What Ms. Moore is Reading - Vacation Weeks 4 & 5

Here are some of the most recent books I've read and recommend for my students. They're all available from the public library, but any donations towards getting them into our collection are most welcome! All cover images and descriptions are from Goodreads.

Middle Grade Novels

Charlie wishes his life could be as predictable and simple as chicken nuggets. And it usually is. He has his clean room, his carefully organized bird books and art supplies, his favorite foods, and comfortable routines. But life has been unraveling since his war journalist father was injured in Afghanistan. And when Dad gets sent across country for medical treatment, Charlie must reluctantly travel to meet him. With his boy-crazy sister, unruly twin brothers, and a mysterious new family friend at the wheel, the journey looks anything but smooth.

Twelve-year-old Warren has learned that his beloved hotel can walk, and now it's ferrying guests around the countryside, transporting tourists to strange and foreign destinations. But when an unexpected detour brings everyone into the dark and sinister Malwoods, Warren finds himself separated from his hotel and his friends and racing after them on foot through a forest teeming with witches, snakes, talking trees, and mind-boggling riddles. NOTE: This is a sequel to "Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye," which I also highly recommend.

Nonfiction

On the morning of August 6, 1926, Gertrude Ederle stood in her bathing suit on the beach at Cape Gris-Nez, France, and faced the churning waves of the English Channel. Twenty-one miles across the perilous waterway, the English coastline beckoned. Lyrical text, stunning illustrations and fascinating back matter put the reader right alongside Ederle in her bid to be the first woman to swim the Channel and contextualizes her record-smashing victory as a defining moment in sports history. 

This clever picture book introduces the concept of animal characteristics by highlighting how there can be both differences and similarities within a group. For example, the zebra gallops, the bumblebee flies, the lemur leaps and the tiger prowls ... But look closer now ... We all have STRIPES! And so it goes. ... Observant children will notice that one of the animals from each group also appears on the following spread with three new animals that have a different characteristic in common. NOTE: I'm adding this to our first grade categories unit.

If you were the moon, what would you do? You'd spin like a twilight ballerina and play dodgeball with space rocks! And more.