The Book Search

I FINALLY got to read "Last Stop on Market Street" by Matt de la Pena.  In case you haven't heard, it won the Newbery award as well as a Caldecott honor.  That's pretty unusual but one look at this book and you'll see why everyone was putting it up for awards.  The story is about CJ who lives in a big city.  CJ is leaving church with his grandmother and wants to go play, but they have somewhere else they need to go.  CJ sees a lot of negative things as they ride the bus but his grandmother only sees positives.  The language in this one is terrific and will go a long way with the little kids and oral language.  The pictures are flat, folk lore kinds of pictures that still manage to look modern and up to date.  It's also terrific to see the kind of multiculturalism infused in this book so it doesn't feel put on or forced-it's about a community of different kinds of people and lots of different kinds of people are present.  This one would be gre...

Today was my favorite kind of day in the library.  The bookkeeper let me know that my book order finally came in (YAY!!!!) so I dragged the three very heavy boxes over and started to open them up.  I always think of opening boxes as something like opening gifts and these were so exciting and so gorgeous.  It was a BLAST!!  In fact it took me several hours to get the books unpacked.  Not because there were so many (there were a lot, but they DID fit into three good sized boxes, and frankly, my budget doesn't allow for gigantic expenditures, but still) but because every time I pulled one out I thought of someone who needed to have this book in their hands RIGHT NOW.  My reward for putting the right book in someone's hands varies- "FINALLY."  Tears rolling down cheeks "This is the BEST book I've EVER read".  Books hugged to chest.  Arms thrown around my waist (I'm 6 feet tall and I work in an elementary school).  There were only a few minor...

I got some new books today, YAY!  I suppose it's a sign of my madness that when I get a box of new books, it always feels like Christmas.  So of course,  I hauled several of them home to read.  There were three gorgeous picture book biographies that I had been reading about on other blogs that I FINALLY got for our library. The first one is called "The Right Word" by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet.  These two have teamed up before to write some awesome biographies about people you might never have heard of (like Tony Sarg, who invented the Macy's parade balloons-"Balloons Over Broadway").  This one is about Peter Mark Roget, of the thesaurus.  It gives nice background information about the life of Dr. Roget, including the amazing number of things he invented, besides the thesaurus, but in my opinion, what really brings this one to life is the art work of Melissa Sweet.  There is so much energy in these pictures, they practically leap off the page....

I've been reading biographies this week.  I got a few new ones in the media center and found a few more in the Ebook section of my local library (free books!  Delivered to my ipad!  What a deal!). The first one is called "On a Beam of Light" by Jennifer Berne is a picture book biography of Albert Einstein.  The pictures are exuberant and kind of primitive (in a good way) and it makes the life of Albert Einstein accessible to little kids (and bigger kids who might have thought that Albert Einstein was too smart for them to read about).  It explains some of Einstein's theories in very simple terms but it also talks about his persistence and his questioning attitude as well as his love of reading that took him to the places he wanted to go. The second biography I read was about Jane Goodall.  It's called "The Watcher: Jane Goodall's life with the chimps" by Jeanette Winter.  I'm a big fan of Jane Goodall, having heard her speak at a loca...