Such A Lot of Great Books!

        Visit Jen at Teach MentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to discover books you'll love!  Thanks to Jen, Kellee, and Ricki who share so much with us by taking time to support this meme!


    What a week last week! Wow! ALA Midwinter and Cybils Awards. Hope you had a favorite or favorites receive some honors!  


        This is one of the Cybils' finalists, and an amazing story re-told in verse. For those who teach and share the classic myths with older students, here is a book that will excite. David Elliott brings the tragedy of  “The Minotaur” into today’s vernacular, well known by students, young and older teen. When needed, there is strong language, meaning-filled sarcasm, and strong feelings of both love and grief. All the players show up, and Elliott has given each a particular voice and writes the same poem form for each as well.  Key storyteller is the top person, Poseidon, who quickly manages to ignite the story in a fury. With a bored affect, he sends desire to Queen Pasiphae for the mighty beast, laughs behind her back at the trick he has done.  He says: “So, yeah--I gave the queen a thing. For the white bull’s thang. Be glad that I did! If I hadn’t? No story. You know the drill. No guts. No glory.”

            Humans were given brains to make their own choices, Poseidon merely started it all and shows interest but no thought of intervention. He allows strong emotions from desire to love, revenge to grief, can mirror today’s lives if the reader only makes the connections.       

          All the familiar names are there, Queen Pasiphae, King Minos, their daughters Phaedra and Ariadne, Theseus and The Minotaur, doomed Asterion! And each character has a unique voice, along with writing the poems in forms also unique to each voice. From Pasifphae about Minos:  “IgNOrant self/aNOinted fool/he thinks he kNOws/me but NO one/kNOws the hard tight/kNOt of my heart.” As you see, there is use of different kinds of rhyming, bolded words within poems and darkened pages when words come from the Labyrinth. Elliot has brought this old myth to teens in the 21^st century for lively interest.

           Finally, it was my turn to have this wonderful book from the library, now wondering why I just didn’t purchase it?  Oliver Jeffers wrote and illustrated a book about life on earth for his son when he was two months old. I imagine this might be one he’s memorized by now, or perhaps he’s moved on to “more”. The book is full of the basic stuff, lovingly told and shown so you want to examine, and eventually, ask questions about all that space stuff, like the funny name of the planet Neptune; or ask about the people who dress differently, like that boy with a man in gold helmets. Perhaps you’ll want to know about the animal who’s “not” supposed to be on the page with all the others, or wish you could travel on that very large ship? That’s the wonderful book Jeffers has created. I haven’t shared it with my granddaughters, know they will love each page and wonder what’s next.