It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 5-23-22

It's Monday! What are you reading? Is a wonderful community of readers, teachers, and librarians. Hosted by Jen over at Teach Mentor Texts along with Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers, participants share their reading adventures from the past week along with their reading plans for the week ahead.

My Monday posts are generally just a highlight of what I've been reading during the week so if you'd like to see all that I've been reading, follow my Goodreads page.

Last week I read and enjoyed:

Take More Vacations: How to Search Better, Book Cheaper, and Travel the World by Scott Keyes

When a book completely changes the way you think about travel, that warrants 5 stars. While it is full of tips, details, and examples of how to find cheaper airfare, it can be boiled down essentially to this: find a cheap flight first, then build your trip around that rather than choosing the destination first.

While that is an oversimplification of the book, that beginning premise helps the reader with a mindshift about travel and how it's better to approach travel by taking more, cheaper flights than fewer expensive ones.

Too bad the pandemic made me a tad agoraphobic, but now that I have this information in my back pocket, I can start thinking about the potential for travel again.

Gibberish by Young Vo

Gibberish tells the story of a young boy named Dat who is new to the English language and what that feels like to be the new kid at school who doesn't understand everyone. That story arc isn't new, but the way Young Vo tells it and illustrates it is unlike anything I've seen before. His use of black and white cartoonish illustrations for Dat's surroundings along with emojis for dialogue that he doesn't understand really immerses the reader into Dat's world of unknowing. As Dat becomes more attuned to the English-speaking world and begins understanding more, his surroundings become more colorful and less cartoonish.

This book is brilliant and so incredibly innovative. I'm calling it now: 2023 Caldecott medalist. I will be shocked if it doesn't at least win an honor.

How to Hug a Pufferfish by Ellie Peterson

A sweet and humorous book about consent about a good-natured pufferfish who just... prefers a heads-up if you want to hug him. And important book to add to the collection of books that are currently written about consent. Pair with Can I Give You a Squish by Emily Neilson. School is Wherever I Am by Ellie Peterson Learning happens everywhere... it doesn't have to only be in a building we call school. The World Belonged to Us by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Leo Espinosa A tribute to the joys of summer when kids played in the street and always knew to come home when the streetlights came on with not an electronic device in sight. Currently reading: Moonflower by Kacen Callender Currently reading with my ears: From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks