Virginia Young Reader’s Choice

If you don’t know anything about the Young Reader’s Choice awards, you can find out here. Basically, this is a process to help young readers get introduced to some contemporary books they might not otherwise read.

I have several 5th graders who are SO excited about this list of books. There are kids all over my school interested in reading this list of books, mostly because of how our school librarian introduces the list to the kids and partially because the kids who read and vote also get to have a pizza party celebration after the voting is over. I’ve never been involved before, but this year, kids from all over the school have been coming and asking me if I have this book or that book.

That’s happening, I guess, because last year I worked with both 3rd and 4th graders in Literacy and the kids discovered one of my loves–books–so they know I have a pretty extensive library.  Many of them borrowed iPads at various points last spring to read books, and discovered I buy regularly from Amazon–so have books the library doesn’t have.  When kids started coming to me this week, I went to Amazon and made a “Young Reader’s” wish list. By week’s end, a parent had given a gift card that covered most of the books from the Kindle store.

So my iPad now has those books on it, and I am spending my weekend reading many of them. One of the kids really wanted to read The False Prince by Jennifer Nielson, so I decided I would read that first.  (Click on the cover to go to Amazon’s page about it.)

So, 2:00 Saturday morning, I finished–and went and bought the sequel and read that, too. I am looking forward to getting to school on Monday and see if the kid saw and read the sequel, too. I am also looking forward to the final installment in this series coming out this fall.  At least I don’t have too long to wait.

Loaning my books (or iPads) out to kids so they can read is just something I do. It’s just like Donalyn Miller (@donalynmiller) explains in The Book Whisperer–most of the time books come back, and in the fall, many children return books they “found” in their houses over the summer. Because of my passion for reading and sharing and talking books and because of my ready trust of kids when they ask to borrow a book, and because of our sharing of stories with one another in book discussions, the kids work hard to return the books–they know others want to read them too.

So, I’m really looking forward to the conversations these Young Readers Choice books will elicit. And I’m looking forward even more to reading more of them–so right now I’m going to quit writing and go read…

I’ll share my reflections on the books (at least the ones that touch me) as I read.  Have a great weekend!

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