It's Monday - Loving Halloween books, History, and More!

 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! Happy Reading!

     Share with the hashtag #IMWAYR 

  

      Still wishing all of you educators good days with your students! I admire you very much! I ended up talking with a teacher (a stranger) at the grocery last week who told me everything she was doing from morning till night for her students, her teaching. She was so tired, but still, more concerned about her students. 

        Here are two books I loved this week from my regular reading. 

         Sometimes one expects middle-grade books to be fairly simple, but this debut book by Ernesto Cisneros is anything but simple. I am so glad to see his respect for middle-schoolers, that they do ponder important parts of their lives, they do make good decisions, and they are quite capable of doing great things! Efrén Nava's Amá is his Superwoman - or Soperwoman, named after the delicious Mexican sopes his mother often prepares. The story centers around Efrén but entrenches deeply with his family of mother, father, and two younger siblings. He lives in Highland, California in a one-room apartment with mattresses on the floor, a tiny kitchen, and a whole lot of love. His parents are both undocumented, and the tension arrives at the beginning when they all go on lockdown as a helicopter whirrs overhead. The story intensifies when his mother is deported and Efrén must take over most of the sibling caretaking while his father works two jobs. Little money along with few hours of sleep makes school a challenge for the usual super-student Efrén, along with keeping everything a big secret. Other school challenges with friends and a trip across the border to save his mother made me admire this young boy, but also angry that it should not be like this for children. Despite these huge events, Cisneros keeps Efrén the sweetest boy ever with his family and trying hard to do right by his friends. I love that there are numerous Spanish phrases throughout and a glossary at the back that helped when I couldn't figure out a word. This book is definitely a "soper" story!

Thanks to Barry Wittenstein for this copy in exchange for an honest review. It's published tomorrow!

        Read this book to inspire your children or your students to become interested in history, tracing their homes, or in this case, the proprietors of a local "corner store". Read this book with them and have them research their own personal history of a local store, or of their home. Of course, it would be great if they lived in a place that has been around for a long time, but choosing a favorite building visited in a nearby town or city will work, too.

        Barry Wittenstein has created his own fictional history in Oscar's American Dream of a city corner location that changes with the times, a parallel journey of the highlights of the twentieth century. Oskar Nowicki, soon to become "Oscar" came to Ellis Island with only a cardboard suitcase and "a skinny roll of money", ready to make his dream a reality. In 1899, he opened his barbershop, celebrating the new century coming with his Grand Opening. He gave some free haircuts and lemon drops to all the children. Later, he found work that paid better, and that corner store became full of women, suffragettes, too, moving on toward the 1920s, two sisters getting rich selling flapper fashions. "The good times were here to stay–" 

         You older readers may guess what's coming, the Great Depression. Those sisters lost everything and their store became a soup kitchen for all in need. Years continue to pass as Barry tells this building's story with numerous details added in illustrations from Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell: flappers trying on the latest, the dark times of the Depression, the variety of people sitting together for their free meals, a World War II recruitment office, and on.

                                                    The soup kitchen illustration!

                 

            

                                       

                     This corner store has become a memory during the century for hundreds of people. I imagine a great cloud floating above that store with people, friends, and family, talking together: "Do you remember when you found green banana cakes from Moises at the corner bodega, or when you bought your first television there? Remember when it burned, then Annie & Danny reconstructed it and opened the first coffee shop? Remember Candy's? 

           Sometimes these places create a bond among us. Sometimes for kids, they are places they could first go alone, for young marrieds, a first big purchase; for company, a welcome meeting place. Curiosity about the history in a favorite building makes life interesting and someday, when you meet old friends, you'll be able to say, "Remember when. . ."

          Wishing you all your own connections, and memories, of a building. And I hope you can read this book with kids to inspire them that the places they visit have histories they will enjoy knowing. 

     

            I am sad that Halloween will look different this year but continue to depend on my granddaughters' excitement about home decorating, reading scary books, and their own costumes although they will only be going out in their block which is having its own celebration. 

            However, the most fun in October is reading Halloween books. Here are a few new ones and one old favorite we get out every year.

Monday Reading - Time For Halloween

              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.  
              I arrived home last night from a Highlights poetry workshop led by Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard. I am full to the brim with writing and reading many poetry books, including Halloween ones new and old. The library there is filled with their published books new and old, as is each room and cabin with a bookshelf full! I read a lot, but didn't take note of them, just enjoyed every time I opened another book! We skyped with Jane Yolen and Nikki Grimes. It was a week I will treasure. 

            One book I finished before I left!

             Ruta Sepetys tells stories that live (so far) in our past of historical events, some (without her deep research) we would never have known about without our own investigation. She says she took eight years to bring this to us, she's added a thorough author's note, research and notes, a bibliography, and a glossary to help us through the Spanish phrases included throughout. In this book of the Spanish Civil War and its effects that have stayed, she expands the complexity by allowing different characters a voice. Although there are a couple of main characters, others touch the heart, too, when learning about their experiences. We try to understand from the outside, as Sepetys expresses that she did herself. It's been a while since I've read a book that kept me worried about what's next at every spot. The resilience and different survival approaches show just how different everyone is. Yet, in that path of survival, one quote scratched in the dirt by a character in jail showed everyone's actions though they did take varied paths: "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly." It's a marvelous book!

Thanks to Candlewick Press - new Halloween books!

        Kim Norman's rhyming picture book begs to be read aloud, on Halloween and perhaps on "Talk Like A Pirate" Day. The end papers themselves are delightful. In the opening, human bones are scattered and labeled, except for that peg leg! The back is vertical, showing the full skeleton of a pirate, with accompanying pirate wear, like hat, sword and spyglass. He's found all his bones! The four-line rhymes on each page after the opening are good for laughing out loud every time. A poor pirate skeleton's bones have been scattered throughout the sea bed, and he shouts for the creatures down there to help put him back together again. Bob Molar's illustrations of the ocean's dark bottom serves as backdrop for many kinds of colorful creatures and plants as well as peeks at the bones needed, skull first, and on. Each verse defines the bone called for in rollicking rhyme! Here's one from this fun book: 

                                     "Who can spot my shoulder blade,

                                        my shrugging jacket-holder blade,

                                        my shiver-when-I'm-colder blade?

                                        Oh, scapula, come back!"

         It's the first U.S. edition of this imaginary tale by Katie May Green where those twins of Seen and Not Heard return as the moon wakes the children "out" of their picture frames and they climb out the window, into the woods for a hide 'n seek game. Written in rhyme with woodland animals seen having fun watching these Victorian-dressed children, some pages show the twins (on the cover) in various 'hide-outs' while the others look for them, through woods and a maze. There is so much to see and smile about on each page illustrated by Katie May Green in shadowy night-time blues, purples and greens.