It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? 08/13/2018 #imwayr

~ Shaye Miller

18-8-13

Kellee Moye of Unleashing Readers and Jen Vincent of Teach Mentor Texts decided to give Kathryn’s (at Book Date) “It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?” meme a kidlit focus, reviewing books in children’s literature (picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, or anything in the world of kidlit). If you enjoy this type of reading, join us every Monday!

This past week has been a whirlwind of travel preparations, surgery updates, new college course preparations, and seemingly endless errands. 🙂 So this will be an extremely short #imwayr post showcasing just my three main book reads for the week. (I’ve also been reading over several syllabi, but I’ll spare you photos of those reviews!! ;))

Reaper-at-the-Gates

Reaper at the Gates
Sabaa Tahir
June 12, 2018
Razorbill
Young Adult

I’ve been working on this one for the last 2 1/2 weeks. It is worth savoring and easy to fall back into the story every time I pick it up. If you’re not familiar with this series, by the time you reach this book (#3) we’re now oscillating between between three main characters. I’m enjoying the development of each character, learning more about what makes them tick and understanding why they react certain ways. I think I’m especially taking my time with this one since I know it will be a long wait until book #4 is published. Boo!

StinkiestStinkiest!: 20 Smelly Animals
Steve Jenkins
May 22, 2018
HMH Books for Young Readers
Nonfiction Picture Book
Kidlit/MGlit

This is a cute little nonfiction picture book about a variety of stinky animals. There are explanations on each animal so the reader knows the animal’s size, where it lives, what it eats, and why/how the animal stinks. The artwork was done in torn-and-cut-paper collage and there are 40 pages to this book. I’ll share one page-spread, below:

Stinkiest-spread2

Music-ContentMusic Content and Strategies
for Elementary Classroom Teachers
Dawn S. Baker
Patrick A. Garrett
2016
College Textbook

This is the textbook for a course I’ll be teaching this fall and spring. As the title indicates, it provides very basic strategies for sharing music in the (elementary) classroom. And it just so happened to be written by a dear friend of a friend. This is probably the one book I should be focusing all my attention on this next week (since classes start next Monday). Anyway, I know it’s a college textbook. However, since I use #imwayr to document my weekly reading journey I figured it’s completely applicable. 🙂

To Be Read:

We’re still out of town, spending time with my mom down in Texas after her second knee replacement surgery. I’m finding it difficult to sit down and read with a number of health care professionals and visitors dropping in (along with our own household schedule). So I won’t commit to finishing anything, just yet. I’ll just look forward to seeing whatever I happen to get to before next Monday.

Have a great reading week, everyone!

 

19 thoughts on “It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? 08/13/2018 #imwayr”

  1. Hope you find some reading time! I don’t do well squeezing a little reading time in here or there. I much prefer a nice long chunk of time where I’m not likely to get interrupted–which means that I do 99% of my reading early morning or at night when my kiddo’s asleep! I had the first book in the Sabaa Tahir series checked out from the library at one point but didn’t get around to it. Is it worth the read? Sounds like you’re enjoying it. I just finished Kelly Yang’s Front Desk this morning and loved! Trying to decide what to start next. Maybe the new Dory Fantasmagory! I really need to commit to a YA novel too….

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    1. I prefer huge chunks of time, too! I’ve enjoyed the development of the characters in the Ember series. When it first starts, the main female is all shy and insecure and kinda needy. But by book #3 they’re all much different with more depth after having made huge mistakes. I’m definitely enjoying the series. And I know you don’t like to read highly recommend books, anyway. 😉 By the way, I purchased book #1 of the Murderbot series. Excited about that!

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  3. Stinkiest! looks like a fun book! I’ll definitely need to look for it. Hope the week goes smoothly for you and you get a chance to relax for a minute!

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  5. Hope, though buy, that everything in Texas is going well & your mother is recuperating nicely! I do love Steve Jenkins’ books & think I’ve read most. The Stinkiest looks like lots of fun & learning! Thanks, Shaye!

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    2. Mom is doing fantastic. She was up to about an 82 degree knee bend when we left and she just shared with me that she’s already up to 93 degrees — and we’ve only been home a few days. Very proud of her progress! Thank you for swinging by, Linda!

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    1. I AM!!!! It’s taken me the longest time to finish, but that’s only because of my personal circumstances. I’m so glad I picked this series up! Thanks for dropping by, Hallie!

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    1. I’m really into the series!! I should warn you that Book #3 isn’t everyone’s favorite, though. I still think book #4 will be excellent, so I’m not giving up on the series now. #superlateresponse

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