Five Great Picture Books!

For a class last year, I had to join Twitter.  Little did I know then what a great professional resource it would be.  I have connected with so many great teachers, media specialists, authors and illustrators.  They have made me so excited to start this school year.  One activity that I found out about International Dot Day.  Most of my Kindergarten and 1st Grade students had a great time with our activities.  I will have a blog post about our celebration soon.  I'm just waiting on permission slips to use some pictures.

A teacher and media specialist that I have met on Twitter have started a monthly online book club.  The first book that we discussed was The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  This is a great chapter book for 3rd grade and above.  If you haven't picked up a copy of this book, you are missing out on a great story.  Click here to see a summary of the book.  Then the next month was another chapter book, Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson.  This is a historical fiction book, which I have never been a real fan of historical fiction.  Well, thanks to Twitter I realize I have been reading the wrong historical fiction books!  In the past year I have read about five historical fiction books that I have LOVED!  Click here for a summary of Hattie Big Sky.  

In October the focus of the book club switched to pictures books.  Even if you have an older child, picture books still are a great type of book to have them read.  There are so many great discussions that you and your child can have using picture books.  The five that we read were Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, The Gentleman Bug by Julian Hector, Rocket Writes a Story by Tad Hills, Here Come the Girl Scouts by Shana Corey, and Boy + Bot by Ame Dyckman.  If you click the titles, you can see a summary of each book.  I was so excited because out of the five books I had only read two of the titles and the other three were on my to-read list!  I was not disappointed in any of the three that I hadn't read.  I've posted about Boy + Bot on this blog before.  I think it is a great book and click here to see that post.  The best part about the book club chat was that four of the authors participated in our chat.  We were able to ask questions and they actually answered them.  

I highly recommend each and everyone of these books for children of all ages.  All of these you can get a the public library.  At the HES library we have Boy + Bot, but will be ordering the four titles soon.  If you do read one or all of the books, please come back and make a comment letting me know what you thought of the book or books.

Happy Reading!!

Miss Hazuda