#IMWAYR

I came upon this great little meme while taking a stroll through the amazing Adrienne Gear's website & blog (if you aren't familiar with Adrienne Gear, you need to check out her Reading & Writing Power books. Trust me.).

Hosted by Jen of Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee of Unleashing Readers, It's Monday, What Are You Reading is the YA offshoot of Book Journey's adult IMWAYR. And wouldn't you know, I had to jump on that train! And I'm dragging Kristi along with me. I mean, we love kid lit, right? (We love adult lit too but honestly, I'd rather write about kid's books.) It really is a perfect fit!

So, from now on, Mondays = IMWAYR.

For our first IMWAYR post, I would love to share a YA series that I just ripped through (I love camping for all the reading time!) and two wonderful picture books that my 5 year old got for her birthday.

The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima was quite an enjoyable fantasy read. My best description of it is Diana Gabaldon for teens; all of the key elements are there: magic, romance, war. As with the Gabaldon series though, I felt it dragged on too long and could have been wrapped up in at least one book less. That being said, it was entertaining and kept me turning the pages. 

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As for picture books, my daughter was given Rosie Revere, Engineer (Andrea Beaty), and The Most Magnificent Thing (Ashley Spires) for her 5th birthday. Both are fun, clever books about perseverance and feature girls building fantastic machines (and fabulous flops) for loved ones. Rosie Revere has a wonderful cadence and rhyme, with some really interesting words thrown in for good measure. In contrast, The Most Magnificent Thing has a somewhat spare text but is no less enjoyable (especially when the girl gets frustrated!). I highly recommend both for your classroom and your own kids. 

They are excellent as STEM tie-ins and for use with connection & inference lessons as well as word choice and sentence fluency in writing.

What I'm looking forward to reading:
I look forward to finishing Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady. Not in any way shape or form a YA novel and a bit of a slog after the Seven Realms series. But I rarely give up on a book, so I will finish it.

I look forward to reading more great books to my kiddos....hopefully less Frozen and more cool stuff like My Brave Year of Firsts (Jamie Lee Curtis).

Stay tuned for more next Monday!