Here are my books for this week. This was not exactly a record-breaking reading week, but we're going with quality over quantity. Most of my new reading was done with my students this week, so these are also their stories.
I totally forgot that I'm a Frog! was going to be released this week. I had preordered it, and I was quite surprised when I opened the giant box from Amazon that I thought only contained my daughter's diapers. My students were really excited as well. After I shared it once, we put the book under the document camera and split the class in half to read the parts of Gerald and Piggie. They had so much fun! We will definitely do this with other Elephant and Piggie books in the future. This won the vote for Room 11 Book Pick of the Week in a narrow victory over the next title.
The story of Otis and the Tornado is subtitled, How My Students Learned About the Wonder of Interlibrary Loan. We shared Otis by Loren Long for Read for the Record Day a couple of weeks ago, and I had told the kids that there were other Otis books. A couple of my students had seen this one in the bookstore, so I told them I'd try to find it in the library. We looked it up together and found it at a library a few hours away. I made the request, and they were so excited to walk in this week and see it sitting on the desk. They are really starting to learn about how readers plan ahead for future reading. Of course, we added Otis and the Puppy and the new Otis Christmas book to our Shelfari TBR list. This is a great story to read if you enjoyed the original, and if you haven't read any of them yet, definitely add them to your list.
I love Kevin Henkes, although I had only read his picture books before this one. The Year of Billy Miller is a great book for late first, second, and early third graders. I like that the book is about a boy. It seems that these types of early realistic fiction (with the exception of Ready Freddy and Horrible Harry) are usually centered around girls (Junie B., Clementine, Ramona, Marty McGuire). That being said, I wish Billy Miller had maybe a little bit more spunk. It was a sweet story, and I like how it focused on his family relationships as well as his school ones. I may share this with my students toward the end of the year.
I'm currently listening to The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail by Richard Peck on my commute, and I've got a small stack upstairs that I'm hoping to get to soon, including Serafina's Promise and Penny From Heaven. What else should I add to my list?