Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites. Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading!Share with the hashtag #IMWAYR
Special Announcement!
I shared a new poetry book by David L. Harrison and Stephanie Laberis last Wednesday. After Dark publishes on February 25th and is a wonderful book about animals and their lives at night. I hosted a giveaway, too, and am happy to announce that Midway Mo won a copy. Please send your address via email. CONGRATULATIONS! And thanks to Boyds Mills and Kane for the giveaway copy!
Genesis Begins Again, a Newbery Honor book, with Scary Stories of Young Foxes, shows a young thirteen-year-old driven by a list given to her in fifth grade: "100 Reasons Why We Hate Genesis." She's added to that list, and the first time we meet her, she must sit on her sofa outside her home because all the family's things are in the front lawn. They've been evicted! Genesis tells her thinking, her story, in a heartbreaking gush of words, from this situation to a new one, a home her father seems magically to acquire in a mostly white suburb. How she navigates her life there and with the friends made and lost while trying to save her family in crisis felt like a rollercoaster of emotions that is her life. I wonder how very many young people see themselves in at least some part of Genesis' story? My hope is that they do and that it gives them hope or a way to understand that life for others is not so easy. It's a special story.
When my daughter was very young and her older brother came in from play one day, told us he had seen the first dandelion, she cried and said she wanted her own "dandy lion". After all these years, perhaps Yoko Tanaka has made her wish come true! In dreaming-along pictures, he tells the tale about a special spring flower getting its wish. It goes on a magical trip to faraway places, ending in the very place it was meant to be. Finding the path to being who you are is a message for everyone. It's a beautiful book to experience.
