Gillian's favourite books

              Silver Wing by Kenneth Oppel

Silver Wing is about a young silver wing bat named Shade. Shade is the runt of his colony and his dream is to see the sun! The law is that no bats can see the sun, it's illegal. One day Shade decides to stay out and get a glimpse of the sun, but this just causes trouble between the owls and the bats, what will Shade do? And just when things seem to get as bad as they can, Shade gets separated from the rest of his colony during Hibernaculum. Will he ever be able to meet up with his colony? Will he ever solve the problems between the bats and the owls? 

I really enjoyed this book I would recommend it for grade 5 or 6 students.                                                     

              The  Candy Makers By Wendy Mass     The Candy Makers is about four 12 year olds named Logan, Miles, Daisy and Phillip (at the Life is Sweet Candy Factory) who compete in the national candymaking competition of a lifetime! They soon become great friends, and learn some interesting secrets about each other. They have three days to make the best selling candy. Read this book and find out the mysteries that these 4 contestants await! I would recommend this book for late elementary school students or early middle school students.

      The Whole Truth By Kit Pearson

The Whole Truth is about a girl named Polly, this book takes place in 1932 when Polly is almost ten. Polly and her older sister Maud move from their home in Winnipeg to a small island between Victoria and Vancouver to live with their grandmother. Maud goes off to boarding school and leaves Polly by herself. But after a little bit she starts feeling at home, she starts making friends at school and feels like she`s part of a very big family she never knew about. But she is having trouble keeping a secret that she and Maud have. Then an unexpected arrival comes and Polly does not know if she can keep her awesome life on the island.
 I would recommend this book for middle schoolers.




 
    And Nothing But The Truth By Kit Pearson

And Nothing But The Truth is a sequel to The Whole Truth. In this book It's Polly's turn to go to boarding school. Although she's dreading it she knows its the best option for her. The only thing she's looking forward to is getting art lessons, and her family is all good now so there`s nothing to worry about... until Maud tells Polly her dark secret. Will Polly be able to keep another secret?
 I would recommend this book to middle schoolers.

Thanks to a group of grade 7 students from Glenlyon Norfolk House School for meeting with the PDPPPosse Book Club today to share some of their favourite (and not so favourite) books.


Today, we learned from a student who is into classic literature and recommended "Watership Down" by Richard Adams and "Emma"by Jane Austin for others interested in the genre.

We learned about a fantasy series called "Fablehaven" by Brandon Mull which is a quick and satisfying adventure read, leaving the reader wanting to know what will happen next in the series.

Students recommended "City of Ember" by Jeanne duPrau, "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak, "The Devil and His Boy" by Anthony Horowitz, "Maze Runner" by James Dashner, "Out of My Mind" by Sharon Draper and "The Shakespeare Stealer" by Gary Blackwood.

We were also told about "King of Shadows" and "Keys to the Kingdom" which were given less than raving reviews.  I guess we need to read them ourselves to see if we agree with the assessment!


I won't add any more detail about these books here because we just might get lucky and have the students blog about the books themselves.  Stay tuned . . . .

Mo, Mo, Mo!

Pigeon puppet made using a popsicle stick & cardstock

Mo Willems is one of my favourite authors! His books have been a hit with all of the grade 3 and 4 students that I have been tutoring since September. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus seems to be the most popular. Other favourite titles include Knuffel Bunny and The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog.

Mo Willems' books are great for practicing reading fluency. We had a lot of fun changing our tone and thinking about how punctuation affects meaning.

The artwork and writing is very accessible, so we used it as a mentor text to create our own picturebooks. We've put them on the shelves alongside the other books. It's so empowering to be an author!

Science Verse

Science Verse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith is a phenomenal book. It combines poetry, art, science, and puns. It would be a great fit with grade 5 body science curriculum.

Primary students love it, too. I read/sang it to the grade 1/2 science club I work with. It also comes with a CD of the music, for the more reluctant singers.
 

These wonderful authors also wrote Math Curse.

Mmm, Cookies!

Mmm, Cookies! by Robert Munsch is full of delicious words. I read it with a grade 4 student who I tutor. We made onomatopoeia cookies out of paper to explore the world of sound words.

The Lunar Chronicles

The Lunar Chronicles is a great series of books if you like fantasy, sci-fi, and fairy tales. It takes the stories that we grow up with like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, and puts a sci-fi twist on them combining into a great over-arching story blending the tales all together. The books center on a girl named Cinder who is part cyborg. Cyborgs are looked down on in society and for them to be an active member, someone must have ownership of them. I don't want to give too much away in case you read them (and I highly suggest you do!). There is so much more that happens in these books and they could bring up topics of conversation such as racism, dictatorships, government, community, and more.

The Arrival

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is one of the best books I have read lately. It is a wordless graphic novel about immigration. It tells many immigrant stories with one overarching story about a man who leaves his family and country to make a better life in a new country. The narrative begins with him leaving his family to travel on an ocean liner to a new land. He meets many other immigrants along the way. In this new country he witnesses unusual creatures, different foods and customs. He begins to work in order to make enough money to bring his wife and daughter to this new home.
The illustrations are so intricately detailed, every time I look at this book I notice something else. This is a great story for grade 6 to adults.

Elsewhere

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin tells the story of Liz Hall a girl approaching her sixteenth birthday who is a victim of a car accident. She wakes up on a ship taking her to "elsewhere"the place where everyone goes after they die according the Zevin. It is a phenomenal story about loss, acceptance and really growing up. A great story for ages 12 and up. Beautifully written!

With thanks to Gordon Head Middle School

Today we met with the Gordon Head Middle School library club using the video-conferencing BlueJeans program.   Thanks to Alex DeMedeiros and Lindsay Ross for helping your students to engage with us about books.  It was time well spent.

I am going to list the book titles, authors and genres we heard about today in case any of our readers want to investigate them further.

Favourite Books

Vampire Night (manga)
The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
Carrie, Stephen King
A Handful of Time, Kit Pearson (and many other Kit Pearson titles - she is a well loved author)
Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer
Harry Potter Series, J.K. Rowling
Divergent series, Veronica Roth
Hunger Games series, Suzanne Collins
The Hobbit, J. R. Tolkien
Wing, Eric Walters
Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall, Wendy Mass (and many other Wendy Mass titles)
Percy Jackson and the Olympian series, Rick Riordan
The Fault in our Stars, John Green (and many other John Green titles)
Pretty Little Liars, Sara Shepard
Maximum Ride, James Patterson (and many other James Patterson titles)

I may have missed some . . . but the students will be blogging about their favourite titles so stay tuned . . .

Also, the students mentioned some genres and themes that are of interest to them including, fantasy, manga, action adventure, realistic books , books with opportunities for emotional engagement and empathy.   There was a theme of dystopia and dying quite prevalent in there too.

There were several other PDPP Posse People there so, what did I miss?  Please comment to add your thoughts about our virtual book club, to correct me (!) or to add suggestions for future gatherings.  thanks!