It's Monday - Sharing Lovely Books

       

        Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow! It's been another warm, wonderful spring-like week with a few green leaves popping. And now, just as I wrote last week, we've had snow! An April fool welcome, right?

         I'm writing and posting a poem every day for April, Poetry Month! Hoping you will come visit when you can! 

        One thing I love about Kate DiCamillo's stories is that one can see she loves every character, too, each one, like all humans, with their goodness along with their quirks. This newest story centers around Emma Phineas Wilkey's summer before fifth grade. She's called Ferris because she was born under a Ferris wheel. It's also about her family, best friend Billy Jackson, and a few others, both from the past and her current beloved neighbors. It's about loving life and the people in one's life, taking great care of them, no matter how very hard it might be. The story shows the loving, though sorrowful goodbyes of life, and carrying on that love as time does not stop, but moves on no matter how much we might want it to. Knowing the right words for a moment has its own thread. You'll see and love that, too. I am glad I had the fun of reading one more from Kate DiCamillo, but sorry to see it end.

Thanks to Candlewick Press 
for this copy!

         For middle schoolers, who often feel as if they have no power, a new graphic novel series by Kekla Magoon and Cynthia Leitich Smith begins the stories of Riley Halfmoon and Maya Dawn, cousins who haven't seen each other in years but have moved to Urbanopolis to live with their activist grandma. They couldn't be more different, and besides being in a brand new environment, home, and school, they must share a room! They're just making some progress in their relationship when they begin to wonder about their school's vice-principal, who seems only interested in the many cameras spying on all the students and sending many students to detention. With the challenges at school and learning from their grandma that they do have star power, they begin to see their differences just might be a huge strength. It's a great story of persistence in doing what's right and figuring out differences add to the whole in a very good way. Molly Murakami's art shows all the story's action and emotions in this powerful and inspiring story.