I went to my local library today, I was 30 minutes early! After I returned a huge pile of books that my oldest boy checked out (ALL Dr. Seuss). I asked if they had a list of Newbery Award books anywhere...the answer was "No, we do not." WHAT! They don't how is this possible that a library does not have a list of award winning books available for parents or children. It's so simple to print a few copies off and put them in an appropriate area for easy reference. However, one of the nice ladies there went to her office and printed me a full list of Winners and Honors and the first on the list for the current year was this book.
This is the current Newbery Award winning book. I checked it out. I was early to pick my two young boys up from playschool so I went in and found a quite corner and started reading. Before I knew it, it was time to check them out. I couldn't believe how that book just sucked me right in. I'm only partially in chapter 2 but I love it! At first I thought...do I really want to read this? It seemed too dark for me. So far, it's not...who knew.
This is the first book of many that I'll be reading. My goal is to do one Newbery book a week that I haven't already read (and maybe some I have). What I'd like is for you to read them with me. You're almost guaranteed to find the books at your local library.
Read them with me. Come back to this post...there will be a link on the left that says "Book of the Week". Come back and leave a comment. Share with the world what you thought about it...this isn't Oprah's book club. This is to help review books that are written for Children's Literature. Help me make this little site a good place for others to use as a tool.
I'll share with you my Caldecott selections for the week next.
Oh and before I forget...go HERE! It's the author, Neil Gaiman's website and you can download a desktop image for your computer...I did! Read it to find out why it's an award winning book!
New book next Friday.
1 comment:
This was actually a better read than I thought. I could NOT put it down. The twist at the end was predictable but to a child, it was not. I do think this book is meant for children of middle school age or higher. I think High Schoolers would love it. My back and neck are aching from the constant hours of reading. The imagery was wonderful and I loved how he told you who someone was or what someone was without actually telling you (like he gives his audience credit for being intelligent enough to figure it out). You actually get attached to the main character fairly quickly because he starts off as a baby. I would not attempt to read this to children under 3rd grade at least. There are certain aspects about death that they can not understand at this age and the abstract role of death in this book doesn't help. I highly recommend you pick up this book and read it. Oh, and the author also wrote the book "Coraline" that the movie was based on. So there are dark undertones in most or all of his books I suspect.
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