The best time of the school term. I get to go book shopping for our Middle School and Grade 7 "young adults". I have an subject allocation and I purchase quarterly. It's FANTASTIC! This is my greatest passion in teaching - encouraging and growing enthusiastic reading children. We have made so much progress. The little school where I teach Forres Preparatory School, has a very new Middle School department and in 5 years we have grown a library from ground level (ie no books). The strategy has been to buy current and good reads and spread across reading strengths without labelling books by age or gender. I have impressed on children that we are free to read whatever we want to (breaking molds of "girl books" and "boy books"). So we invite boys to dip into Jaqueline Wilson and Meg Cabot if they so wish...and many do!! I will spend the next post listing some other creative strategies in our library and how I have created an enthusiasm for reading in even the toughest nuts.
I have a favourite shop where I browse to my heart's content and come away loaded. Last term I focused on easier reads for the emergent Chapter Book Readers. We bought in a big collection of the Aussie Nibbles, Aussie Chomp and Aussie Bites. Brilliant for beginner independent readers. I also always include a couple of picture books such as Shaun Tan and Emily Gravett and Chris Riddell - just because Literacy is beautiful and thought provoking in so many forms.
Some titles in today's shop for ages 9 - 13:
Niki Daly - Zanzibar Road (can't think why we don't have this one on our shelves)
A full set of Cressida Cowell - "How to Train your Dragon" series
Chris Mould - "Something Wickedly Weird" series
Michael Morpurgo (of course and per usual) - a selection (inevitably I bring in about 3 Morpurgo titles
Eva Ibbotson "The Ogre of Oglefort"
Barack Obama "Of Thee I Sing" (How beautiful is that picture book??!)
Michael Foreman's "A Child's Garden" - so much lesson material to be found in that
Carole Wilkinson - Dragon Keeper series
Helen Stringer - The Last Ghost, a Belladonna Johnson Adventure
Axel Scheffler - How to Keep a Pet Squirrel
Charlie Higson - The Young Bond Dossier - Danger Society
John Boyne - Noah Barleywater Runs Away
Kevin Henkes - Bird Lake Moon
Anthony McGowan - Einstein's Underpants
A few collections of short stories and a few poetry anthologies with lush illustration (kids love these!!)
Always bring in a promote classics. I usually set them as challenge books for stronger readers and because children love a challenge when it's out in the open, they really do dive in and read things like Treasure Island. This time am going to pimp:
Eve Garnett - The Family From One End Street and
Edith Nesbit - Five Children and It
Yay - will share how I we introduce the new reads and create a fever around the new "hot books" in a post or two... So excited - have them spread in glorious piles on my diningroom table and will take them in to school on Monday.
2 comments:
How wonderful to read a blog about YA lit - and one that mentions E. Nesbitt! I have a first edition of The Railway Children and I treasure it.
may I just shamelessly add the hope that The Night Watchman Express will be on that shelf one day ...
What a fun part of your job!
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