Monday, February 23, 2015

It's Monday! Here's What I'm Reading...


Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye and Ricki Ginsburg at Unleashing Readers cohost It's Monday! What are You Reading? weekly on their blogs.  To see what

others are reading and recommending each Monday, or to participate, be sure to head over to these blogs.

Unfortunately, the chapter book I was planning to share this week was not a book that I enjoyed enough to share with this community. I prefer to say nothing if I can't say much nice, so this week, I will only be sharing a couple of picture books.

A Thirst for Home by Christine Ieronimo caught me by surprise with its emotional impact. While this book definitely highlights the struggles that people have in our world to obtain clear water, it also deals with the painful choices that families and parents have to make in order to survive. With beautiful language and imagery--"the sun was always smiling down on me and whispered my name with its hot, sticky breath--Christine Ieronimo introduces readers to Ethiopia, and then with painful images, she writes about the loss and separation: "Emaye cried, and her tears were like raindrops so precious that I tried to collect them with the scarf she gave me." This book is another resource for building empathy, global awareness, and personal responsibility in elementary students.


Coming Home by Greg Ruth also surprised me. From the cover, I assumed that it would be about a parent coming home from serving, but it's almost a wordless picture book and a beautiful tribute to people who serve our country and people who wait for their return. The pictures are incredibly powerful and full of details, each one with layers of stories. I could imagine some really sophisticated conversations coming out of this book.

Happy reading!

3 comments:

  1. Ah, I just checked out A Thirst For Home, Melanie...your review has me so glad that I did!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I loved Coming Home, Melanie. You're so right, it's a book that will start such conversations that are important. I've sent the other title to a colleague whose class is studying water this year. Thanks for that title.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A Thirst for Home sound like the kind of book I need to have in our school library. So does Coming Home, although I will have to preview it, since I'm from Canada and try to avoid books that are too American focused.

    ReplyDelete