Why I Picked It Up: This summer, we went through a LOT of audio books. I have my go-to authors, but we’d pretty much exhausted those, so I was browsing some middle-grade novel blogs and Lemons jumped out, probably because of the upside-down Bigfoot on the front. My son likes mythical creatures, and I was […]
Reading Strategies
Mentor Texts for Nonfiction Writing
Mentor Texts is a highly used teaching strategy to get students to emulate authors in their own writing. [see How-To Post]. In my experience and searches, I see that there are a lot of places to find fiction mentor texts, but nonfiction texts seem to be a bit more elusive. Here we share some ideas […]
Book Review: Kid Normal, by Greg James and Chris Smith
Why I Picked It Up: Last spring/summer, Audible offered a selection of free audiobooks for kids to listen to while schools were closed. We are audiobook junkies (if the car trip will be longer than 10 minutes, we usually have a story playing), and so we listened to lots of them, but Kid Normal was […]
Book Review: Outside, Inside, by Leuyen Pham
Why I Picked It Up: During our back-to-school meetings, an administrator said to us that we had 2nd graders who had never known school before COVID! It really painted a picture that had eluded me. I am coaching teachers in a hybrid model that seemed tough on its own, but I realized that their kids […]
Book Review: Fergal and the Bad Temper by Robert Starling
Why I Picked It Up: This adorable picture book is on the Texas Library Association’s 2X2 Book List for 2019. I have to tell you, the TLA usually gets it right, and I always enjoy books about characters with bad tempers (we can analyze that later…) Why I Finished It: Fergal really is a sweet […]
Book Review: Julián Is A Mermaid, by Jessica Love
Why I Picked It Up: Definitely the cover and title curiosity on this one. Since this is a delicate topic for our culture, I wanted to see how this story would be handled. Why I Finished It: The story was handled beautifully – beyond all expectations. Jessica Love tells a story of a little boy […]
