Reading in the Wild

A biography as a picture book, what a fun way to get students interested in learning about history? What an amazing way to tell the story of those who made a difference?

In this story readers will learn about John Roy Lynch, his life, his accomplishments, and the sacrifices along the way. In the story of this man's life there are some pretty tough situations, and some areas that are pretty rough. However, author Chris Barton tells the facts in a way that everyone will learn something but not be offended.

At the end of the story is featured a timeline, map, information for further study, and more. This could be very beneficial for students who are working on a report about John Roy Lynch, or who are interested in this time period. 

Happy reading everyone!

Mrs. Emory

What an amazing story! It is easy to see why this book was chosen for the Bluebonnet Nominee list! 

Readers follow as different families collect the ingredients, prepare, serve, and devour a simple recipe. It is interesting to compare and contrast the differences in how each of the different cooks collect their ingredients and put the recipe together. While all of the ingredients stay the same throughout, readers see a huge difference from the first story where the cream is gathered from the cow's milk, to at the end when it is purchased from a supermarket. Another interesting difference to note is how each of the different cooks chill their dessert.

This book would be great to use for comparing and contrasting different time periods and how people in these different time periods gathered, prepared, and stored their foods differently. It would also be appropriate for readers of many ages, whether it is being read aloud or if the reader is reading it on their own.

Happy reading everyone!

Naomi Emory

This book is written in poetry form and follows a young girl as she discovers mementos of her family as well as when she is seeing wonders while visiting her grandmother. This young girl gets to discover, through poetry, her mom's childhood and all of the wonders that she got to see in person. Each page features a poem from the young girl's perspective as well as one from her mother's perspective. Readers can tell which poem is which by the fact that the mother and the young girl have different hair styles, and the young girl has poems in regular text on the left, while her mother's are in italics on the right. 

Once I understood the flow of the book I really enjoyed reading the parallel styles of the mother's and daughter's poems. However, for younger readers having the poems set up in this way could be confusing, it took me a few pages to really understand what was going on. But, once this is understood it is a great book to use for poetry analysis. I would recommend this book to older readers as a way to introduce poetry.

Happy reading everyone,

Mrs. Emory

Hello Everyone,

When I am traveling in the car I am usually listening to an audiobook. I have listened to many different books this way and Echo is one of them. The audio version of this book has a lot of interesting features, which I will discuss later on in this review. 

Do not feel daunted by the length of this book, it is one of those that you get into and forget that you are reading. This book is broken into three parts and each part follows the story of three children and how they are affected by World War II. These children are from all different areas of the world and are creatively connected by a harmonica. This is where the interesting features of the audio version of this book come into play. 

From the beginning, where the reader is following the story of an amazing musician and harmonica maker, the reader is serenaded by the harmonica as well as different orchestra songs. The reader is really given a gift to be able to hear these aspects of the story for themselves and it pulls you deeper into the story. 

Readers who love historical fiction will enjoy following the stories of these children and seeing how all of them are connected in the end.

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Emory

Good Afternoon Readers,

Don't you just love reading graphic novels? Especially ones that have interesting characters? If this is the type of thing that you enjoy then you will definitely like Lowriders in Space.

This story follows the story of a group of friends that are doing all that they can to accomplish their dream. These friends are all working in a machine shop that is owned by someone else, and they all dream of one day having a shop of their own, where each of the friends can work on things that interest them. One day when they find out about a competition of create a car, where the prize money could buy their shop they are all in! 

Those who enjoy reading fantasy and graphic novels will dive right into this story of friendship and adventure.

Happy Reading Everyone! 

Mrs. Emory

Good Afternoon,

Many of my younger readers are loving reading the increasingly popular graphic novels. These books draw our readers in for a variety of reasons, including the wonderfully drawn pictures that give amazing detail to the story.

This year there are two graphic novels on the Bluebonnet nominee list, one is Hamster Princess. In this story readers will meet a princess that breaks all the molds. 

Harriet is a young hamster who happens to be the daughter of the king and queen, but she is definitely not interested in doing anything remotely princess-like.

When she discovers that she has been cursed at birth, similarly to Sleeping Beauty, she finds out that the curse keeps her from dying or getting seriously injured. To Harriet this is amazing news! This means that she can go off and have as many adventures as she wants! 

Readers who enjoy fantasy and adventure will enjoy following Harriet on her many adventures as well as seeing what happens in her face-off with the evil witch! 

Happy Reading! 

Mrs. Emory

Hello Everyone, 

This book was phenomenal. Many times the books that are chosen as Bluebonnet nominees are, but this is definitely one of the better ones! Many of us remember hearing stories from our grandparents, sometimes these stories can be a bit farfetched, but we love those stories all the same, young Micah is no different.

This adventurous story follows Micah as he tries to reach out to the Lightbender to help save his grandfather who is dying. Along the way the reader gets to hear the story of how Grandpa Ephram met the Lightbender, as well as his travels with Circus Mirandus.

Readers who enjoy fantasy and mystery will definitely enjoy this wonderful and heart wrenching story. 

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Emory