It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 4-21-2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (IMWAYR) is a weekly challenge begun by Sheila at Book Journey to encourage others to share the books they are reading each week. Jen at Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers added the "From Picture Books to YA" element to Sheila's idea. Many thanks to these four women for creating a fun way to share our reading lists. Please be sure to visit their blogs and see what they've read over the past week. 

Picture Books

Roxie's Doors by Roxie Munro

This isn't the first time I've read Roxie's Doors but it is the first time I've read it on Tumblebooks. I originally read the app version of this book and wrote a review of it after connecting with Roxie Munro (@roxiemunro) on Twitter. The Tumblebooks version is pretty close to the app version, with interactive doors and all. I included the book as part of our unit on National Poetry Month.  

Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim

With Mother's Day coming up, I've been working on a family theme for library displays and coming up with a list of books to read on Tumblebooks. Ruby's Wish was one of those books that showed up in my search for books on families. 

It is a very powerful story about being a girl and growing up in China, based on the life of the author's grandmother. I'm glad I wasn't reading it aloud to students because I wouldn't have been able to finish the book without getting a little choked up. 

Even though I am using this book to promote books on families, I think it would be great to read at Chinese New Year, or when studying life in China or Asia. In fact, I decided to find some other books and set them out for students in case they wanted to learn more about Asian countries, culture or folktales. 

Old Mother Hubbard and Her Wonderful Dog

by James Marshall

 Recently I've noticed that a lot of my students aren't familiar with nursery rhymes so I'm trying to use them more in library lessons, especially with the Pre-K and Kinder crowd. But I've noticed that students in second and first grade enjoy them, too. Some of the students do recognize the nursery rhymes as songs. When that happens, they are quite happy to share what they know and we have a sing along. Happy times!

Young Adult

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

I finished reading Cinder, the first book in Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, and I loved it! It's pretty interesting the way Meyer takes fairy tales like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood and gives them a sci-fi twist. The book stops at a crucial moment, which killed a small part of my soul, but I guess that's how things work when sequels are involved. I'm looking forward to reading Scarlet just as soon as I get a few other projects finished.

ARC

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

I am a lucky gal. Very, very lucky. I received a digital copy of this ARC through Edelweiss and I'm in the midst of reading it. Afterworlds pretty much a book-within-a-book with another part of a book added in here and there, making up a total of 610 pages of pure Westerfeld genius. 

Back in February I wrote about Westerfeld's Uglies series in another IMWAYR post and made this comment regarding Extras:

The one thing I appreciated about Extras, however, was Westerfeld's futuristic interpretation of social media and internet fame which permeated this final book.

In Afterworlds, Westerfeld takes on social media and internet again. I'm aching to do a comparison of his representations of social media in Afterworlds and Extras with some high school students. Unfortunately for me, I'm not a high school English teacher. So if there are any high school English teachers out there, would you please get started on this immediately! That is, once Afterworlds is published.

I'll write a more formal review of the book once I finish it.