300 Books!

Well, I don't expect anyone but myself to get excited about it, but I have now posted reviews of exactly 300 books.  It's not a prime number, nor an especially lucky one, but it's a pretty big number.  If you've enjoyed this site, if you have any fun comments, or if you have any ideas for me going forward, please add a comment below!  It's been fun reading with and for you, and I look forward to many more posts in the years to come.

Nursery Rhyme Comics- Various Artists

No, this isn't my normal type of recommendation.  However, I picked this book up at Barnes and Noble last week, and neither my almost-3-year-old son nor I have been able to put it down.

In this beautiful hardcover book, fifty classic nursery rhymes have been totally modernized and reinterpreted by big-shot comics artists.  The words are the same Mother Goose we learned from our grandparents, but the illustrations breathe new life into the stories, so much that my son has nearly memorized all of the stories in one short week, and we spend hours singing them together, looking at the wide variety of captivating drawings.  Don't let the cover fool you - the woman who designed that didn't even write any of the sketches, and the quality in-book is better than that on the front. My personal favorites: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Owl and the Pussycat, and For Want of a Nail.  Flip through this book and you'll fall in love with some old nursery rhymes all over again, too.

5 Years and 200 Books: A Celebration

Dude, this is awesome.  Mister K has reviewed 200 books, and you're here reading about it.  It's hard to believe I've been plugging away at this blog for five years.  It started as a project for an educational technology class while working on my Master's degree, and I enjoyed it so much I never stopped.  201 reviews later, and here we are.  It's been good for me to have this creative outlet, and to be able to share my reading with more than just my fourth grade students.  From the feedback I get, it seems like this has been a helpful resource to many parents and teachers, as well as my target audience of upper elementary and middle-school students.  If I've helped one person find a good book, then it's all been worthwhile.

It's been fun working my way into the blogosphere community of those who are passionate about children's literature.  There are many excellent blogs out there, with amazing people writing them. Two of those are my blogging buddies Ms. Yingling and Momo, who have both been quite supportive of my blog over the years with their thoughtful comments and interesting questions.  I've also enjoyed watching some of my students take the leap from readers to book bloggers over the years.  For people who would much rather have our noses stuck in books than pressed to our computer screens, we've done a nice job of building a community of book lovers in cyberspace.

Keeping this blog has pushed me to read more widely than I normally would.  Rather than re-reading favorites, I'm always on the lookout for new books to read and share.  I don't review every book I read, in fact I read as many adult books as children's lit, but that's another story.  There are many books that I abandon, or finish but don't have the heart to write about.  While there is a lot of good children's lit out there, there's certainly a lot of junk, too, and it's often hard to tell which is which at first glance.  That's part of why I love sites like this, and the reviews that are showing up on the bookstore and library sites.

While I think every teacher should be at least as well-read as their students, it's obviously not that simple, especially when your family and obligations grow.  With my own Little Dude two years old now, I spend much of my home time reading to him.  His favorites right now? Here are today's top picks:  Zany Zoo, Punk Farm, and The Gruffalo  (Lucky for me, he has good taste, because the daily favorites get at least a half-dozen readings each!)  How do I pick out the books I review?  They are either books I've bought from a bookstore or Scholastic book order because they looked good or I heard a good review (I hope to read all the books in my class library, but it keeps growing!) or ones I found at one of my local libraries, where I browse the shelves weekly.

On this red letter day, I thank all of you who took the time to read this when you obviously have plenty of other ways you could be spending your time. You are why I write these reviews, and your continued support by visiting and sharing my site brings me great joy.  Take care, and keep reading!

Wordle: A Word-Lover's Friend

Wordle is a cool new site I found that takes the most frequently used words from any text or website, and creates a bit of word art.  The image above is from this site, misterkreads.com.

Click here to visit the Wordle site

Harry, a History - by Melissa Anelli

I came across this book by accident, browsing the shelves at my local library.  When I found it, I had already read all of the Harry Potter books at least twice, and I was definitely fan.  This book, however, rekindled my fascination with and love for the Potter series, turned me on to a new branch of music (Rock out to Wizard Rock!), and gave me a new appreciation for the community-building power of literature.

Melissa Anelli runs a Harry Potter fan website, The Leaky Cauldron.  My first visit to this interesting site was after reading this book, and I was amazed at what I found.  There are a ton of Harry Potter fans who have taken their fandom FAR beyond the level of my own, which consists mainly of reading the books, talking to freinds about them, and then reading them again.  Harry Potter fandom has become a universe of its own, it seems, with communities, websites, bands, conferences, and a host of truly fanatical fans.  This book chronicles the rise of this Potter-fan universe from the very beginning, and includes captivating interviews with J.K. Rowling herself.  I thought I was well-versed in the history of the series, but this book showed me the REAL story, and it's amazing.

If you're a Potter fan of any age (perhaps teen and older, actually), pick up a copy of this memoir and rekindle your own love of the (arguably) greatest series of all time.  In the meantime, look up my new favorite band, Harry and the Potters, and get ready to rock, Wizard-Style!

Lemony Snicket (David Handler) Speaks

I recently went to see David Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) speak, and found him captivating. Yes, he's just a weird guy with an odd sense of humor who happens to be a writer of children's literature, but in doing so, he gives hope to all of us weird guys with odd senses of humor that we may one day achieve some level of success. Here's a video interview with Mr. Handler from the Barnes and Noble Booksellers website for your viewing enjoyment.