Teach Mentor Texts: It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 1/9/12

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA!

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now…who knows, you might discover that next “must read” book!

After doing the meme for a couple of weeks, we realized this would be a fun meme to start up with a kidlit focus - anyone reading and reviewing books in children's literature - it can be picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, you name it in the world of kidlit and it's in! We have loved being a part of this meme and we hope you do too! We encourage everyone participating to go and visit the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and to comment on as many posts as you can. We love talking books and believe in sharing and discussing what we're reading. We hope you join us!

Last Week's Book Adventures:

Kellee Says: So this week reading-wise wasn't very eventful. With going back to school I found myself wanting to go to bed on time and not reading into all hours of the night- who would have known, hm?! I did read "Freak the Geek" from Geektastic and the chapter preview of The Fault in our Stars by John Green as I hoped. I also finished reading The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe so I could review it for ALAN's Picks and it was really good. It is about a girl stuck on an island during a quarantine- such an emotional and frightening book! But that was about all I got read this week. It is kind of depressing because my Goodread's 2012 Reading Challenge is already yelling at me that I am 3 books behind and it is only 9 days into the year. Oh well, good thing we have a summer break!

Jen Says: I agree! It was really hard to get reading in this week since we were just back at school. I did read the John Green short stories - the one from 21 Proms is definitely my favorite - and I finished Paper Towns. I've been doing so great with Neversink. My students remember when I tried to read it before and was frustrated because at first. Now I kept showing them how I was reading more and more and they were so proud of me. It took me a while to get used to the characters but now it's getting exciting! I reread more of A Monster Calls for Part 2 of our Reading Along on I-94 series with Colby.

We read a bunch of picture books but my favorites this week were: Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems, Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges (A Caldecott winner), and Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People by Monica Brown (all 5-stars in my book!)

Reviewed Last Week:

We also introduced John Green Week with our favorite quotes and videos by him followed by a post where Kellee shared John's presentations at NCTE/ALAN.

Just click on any picture above to go read the review

Upcoming Book Adventures:

Kellee Says: This week I am planning on reading Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner as well as the complete The Fault in our Stars after I receive it on Tuesday. I'll let you know next week how that goes. I am excited for this upcoming week, though, because Ginny Rorby, the author of one of my favorite novels Hurt Go Happy, will be in town and we having dinner together on Tuesday! So not very much reading will be done that day, but a lot of talking about books.

Jen Says: This week I'll still be reading Neversink but I'm confident I'll finish it! Wahoo! I have just barely started Sidekicks by my friend, Jack Ferraiolo, that I am super excited to listen to. The narrator actually sounds like Jack. It's very cool. Once I finish Neversink I have the first Reading A-Z Mystery waiting for me and Pull of Gravity by Gae Polisner (a Nerdy winner!). And I'm still reading along with A Monster Calls. I think I've read all the picture books we got from the library so it'll be a surprise to see what picture books I read!

This Week's Reviews: