Monday, May 28, 2012

It's Monday! What are you reading?


I’m joining Jen & Kellee (and many other bloggers) in discussing what we are reading this week. Join us! Go to their site and link up your own blog.

I didn’t get a chance to post last Monday because I was hosting a book tour. So here are the books I’ve read in the past two weeks:


My favorites would have to be The Knife of Never Letting Go and Squish #3: The Power of the Parasite. Two very different books but wonderful in their own way.

On a side note, we had #titletalk last night and the topic was graphic novels. I took screen shots of some tweets from Colby Sharp and John Schu:




Truly, I could not agree with their statements more. I just wanted to put that out there for all parents and teachers that are concerned about their children/ students reading graphic novels. They are reading! And graphic novels are amazing. The amount of work you have to do to infer between panels is unreal. The pictures help the students visualize but they do have to read the words as well. My heart breaks when kids return graphic novels to me and say their parents said they couldn’t read “comics.”  And as teachers if we say we value choice in our reading programs, you cannot take away graphic novels from your students.

Beyond that my husband is an excellent example of what I see in my students. He was an excellent student in school, graduated from the College of Engineering at the U of I. He reads almost daily and a steady stream of comic books. The occasional book slips in but he devours comic books. He was the first person to recommend Bone by Jeff Smith to me, and that is where my purchasing of graphic novels began. Please give these books a chance. Your students will amaze you!

If you need a resource for teaching graphic novels, Terry Thompson’s Adventures in Graphica is wonderful. I plan on reading it again this summer.

Finally, I am beginning my summer #bookaday. My school got out for the summer May 25th and we start back up August 20th. By my count that is 86 days or 86 books. (My actual goal is 100). Here we go!