It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 5.17.21

This weekly post comes from Jen at Teach Mentor Texts

 and Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers.  

It's a great source to find new books to use with your students.

Last Week's Adventures

I shared some longer nonfiction books that are sure to intrigue readers!

Picture Books

Hair Twins

written by Raakhee Mirchandani

illustrated by Holly Hatam

Celebrates a father-daughter bond over hair styles!  While the young girl in the book gets to have different styles, she especially loves when her Papa and her get to "twin" with their hair buns.

Without it being a book about the Sikh custom of not cutting your hair and men wearing turbans, it celebrates that part of their everyday life.

My favorite line is when they are going to to the park to "meet my friends and the grown-ups who them love."

This one would pair well with Matthew A. Cherry's Hair Love and Simrat Jeet Singh's Fauja Singh Keeps Going.

What the World Could Make: A Story of Hope

written by Holly M. McGhee

illustrated by Pascal Lemaître

This is a beautiful book about the magic of the world and the beauty we can find in it.  Two rabbit friends celebrate the gifts that the earth gives us in each season and while the gifts don't last forever, it's the memories we make with them that do last forever.  And they return to us year after year.  Although I personally may want that lilac smell to last forever!  It's lilac season now :)

Oscar's Tower of Flowers

by Lauren Tobia

A wordless picture book about growing and sharing.  

Someone Oscar loves is going away and it looks like it will be awhile before their return.  Oscar stays with a grownup who knows just how to pass time - planting lots of flowers and plants from seeds.  When the apartment is overgrown with growth, Oscar has great fun giving them away, and making new friends.

Thank you to Candlewick for the review copy.

Wonder Walkers

by Micha Archer

I love Archer's artwork and I think this is one of her best.  Two siblings go for a wonder walk where they question and wonder about the world around them.  Perfect for inquiries about the environment and seeing things in a new way.

This book would be perfect to use as a picture walk - I know many schools and libraries are doing this right now!

More Than Sunny

by Shelley Johannes

I ADORED this book!  The illustrations drew me in and I spent so much time looking at them.  I loved the goofy rhymes and the opposites each sibling found.

It's a story about two siblings through the different seasons.  While they may find opposites in the things they do, they each find a new way to look and wonder about their world around them.  I think this one is going to be well loved by readers!

Middle Grade

Flight of the Puffin

by Ann Braden

Braden's debut middle grade, The Benefits of Being an Octopus, was one that stayed in my mind long after I closed the pages.  Now her sophomore title, under the guidance of editor-extraordinaire, Nancy Paulsen, is even more amazing.

Flight of the Puffin is about how one small act of kindness can cause ripples that reach far and near.  Sometimes that one small act is actually so big, it can affect a person's life.  An act of kindness doesn't have to cost money, but it should come from the heart.  

This is the story of four kids.  Kids who don't necessarily know each other or live anywhere near each other.  But one character does one thing, one small gesture, that makes an impact, a different impact, on each of their lives.

Highly recommend for intermediate and middle school readers.

Finding Junie Kim

by Ellen Oh

This book needs to be in every middle school classroom library and school library and public library, right now!

Junie Kim is about finding your voice and figuring out how you want to use it when fighting racism.  Everyone has a different comfort level, but being silent, even when it's easier, is letting racism win.  Junie listens to the stories of her beloved grandparents and learns how she wants to use her voice.  

This book was important for me to read because I really didn't know much about the Korean War.  I know we touched on it in 8th grade social studies, but I don't remember really being taught about it.  Add that to the other whitewashed topics of my youth.... Native Americans and their brutal removal and myths... Japanese internment camps...  I loved how Oh brought current events and lived wisdom of the older generation together to form this story. 

With the wide Asian American racism that we see today, it is so important for readers to have Junie's story.  I live in that "I had no idea this was happening" bubble, and that's not ok.  I'm sure many other privileged young readers need to know this is what is happening and they need to find their voice too.

I recommend this one for readers in 6-7th grade.  There are some trigger warnings: suicidal thoughts (the main character contemplates swallowing a lot of ibuprofen pills to make the pain she feels from the racial slurs she hears at school go away), details about the horrors of war, and mild language (multiple uses of bastard, hell, freaking, sucks).  I know I would have been ok with these topics in grades younger than this, but I do think it's important to mention them.

Thank you to Edelweiss for the e-galley.

Currently Reading

Paper Heart

by Cat Patrick

I loved Tornado Brain and I was excited to see this would be a companion novel.

We're inching closer to summer reading!  Who is ready?  I certainly am!