#IMWAYR August 24, 2020

Hello out there. It's #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.

Eight days of company really cut deep into my reading life. No sooner did everyone leave, I headed off towards the big city for a medical test and time with my grandkids. At least here I am reading books with the little ones. I'm not including those here because I have already written about most them previously.

Before I leave I hope to get to Kidsbooks to pick up a couple of copies of Old Rock is Not Boring. I read it with my grandkids a while ago and when they were visiting me, my grandson got very irate that I no longer had it. He understands about libraries but wanted me to go check it out right now. 

Titles with a 🍁 indicate this is a Canadian Author and or Illustrator. Clicking on the title will take you to the Goodreads page of the book.

NONFICTION PICTURE BOOKS 

5 stars

Sea Bear: A Journey for Survival by Lindsay Moore

I picked this up from the library, came home and read it. Then my granddaughter joined me on the sofa and we started it from the beginning. She looked at the first page and proclaimed, "It's so beautiful!" I agree. It was my first thought upon opening the book. Lindsay Moore's illustrations are just stunning. Each page is worthy of hanging on a wall. Her poetic text tells the experience of a year in the life of a polar bear from the polar bear's perspective.
The back matter contains additional information about polar bears and other animals mentioned in the book. While climate change isn't mentioned in main body of the text, it is addressed in these notes.
If readers already have an understanding of what is happening in the arctic because of climate change, they will understand why it may well lead to the extinction of this remarkable animal.

GRAPHIC NOVELS

5 stars

The Big Break by Mark Tatulli

This story of two boys as their friendship deteriorates broke my heart a little bit. There are lots of stories about girl friendships disintegrating, but this is the first one about boys that I remember. For this reason alone, it's a must purchase for all school libraries.
Andrew and Russ are working on a video about the Jersey Devil. They plan to enter it into a contest in hopes of winning and getting a head start on their future careers as filmmakers. Unfortunately the two boys end up maturing at different rates. Russ ends up with a girlfriend and Andrew, who lost his father 18 months previously, feels abandoned. Add to that their inability to communicate sincerely with each other and it isn't long before they have a big blow up and stop talking altogether.
It takes a winter campout with others and a near disaster before they mend their fences.

NOVELS

4 stars

How It Went Down (How It Went Down #1) by Kekla Magoon & Narrators: Cherise Boothe, Shari Peele, Kevin R. Free, Avery R. Glymph, & Patricia Lucretia Floyd

Kekla Magoon makes space for multiple perspectives in this novel about the killing of a black teen by a white man. The scenario is all too familiar if you have been paying attention to social media in the past few months. How It Went Down is not only about the reality of the shooting, but about how it is experienced, twisted, and justified by different segments of the community.

4 stars

Light It Up (How It Went Down #2) by Kekla Magoon & Narrators: Landon Woodson, Karen Chilton, Cherise Boothe, Eevin Hartsough, Christopher Carley, Peter Jay Fernandez, T. Ryder Smith, Julian Thomas, Kevin R. Free & Korey Jackson

As in How It Went Down, Kekla Magoon makes space for multiple perspectives. This time she deals with the killing of a black special needs teen by a white policeman. It is not only about the reality of the shooting, but about how it is experienced, twisted, and justified by different segments of the community. What was especially fascinating was connecting with many of the same characters in the first book. The cast of narrators were brilliant.

Both of these books put me in mind of Walter Dean Myers intense and gritty work.

NONFICTION

5 stars

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Civilizations Rise and Fall #1) by Jared Diamond

This pulitzer award winning book began with the author attempting to identify the roots of inequality in the world. He concludes that it is essentially a function of geographical luck. People who lived in areas with plants and animals that were easier to domesticate ended up having resources to support the development of technology. I highly recommend this book and am looking forward to book club and talking about it! If you don't have time to read it, You might enjoy the three national geographic documentaries based on it. I ended up watching the first 1 1/2 and plan to finish them all. I'm also planning on reading Collapse, the next in the series. 



Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HULhXXnMlww
Part 3: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVShQfYcX28

CURRENTLY

Everything was put on hold while I read Guns, Germs and Steel, but I'm back to reading Yara's Spring by Sharon McKay & Jamal Saeed. I started it all over again. I just started listening to The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue by by Karina Yan Glaser. 

UP NEXT

I hope to get to Audacity by Melanie Crowder. I picked Molly Bang's nonfiction picture books about sunlight and plan to read and write a blog post about them. The art in them is spectacular!

PROGRESS ON MY READING GOALS

  

Big Books Summer 2020 8/10 

#MustReadIn2020: 18/25 

#MustReadNFIn2020: 7/25

Books by Canadian Indigenous Authors: 17/25 100 

Books by Canadian Authors: 105/100 

 Goodreads Reading Challenge: 241/333