This Happened

Oh, the joys of a book award committee.

The stacks on the left are August books that still need to be read/reviewed, and the tower of 4 boxes and a package came yesterday.

No Poetry Friday for me this week! Probably not next week either -- I'll be teaching fly fishing at Ohio's Casting for Recovery retreat.

Happy reading to me! Happy Poetry to you!

(Updated to add today's shipments: 4 more boxes and 2 more packages! Eek!)

Poetry Friday -- Love Song to Reading

Hooray for a book of poems that celebrates reading...

The WONDER of reading words

"...that fly like birds
from pages
in your book
to branches
in your brain
where they sing
like soothing
summer rain."

The JOY of learning to read.

"I longed so to read.
This was my hope.
This was my need." 

All the KINDS of reading we do:

Cereal Box
Sports Page
Maps
Road Signs
Field Guides
Google Searches
Birthday Cards
Magazines
Sunday Comics

The ways reading COMPLETES us:

"Every single thing you read
becomes a part of you." 

"A book gives you a double life." 

The ways reading CHANGES us:

"An open book will make you kind." 

"Charlotte taught me what to do." 

"I'm a reader.
I explore." 

Thank you, Amy, for a book that readers of all ages and stages will want to hug and share and read over and over again until it falls apart.

Read! Read! Read!
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke
Wordsong, September 2017



Carol has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Beyond LiteracyLink.

For next week's Poetry Friday Roundup, Tabatha has invited us to write/share poems in honor of National Mac and Cheese Day, which falls on Friday, July 14 this year. Start cooking up an oozy, gooey Poetry Friday post!! (It's optional, but it was so much fun when we celebrated Billy Collins at the beginning of his birth month back in March.)

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Go visit TEACH MENTOR TEXTS for the whole round up of 

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? posts.  

Thanks Jen and Kellee!

This Week's Update is Brought to You by Mary Lee

I grabbed FAKE MOUSTACHE by Tom Angleberger at the library yesterday. (I was gathering books for the unit of study on empathy that we'll be beginning Monday. No, I don't think FAKE MOUSTACHE will be part of the study!) Based on all I've heard about it, including Franki's review last week, this is the funniest Angleberger yet. I can't wait to get started on it!

But before I start FAKE MOUSTACHE, I'm embarrassed to say that I need to get caught up and read DARTH PAPER STRIKES BACK. I started it last night, but I soon fell into a food-induced coma from a birthday dinner at Rivage. 

Actually, I need to put this one aside (yet again...and this is how it has happened that I haven't read it yet...) because...

...I really need to read the newest LUNCH LADY (LUNCH LADY AND THE MUTANT MATHLETES) so that it can be on the chalk tray first thing this morning and I can maintain my position as The Teacher With All The Coolest Books.

Now a peek at my adult reading...

I just finished listening to LITTLE BEE Saturday. Because of the two voices in the story, the audio experience was particularly powerful. Plus, this was the first audio book I checked out of the public library. CML has a really easy stepsheet for getting the free OverDrive app and checking out e-books and audio books. 

Now that I'm finished with LITTLE BEE, I'll get back to listening to 11/22/63 by Steven King. I sort of left the main character stuck back in time while I took a break to listen to LITTLE BEE for book club. It made for fascinating conversation to be reading a time travel book while my class was listening to/reading along with A WRINKLE IN TIME.

Happy Monday, and Happy Reading!!

Poetry Friday -- Found Poem

Flickr Creative Commons licensed photo by Thokrates

FIT TO BE CALLED READING
by Robert Louis Stevenson


In anything fit to be called
by the name of reading,
the process itself
should be
absorbing
and
voluptuous;

we should gloat over a book,
be rapt
clean out of ourselves
and rise from the perusal,
our mind
filled
with the busiest,
kaleidoscopic dance of images,
incapable of sleep
or of continuous thought.

The words,
if the book be eloquent,
should run thenceforth in our ears like the noise of
breakers,

and the story,
if it be a story,
repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures
to the eye.

from Memories and Portraits, but found in The Pocket R. L. S. : Being Favourite Passages From the Works of Stevenson, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922



Thank you, AJ, for sharing this passage-turned-poem (by me) in your little leather-bound 1922 collection of R. L. S. quotes and passages.

Here are a couple of links from some recent discussions about the love of reading:
Alan Jacobs in The Journal of Higher Education
and a response from
Donalyn Miller at Education Week.

Where do you stand on the love of reading?



Today, the Poetry Friday Round Up is at Dori Reads.

Master List: Books about Books and Reading

Picture Books

How a Book is Made by Aliki
Read Anything Good Lately? by Susan Allen and Jane Lindaman
What Are You Doing? by Elisa Amado
Souper Chicken by Mary Jane and Herm Auch
The Lonely Book by Kate Bernheimer
The Best Place to Read by Debbie Bertram and Susan Bloom
The Best Time to Read by Debbie Bertram and Susan Bloom
Wolf by Becky Bloom
Miss Brooks Loves Books (And I Don't) by Barbara Bottner
The Day Eddie Met the Author by Louise Borden
Across a Dark and Wild Sea by Don Brown
Arthur and the Race to Read by Marc Brown
The Year of the Book by Andrea Cheng
But Excuse Me That is my Book by Lauren Child
Otto the Book Bear by Kate Cleminson
Henry & the Buccaneer Bunnies by Carolyn Crimi
Petunia by Robert Duvoisin
A Bedtime Story by Mem Fox
Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook by Michael Garland
Book! by Kristine O'Connell George
Check it Out! The Book About Libraries by Gail Gibbons
A Story for Bear by Dennis Haseley
The Gentleman Bug by Julian Hector
That Book Woman by Heather Henson
The Reader by Amy Hest

Mr. George Baker by Amy Hest
How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills
The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce
Open This Little Book by Jesse Klausmeier
Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen
Jake's 100th Day of School by Lester Laminack
The Red Book by Barbara Lehman
Book by George Ella Lyon
Santa's Book of Names by David McPhail
Edward and the Pirates by David McPhail
Edward in the Jungle by David McPhail
Tomas and the Library Lady by Pat Mora
Amelia Hits the Road by Marissa Moss
Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne
Reading Makes You Feel Good by Todd Parr
The Girl Who Hated Books by Manjusha Pawagi
Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair by Patricia Polacco
Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco
Read Me A Book by Barbara Reid
Reading Grows by Ellen Senisi
Wild About Books by Judy Sierra
It's a Book by Lane Smith
The Hard Times Jar by Ethel Footman Smothers
Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein
From Pictures to Words: A Book About Making a Book by Janet Stevens
The Library by Sarah Stewart
Take Care, Good Knight by Shelley Moore Thomas
Free Fall by David Wiesner
We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems
Library Lil by Suzanne Williams
The Old Woman Who Loved to Read by John Winch
The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter
Dog Loves Books by Louise Yates
Baby Bear's Books by Jane Yolen



Chapter Books

Magic by the Book by Nina Berenstein
The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst
Seven Day Magic by Edward Eager
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little by Peggy Gifford
Ban This Book by Alan Gratz
The Big Green Book by Robert Graves
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Fly By Night by Francis Hardinge
The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup
Looking Back: A Book of Memories by Lois Lowry
Summer Reading is Killing Me by Jon Scieszka
At the Sign of the Star by Katherine Sturtevant
The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Poetry

Wonderful Words: Poems about Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening
selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Good Books, Good Times by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems by Gail Carson Levine
The Bookworm's Feast by J. Patrick Lewis
Please Bury Me in the Library by J. Patrick Lewis
BookSpeak!: Poems About Books by Laura Purdie Salas
Read! Read! Read! by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater


Professional

Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers by Penny Kittle
The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller

Quotations

Quotations for Kids by J.A. Senns

Books For Adults That Could Be Used For Exerpts

Life is So Good by George Dawson
Grand Conversations by Ralph Peterson and Maryann Eeds
The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby
Better Than Life by Daniel Pennac
How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen
The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading by Francis Spufford


* * * * * *

Check this out, too: A Notes from the Windowsill annotated bibliography of book-books by Wendy E. Betts.