Our house has been taken over by books. Picture books, comic books, young adult novels, and the ever present (and dreaded) textbooks.
Jorden has been a great sport at putting up with the stacks of books that can be found on the dining room table, coffee table and other available surfaces. My collection is quickly growing beyond the limits of our bookshelves. We're both looking forward to moving in July and having a bit more space.
I've always loved reading. As a kid, I would occasionally get grounded from books because I'd read them all day (and night). Sadly, college life hasn't left a ton of time for fun reading. This semester is remarkably different. One of my courses is Children's Literature which not only has weekly book reports, but several major book projects.
The first one of these is the Picture Book project which required the reading of 25 Caldecott Award Winners.
After reading all of these books, I did a paper on which one I thought was the best picture book and why. I chose Flotsam, a wordless picture book which tells the story of an underwater camera that washes up on different shores around the world. It has beautiful illustrations which allow emergent readers or ELLs (English Language Learners) create their own story without being restricted by text on the page. Here's my accompanying poster (art is not my strong suit, so I kept it simple).
Btw, if you haven't read Flotsam, I highly recommend it! David Weisner writes some fun books!!
I recently finished reading Cinder, a sci-fi take on the Cinderella fairy tale. It is the first in the Lunar Chronicles book series. These focus on unconventional spins on fairytales staring strong heroines. I loved Cinder and got very into the story line. Because of that, I don't know how much I'll like the sequel Scarlet which brings in the storyline of Little Red Riding Hood.
Now I'm working on my Multicultural Book Project, which requires the reading of any 6 books from the more recent Notable Books For a Global Society list. After that I get to adapts a children's novel into a Reader's Theatre script. Between all of these projects I am becoming quite familiar with the Juvinile section at both BYU's library and the Provo City Library.
The obvious benefit of this class: reading books when I normally wouldn't, is also the down side. Between all of these book projects and weekly book reports, I feel like I always have my nose in a book. This week's book is Making Lemonade. The author, Virginia Euwer Wolff will be attending class on Thursday. It came today via Amazon, so I better get cracking.
If you have a favorite book, particularly elementary or middle grade, let me know!!! I am working on compiling an awesome book list!
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