Adventures in Learning: It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

I'm talking part in the meme, "It's Monday! What are you reading?" sponsored by Teach Mentor Texts and Book Journey. Here's what I've been up to over the last two weeks (I missed the post last week):

Picture Books:

Otis and the Puppy by Loren Long

Another cute addition to the Otis family. Otis and the other farm animals acquire a puppy, who ends up lost in the woods one night. Otis must face his fear of darkness and set out to find the puppy in the woods.

The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie dePaola

This would be a fun book to use in a writing class, as half of the book is wordless. dePaola starts the story with words, then tells the remainder in illustrations. It would be a good exercise, especially for struggling writers, to create dialogue to go with the story. The framework (often the hardest part for an emerging writer) is there. Natalie loved it, too. Anything with some fantasy and she's sold. She gets it from her dad...

The Mighty LaLouche by Matthew Olshan and Sophie Blackall

The illustrations in this book make it great! The Mighty LaLouche is a mailman who loses his job in Paris at the turn of the century. His job is lost because the post office just bought a fleet of automobiles. He must find work and becomes a fighter. His small size surprises his opponents and he turns out to be more agile than the bigger men he fights. In the end, he once again becomes a postal worker (the cars didn't work out so well) and all is well for LaLouche.

Henry's Freedom Box by Ellen Levine, illustrated by Kadir Nelson

Henry is a slave that longs for freedom after his wife and children are taken away. He mails himself in a box to Philadelphia, bound for a new life. The illustrations are gorgeous.

Mercy Watson Fights Crime by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen, read by Ron McLarty

This was Natalie's first audio book! It was great fun. You could have heard a pin drop in the car. Another great installment in the Mercy Watson series.

The Princess and the Peas by Caryl Hart, illustrated by Sarah Warburton

I loved this tale of a girl who wouldn't eat peas. The doctor diagnosed her as a princess and she moved to the castle to eat cold cabbage stew! She soon decides being a princess isn't all bits cracked up to be and moves back home with her dad in the woods. Great picky eater story!

Flood by Alvaro Vila

Beautiful book about a family that has to abandon their house because if an impending flood. They return to find their house destroyed, but work to restore it to its original beauty. Could use each page as a story starter, then out all stories together to form a written companion to the book.

Adult Books:

The House Girl by Tara Conklin

A story about two women searching for freedom, 160 years apart. Josephine is a slave in Virginia that runs for her freedom. Lina is a lawyer in NYC who is searching for her mother. Both stories are important and both are told extremely well in Conklin's first novel. I particularly loved how each chapter alternated between Josephine and Lina.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

This was an intriguing book about a serial killer who travels through time from the 1920s to the 1990s in Chicago. He hunts down woman throughout the 70 year span that are "shining". He attempts to kill Kirby, but her dog saves her from the attacker and now she is on a mission to hunt him down. A fast, different take on a murder mystery. There's a lot to talk about in this one!

Currently Reading: