It's Monday and a Snow Day! Here's What I Read...

Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye and Ricki Ginsburg at Unleashing Readers cohost It's Monday! What are You Reading? weekly on their blogs.  To see what others are reading and recommending each Monday, or to participate, be sure to head over to these blogs.


We had a snow day here in Connecticut (which was really a rain day, but that's another story), and I was able to spend some time at the local book store reading some of the newer picture books on the shelves.

So many examples of end punctuation!

One of my favorites of the day was Goodnight Already!  by Jory John and Benji Davis. I could easily see using this as a mentor text in a writing workshop to illustrate conflict, different types of beginnings and endings, as well as several convention moves. On one particular page, there are several examples of periods, question marks, and exclamation marks. How fun would that be for teaching first-graders the importance of end punctuation! Goodnight Already also has several opportunities for young readers to talk about "what else" is happening on the page, even a couple of pages without any words.

We always have to read a Mo Willems book, and today we read A Big Guy Took My Ball. If you have not read this one, find it and read it. Soon. All of the Elephant and Piggie books have messages for living, but I especially liked this one because it was so much about empathy and perspective. A big ball to a pig is not a big ball to a whale. Also, in our competitive world, it's good to talk about the fact that we can usually find people who are smarter, faster, stronger, richer, thinner...yes, Elephant, there is someone who is bigger than you.

Although I am not positive how I would link A Perfectly Messed-Up Story by Patrick McDonnell to writing workshop, I think that young children would think that the premise of this book is hysterical. Furthermore, the message that could come out of this book is important as well, since the main character struggled so much with perfection that he froze and gave up. Don't we all sometimes?

I have a new idol and his name is Brad Meltzer. I had not seen Brad Meltzer's series about ordinary people who changed the world until today. I read his book, I am Rosa Parks. Told as a personal narrative, Brad Meltzer weaves in many facts and details through Rosa's voice. In addition to Rosa Parks, he has written others from the points of view of Albert Einstein, Jackie Robinson, Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, and Lucille Ball. With not only the narrative, but also the graphic representations and speech bubbles, readers will come away with so much knowledge about the person and time period! In addition to the body of the text, there is also a section in the back with photographs, archived information, and additional resources. For anyone with a biography unit, I highly recommend these for middle to upper elementary students.

Over the rest of the week, the majority of my reading time has gone to my on-line writing group. I am so grateful to these people for having the courage to share their writing and critique mine. Some day, I hope to write about their books with a link to Amazon!

Happy Reading!