Books, Books, and more Books

I have been reading and reading. So want to share some great titles to add to your collection or for your kids to read in class.

The Shadows We Know by Heart by Jennifer Park

This book is a mystery and romance all rolled into a big myth of the East Texas Woods. Are the Sasquatches real? Why does Dad only have one rule? Don't Go in the Woods? Leah longs to escape a home life filled with grief of her missing brother. When she escapes into the woods and finds a boy who can't remember his past and has difficulty speaking. But he is living with the Sasquatches and she knows if she is not careful someone will find them and then who knows. So she must be careful, but she also must find out what this boy knows or remembers. But who else is watching?

The Stacks of reading continue. Next book I really loved this summer was Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel by Kimberly Willis Holt. "Soulful and Satisfying"- Kirkus Review and I have to agree. Holt just speaks to your soul when you read this story, sure bad things happen to great people but how we deal with those things builds us into incredible people. This one has it all, a tragic event, coping with loss, and dealing with crazy family members and even a slight romance with some humor. It is one of those books you want to say... "Just Read It"!

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Break Out Your Reading Skills!

Break Out Your Reading Skills Challenge This challenge will ask our readers to READ a piece of non-fiction. Then answer 5 questions to get a code. If they get all 5 answers correct their code should unlock the snack box to BREAK out a snack for you and a friend. If you get the first 4 answers correct you should have the code to BREAK out one snack for yourself. So I have three cards of five questions each. These questions are STAAR formatted to keep it familiar to students, and are based on 7th & 8th Grade reading TEKS. Each question tells you page numbers, so you really don't have to read the whole book but you can read parts of the articles or stories in it to answer the questions. Like a short article, or quick story, no more than two or three pages each. Students try a story, to see if their code unlocks the lock. I am using the following non-fiction books: The Queen's Shadow - A Story about How Animals See by Cybele Young Shark Life - by P

Books of the Summer Begins this Week

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Spring Break Resolutions

Well since first of year resolutions have been tossed and a more realistic idea is shaping up through Future Ready Librarians, I have decided hopefully this will help the blog grow more. We have a schedule to blog each week for the next 9 weeks of school. This is where we can share ideas, and learn more from each other. I do know for this Month many are doing March Madness, but with STAAR on our campus, it will be tough for me to do that. So my BreakOUT your Reading Skills will continue in the library. Students were asking all about it last week before spring break. They love it. It has become so popular that I have asked my office aides to make /read/write questions from non-fiction text to help us have more choices in BreakOUT codes. They love this idea because they get to participate and try to trick their friends. One teacher came to me after school last week, and said, "Wow Mrs. Kistner, you really started something when my student Aaron came back to class with h

Kistner's Kollection

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