It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 4/23/12

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:

Jen Says: I did pretty good last week with audiobooks - I finished Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta. It's a superb fantasy read and I recommend it to anyone who likes Kristin Cashore's Graceling or Fire. I then listened to The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. I'm excited to hear what John and Colby think of it when they get to it in their Nerdbery challenge. I really enjoyed it but I do think it would read better. The narrator was a little stiff and dry for me. I recommend reading this one instead of listening to it. I have also started Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli on audio. Love this book! It's read by John Ritter, a pleasant surprise.

Reading-wise, I finished reading Graceling and finished Marty McGuire (#1) by Kate Messner. I am working on rereading Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby. I also read some picture books Bawk and Roll by Tammi Sauer was cute and The Three Questions by John Muth (based on Leo Tolstoy) brought me to tears.

Kellee Says: I did better this week than I thought I did. I finished 4 novels: 

• Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, which I liked, but I wanted to like more than I did. I reviewed it on Goodreads if you want to see what I thought: my review. 
• This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel which is a prequel of Frankenstein and I really liked it. Oppel is an amazing writer and I've enjoyed everything I've read/listened to of his. This one will probably get a TMT post because it is an awesome companion to Frankenstein. 
• The Unwanteds by Lisa McMann which is a fun book which actually fits the blurb "Hunger Games meets Harry Potter".  It is a crazy dystopian fantasy filled with adventure.
• Blood Red Road by Moira Young which is a dystopian adventure that took me a while to get in to (the dialect and author's style of writing took me a bit), but then I couldn't put it down.  It is a definite mentor text for characterization and world building as well as unique choices in style and punctuation, so I'll being doing a post for it in the future. 

I also read the newest Lunch Lady graphic novel: Lunch Lady and the Mutant Mathletes which is a great addition to the series and a great math cross-curricular book (add it to the pile with Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace and Babymouse: Dragonslayer).  

Reviewed Last Week:

Just click on any picture above to go read the review

Upcoming Book Adventures: 

Jen Says: I'm super excited to get in my car today to finish listening to Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. It has really spurred me to want to listen to Love, Stargirl next because I think I love that book even more. I do have Fire by Kristin Cashore to listen to first. I am going to try listening this time just because it is so long and I need to devote my reading attention to books that I can't get on audio but we'll see if I like the audio of Fire since I wasn't a huge fan of the Graceling audio. After I finish Hurt Go Happy, I'm planning on reading Night Circus (this is an adult book I am excited to reread and savor). I'm also hoping to reread Little Princess and that will mean I have reread all the books I had wanted to reread in April! We'll see how much reading I can get to this week!

Kellee Says: I'll be picking up Liesl and Po, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, and The Apothecary. Cannot wait to read all of them. 


I'm also currently listening to *gasp* an adult book: Dirty Job by Christopher Moore which was recommended to me by Cindy Minnich (@cbethm) so I have no worries about its awesomeness. 

This Week's Reviews:

   

Check back throughout the week to hear about these books. 

Announcements:

We have some announcements for you! 

We are gearing up for our two-year blogiversary here at Teach Mentor Texts! As part of our celebration, we are making a video about what reading means to us. Anyone can participate! Send a video of how you finish the statement, “Reading is...” You can send your videos as an attachment to Jen at jen@teachmentortexts.com or to our Dropbox by clicking this link: http://db.tt/EgZ4NIfi  

For some examples, please visit our Reading Is... video post.

You can be creative, but your video should be less than 15 seconds so we can include multiple videos. Try to keep your ending to the sentence between 1-10 words. Videos will be edited to ensure they will fit into our montage.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and videos with us!

Also, it is the last day to vote for TMT in the Independent Book Blogger Awards- just hit the VOTE button in the sidebar to vote for us.

So, what are you reading this week? 

Please link up below and don't forget to check out other blogs to see what they are reading!

Happy reading!

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