Why I Bought It Wednesday!

Three *is* my favorite number, so welcome to week three of Why I Bought It Wednesday!

Today I stopped by "the office" and there were even more boxes of books waiting for me!  It was so hard to chose the five for this week's post, but here they are...

:: Brush of the Gods 
by Lenore Look and illustrated by Meilo So

Why I Bought It:  My second graders study Ancient China along with Ancient Egypt, so I thought this would be a perfect semi-fictional picture book.  I could pair it with several other wonderful books such as The Pet Dragon or At the Beach by Huy Voun Lee.  You could also pair this book with another book about remaining true to oneself and ones passion.  

:: Amphibians (Animal Classes Series)

Why I Bought It:  I am completely addicted to the Blastoff Readers from Bellwether Media {I have not been compensated for this recommendation!!} series of books and best of all, so are my students and teachers.  Like the A True Book series, these books are filled with large, engaging photographs, easy to read (on the eyes, I mean) text, nonfiction text features and these books pass my nonfiction text test:  a glossary MUST be called a glossary!! {So bugs me when they call it something else!  It's a glossary, people!  My kindergarteners can handle the term!}  I bought a ton, I mean a TON more of these this year after I tried them out with a few last year.

:: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library

by Chris Grabenstein

Why I Bought It:  I have not read it...just the buzz.  But it has the word LIBRARY in the TITLE for goodness sakes.  And, be still my heart, it has some sort of Dewey Decimal spinner on the cover.  You KNOW I am a DEWEY NUT!  Each year I get a little more creative with my second graders and Dewey.  They love it!  It feels like cracking a code to them.  But I digress...  Can't wait to read this one!

::The Fellowship For Alien Detection

by Kevin Emerson

Why I Bought It:  Again, I have not read this one...but my 4th and 5th graders are *hungry* for science fiction that is at their level so I grabbed this one up!  I hope this one will pass their stringent requirements!

:: Tito Puente:  Mambo King
by Monica Brown, illustrated by Rafael Lopez

Why I Bought It:  This bilingual picture book was an easy pick for me.  We were fortunate enough to have Monica Brown visit our school last year and she introduced the children to many of her other books, including My Name is Celia Cruz.  After I read this book, I immediately went to uTube to watch Tito Puente in action!  A great start to biographies, music appreciation and Hispanic culture!  

Why I Bought It Wednesday!!

Welcome to the second edition of Why I Bought It Wednesday!

I stopped by my library yesterday to find eight boxes of books just waiting to be opened!  twitter.com/booksandbytes stopped by, so we spent some time pawing, oohing and awing over some of the newly arrive purchases.

:: Here are five titles and Why I Bought It (THEM!). : ) {You can see more over at my Pinterest account.}

:: Becoming Babe Ruth

Why I Bought It:  Last year, as close to opening day as possible, I read several picture book biographies about baseball players, including You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! by Jonah Winter.  This year I plan to do the same, so I scooped up several more titles.  Soon I will do a post of all the fantastic baseball pictures books - there are so many great ones and so many to keep track of...!  They get my students reading sports-related books and biographies!

:: The Wing Wing Brothers Math Spectacular

Why I Bought It:  Oh...come on.  Why WOULDN'T you buy this book?  I mean, look at the cover!  However, it also amusingly explains the concepts of greater than, less than, equal to and addition and subtraction.  Funny Math!  It's a Wing Wing situation! <--Heh, heh...see what I did there?

:: Frogged

Why I Bought It:  Okay, so here is a book that I have not read yet, but I snuck it home and have added it to the Four Books I Will Read Before School Starts Again pile.  Why?  My students are always looking for fractured fairy or folk tales that mix things up a bit.  I'm sure this will be very popular with my students and will be a great book to book talk along with Rump.

:: Doll Bones

Why I Bought It:  Well...here I cheated just a little bit.  I received this book from the publisher, but with all the buzz I'm glad I did.  It is the second book on my Four Books I Will Read Before School Starts Again pile.  My students are always looking for "scary books" and I think this will do the trick without giving them too many nightmare.  What other books would go along well with this one?

And finally...

:: Frog Song

Why I Bought It:  My guys just cannot get enough of books about animals and animal behavior.  I can't wait to introduce them to Frog Song...and the opportunities for pairing fiction and non-fiction texts are ENDLESS I tell ya...  Hello Froggy Goes to School!  Can't wait to use Frog Song this year.

What books did you buy this week and why?

Library Lessons - Cheers and Jeers

We've had a few cheers and jeers so far this week during Library.

Let's start with the Jeers, shall we?

I decided to have my fifth graders create spine poetry with Newbery award-winning titles as a sort of poetry/Newbery unit mashup.  Meh.  The problem was that limiting students to the Newbery titles limited their creativity.  Here were two of my favorites, however:

Lessons Learned:  Next time allow students to choose books from the entire library collection.

There were more Cheers this week, however.  My students LOVED LOVED LOVED...

There Goes Ted Williams - Written and Illustrated by Matt Tavares

and so did I!  LOVED this book by Matt Tavares!  A great read for celebrating opening day or any day.

And finally, to coordinate with their animal unit, I did this Animal Mystery activity with my kindergarteners and the book A STICKLER ON STILTS:  A ZOO ANIMAL MYSTERY.  I revealed each clue as I read each page and the students would tell me what they thought and why.  The kids loved it and all their hands were waving frantically right before they told me the answer!

Did you have any Cheers or Jeers this week?