Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

A friend just asked for a list of multicultural reads for 6th graders, and since reading multicultural books is so important I thought I would share it here. Multicultural Reads for 6th Graders: The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, Christopher Paul Curtis Esperanza Rising, Pam Munoz Ryan Brown Girl Dreaming, J. Woodson (LOVED this book) One Crazy Summer, Williams-Garcia Inside Out and Back Again, Lai The Cay, T. Taylor Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, Lensey Namioka Witch of Blackbird Pond, Speare Chains (Book #1, The Seeds of America Trilogy), Anderson Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor Birchbark House, Erdich Starry River of the Sky, Lin Threads, Polonsky Dancing, Alma Flor Ada Tiger Boy, Perkins Ninth Ward, Rhodes Star in the Forest (story about illegal immigrants--timely), Resau Boys Without Names, Sheth How I Became a Ghost, Tingle

"For thus my Lord said to me: Go, station a watchman, let him tell what he sees."  --Isiah, 21:6, New American Bible *Spoilers* I told myself to ease into. I told yourself that it's not a sequel, it's a rough version. I told myself it's full of the characters of my childhood (and second childhood), the characters I know as well as myself, and love so much I just have to travel alongside them again. On a new journey. And yet I still prepared for the worst. And I wasn't disappointed. There is no way this is all Harper Lee's doing--though her publisher would have us believe it's an early and very different draft of what later became To Kill a Mockingbird --this book reads so inconsistently, and only parts of it ring with Lee's voice--in the part featuring the flashback of the children and the Revival I couldn't help but smile and be momentarily lulled. There she is, now she'll take over the story, and it will come right... ...

Feeling like I haven't been writing much lately because I've been so damn busy. Which is a good thing. I've been: Finalizing Summer Reading at work (our Kick-Off's this weekend!!), program begins Monday! Having nightmare about the aformentioned Playing softball (our team's terrible! This weekend we lost 18-3, an improvement of the previous weeks 25-3) Traveling all over God's green Earth: Indiana (camping), Michigan (Godchild's Baptism), Cleveland area (visit to my A3's house to see my niece and chubby baby nephew) And reading TONS. Particularly reading tons of YA lately, which is why I wanted to share what I've read and enjoyed lately! The Maze Runner series by James Dashner: YA dystopian genre, a trilogy with the fourth book acting as a prequel to The Maze Runner. I am reading them in the order pictured and am about 1/4 of the way into Death Cure. We Were Liars , E. Lockhart: I picked this up because John Green gave it a stellar review on...

And still more ... 5th Grade Recommendations: Aurora County All-Stars, by Deborah Wiles, any books by her Becoming Naomi Leon, by Pam Munoz Ryan BFG, by Roald Dahl Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrop Dealing with Dragons series, by Patricia Wrede Donuthead, by Sue Stauffacher Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan Flipped, by Wendelin Van Draanen From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg George Washington’s Socks, by Elvira Woodruff The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke and its sequel Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert O’Brien My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall P.S. Longer Letter Later, by Paula Danzig...

I'm a little behind, since this list has been out for over a month, but here goes (thanks Publishers Weekly for posting): FICTION: Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King Louise Erdrich, The Round House  Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds  NONFICTION : Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956  Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4 Domingo Martinez, The Boy Kings of Texas  Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East      POETRY: David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations Cynthia Huntington, Heavenly Bodies Tim Seibles, Fast Animal Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic ...

Today marks the first day AND the 30th Anniversary of Banned Books Week! Books are challenged for a slew of reasons: language, sexuality, immorality, anti-church, anti-government, anti-adults, sentiments of witchcraft, you name it.   Why do we celebrate Banned Books Week? Well, we celebrate it in the hopes of raising awareness about these challenged/banned books (many of which are considered classics!), and also because we believe that people should have free access to and the ability to read whatever they want—each person should be able to judge what is best for him/herself! FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO READ!   For a list of most frequently challenged and banned books, click here . Also, thought I would share some quotes from some of my favorite books which have all been challenged and/or banned too! I am a REBEL! “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you'r...

"Twenty Minutes a Day" Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, "Hey, don't quit." --Richard Peck

Booklist  had this awesome list on their site some months back and I wanted to share it:    Top 10 Historical Fiction for Youth by Ilene Cooper   First published April 15, 2012 ( Booklist ). The magic of historical fiction is that it can take you back in time, where the experiences of another era seem real, yet the characters’ feelings are the same as the reader’s. These 10 titles do just that, whether the setting is a small southern town, Soviet Russia, or a ship at sea. — Ilene Cooper A Month of Sundays . By Ruth White. 2011. Farrar, $16.99 (9780374399122). Gr. 6–8. In 1950s Black Rock, Virginia, Garnet, 14, gets dumped with her father’s relatives, none of whom she’s met (not even her father for that matter.) But Aunt June treats her like a daughter, and they become close while visiting a new church each week to see if June’s cancer can be cured. Breaking Stalin’s Nose . By Eugene Yelchin. Illus. by the author. 2011. Holt, $15.99 (97808...

Looking for a (many) great book(s) to read while you soak in the sun this summer? Here is NPR's Audience Picks: 100 Best Beach Books Ever 1. The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling 2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee 3. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini 4. Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding 5. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen 6. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells 7. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald 8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams 9. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg 10. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver 11. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger 12. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel 13. The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan 14. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien 15. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger 16. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell 17. Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett 18. The Lord of the Rings , by J.R.R. Tolkien 19. Mid...

Stumbled upon this awesome blog post about reading lists, it inspired me to think about a few books which I would like to tackle this summer: Lolita , Vladimir Nabokov Grapes of Wrath , John Steinbeck The Innocents Abroad , Mark Twain East of Eden , John Steinbeck The Prodigal Summer , Barbara Kingsolver What's on your summer reading list?

It's the simple things: today it was the mother of five--ages 9, 7, 6, 4, and 3--who signed up all five kids for summer reading and then checked out the 20+ books the kids had picked out...and I loved how excited the kids got about A. picking out books B. they didn't go get DVDs like most kids these days do and C. the kids checked out a ton of non-fiction books which looked, "awesome." Thank you, Mom of Five. YOU ROCK!

After recently reading many reviews of Eleanor Brown's new book, The Weird Sisters , (and seeing it on a couple summer book club lists) I decided to order it. What caught my attention was not only the title's references to the three witches in Shakespeare's MacBeth,  but also a quote from the book: "See, we love each other. We just don't like each other very much." -- refering to the relationship among the three main characters in the story   That's something I often think about my relationship with my sister (if I'm being honest with myself), and after another bout of arguments with her lately, this just felt apropo...as much as I love my Lizzie and Jane Bennet, and my Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, I needed something else. Summary: The story follows as the Andreas sisters wind up back in their parents home, in the middle of nowhere Ohio, not long after finding out their mother has cancer. The story follows the sisters, named for Shakespearean...

Some time back I finished another Newbery award winner, The Midwife's Apprentice , a book I was looking forward to both in its plot and brevity, but finished it feeling nothing but relief. I like the idea of the story: a nameless girl wanders from place to place eventually finding herself in the job of being, yep, you guessed it, the midwife's apprentice; a girl who learns how to stand up to the things that confront themselves as challenges (both people and situations in her life)...but I just didn't like it. I was so glad to be done with it, excited to move on to another book...though now I am reading The Wheel on the School , Meindert DeJong, illus. Maurice Sendak--this is proving to be terrible...not quite Miss Hickory bad , but pretty close...I am losing faith in Newberry winners, seems like the bads are outweighing the goods...

One Crazy Summer , Rita Williams-Garcia, follows sisters: Delphine, Vonetta and Fern as they travel from Brooklyn to Oakland, CA in 1968. Abandoned by their mother years before, their father (against their grandmother's wishes) thinks it's high time his girls spend some time with Cecile, the woman who ran out on their family. All I kept thinking was, "What the hell are you thinking, sending 3 girls under the age of 12 to Oakland in 1968!!!?" Leaving all that they know in a world of Big Ma's manners and rules, the three sisters enter into a world of afros, hippies, and a summer camp program run by the Black Panther Party (When I was reading anything to do with the Black Panther Party I kept hearing Forrest Gump's voice in my head, "Sorry I ruined your Black Panther party" and couldn't help but smile) that their wanting-nothing-to-do-with-them-mother seems to have some dealings. While I was impressed with how Williams-Garcia was abl...

In my continuing Newbery award winners quest, I recently read Bud, Not Buddy , Christopher Paul Curtis. The book was good, definitely an improvement on some of my recent reads, (i.e. The Cat Who Went to Heaven and The Secret of the Andes). The story follows Bud, an orphan who's "on the lam," after running away from a foster home where he was beaten; as if that's not bad enough, throw in the fact that it's during the Great Depression, Bud is black and he's trying to get from Flint to Grand Rapids, MI on foot. As Bud searches for his father (based on some clues left behind when his mother passed away) he learns a little bit about what he is capable of, and what family really means. I appreciated that it all took place in Michigan; that Curtis weaved snippets of history into the story, i.e. Hooverville, (which Bud mishears as "Hooperville"--where he meets Deza Malone, the star of Curtis' latest, The Mighty Miss Malone . ) I like books like B...

While bored at the desk one day this week, I snatched Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery, & a Very Strange Adventure , Lissa Evans,   from our new book cart and was immediately sucked in. The book follows Stuart Horten—a boy obsessed with his small stature—as he and his geeky parents pack up and move to his fathers’ boyhood city. Stuart learns of his Great Uncle Tony’s last great act—his own disappearance! and gets sucked into solving the clues that were left behind over a generation before; along the way Stuart must deal with the annoying, newspaper writing triplets next door, and the sneaky, suspicious magicians in town—friend or foe? I love when authors introduce new language to kids (I LOVED that about the Lemony Snicket books—in those the narrator would stop and explain what the word meant), in this story, Stuart’s Dad is a crossword puzzle creator so he’s always using the most Herculean (difficult—see what I just did there? Eh eh!) words. While the ...

We are always on the go, especially this week with TRANSPORTATION. Here's my storytime goods: Photo from here . Music/Movement : “Shake Your Sillies Out,”   #13, Raffi’s More Singable Songs Flannel Board: “Green plane, green plane, what do you see?” OR “Bus to Storyland” Flannel Board: “ “This Little Train” Music/Movement: “The Wheels on the Bus” w/motions Book 1: The Seals on the Bus , Lenny Horton Book 2/Prop Story: Duck in the Truck, Jez Alborough w/puppets Music/Movement: “ Stop!” #12, Sesame Street’s Sing-a-long Travel Song Prop Story: One Dog Canoe , Mary Casanova, illus. Ard Hoyt w/puppets Book 3: Snappy Sounds: VROOM! A Noisy Pop-Up Book Music/Movement: “The Freeze,” #10, Greg & Steve’s We All Live Together, Vol. 2

No, no, not that kind of adult novel, I am refering to J.K. Rowling's new novel geared at adults, The Casual Vacancy , which is due out in September. Described thus by Little, Brown, "...set in a small English town called Pagford, which comes undone after one of its denizens, a man in his early 40s named Barry Fairweather, unexpectedly dies. The event shakes the town and reveals the rampant unrest bubbling under the surface in the deceptively perfect hamlet."  Full article here . I am not sure that I will read it, as I am still fist-shaking-angry at Rowling for her damn epilogue in HP7.

"Gary Snyder, one of my heroes, famously said, 'Find your place in the world and dig in.' I thought, 'I'm ready, Gary. Just hand me a friggin' shovel.' " --Jenna Woginrich, Barnheart After reading Jenna Woginrich's, Mad e from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, last year I began to follow her blog: Cold Antler Farm , and I realized that Jenna is the kind of person I envy: a dreamer and a farmer...with a "day job" to boot! So, as you can imagine I was pleased as punch when Jenna's newest book: Barnheart: the Incurable Longing for a Farm of One's Own, a Memoir arrived. The book--named for a disease with symptoms that vary from: "calling in 'sick' to work in the garden," to "sitting in your office, classroom, or cafe and your mind wanders to dreams of the farming life," to being someone who'd, "rather be stretched out in the bed of a pickup truck, drinking in the stars ...

I have decided to read each of the Newbery Medal Winners (1922-Present). I was going to read them in chronological order, but have decided instead to just read them in alphabetical order by author, as that is how we have them on the shelf at our library. I began with William H. Armstrong's 1970 medal winner, Sounder (technically I should have started with Lloyd Alexander's The High King , but I've read it a couple of times). " As told by William H. Armstrong, the timeless novel of Sounder reads as if it is a parable. The family is held together by its unwavering faith, believing that life will get better no matter how bad things are...Although deceptively simple in its language and brief in its length, Sounder is a powerful parable of poverty, hope, prejudice, inhumanity, and ultimately, survival."   -- Harper Collins Instructors Guide   I put that quote up because it sums up the book succinctly without giving away too much of the plot, which is easy to do ...