Book talks

This week is a short week, with half days on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for parent conferences.  My goal this week is to get good books into kids' hands so they can read during their non-school hours.  I know they won't all do this, but the more good reading material they have around, the better chance they will pick it up on Thursday afternoon at 12:30 when they are done eating lunch.

In sixth grade classes I am booktalking books I read recently or have reviews from my Book a Day blog from the past two summers.  Notice I didn't reach my goal of reading a book a day, summer activities and family tend to get in the way of that, but I did read some good books that I can share with students.

For the 5th grade HiCap class, I booktalked Animal Fiction (defined as either being from the point of view of the animal, e.g. The One and Only Ivan, which they just finished reading as a read aloud in class; or defined as having animals as central to the story, e.g. Julie and the Wolves or My Side of the Mountain).  This was a genre I struggled with the past few weeks when students asked for recommendations.  I knew we had them, I knew I had read them, but I was having trouble finding them on the spur of the moment.  I really wanted them to move beyond the Erin Hunter series Warriors, which most of them have already read.

Once I started really doing some research and scouring the shelves, I found lots of books to share with them.  Some old favorites, some classics, some newer books, and a good variety that they all clamored to check out when I was doing booktalking them.  Some students ended up doing Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who got to check out Lion Boy and a few other popular titles.

My list for now (so I have a reference point next time this genre comes up!):

• Lion Boy by Corder
• Snow Dog by Kjelgaard
• Canyon Winter by Morey
• Owls in the Family by Mowat
• Julie of the Wolves by George
• The Incident at Hawk's Hill
• The Tale of Despereaux by DiCamillo
• The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series by Lasky
• Wolves of Beyond by Lasky
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
• Whittington by Armstrong
• My Side of the Mountain by George
• Summer of the Monkeys by Rawls
• Where the Red Fern Grows by Rawls
• Old Yeller by Gipson
• Poppy series by Avi
• Call of the Wild by London
• White Fang by London
• Black Beauty by Sewell
• Misty of Chincoteague by Henry
• The Black Stallion by Farley