September | 2015 | Literacy Love

I’m baaaaaack! It’s been an embarrassingly long time since I’ve posted here, but today my students will be posting their first IMWAYR posts, so I have no excuses! While I am 22 books behind my Goodreads reading goal right now, I have had read some pretty good books lately, and here are a few of them!

It’s Monday! What are you Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys and invites bloggers to recap what they’ve read this week while planning ahead on what to read next! Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers added their own twist by focusing on kidlit, from picture books up to YA.

Be sure to click on the covers for an in depth synopsis and others’ reviews

A Night DIvided by Jennifer Nielsen

MG Historical Fiction, August, 2015
384 Pages

My Goodreads Rating: 5/5 Stars

Everything Jennifer Nielsen writes is awesome. The False Prince trilogy is probably my favorite middle grade series. She writes characters so well and A Night Divided is another example of a book with characters that jump off the page. I haven’t read a lot of books about the Cold War and Berlin Wall so I was intrigued by the interesting subject matter. This story is told from twelve year old Gerta’s perspective and centers around the Wall being put up one night when her father and brother are away, and now half of her family is on the East side and 2 others on the West. The conditions on the East side are terrible and Gerta and her brother Fritz long to be reunited with their father and escape to the West. Time is running out and they are forced to make some big decisions. Highly recommend this book!!

Crossing Stones by Helen Frost

Historical Fiction Novel Written in Verse, 2009
184 Pages
My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Stars
My seventh graders will soon be undertaking a very big study of novels in verse (Surprise, 3rd and 6th period!) and I am still looking for good titles. I love Helen Frost’s structured verse and am in awe as I read her books. She is very talented! This novel takes place in a rural setting around two families that live near each other. Their lives are intertwined and World War I and the Women’s Suffrage Movement force the family to face an ever changing world. The whole story takes place around nine months of their lives. I wasn’t sure the subject matter and time period would be interesting, but I fell in love with these characters and Helen Frost’s beautiful words. Timeless themes of family, war, and growing up are relevant to all readers.

Hello, Goodbye and Everything by Jennifer E. Smith

YA Contemporary Fiction, September, 2015
246 Pages
My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Stars

Jennifer E Smith is another favorite author of mine. I highly recommend The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and The Geography of You and Me. Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between is another great book about teen relationships and this one centers around one night, which I was a little hesitant about at first. 250 pages about one night? It definitely works. Clare and Aiden, the golden couple, are headed off to college the next morning. Two different colleges on opposite sides of the country. While Clare has prepared a walk down memory lane for the couple, both have bigger things to figure out. Should they make a clean break or should they continue their relationship, long distance? This book had me laughing out loud at times and is pretty adorable!

I’m hoping to pick up A Night Divided and Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between at our school’s upcoming book fair in November. Not sure I can wait that long to get them for our classroom, but we’ll see.

Here’s what I’m reading next: