Challenge Update

So I hate to admit this but my challenge has gotten off to a slow start. As soon as I made my challenge I found all these books I want to read that have nothing to do with the Theodore Seuss Geisel award. Most of them have been recommendations from friends but others I want to read are because I have watched the movies or they are coming out with new movies. I almost think my challenge should have been comparing movies and books, but unfortunately that is not what I chose so it is time to kick it into gear and get this challenge under way.
Here is a side note, I was looking up books to read for my challenge and I came across Dr. Seuss books that are dedicated to science!! How cool is that? Anyway I digress, to help improve my challenge I am seeing a challenge within my challenge. I am going to dedicate 2 hours to read Theodore Seuss Geisel award books and 2 hours to books that are on my to read list!

It’s Monday! What are you reading??

This week I started working on the challenge I set for myself.  If anyone is unaware of what my challenge is, I am going to read and get familiar with books that have won the Theodore Seuss Geisel award.  I decided to start off with reading some Dr. Seuss books even though, they haven’t won the award.

This books is a favorite of mine.  One of my favorite parts is when you can think about Schlopp, even with a cherry on top.  I never knew what Schlopp was but I imagined it to be a delicious treat that was more yummy and magical than ice cream!  The best part about Dr. Seuss books is that they are so bright and make me want to be a part of that world.

Honestly, the only reason I like this book is because of the oobleck!  Has anyone ever made oobleck?  If not I recommend trying it out.  I made it when I was babysitting and the kids loved it, let’s be honest here so did I!  You can find a recipe for oobleck on pinterest or on the web.  I really like how you can incorporate science into this book, kind of makes it easy to think up some future lesson plans.

For the last set of reading I did, I tried out a collection of audio books.  They are still Dr. Seuss books but they are read by some pretty popular names such as Kelsey Grammer and Dustin Hoffman, to name a few.  I really like audio books because obviously they are read very different compared to how I would read them.  My mother in law swears by them, I could honestly take them or leave them, but it is good to have that option (it definitely makes long car rides more enjoyable when you are alone).  My favorite reader is Kelsey Grammer, he helps grasp the important and exciting parts better than I can in my head when reading alone.  When I read Oh, the thinks you can think, I read it to my niece and I really tried to read in a more exciting way.  She was more attentive to the book when I was reading with excitement than if I was just reading the words to read.  I give lots of credit to the audio book for inspiring me to read with more expression.

Here is a list of the books on the audio disc.

The Cat in the Hat; Horton Hears a Who; How the Grinch Stole Christmas; Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?; The Lorax; Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories: Gertrude McFuzz and The Big Brag; Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose; Horton Hatches the Egg; and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

It’s Monday! What are you Reading???

So I made my challenge to read more books that have won the Theodore Seuss Geisel award, but this week I thought I would read one more YA literature book and I am glad I did.

I decided to read The Kingdom of Little Wounds.  This is indeed the only book I read because it is quite long and kind of hard to understand what is happening at times, but I finished it and am pretty proud of myself.

It is set in somewhere in Scandinavia during the time of the Italian Fire, which I found out was syphilis.  So you can imagine in the book it talked about how people were itchy and they had sores in certain places.  Ava is a maid to Queen Isabel who is married to King Christian V.  In the beginning of the book all the maids are preparing the Queen for her daughter Sophia’s marriage to a Duke who is a great deal older than Sophia, but in this time that was not unheard of.  When Sophia is lying in bed with her new husband she screams so all the maids rush into the room and notice she has from what I could imagine, boil type things around her neck.  She ends up dying, but later on in the book we start to realize that her younger siblings are ill.  They think someone in the royal court has been poisoning the royal family but Queen Isabel later on towards the end of the book miscarriages again so they wonder if the queen has this illness and has poisoned all of her children.  There is a lot of stuff that happens in the middle parts of the book as well.  Ava tells a lie that the queens right hand lady is the one that poisoned the children, she gets mixed up with Lord Nicholas who is pretty evil from start to finish.  I liked how the author, Susan Cokal, didn’t hold back with his character.  I instantly felt hatred for his character, he just seemed sneaky.

I liked the historical aspect of the book but like I previously stated I had a hard time following along and pronouncing some words.  It says it is a YA book, I would encourage anyone who wanted to, to read it but I would never jump out of my seat pressuring a person to read it.  I am just proud of myself for finishing it because there were times I wanted to give up.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?!

This week I read The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine George. I did not read the inside cover before I checked it out so I was somewhat surprised that this story revolves around two girls who are in a secret love relationship. I did like this book because each chapter was from either Jesse’s perspective or Emily’s. Jesse is very open about being gay and she doesn’t care, she puts off a rough exterior with her big boots but sometimes it came across to me that she was vulnerable, especially when it came to Emily. On the other hand Emily has a boyfriend and has had this boyfriend (Mike) since they were born. She is a perfectionist and just wants to make her school better. Her and Jesse have nothing in common when you look at the lifestyle of the two or their appearance, but they are both very passionate people who want to be heard, just not about the same things. I would recommend reading this because it actually has a good message, which is that all people are different and if you really get to know someone and how they feel you might find an amazing person.

I am ashamed to say this was the only book I read this week.

My Reading Plan

After being on this class for a few weeks now I would like to say I am becoming  a reader. I have enjoyed reading the different awards books and that has helped me figure out what books I think I will enjoy looking for and what kind of books I will recommend to my students. While I am starting to enjoy reading for myself my reading plan is starting to focus more n how I can use what I have read to teach my students. I hope to stay in the lower elementary levels and if I get to then I really want to use reading across the curriculum, I like reading books for different subjects. I know you can’t use Dr. Seuss for everything so what I really want to focus on is finding different authors I could read and see what I could do to present these books in different subjects. I really enjoyed doing poetry in elementary school, so I would really like to branch out in more of a poetry plan as well. I don’t want to limit myself to one author because I think in order to become an expert in a genre you need to read a variety of authors and then make your choice of a favorite you would like to use for lessons. If anyone has any recommendations on authors that focus more on poetry for lower elementary then please share I am anxious to see what people know.

As for myself I like challenging myself. Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew but I learn a lot about myself in that way. I don’t want to limit myself to reading the young adult section and lower but I really enjoy them. Right now more “mature” books really don’t interest me. I just really want to focus on becoming a reader for my students.