It's Monday - More New Books to Enjoy!

    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 

Wishing you all a good week ahead! And, VOTE if you haven't yet! It's going to be a wild week!

        Thanks to Candlewick Press for all the books I'm sharing today.

            From the author of A Wish In The Dark, Christina Soontornvat who has family in Thailand happened to be visiting there when the Wild Boars went missing. She never stopped following their journey and knew she had to write this book!

           From the beginning exciting trip to a cave promised by Coach Ek to the incredible end, Christina Soontornvat takes us on this journey with emotion and clear explanations of the challenges, including a broad swath of volunteers wanting to help in any way possible. Many stepped in, figured out what was needed and acted, helped, went without sleep or payment. The heroes number in the thousands and the boys were saved! I learned a lot from this emotional telling, the science of the water in the Thai mountains, what and how sumps work, the super pumps that farmers there really use to water their fields, thus using them to help in a different way in the rescue. Also included were the cave divers and their expertise, a group I knew nothing about. They were the final rescuers, taking on a risk even they had not taken before. The kindnesses do not stop! It was also wonderful to hear about the boys and their coach, the strength of brotherhood they brought to achieve survival before they were first found and after. The reading was high drama consistently and the ending "after" is to be appreciated. I guess we all lived through this rescue via television or the internet, but to read the minute details of those days makes an adventurous story to absorb and appreciate the time and research from Christina Soontornvat. 

        This is the final book of Victoria Bond's trilogy about Zora Neale Hurston's family and hometown of Eatonville, which is the first incorporated black township in America. I've enjoyed each one, the books unfolding as Victoria Bond used facts from Hurston's life to weave a dramatic story for middle-grade readers. This finale shows Zora's family and Eatonville itself immersed in a frightening upheaval that includes a lynch mob pursuing a fugitive, a grave robber, and Zora's own family sorrows that show reasons she finally left to pursue her own dreams. Her best friend Carrie again tells the tale filled with lives of so long ago with numerous interesting characters, old-time medicine and politics, some explanations of voodoo and zombie-ism at that time, and the challenges for black people even in a place created to be safe. A quote I loved that fits this tale, but our lives, too: "The world is covered in dull and sharp points alike." It begins Chapter Six and when you read the book, be sure to read the whole paragraph it started! There is a brief biography explaining some of the truths woven into the story. Terrific final book!

        Smriti Prasadam-Halls' poetic rhyme offers courage and hope as a young girls and her fox companion travels through storms and dark yet find some friends who give them hope along the way. Finally, the day and a hope-filled future arrive: "Rain before rainbows, clouds before sun,/night before daybreak–a new day's begun. David Litchfield's illustrations feel poetic, too, filling the pages with the emotions expressed as the girl travels from dark to light. It's a beautiful book that will encourage discussion of the metaphor and its meaning personally. 

It's Monday - All Kinds of Favorite Books!

              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.

            Thanks to Candlewick Press for the following three picture books, out this month!

     
            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.