Just Finished Reading...

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt
          This book is on the top of about every mock Newbery 2012 award list, and I can see why. Doug Swieteck is about the most real and well-written character I've read in a long time in young fiction. The entire story spans Doug's 1968-69 school year beginning with him and his family moving to stupid Marysville, as he deems it.
          Doug has a meekly sweet mother and not-so-loving father, as well as two older brothers.  The oldest, Lucas, is away fighting in the Vietnam war, but we get an idea of his character when Doug does or says something "jerky" and compares it to his brother. Now I sound like Lucas.  That's something Lucas would say.  Christopher, the second oldest brother, seems to be another chip off the old block.  He is ruthlessly mean to Doug, stealing his Joe Pepitone-signed hat, and making fun of all he does.  Doug has to hide anything valuable or special to him from his brother.  The boys' poor attitudes are a result of their father's character.  He is negative, abusive physically and through his words.  Doug's mother is the only saving grace of Doug, but she does not stand up to her husband.
          Doug's story has its ups and downs - things look up and then something happens to dampen his spirit.  His teachers and principal think the worst of him for crimes his brother allegedly committed.  People in town question his nature as well.  And, of course, there is the crotchety librarian who scolds Doug for waiting on the steps of the library to open.  What librarian would do that?
          There is so much addressed in this book that one could spend days discussing - John James Audubon's Birds of America and how Doug can associate what's happening in each painting with what's happening in his life, domestic violence, the controversies of the Vietnam War, Jane Eyre!, baseball and the New York Yankess, NASA's space program and landing on the moon, as well as other significant events of the 60's, etc.  Doug is such a dynamic character, as well, that the story almost reads as a memoir.  A nice surprise at the end of the book is a teaching guide full of discussion questions and activities, along with the first chapter of The Wednesday Wars, a companion to Okay for Now.

Add to your to-read list.

Just Finished Reading...

The Wall... Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis

          I placed this book on hold at my local library along with some other children's picture books.  I got a call yesterday that a few of my book selections were available, so I headed over, found a seat, and got to reading.  This book was compactly educational in regard to the Cold War and Communist Soviet Union.  I grew up hearing about the Berlin wall and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I knew about the Cuban missile crisis. I knew we were at odds with Soviet Russia, but I didn't understand the conflict any further than we had differing governing ideologies.  I also liked that the introduction concisely explained the link between the events of WWII's aftermath to the onset of Russian-formed Soviet Union, because many times we study events of our history in isolated segments, and we forget to examine the cause-effect sequences in between large events. This book told the story of author Peter Sis's first-hand account of life in then Czechoslovakia and how the Prague Spring of 1968 helped him to awaken from his "brainwashed" youth.  Art and music played a huge role in his awakening.  I've read many fictional dystopian novels and never fully realized that these societies truly existed/exist today.  I highly recommend putting a copy of this on every school/classroom library shelf.  It's a great jumping off point for further research and examination.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List.

Just Finished Reading...

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
*read by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, and Cassandra Campbell on audiobook

“Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.” ― Kathryn Stockett, The Help 

Well, Mammy's still waiting for someone to ask her...

      
          I started out listening to the audiobook of The Help on a six hour trip back from Pensacola Beach.  I was never really excited to read it, because I usually don't find myself enjoying many of the mainstream best-sellers in women's fiction - or "chick lit" I like to call it.  It happened to be the only book available to check out on my online library account at the time, so when my companion and I were finally bored enough on our drive home, we turned it on.  Right away, we were both entertained.  The narrators all did an exceptional job, and the narrator for Minny even went on to play her in the movie. 

          We continued listening to it on a two hour drive to Orlando and back over the weekend, and when I got home, I decided I didn't want to have to wait to finish reading it; so I ran out to Barnes and Noble and bought the paperback.
          I'm not going to waste time summarizing the story, because just about everyone's read it or seen the movie, or at least know the premise.**   I'm just going to jump in with my reaction, so I apologize for any spoilers I may reveal.  The Help is definitely an entertaining read.  The characters are well-developed, and I felt invested in their stories.  Should this book be considered a champion of the civil rights movement and the victorious black women of the South?  Heavens, no.  It was, after all, written by a white woman, Kathryn Stockett, who, like Skeeter, grew up in Mississippi.  Stockett was also sued by her own brother's housekeeper for using her likeness to create the character Aibileen. The suit was only thrown out due to a statute of limitations.  The character of Skeeter is not interested, nor does she know much about, the black woman's struggle under the Jim Crow era, and only initially decides to create a book about black housekeepers in Jackson because she has a dream to be published.  The character Aibileen in the story is even responsible for giving Skeeter the idea to write the book.  So why anyone would mistake Skeeter as the heroine of the story is beyond me.  Aibileen and Minny risk their jobs and safety to write this book.  Skeeter risks being ostracized from Hilly's League.  Her biggest worries are getting her hair to straighten and to find a man to marry so that her mother will stop pestering her. Skeeter is merely the editor of the book, so it bugs me that she takes so much credit for it. 

 Things That Also Bothered Me

          Aibileen - I can't believe Aibileen would be truly sorry to leave her job working for Elizabeth.  She's sad to leave Mae Mobley and perhaps the steady income, but I would think she'd be jumping for joy to be rid of those women and their bridge club lunches.  Plus, she gets a job writing for the paper, and there's potential their book will bring in more money as time goes on.
          Minny - Minny's story was my favorite to read.  She's a strong, outspoken woman full of sass, so I was surprised that she suffered from spousal abuse.  She addresses it in the end of why she doesn't fight back, and eventually leaves Leroy, but I have to wonder why the author thought it was necessary to put this in.  It seems that it's only the black men who are seen doing the abusing and leaving and not the white men.  I'm not sure what the author's message is here.
          Skeeter - Beyond what issues I already have with this character, I can't understand her friendship with Hilly.  Skeeter speaks in a disparaging manner about her closest friend, and can't trust her to not snoop in her satchel, and yet because they've been friends since childhood, she reasons that's justification enough to have stayed  her friend so long.  Also, the storyline with Stuart seemed nothing more than a way to show the "sacrifices" Skeeter makes for her dear new friends publishing deal.  I think the story would have been much better if Skeeter wasn't in it in the first place.  This wasn't her story to tell.  I'll be interested to see how the movie portrays her, but I'm sure it will be much the same since Stockett and her close friend were the screenwriters/director for the film.  I hope that the readers and audience of this story realize the irony/hypocrisy of it all.  It is still a white woman telling her version of the black woman's story.  The cheesy declaration at the end that the point of the book is to show that there's really not much different about us women is the most ridiculous revelation Skeeter could make.  I didn't see a whole lot of similarities between Minny and Hilly, Minny and Celia, or Aibileen and Elizabeth.
          Plot plunks - There were a lot of plot secrets Stockett used to keep the story intriguing:  What is wrong with Celia?  What happened to Constantine?  What was the "horrible thing" that Stuart's ex-fiance did? And all of them were either predictable, overly-dramatized, or both.

          Overall, I don't discourage anyone from reading this book.  It is an entertaining read, probably more so as audiobook, but please take it as the work of fiction that it is and not a revolutionary memoir of the Jim Crow south.

**After spending the holiday at my grandmother's house, I feel obliged to mention the premise, as she had heard about the book from her friends and tried to download it on her Nook, only to have accidentally downloaded The Help, A Novel, or The Secret Confessions of a Traditional Housekeeper by Shay Arthur.  She complained, "I don't know why everyone says that book is good.  I thought it was so boring."  She started to tell us about the plot, and that's when we realized she had purchased the wrong book. 
          The Help is told from the point of view of three women: Aibileen, a housekeeper in Jackson, MS who has worked her whole life working in white people's homes and raising their babies; Minny, Aibileen's friend and fellow housekeeper who gets in trouble for her sass-talking, and Skeeter, a recent college graduate who is a socialite and friend of the women Minny and Aibileen work for. Skeeter's dream is to become either a writer or journalist, and by way of talking with Aibileen, decides she wants to write about housekeepers' experiences working in the south.

I apologize if this review is not the most cohesive. I wrote it over the span of my week on Thanksgiving holiday - ten minutes here and there.

Just Finished Reading...

The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan

While I enjoyed last year's The Lost Hero starring Jason Grace as the Roman demigod and amnesiac, I felt there was something missing.  Leo is the only character who sticks out in my memory from my reading of the first installation of the new Heroes of Olympus series.  Maybe because he *SPOILER* appears in book two.  I didn't feel as invested with the characters as I had with Percy, Annabeth, and Grover from the first Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. 

The first two books are a set up for the new fight.  In PJatO, the fight was with Kronos, in HoO, the fight is with big, bad mamma Gaea.  The Greek and Roman camps are unaware of each other, but will now be forced to work with one another in order to fight the mother of creation. 

In Son of Neptune we find out where Percy's been the whole time Jason and his new gang were fighting wind gods and flying around on mechanical dragons on a quest to free Hera/Juno.  Percy wakes up from a long nap and finds himself at a camp for Roman demigods, Camp Jupiter.  He meets two campers, Hazel and Frank, who helped save his life but are of course not highly respected by the other campers.  I thought these characters were more richly drawn than the characters in the previous book, and so I cared more about their stories.  Hazel gets flashbacks that render her unconscious, and Frank, though big and beefy, doesn't think much of himself.  Percy is his usual self, even with losing his memory, full of wit, humor, and courage only a true hero possesses.  Their quest is to free the god of death, Thanatos (imprisoned somewhere in Alaska), defeat the king of giants, Alcyoneus and rush back to help defend Camp Jupiter from attack by the Feast of Fortuna.  No problem, right?  Actually, that's my only quip with these stories.  It seems too easy for these half-bloods to defeat these ancient (and usually stupid) monsters.  I would think the gods have to be on their sides for them to always be so victorious.

What I love about this new series is that (and I said this with the first book) it introduces the reader to Roman mythology.  The reader sees that not only do the names change of the gods, but that their personalities are altered as well.  We see this mainly with the character of Ares/Mars in book two. 

Riordan gives us more of what we love:  good battles, a tiny sliver of puppy love, lots of humor, and a world where fantasy and reality collide.  If you haven't read The Lost Hero, you could probably skip it and read The Son of Neptune without missing a beat. 

Oh, yes.  My only other problem with the book was that I bought it as a Nook book, and the spacing was jacked up throughout.  Slightly annoying.

All You Need Is Love... and Individuality

My favorite genre of Young Adult fiction is dystopian fiction.  Dys meaning "not" and topian taken from "Utopian" or an ideal society.  Dystopian societies are usually formed out of tyranical rule.  Its citizens have few freedoms and many laws, many which seem outlandish to the reader, all in an effort to form a society that is seemingly perfect and without conflict.  The problem is that it is these laws and limited rights that breed conflict.  Authors tend to create these fictional societies as a way of commenting on our own forms of governing conventions.  Authors pose questions through their stories, asking students/teens/readers to examine and/or reexamine their views on many principles, easily tying in to conversations regarding political science, history, and the humanities.  Dystopian societies are often set in the future, and that is why these books are generally considered a sub-genre of science fiction. 

As Banned Books Week was a little over a week ago, and I like to do things in my own time, I've decided I would go through my favorite YA books in this typically challenged genre.

1.  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What can I say, Ray Bradbury's the boss.  This book is for everyone who believes in the power of books.  And if that's not enough, there's a killer spider-robot chase scene.  I believe in the importance of rereading and reading again good books, but I don't do it enough.  Except with this book and a few others. 

Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave.

Umm... for the millenials, at what temperature does an eReader burn?

Controversial:  Montag's pill-popping wife.

2.  The Giver by Lois Lowry

For my degree, I had to take an Adolescent Literature course at UMKC.  I had been used to reading out of anthologies, studying Shakespeare, falling asleep to Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, and learning gaelic and other Old English/anglo-saxon dialogues.  Great for starting conversations with other English majors, but generally not beneficial or entertaining in any other fashion.  I was interested even less in reading kids' books.  I had to do a lot of reading in college, and it was the one time in my life that I started to despise reading.  One of the course requirements for my class was that we had to read twelve books from a provided list of notable YA/chapter books.  Many of my selections were random, while a few based on recommendations.  The Giver happened to be one that I chose.    I tucked myself into bed one night with this book at the top of my stack, and I ended up reading it cover to cover that night.

Controversial:  Pills that stop "stirrings."  Unwanted babies and elderly alike are euthanized.

3.  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

This book's a classic, but I only first read it a couple of years ago.  I've read it once a year ever since, though.  Such a good story, with one of the most well-known and copied first sentence.  I actually made a book trailer a couple of years ago as a model for my students to make their own.







Controversial:  Heck, I don't know.  The idea that sameness is bad?

4.  The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

I loved this book, but why talk about it again when you can go here and read my inital review?

Controversial:  Language and brutality. 
5. Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Sometimes the best way to get a kid to read a book is to tell them why they shouldn't read it.  That happened to be the case for this book.  After I finished my book talk  for this book with each class, I had at least half of my students add their names to the waiting list to read this one.  I read this book when none of my books on hold were available and I had nothing else to read.  It was my first Shusterman novel, and I just thought it was going to be another average, ho-hum YA book.  Obviously it wasn't, or it wouldn't be on this list.  This story had a great premise:  You can "unwind" a child between the ages of 13 and 18 if you decide they'd make a better contribution to society as parts than as a whole.  In one chapter, the reader actually experiences a character getting unwound.  I feel ill just remembering it.

Controversial:  Uh, see last sentence.

**This blog post was probably spurred by two of the latest books I've read.  I highly recommend both, but I'm too tired to discuss either at this point in time.

*The Maze Runner by James Dashner

*Across the Universe by Beth Revis

#48HBC Calling It Quits

I'm throwing in the towel. Mainly because I haven't enjoyed the majority of books I've chosen to read this weekend, but also because I've gained back all the weight I had lost this week, and I'm about to be living the single life for a week while my husband leaves town for a business trip followed by a fishing trip. I won't see him again until June 20th. I plan on getting the most out of living single. Tomorrow, I'm joining the gym and will be every day using my Pilates Crunch DVD. I plan to continue reading through 6/20 and will donate $2 for every 100 pages read from this weekend until then to my selected organizations.

Just Finished Reading...

Wake by Lisa McMann

time spent reading: 3.45 hours

pages read: 210

This book was not so great. It was on the level of the DaVinci Code or a Lifetime channel original movie - stupidly stupid but with mass appeal.

Janie discovers at a young age that whenever she gets near a sleeping person, she gets sucked into his dream, much to her chagrin. Most people dream they're naked in a room full of people, or that they're falling, or dream about their greatest desires and worst fears. Janie comes to know more about people, and perfect strangers, than she cares to.

Her senior year, Janie runs into a boy she used to know. He's had an extreme makeover, going from greasy goth guy to pulled-together, glasses-wearing cutie. The girls at school think he's a new kid, that's how well they recognize him. He and Janie grow close and eventually he learns her secret. Afterward, he seems to distance himself from Janie, and she learns through a friend that he is hooking up with her enemy and possibly selling dope. What's a girl to do?

I could deal with the short, choppy sentences and even the choppy storyline punctuated by dates and times, but I couldn't get used to the cheesy, inauthentic dialogue. Listen, nobody says 'rents. Nobody ever has. And meeting the Captain? That pushed this story far into the Lifetime television, paperback novel sold at your local grocery store or pharmacy. Finally, I find it unbelievable that there would be so many kids and adults who fall asleep napping at school and the office. Silly, silly, silly.

Just Finished Reading...

The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

time spent reading: 1.5 hours

pages read: 129

I grabbed this book off the shelf because it was short, and I wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment first thing this morning. It turns out I really enjoyed this short children's story. Sara lives with her Aunt Willie along with her 19-year-old sister, Wanda, and her mentally handicapped brother, Charlie, after her mother passed away. Sara's father works in another town and visits occasionally on the weekends. One summer morning, Sara wakes up and finds her brother has disappeared. He got up in the middle of night wanting to see the swans at the lake Sara had taken him to the day before, but he couldn't remember the way and got himself lost in the woods.

I liked this story because it reminds me of my grandmother, and how she probably grew up. The characters are real people and funny to listen to. They all share the same names as my grandmother's family and friends: Midge, Frank, Wanda, etc. It reminds me of the "good ole' days" when there was only one television program to choose from, and people got excited about the little things. Everyone knew each other, and everyone was cordial.

Sara is an adolescent who is discontent with life. She thinks she's ugly and has clown feet made all the worse by her "Donald Duck" orange-dyed tennis shoes.

Up until this year, it seemed, her life had flowed along with rhythmic evenness. The first fourteen years of her life all seemed the same. She had loved her sister without envy, her aunt without finding her coarse, her brother without pity. Now all that was changed. She was filled with discontent, and anger about herself, her family, that made her think she would never be content again. p.35

Really, this is nothing more than what every 14 year old girl feels at one point or time.

"I feel like I want to start screaming and kicking and I want to jump up and tear down the curtains and rip up the sheets [...] I want to yank my clothes out of the clsoet and burn them and -"

"Well, why don't you try it if it would make you feel better?"

"Because it wouldn't." [...] "I just feel like nothing."

"Oh, everybody does at times, Sara."

"Not like me. I'm not anything. I'm not cute, and I'm not pretty, and I'm not a good dancer, and I'm not smart, and I'm not popular. I'm not anything." p. 39

The story only covers a 24 hour period, from one evening to the next. That's not enough time for a character to actually grow and change a whole lot. Sara is still Sara, but she finds that she had misjudged a boy from her school and maybe her father, too.

The humor in the characters' conversations is also what makes the story so enjoyable. As Sara and her friend Mary are tryin to figure out where Charlie went, Mary suggests they go back to the house as he may be there. Sara knows that won't be the case, and she repeats this again and again.

"I know he won't be."

"Well, don't get discouraged until we see." [...] "You know who you sound like? Remember when Mary Louise was up for class president and she kept saying, 'I know won't get it.' For three days that was all she said."

"And she didn't get it."

"Well, I just meant you sounded like her, your voice or something," Mary explained quickly. p. 61

#48HBC 12+ hours

Done for today.

Hours devoted to 48HBC: 12.25 hours
books read: 2
pages read: 490
audiobook: 3.5 hours (Beastly by Alex Flinn)
blogging: 2 hours

G'night.

#48HBC Update

Just finished reading...

The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall - p. 170-283 finished

This is a book I've ready many times when I was younger. I shared it as a read-aloud to my sixth graders, but never got the chance to finish it with them. So, I picked up where I left off and read the rest.

113 pages read

#48HBC Book One

#48HBC Book One

I finally finished The Dark and Hollow Places. I feel like such a slow reader for taking around 7 hours to read it. (I spent part of my late morning listening to Beastly on audiobook while I cleaned up.) This book is the apparent end to The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy, although neither the second or third book lives up to the first. There was so much potential for this story, and it all got lost somewhere in between the silly love stories, chases, near deaths, and evil Recruiters. There was no big revelation or glint of real hope for the survivors. I'm exhausted not from the length of time it took reading this, but from Annah's constant fight and struggle to stay alive. It never ended.

pages: 377

time spent reading: roughly 7 hours

On your mark... Get set...

Go!

I woke up late so am already an hour and a half behind my starting line. First book to read:
The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan.

See ya in about 3 hours.

School's Out... Time to Read!

Time to get my list together for MotherReader's annual 48 Hour Book Challenge. I haven't decided yet when I'll start. I have post-planning this week which hopefully I'll be finished with before Friday. I may use Friday to get my house clean and comfortable and start on Saturday morning. I'm not the biggest fan of blogging during the challenge, but I know that was added to the rules last year. This is my third year participating, and I hope it's the best one yet. Again, for every 100 pages I read, I will donate $2.00 to my charities LiteracyKC and Rose Brooks.

Nook books:

The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

Belladonna by Karen Moline

Audiobooks:

I know I can only count one; however, I'm not sure yet which one it will be. Here's what's in my library cart.

Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt

Paper Towns by John Green

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Books lying around the house:

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

Peony in Love by Lisa See

The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

The Door in the Wall by Marguerite deAngeli

Monday Morning Inspiration

Here's some pessimism for you today. Have a good week!

"When somebody tells you nothing is impossible, ask him to dribble a football. - Unknown



"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." - Unknown



"Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry." - George Ade

My vote goes to...

The 2011 John Newbery medal will be awarded tomorrow morning, as well as a plethora of other awards. I tried my best this fall to read many of the contenders for the award. Here they are with a short summary and review.

1. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

I'm not sure what the hype was over this novel except that its subject centers around the Black Panther movement in Oakland, California. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are sisters from Brooklyn whose mother left them when Fern was still nursing. Delphine is now eleven, and her father thinks it's a great idea for the girls to spend the summer with the mother who abandoned them and wants nothing to do with them even when they get there.

The sisters spend their days at the local People's Center, where they eat breakfast and lunch and attend a children's class to learn about the "people's revolution." The reader hopes for the tender moment when the mom will begin to see the error of her ways, look at her girls, and realize she loves them and needs them in her life. It doesn't quite happen that way. This isn't enough of a historical fiction novel that you'll learn anything new, and it wasn't a story that I could put in my students' hands and they would love me for it. It was okay.

2. Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

This is another story set in the past (1935) that doesn't really doesn't have anything to do with the history of the time. This time the daughter, Turtle, is being sent to live with her aunt and cousins in Key West because her mother's new employer doesn't like children. There is a bit of adventure and a bit of self-discovery. I purchased this for the classroom, and while it was enjoyed by a few, the book fell apart too quickly, and who wants to read a book with its pages falling out? Overall, not the winner, but still a light-hearted read.

3. The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

Whoa! Searched this on Amazon just using "strange case," and this title appeared before Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Crazy. While this strange case isn't as classic as the latter, it was still a good read. I knew the kids would love it because the book, from its cover to its pages, are set up similar to the Wimpy Kid books, it has an origami Yoda on the front, and directions for how to make one it the back. That was really the best of this book for my students, the how-to directions.

Many students used this book for their reading response journals, and I was surprised to find many of them were unimpressed with the story. The biggest complaint? The story lacked character development because each chapter was merely a "case file" with a new character's personal account of his or her interaction with Dwight/OY. They felt the book was a bit gimmicky and that the sixth graders weren't relatable. Did I mention my reading students ARE sixth graders? I was pretty impressed with their observations, and I think author's should take note to remember whom they are writing for. Don't get me wrong; they will still pick this up because it is a quick and easy read. They call this kind of book (just like the Wimpy Kid books) a "break" from real reading.

4. Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

This is the story of a girl with cerebral palsey. Melody is highly intelligent with a photographic memory, however she is unable to speak and is confined to a wheel chair because she is unable to control her body in the least. As she gets older, she becomes more and more frustrated that no one understands her. The only way to try to get her point across is by throwing a fit, and that doesn't always lead the recipient to guess correctly why Melody is upset.

Melody eventually gets a medi-talker and is finally able to communicate with those around her. However, it doesn't solve all her problems. People still view her as "retarded" because of the way she looks and acts, including a teacher at her school. (That ticked me off.)

Again, I was hoping for a Rudy moment, where underdog Melody can show everyone up, but the end takes a surprising turn that I didn't much enjoy.

5. My pick for this year's Newbery medal goes to Countdown by Deborah Wiles. The only reason I think it may not win is because it is very similar to last year's winner, When You Reach Me, sans time travel. This is a fun story of a fifth grader named Franny who has to deal with her best friend hating her for no good reason in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis.

This book has to be read, not listened to on audiobook, because it is part documentary, part fiction. I read this aloud to my students, and I knew, even with scanning the pictures, showing actual footage from YouTube of Bert the Turtle and JFK's speech, as well as playing the music Franny listens to in the story, that they still needed to see the words on the page. In almost every chapter there are historical quotes and lyrics to songs interspersed in the story. It sounds confusing to the students when I go from reading the narrative to reading the lines for "It was an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini that she wore for the first time..." I just began skipping reading those parts because my kids kept asking, "Huh?" Also, Franny's thoughts can be random and strung together, having nothing to do with the current situation, so I would sometimes skip over her rambles.

Just Finished Reading...

For Christmas, I got the Barnes & Noble Nook. It is awesome. The first book I completed on it was The Forest and Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. I heard about this book a couple of years ago, but based on the age group of my students, I never picked it up, because I knew I wouldn't be able to recommend it to 5th and 6th graders. Now that I have 7th and 8th graders, I am able to select more and more YA novels, and I'm so glad!

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is my first foray into the zombie genre, and I enjoyed it. Mary lives in a village in the middle of a forest of Unconsecrated, undead humans infected and hungering for blood. The press against the fences that surround Mary's village unrelentingly. Mary has already lost her father to the Forest of Hands and Teeth, but he will not be the only loved one Mary loses.

What's interesting about this story is that the reader knows just about as much as Mary does about the Return and the world outside of Mary's village, not a whole lot. So when Mary enters the Sisterhood, I was thinking she would be uncovering some deep, dirty secrets of the sisters. Instead, there is a breach, the village is wiped out, and Mary, along with her closest loved ones (how much did she luck out?) flee the village and enter the "forbidden" path. The reader begins to hope that this path is going to lead to the group's salvation, but, well, you'll just have to read it to figure out whether Mary ever makes it to her precious ocean or not.

Themes: hope, faith, and zombies

What May Come

2011 is a year full of optimism, opportunity, and potential. I've struggled to make myself a regular participant of the blogging world. While I have hope that I can do better, I know my life makes it impossible at times to keep up. January is no exception.

I like Saturday mornings for looking through all the posts on my Google Reader, updating my To Do list, and taking notes and making plans with all the great information and ideas I've read. And lastly, most sparsely, I sometimes update my blog.

Here are some goals I've already set for myself this year, as well as some upcoming activities that are going to keep me busy:

1. Goodreads Reading Challenge - I challenged myself to read at least 50 books this year. I had initially set my goal for 75, but I didn't think that was a realistic, attainable goal. There are only 51.2 weeks in a year; I'd have to finish more than one book each week to accomplish that goal. If I read more than 50, sweet; if I only read 50, I am still successful.
2. Read 10 Non-Fiction titles in 2011 - I got this idea from Beth @ PointsWest. I don't read enough non-fiction, and I'm not talking about professional books on education. I want to read biographies, histories, amazing facts, etc. I want to learn about more than how to be a great teacher.
3. I'm participating in MotherReader's Comment Challenge 2011 - If I want to take blogging more seriously and make a real effort to exist in the blogosphere, then I need to start putting myself out there. Let's be honest. I've not had a single comment on this blog since I first revamped it in 2009. Pathetic.
4. At the beginning of February, I'm attending the FETC technology conference in Orlando. Our middle school classrooms became one-to-one classrooms this year thanks to the generous donation of a friend of our school's company. It completely changes the pedagogy of the classroom. Our reading classrooms have begun using Goodreads as a way to discuss and share our reading. For the first time, we are also using NoodleTools to instruct and let students write research papers. And the coolest thing that's happened with technology this year is students are bringing their e-readers in for independent reading. They are reading more simply because they have a cool new toy to do it on.
5. For three Saturdays, two this month and one in February, I will be participating in my college alma mater's education program's grant project. It's called a Democracy Lab. I'm not quite sure what's in store for me there, except that I will be spending the bulk of my Saturday morning and afternoon at JU, and will be presenting something to my co-educators at work. Hopefully, I will be getting some valuable, if not useful, information out of this program. And the most exciting part of this prospect? They are going to pay me to participate AND give me some money to use for my classroom. I'm in!

I'm off now to work on my goals: comment on four more blogs, finish reading The Dead-Tossed Waves, write a blog about the upcoming Newbery Award, and a "Just Finished" review on The Forest of Hands and Teeth.