December Update

With December about halfway through, I wanted to share two fun things from Room 204. One math, one not.

Every year after we learn coordinate planes, my 6th graders create a town of their choosing on a coordinate graph. I love this project because I get to see what my students are interested in and their personalities come out. Here's this year's bunch.

In my book club, we made book ornaments. Simple project..... very messy, but simple. Here's mine book ornaments using lines from a discard Giver book, one of my all time favorites.

Book Review: Solo

Solo

by Kwame Alexander

I LOVED The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. I first read it when I took over the Summer Reading program a few years ago. I fell in love with it and knew my students would love it. I couldn't wait for summer to get closer so I could finally introduce it to the students. I was right. The students who picked it for their summer reading devoured that book. Nothing made me more happy than seeing a group of boys who I usually had to cajole to do some reading during independent reading time ask me if they could sit in a circle and take turns reading aloud from the book because they were so excited to read it. I'm pretty sure at that moment, my heart was doing the snoopy dance.

Why did I know the kids would love it so much? First of all, it was so well written. It was, and probably still is, the only book written in verse I actually like. I'll admit it. I don't enjoy reading poetry and I don't prefer books in prose. But Kwame Alexander wrote this book with such rhythm. My students could hear the rap music in his words as they read. It also told a compelling story. All I knew going into it was that it was a "basketball book". It was so much more than that. It was about two twins, who yes are basketball stars, but they are also navigating life through middle school, finding their way, and dealing with some family problems. And it read real. My 6th grade (almost 7th grade) boys could related to the characters and it felt like it could have been someone they knew.

Okay, so why I have I spent so much of this book review talking about a different book? Because when I sat down to read Solo by Kwame Alexander, I was hoping for the same type of thing, but about music instead of basketball. In fact I was more excited because I personally love stories about music. However, this book just didn't live up to that. Maybe it's my fault comparing it to The Crossover, but I just didn't find the verse as compelling, the story as interesting, or the characters as relatable.

The author still keeps the book in verse, but it isn't as stylized as The Crossover. It also is very dialogue heavy which I felt doesn't need verse then. In fact, this book may have been better written in prose. The plot isn't bad -- a boy with a love of music, Blade, is born in a rock star family can't wait to get out if and go off to college. His drug and alcohol addicted father makes mistakes at every turn, even to the point where his girlfriend's father is so fed up and forbids the girlfriend from seeing Blade. Without spoiling too much, halfway through the novel Blade receives some information and ends up spending the other half of the novel in Africa. Originally presented to me as a love story, this is actually more of a "finding yourself" story. However, I just don't think Blade is as relatable to people as Josh and Jordan from The Crossover. Solo is probably fine when compare to itself, but unfortunately, I can't help comparing it to The Crossover, which in my heart will win every time.

FOUR Book Reviews

Wow, I've been a bit neglectful of this blog. Sorry for that! To make up for it, I will post FOUR book reviews in one post!

Heartless

by Marissa Meyer

I was so excited for this book. I loved Marisa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series. A prequel to Alice in Wonderland sounded like a fun route to go after the conclusion of her first series. However, I just didn't have the same reaction to this book as I did to the Lunar Chronicles. I can't put my finger on what it was about the book that just didn't sit in the same way with me. I didn't care for the characters as much, I couldn't imagine the world as much, and I didn't fall into the story as much. Maybe it's a perfectly fine book, but going into the reading of it with Lunar Chronicles in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but be let down a bit.

Wires and Nerve

by Marissa Meyer

After being let down by Heartless, this book brought my spirits back up. This is a graphic novel sequel to the Lunar Chronicles series. The story follows Iko  helping Earth with the aftermath of the series and dealing with being a unique android. All the main characters from the series have a feature in this book so you can see what happened to them and what they are up to. Some characters have more of a prominent role than others, so I would love to have seen more from some of the others, but there is a Part 2 coming out soon. As someone who isn't the biggest reader of graphic novels, I thought it was a fun and quick read. The characters weren't quite like I imagined in my head, but it wasn't distracting, and made it fun to see the story played out in pictures. Now I just have to countdown to Part 2!

By Your Side

by Kasie West

Kasie West is an author I always preorder her books once I see that there's a new one coming out. She writes fun, simple, clean YA stories. I feel comfortable having her books in my classroom library because even though she deals with high school characters, she keeps it clean enough that I don't have to worry about levels of appropriateness. This book is about a girl who gets locked into a library over a long weekend by accident and finds out she's not alone -- there's a boy with a bad reputation stuck in there too. This book was entertaining and I appreciated how, unlike some of her other books, this one gave the main male character development and his own arc. However, I can't say I loved this one. I just felt like some of the plot points and storylines didn't play out well. One of my best friends read this book too and we disagree on our opinions. I would rank this low on the list of Kasie West's books -- she would rank this up at the top as one of her bests. I guess you will have to read it and decide it for yourself.

A Monster Calls

by Patrick Ness

Out of the four books in this post, this is the only one that's not "new". It came out in 2011. I never read it, but I am also one of those people who always wants to read the book before seeing the movie version. This book deliver exactly what it promised -- a gut wrenching tear jerker. The story is about a boy who's mother is sick with cancer. He is struggling to deal with it, and a Monster comes and tells him stories, that at the end deliver a message to him. Quick read that stays with you. I can't even imagine how it will play out on the screen. I knew there was a Monster that comes to the boy, but I didn't except so much of it to be stories told. It causes the book to feel a bit didactic at times and I fear can be a turn off for some students. But then again, this book is not for everyone. The other day a student told me she loved books that make her cry, so of course I had to recommend this book. You need to be ready for a book like this.

Lunar Chronicles & Graphic Novels

I wanted to share this since I have quite a few students who have recently gotten into The Lunar Chronicles series (you can read my thoughts about it here). The author, Marissa Meyer is making a graphic Novel series following a character, Iko, after the books take place. Graphic Novels are taking the literary world by storm, with many graphic novel versions of popular books coming out. Below, I list a few graphic novels my students might be interested in. However, I wanted to share a preview of the graphic novel for The Lunar Chronicles -- Wires and Nerves. Enjoy this sneak peek, and hold tight until it's released in January! (WARNING: SPOILERS TO LUNAR CHRONICLES IN THE LINK!)

http://www.avclub.com/article/lunar-chronicles-make-their-comics-debut-wires-and-246506

Graphic Novels You Might Like 

Percy Jackson Graphic Novel Series

Legend Graphic Novel Series

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Series Graphic Novel Series

A Wrinkle in Time

Sooo many books have been turned into graphic novels. Just search to see if your favorites have been revamped!

Book Club Bookmarks

The Pageturners, Merchantville's Junior High book club had some fun making corner bookmarks. They came out so well that I had to take photos to share!

A corner bookmark is like origami and marks your place by wrapping around the corner of the page, such as below:

I showed a few examples, including an intricate Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon. Look at how amazingly they turned out!

Here are some more great bookmarks!!

 

Book Club: Food Edition

This month's Pageturners meeting was "Food Inspired by Books". Wow! We had some fun items brought in. Check out what we got to enjoy:

The Fault in Our Stars Cake

Green Eggs and Ham  + Chocolate Brownies

"Hop on Pop"corn

Maze Runner Maze

Hunger Games "Nightlock"    and Goldfish from The Glass Castle

Dr. Seuss's One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish     and a miniature tea party set from Alice in Wonderland.

Divergent's favorite Dauntless Cake

And of course.... some book worms

We had a blast talking about books, discussing books vs. their movies and eating our treats. The Pageturners is definitely a club meeting I look forward to every month :)