The Book Search

Hoo boy, did it feel like a long slog to get to winter break.  In their wisdom, our district decided our kids should go to school until December 22 and we should have December 23 as a teacher workday.  It's so much fun to have special holiday events, concerts, tree lightings, parties, but wow, the level of excitement and anticipation (which has been building since OCTOBER) was pretty intense.  I was relieved to see at a local retail outlet that we have Valentine's day to look forward to, so thank goodness we have something to keep the crazy level high. But so now, we are back home after a wonderful visit with family and we have some time to relax and finish up projects and READ.  YAY!!!  I told the kids that my goal was to read a book a day all winter break, and frankly, I'm failing at that so far, but I'm hoping to catch up a bit now.  I did get to read a couple of brand new picture books on the plane and they are just terrific.  The first one is ca...

There were a lot of picture books I hadn't read at the book fair but there were even more chapter books that I hadn't read.  I read pretty fast, but I'm still having trouble finishing all the books I wanted to read before the end of the book fair.  I wonder if my principal would mind if I took the day off tomorrow so I could finish reading.... There were some completely stellar ones on the list.  Two by Lynda Mullaly Hunt... I hadn't read "One for the Murphys" which got a lot of buzz last year.  It's about a girl named Carley who is put in a foster home (with the Murphys) because of a terrible incident with her stepfather and mom.  Her mom was badly injured and couldn't take care of her so Carley is sent to foster care.  The Murphys are a solid family with three young boys and Carley finds it difficult that people can be so kind to each other.  She makes friends and learns to trust the Murphys.  I was a little surprised by the ending. This would...