I absolutely love it when someone at school asks if anyone is interested in ordering some books for ... anything! My hand shoots up immediately. I love buying books for my classroom, I love buying books for myself, I love buying books with someone else's money! So this time the request was to buy some books for our upper elementary Literacy Lab. Teachers can sign books out to supplement and add variety to their classroom library. I started browsing the Scholastic flyer which always has the current popular series kids want to read. But I was feeling like these are the books they already know about, the ones they probably have, our library probably has and our classrooms probably have. I think it is important to have some of these popular books for the reluctant readers to hook in to but we need something more.
Lately in my classroom I have been witnessing kids really branching out with their reading. There are a couple of kids that are willing to try reading anything I suggest they might like (hello, awesome!). They read the books fast. Within days. This is fantastic for the other kids in our class that like to stick to the same series. They see students with other books that they can't put down and immediately there is a pile of sticky notes in the front cover declaring who gets to read it next. These students that will read anything also like to talk about what they read, telling the rest of the class what they thought of the book, encouraging even more reading. Fantastic!
As I was looking for titles that would inspire our grade 4-6 students I remembered a blog I was pointed to by a friend, Mrs. Loewen.
Sal's Fiction Addiction is a blog written by Sally Bender, a fellow Manitoban. Almost daily, she writes a post reviewing the latest book she has read. Sally loves books and this is glaringly obvious from the passion she reviews books with.
I am reviewing her posts and creating a list and her passion is making it difficult to not order these books immediately, read them myself and share each of them with my class! Comments like:
"Here's a book that will stay with me for a long time, and I will be talking about it in classrooms visits. Once started, I just wanted to keep reading. Then, when I had to stop because I could no longer keep my eyes open, it was the first thing I picked up when I opened those eyes this morning."
"How lucky am I that I keep reading books that yell to be shared? After reading The One and Only Ivan, and fervently wishing that there was a classroom somewhere that I could share it with, Wonder rises to the top of my TBR pile! It is a book that packs a powerful punch and should be read in every fifth grade classroom...and don't stop there. It is a story that should be read and savored by anyone who loves books that will impact the way we live our lives. It is a 'wonder'!"
Her blog is most definitely worth checking out and following by email. I get her blog posts right to my inbox whenever she adds something new. Or, like I am doing today, scroll down and click the label/category you are searching for and get a specific list of the books in this category.
Aqiggiq the ptarmigan