Thursday Thoughts

Yesterday I received ten new boxes of books from Baker and Taylor at my school library. Talk about excitment. These books were purchased with a Target grant I received for the library. :) I am enjoying looking through the book a bit more today because right after the boxes arrived I had to attend a meeting at a different school. I hated to tear myself away from the excitement. Now I have fifteen chapter books in a stack for me to read. I also took home five picture books last night for bedtime.

Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth by Diane deGroat was probably the hands down favorite at story time. The illustrations/photgraphs of real dogs showing what they do and do not do are so cute as well as humorous. I have heard this will be at the girls' book fair, so I am definitely buying a copy.

Big Bear Hug by Nicholas Oldland is another cute picture book about a bear who likes to hug things. He hugs animals, trees, and even the woodsman bearing an ax who is about to cut down a tree. The woodsman isn't used to this strange bear hug, and quickly leaves the forest - sparing the tree from the ax.

Star of the Week by Darlene Friedman and Roger Roth is a cute book about Cassidy-Li's experience being the Star of the Week at school. Cassidy-Li is also adopted from China so while she includes many things from her family, she also wants to include something about her birthparents. My girls loved this book, too. Maybe because they have experience being stars of the week at school, or maybe because we got to see Cassidy-Li work on her scrapbook-like picture collage of her life...whatever it was, my girls loved it. The author and illustrator of this book are married and have their own daughter, Eden, who they adopted from China in 1998.

Read It, Don't Eat It by Ian Schoenherr is a rhyming, fun look at book care. I can see many uses for this with my students - at the beginning of the year, but even at different times during the year to remind them about taking care of their books. The humor in the book helps teach the lesson without making it sound repetitive or too teacher-y.

The last bedtime book we read was Only A Witch Can Fly by Alison McGhee. I had such high hopes for this one. First of all, my oldest daughter just finished Julia Gillian by McGhee, so we were excited to read something else by this author. And, I have seen great reviews about this book everywhere. However, even though I really liked the illustrations-linoleum block prints- I just could never quite get the text to work for me. I spent several pages reading passages over, trying to get them to rhyme, or sound right, and they just didn't. I might try this one again, or give it to a teacher and see what they think. The title Only A Witch Can Fly is also the last line of the book, to which my daughters responded with many examples of other things that fly. Somehow I think the story was lost on them, too.

I have so many books to review right now which is not a bad problem to have - just overwhelming. I am looking forward to this weekend when I make a trip to IKEA and FINALLY purchase much needed bookshelves. YAY!