I like looking back at my reading “year in review” and being reminded of all of the worlds I’ve spent time in and characters I’ve gotten to know over the past year of reading. In looking back at this year, I read an unprecedented (for me) number of books, tried some new things to build a culture of literacy in my classroom/school, and challenged my middle school students to read as much as they could. All in all, 2013 was a great year of reading.
Not all of these released in 2013, that’s just when I read them. Also, I have not included any 2014 releases that I read for this list, but I will be posting a favorites list for those on January 3rd.
Standalones
THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN by Holly Black
THE REAL BOY by Anne Ursu
SOMETHING LIKE NORMAL by Trish Doller
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US by Kasie West
OUT OF THE EASY by Ruta Sepetys
GHOST HAWK by Susan Cooper
JUMPING OFF SWINGS by Jo Knowles
WHERE THE STARS STILL SHINE by Trish Doller
MY LIFE AFTER NOW by Jessica Verdi
TWO BOYS KISSING by David Levithan
OCTOBER MOURNING: A SONG FOR MATTHEW SHEPARD by Leslea Newman
Picture Books
Journey by Aaron Becker
Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown
The Dark by Lemony Snicket
On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne
Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds
Rocket Writes a Story by Tad Hills
Exclamation Mark by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Mr. Zinger’s Hat by Cary Fagan
Flora & the Flamingo by Molly Idle
A Day With No Crayons by Elizabeth Rusch
Series Starters
BOY NOBODY by Allen Zadoff
I HUNT KILLERS by Barry Lyga
THE TESTING by Joelle Charbonneau
THE LIVING by Matt de la Pena
THE 5th WAVE by Rick Yancey
THE NATURALS by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
THE RULES FOR DISAPPEARING by Ashley Elston
Continuing Series
PERFECT SCOUNDRELS by Ally Carter (3rd book in HEIST SOCIETY series)
BANG by Lisa McMann (book 2 in Visions series)
CROWN OF MIDNIGHT by Sarah J. Maas (book 2 in THRONE OF GLASS series)
ENDLESS by Jessica Shirvington (book 4 in EMBRACE series)
CRASH INTO YOU by Katie McGarry (book 3 in PUSHING THE LIMITS series)
THE RUNAWAY KING by Jennifer A. Nielsen (book 2 in THE FALSE PRINCE series)
SNAKEROOT by Andrea Cremer (book 4 in the NIGHTSHADE series/start of NIGHTSHADE LEGACY series)
Series Finales
CHAMPION by Marie Lu (finale in LEGEND series)
CLOCKWORK PRINCESS by Cassandra Clare (3rd book in Infernal Devices series)
INFINITYGLASS by Myra McEntire (finale of HOURGLASS series)
JUST ONE YEAR by Gayle Forman (sequel to JUST ONE DAY)
My Reading Tally Door Display (read more about it here)
Students’ End-of-Year Reading Tally Signs (idea from Donalyn Miller) which I put up at the beginning of this school year to put us in the right frame of mind to start the year.
Our year-long “In middle school, we are readers” bookshelves (idea inspired by Pinterest)
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| Students write a book spine for each book they read. I’m hoping we’re overflowing this bulletin board by the end of the school year! |
Student Book Recommendations Signs/Wall
What a wonderful post! Awesome to see you and your students doing so much reading. Yeah! I loved The Real Boy- it was one of my favorite reads of 2013. Best of luck with all of your reading in 2014. 🙂
~Jess
What a great post! I love your blog. A while ago you recommended some great books for me to purchase for my classroom library which I did. Great to see many of them in this post. I think my girls will be very excited when school starts for the year in February.
Great blog and very cool display ideas. I would love to be a student in your class!
Bridget, New Zealand
@BridgetLCM
Great list! I love so many of those novels. Happy 2014.
I absolutely love this post. I love it for the amazing book lists you provided as well as the book "shelf" ideas in the classroom. I am going to see about trying this out, I have four bare cupboard doors that I could use for it, and I think the kids would _love_ it! Thank you!!!