2008 Favorites

Well, the year is almost over.  That means it is time for wrap-up lists, one of my favorite parts of the year!  What are your favorite books of the year?  
Below are my favorite titles published this year:
 

Tennyson by Lesley M.M. Blume- I read this way back in the beginning of the year and [...]

Hurricane Song by Paul Volponi

 Hurricane Song is a story about a father and son in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.  I picked this up off the new books display at the local library and wow.  This is a difficult book to read, but one that I imagine will become more popular as we move on from Hurricane Katrina.
Miles is [...]

New Year’s Resolutions for Teachers

The Cornerstone Blog has a great post about New Year’s Resolutions for teachers.    We all catch ourselves doing it.  You know, saying, “Next year I won’t let *blank* happen!”.  But why wait until next year?  From The Cornerstone Blog:
“So in light of this, I present the “Not Waiting for a New Year” resolution. What do you [...]

Kelly Gallagher Is Coming!

On January 26th Kelly Gallagher will be stopping by to answer questions from you, my readers!  Kelly has a new book coming out and it is amazing. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do about It is being added to my list of “bible books”.  I am only about halfway through [...]

Best of Cybils Middle Grade Round-up!

Let me tell you, I am so proud of the job my panel has done.  It is harder than you can imagine to whittle down 129 nominees to one shortlist!  Obviously, we all have our favorites that just can’t make the cut.  For some reason, the judges just don’t want a shortlist of 50 books. [...]

Plane Reading

I am currently in Dublin, Ireland for four days!  I am very excited and hoping it won’t be too cold.  Traveling presents a great opportunity for me to do some reading that I wouldn’t normally get to do.  Before school ended, my class and I discussed out plans for vacation reading and I explained that [...]

Shooting the Moon by Frances O’Roark Dowell

For some reason, Shooting the Moon sat on my TBR pile since last May. I kept meaning to read it and never quite got to it. However, when it was nominated for a Cybil in the Middle Grades category, it finally made its way to the top.
Why did I wait so long to [...]

Ireland!

On December 27th I will be heading to Ireland for a few days.  I have a few posts scheduled to pop up while I am gone, but I will be enjoying my vacation and staying away from the blog.  

 
Happy New Year!

One month!

In exactly one month, the Newbery award winners will be announced.  I still have a good number of books to read!    Thanks to Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 for putting together a tally of the mock Newbery lists so far!  I’ve read a good number of them so far:

The Postcard by Tony Abbot
Chains by [...]

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa!

A blessed and happy holiday to all those who are celebrating!  I hope you open lots of new books today!