#IMWAYR July 30, 2018

#IMWAYR time again, when readers share what they have been reading and find out what others have been up to in the past week. Kathryn hosts the adult version of this meme at Book Date. Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. Whatever you are looking forward to in your next great read, these are fabulous places to start your search.

Boy has it ever been hot here in Vancouver, BC! In our house in Oliver, we have air conditioning, but here we have to get by with fans, leaving windows open all night and closing everything up first thing in the morning. The heat wave is supposed to break early next week and I am very much looking forward to it! It's hard to get anything except reading, sewing, and lazing around, accomplished when it's like this.

BOARD BOOKS

We are always reading books with the babies so I'm just sharing a couple of books today that seem to be special these days. 

5 stars

From Head to Toe by Eric Carle

I swear I’ve read this a bazillion times. It is, hands down, my granddaughter’s favourite book. If it’s new to you, it shows different animals doing different actions and then shows a child doing it and saying, “I can do it.” Our little one year old thumps her chest and points to the room where the books are. The gorilla is her favourite page, but she can do almost all of the other actions too.

5 stars

Peek-a Moo! by Nina Laden

Like Peek- a Who! by Nina Laden, we love this. I've been forced to read and reread these two books for the past few weeks. I got this one just to have some kind of break. Ada laughed with delight the first time we read this. She loves to turn the pages herself and tries to make the sounds of the surprise. She sure surprised me when we got to the grew page and she showed me the sign for food! Just about her favourite page is the rooster shouting cock-doodle/doo! I only picked this one up two days ago and have read it at least a dozen times. Now to see if the other grand baby loves it as much.

PICTURE BOOKS

4 stars

My Friends Make Me Happy! (The Giggle Gang #3) by Jan Thomas

This is a delightful series for beginning readers. Sheep's friends might make him happy, but sometimes they also make him crazy. You'll want to read it for yourself to see why. It will appeal to fans of Elephant and Piggie and Fox and Chick.

4 stars

My Toothbrush Is Missing (The Giggle Gang, #4) by Jan Thomas

I read this today on my phone while riding the bus. I had to read the first set up and punch line to my cousin who was sitting beside me. We ended up giggling. (This was before the concert and adult beverages) I am absolutely infatuated with the goofiness of these books.

Next Week I'm going to read the first two in this delightful series.

5 stars

Sugar and Snails by Sarah Tsiang & Sonja Wimmer (Illustrator)

Apparently the make up of girls and boys is a whole lot more complicated than that old rhyme could begin to explain. An older man, who I assumed to be a group of children's grandfather, makes up new verses for it that highlight how multifaceted children are, irrespective of their gender. Sonja Wimmer's illustrations are a wild and wonderful celebration of this. Sarah Tsiang's text is written in rhyming verse that works. It was a delight to read out loud.

5+ stars

Islandborn by Junot Díaz & Leo Espinosa (illustrator)

Wow!

Lola has to come up with a picture of where her family is from, but has no memories of the island she was born on. As she asks people what they remember, she begins to put together ideas on paper: bats as big as blankets, people dancing in the street, head sized mangoes, and fish that jump out of the ocean right into your lap. These and other exaggerations fill the book with laugh out loud moments. There’s also Nelson, who’s always yelling, and so just might be an old person in training.

But the book doesn’t skirt the hard stuff. A monster fell upon the island and everyone was terrified. This description of political terrorism without calling it that, is brilliant.

I adored Leo Espinosa’s gorgeous artwork as much as I did Junot Díaz‘ words.

There is considerable text the pages, but since I envision using this with older students, that isn’t a problem. What is a bit of an issue is that on a few of the pages the text and illustrations are close to the same tone and make it challenging to read.

4 stars

Amandina by Sergio Ruzzier

This is absolutely charming. Amandina is a very talented, but solitary, dog. She decided to stop being so shy and show the world what she could do. She rented a run down theatre that she then refurbished. She built and painted sets, sewed costumes, sent out invitations and put up posters.

This line from what happened on opening night felt like the reveal of an important universal truth to me, "The theatre was empty: nobody had come. Sometimes these things happen, and nobody can say why."

Undaunted, Amandina's show went on.

Amandina is an inspirational character who reminds the rest of us to follow our own dreams no matter what.

5 stars

Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina & Angela Dominguez,(Illustrations)

When a young girl’s abuela (grandmother) comes to live with them, they speak different languages. Over time they become very close and help each other become bilingual. Mango is the parrot the family brings home to keep Abuela company during the day.

The book makes my heart sing. I love the sweetness of the text and the charming illustrations.

5 stars

Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship by Irene Latham, Charles Waters, Sean Qualls (Illustrator) & Selina Alko (Illustrator)

I've read and reread this to make sure it's as good as I think it is. I gave it to my brother to read. He loved it and came back with this quote, "there's men dressed in suits so sharp you could cut yourself by looking at them."

You need to get this book and read the back matter explaining how it came to be. Two authors, one white and one black, have collaborated on this collection of poems that take us into the the lives of a white girl and a black boy who are paired in a writing project. Through their poetry we learn about their lives. At the same time as these two protagonists discover their differences, they also realize what they have in common. Their eventual friendship changes their relationships with other children in their class.

Sean Qualls and Selina Alko's illustrations are gorgeous.

4 stars

Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival

One day Norman, a perfectly ordinary boy, grew wings. He enjoyed his first flight and then began to worry about what would happen when others realized he was different.

I was fascinated by how Tom Percival used colour. For the first few pages, everything except Norman is in black and white. Colour explodes on the page as his wings grow in and he experiences flight, but then everything returns to black and white again when he decides to hide his wings.

I especially connected to the part where Norman decides to let his wings show, and his courage allows other children to free their wings in turn. Sure wish I had a few children old enough to talk about this with.

JUNIOR NOVELS

3.5 stars

Ada Lace, on the Case by Emily Calandrelli, Renee Kurilla (Illustrator) & Tamson Weston (Contributor)

Ada Lace and her family have just moved to San Francisco. Instead of exploring her new neighbourhood, she is stuck in her house with a broken leg after a science experiment with a bungee cord went wrong. Luckily she makes friends with Nina, a girl who lives nearby. They spend their time watching their neighbours and realize that Ms Reed's dog, Marguerite, is missing. The two girls set out to find out what happened to her. 

NOVELS

4 stars

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty

I wish I had been smart and taken notes after finishing this book, but I didn't. I know I enjoyed reading about Lucy Callahan, a seventh grade math savant (brought on by a lightning strike.) Up until now she has been home schooled, but she is forced to attend public school for one year before she will be allowed to go to college. Along the way Lucy learns a lot about friendship and working together with other people. I remember that this book made me cry. 

5 stars

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck & Dylan Baker (Narrator)

There is a reason books win big prizes like the Pulitzer. Just the writing alone in this is jaw dropping, but its political and philosophical relevance across time takes my breath away. It’s a prescient warning for our time.

I was absolutely hooked by this audiobook from the end of the first chapter. Set in the 1930’s, the Joad family are forced to leave their land in Oklahoma and migrate to California in search of work.

The story is brutal, but the characters are beautiful. I really loved the alternating between the big picture sections and then showing the reader what this was like at an intimate level through the Joad family. It gave me insight into what it was like for my parents and in laws who were children at the time.

That bleak ending shocked me and left me hanging, which I guess it was supposed to do.

I’ll be carrying the Joad family around with me for a while. I wonder if Steinbeck had any ideas about what happened to them all.

ADULT NONFICTION

5 stars

Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Robert Probst & Kylene Beers

This book provides a new way of looking at how we talk about our reading. While it's set in America against a backdrop of high stakes testing, much of this will be relevant to teachers here in Canada who want to ensure that children grow up to be social activists engaged in deep aspects of democracy.

A couple of things surprised me. First, although I knew the amount of reading a student did made a difference in their academic achievement, the numbers in vocabulary acquisition based on how much reading was going on stunned me. Second, although I would never want to spend more than a month reading a novel out loud, their suggestion that it shouldn't take more than a week was an aha moment for me.

I wish I had read this book while I was still teaching. I hope I can use these ideas if I end up substitute teaching in the coming year. At the very least I hope to be able to use the HBB model for book club conversations.

The most distressing thing for me is that we still need to assert the importance of free choice reading everyday for students.

CURRENTLY

I've put The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora aside to finish up Big Foot and Little Foot by Ellen Potter. I'm in the middle of, and enjoying immensely, The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang. Both of them have to be back at the Library on Wednesday. I've started listening to Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie & Zainab Jah (Narrator)

UP NEXT

Whatever strikes my fancy in my piles is what I'll read next.

PROGRESS ON MY READING GOALS

#MustReadIn2018 17/25 1 in progress

#MustReadNFIn2018 5/12 1 in progress

#BigBookSummer 3/4 1 in progress

25 Books by Canadian Indigenous Authors 14/25

Goodreads Reading Challenge 266/333