Taken from a painting of Kapiti Island at Sunset.
by Sonia Savage.

Monday, March 5, 2012

It's Monday. What Are You You Reading?

Monday has come around again and I am joining in the meme over at Mentor Texts.
Hop on over and join in at the Mentor Text Blog. 


 I had a better reading week this past week, the week before was a bad week for reading with nothing finished.

The first book I finished this week was The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis. Very interesting and really liked Deza very much. A very courageous young girl. However if I had to choose between Doug Swieteck of Okay for Now or Deza, well I have to admit it would be Doug.







In New Zealand we have the NZ Post Book Awards. There are 5 nominations each in picture books,  non-fiction children's books, junior fiction and senior fiction.  The final choices will be made in May. They can be seen here.  NZ Post Shortlist.   Some of our students are reading them and then in May we have a local Mastermind quiz on the books among local schools.  It is a lot of hard work for them but also very rewarding. As I want to read these books as well some of my reading has been and will be these books.

Just Jack by Adele Broadbent is the story of Jack who leaves his home at 13yrs to become an apprentice jockey.  It is set in 1931 and includes the Napier earthquake. I enjoyed this book and rated it 4 stars.  Realistic and historical fiction.








This book is by Barbara Else and was also enjoyable. It started really well and left the reader with many questions to be answered. So it is both mystery and fantasy.  It is well written and for most of the book I was hooked. However by the end of it I was a little more disengaged. Everything ended very well tied up and I just got a little bored. I am interested to see what my students make of this one. I awarded it three stars.




For the coming week I plan to read:
Babymouse Cupcake Tycoon - Jennifer and M Holm
Amulet - Book One The Stonekeeper - K Kibuishi
And two NZ Post Award books -
The Flytrap Snaps by J Knox  and...
Kimble Bent - Malcontent.  By C Grosz


5 comments:

  1. I also read The Mighty Miss Malone...but was underwhelmed by it. I love Christopher Paul Curtis so I was surprised I didn't like this one more.

    I'm not familiar with Just Jack or The Traveling Resturant. That's why I love this meme so much...always finding new and interesting titles!

    Have a great week among the pages!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I too haven't seen those two books up for your Post book awards. The first does look interesting. I liked The MIghty Miss Malone, but loved Okay For Now. Do you think it's because the first was meant for younger students so not so detailed? Hard to really decide why I liked one better. Thanks for the book ideas.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think both have plenty for readers to think about. However I just fell in love with Okay for Now and I am reading it now to my class and enjoying it all over again.
      Kathryn

      By the way as the other two are New Zealand books I think overseas readers are unlikely to come across them.

      Delete
  3. I was wondering if maybe the books in New Zealand were a bit different from books we have here in the US. Very interesting! I enjoyed Miss Malone!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jen
    Generally I would say they have similarities, however often settings are different. However if fantasy then you wouldn't know where it was written. When reading a book set in the USA I have less background knowledge to bring to it, a book set here in NZ is easy for me to read because often I have been there. For example the Just Jack book, I am familiar with the setting so found it easy to picture. Books set in USA often have me diving for a map!
    Kathryn

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...