A little math to put it all in perspective…

(*Well, actually a few more books than that because picture books under 50 pages=1/4 point & books from 50-150 pages=1/2 point)

If you want to join in the fun again, or if you missed it the first time, round 2 is starting on Sunday. We’ve made some adjustments based on the feedback we got from everyone this round, so be on the lookout for a kick-off post from our fearless librarian leaders Sherry & Kathy soon.

Perhaps you’ve seen/heard the buzz on twitter (where, I’ve found, most awesome ideas begin with a 140 character spark). Perhaps a friend encouraged you to visit. Perhaps you’re just coming across this and think it sounds fun. No matter how you found us, we’d love for you to join in! (No twitter account or blog required-just an enthusiasm for reading with students!)

The purpose: To support, encourage, and celebrate reading and librarians and teachers. To network with other teachers and librarians on twitter to grow our PLNs. To enjoy a friendly challenge to keep us motivated to read as much as possible this summer. To hold ourselves accountable because we’ll have to tell someone how much we’re reading.

The timeframe: June 18 – July 17 ~ Majority of the book finished within these dates.
This means that if you start a book before the competition begins, that book still counts so long as you had less than half of the book finished before June 18th. If you start a book during the timeframe but don’t finish it before July 17th, it doesn’t count, no matter how much you have finished. So, no waiting to finish the last pages of a book until the 18th (nice try, though!), but go ahead and get started on one, it’ll still count. We don’t want to interrupt anyone’s reading flow/pace here. (Hey, we’re middle school teachers, we’re trained to think in ways students would to get around rules.)

The guidelines: Every book you read counts as a book read!
We all have different specialties and are reading books to prepare us to teach/work with different levels of students. All of this reading is valuable. If you’re reading picture books to prepare to teach Pre-K (or for use with any level students for that matter), that’s as important as someone reading 400+ page tomes to prepare to teach AP English. Or if you just like that sort of thing. ALL READING IS VALUABLE. But because we ought to find some way to keep this on a level playing field, there are some handicaps in place for the scoring
          ~Any format of books read counts for this (novel, picture book, graphic novel, etc.)
          ~Any way you read counts (by yourself, audiobook, reading to a child, etc.)
          ~Books under 50 pages count as 1/4
          ~Books between 50-150 pages count as 1/2
          ~Books over 150 pages count as 1

The main rule-KIPP: Keep It Positive, Please! This is all in the mode of encouraging reading and we want to be positive role models for our students. All-in-fun trash-talking is fine (and, essentially encouraged if Brian & I are any example), but please keep it in the spirit of the purpose of this reading event! Thanks so much!

The winner(s): EVERYONE because we’re all going to be reading more (we hope) and growing our community/network of teachers and librarians on twitter and beyond. But the group (Librarians or Teachers) that reads more, determined by a collective total figured into books/person, does get the bragging rights.

The people behind the curtain: Brian (@brianwyzlic) and I (@heisereads) [teachers] first started the friendly #teacherthrowdown and Kathy (@thebrainlair) and Sherry (@LibraryFanatic) [librarians] ran with a summer version teachers vs. librarians idea. If you have any questions, feel free to ask any of us (you can easily find us all on twitter)!

The history: aka: So what is this #throwdown thing anyway? Brian and I started this as an offshoot from a reading motivator #throwdown we did with our Sister Classroom Project this year. If you want to know more about it, I explained it here and Brian talked about it here.

The links:
Get started here…Join the #summerthrowdown challenge!

Record your progress…on this spreadsheet.

The buttons: Copy a button to your blog/twitter/electronic method of choice to show your affiliation and declare it on twitter:

That all changes now (well, actually, Tuesday, but I’m posting early). This will be my first year officially participating in Summer Book-a-Day; however, since I’ve found that I tend to be better about meeting goals if I write them down and share them, I’m publicly proclaiming my summer #bookaday goals right here, right now.

My summer #bookaday to-be-read piles (more than I need, but I need choices, and I’m a mood reader, so these could change at any time, especially after I go to ALA, but it’s a good place to start!) that I hope to get through:
Professional Books
The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller!
So What Do They Really Know? Assessment That Informs Teaching and Learning by Cris Tovani
Choice Words by Peter H. Johnston
Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher
Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey
Sustaining Strategic Readers by Valerie Ellery
Comprehension Strategies for Middle Grade Learners by Charlotte Rose Sadler

Graphic Novels (lots of these because I want more variety to recommend to my students and they’re quick reads to up my count!)
SIDEKICKS by Dan Santat
TEEN BOAT by Dave Roman
ASTRONAUT ACADEMY: ZERO GRAVITY by Dave Roman
ZITA THE SPACEGIRL by Ben Hatke
LEGENDS OF ZITA THE SPACEGIRL by Ben Hatke
BAD ISLAND by Doug TenNapel
BAKE SALE by Sara Varon
RESISTANCE by Carla Jablonski
SMILE by Raina Telgemeier
BRAIN CAMP by Susan Kim
FRANKIE PICKLE AND THE CLOSET OF DOOM by Eric Wight
BABYMOUSE (as many more in the series as I can) by Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm

Anthologies
DEAR BULLY: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories
GUYS READ: The Sports Pages by Jon Scieszka
GUYS READ: Funny Business by Jon Scieszka
GIRL MEETS BOY: Because There Are Two Sides to Every Story
AFTER: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

Middle Grades Books
CHAINED by Lynne Kelly
OUT OF MY MIND by Sharon M. Draper
WONDER by R.J. Palacio
GODS AND WARRIORS by Michelle Paver
THE SERPENT’S SHADOW by Rick Riordan
UNGIFTED by Gordon Korman
HOUND DOG TRUE by Linda Urban
THE STORM MAKERS by Jennifer E. Smith
THE HERO’S GUIDE TO SAVING YOUR KINGDOM by Christopher Healy
SCARY SCHOOL by Derek the Ghost
ORDINARY MAGIC by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway
ISLAND OF SILENCE (THE UNWANTEDS 2) by Lisa McMann
AUDITION & SUBTRACTION by Amy Fellner Dominy
RUSH FOR THE GOLD: Mystery at the Olympics by John Feinstein
SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS by Sara Pennypacker
FAKE MUSTACHE by Tom Angelberger
REMARKABLE by Lizzie K. Foley
THE TIME-TRAVELING FASHIONISTA by Bianca Turetsky
GOLD MEDAL SUMMER by Donna Freitas
WARP SPEED by Lisa Yee
REBEL MCKENZIE by Candice Ransom
THE CLASSROOM by Robin Mellom

Young Adult Books
UNWHOLLY by Neal Shusterman
EVERY DAY by David Levithan
DAIRY QUEEN by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
THE PULL OF GRAVITY by Gae Polisner
THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson
THE CATASTROPHIC HISTORY OF YOU AND ME by Jess Rothenberg (a student loved this book and told me I must read it.)
THE LOST CODE (The Atlanteans #1) by Kevin Emerson
ENDLESSLY by Kiersten White
A BAD DAY FOR VOODOO by Jeff Strand
PERCEPTION by Kim Harrington
THE NEAR WITCH by Victoria Schwab
POSSESSION by Elana Johnson
SHIFT by Kim Curran
TAKING OFF by Jenny Moss
A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE by Kody Keplinger
THRONE OF GLASS by Sarah J. Maas
BURN FOR BURN by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian
MEANT TO BE by Lauren Morrill
EXPOSED by Kimberly Marcus
COLD FURY by T.M. Goeglein
52 REASONS TO HATE MY FATHER by Jessica Brody
NO SAFETY IN NUMBERS by Dayna Lorentz
MONUMENT 14 by Emmy Laybourne
STRUCK by Jennifer Bosworth
SHADOW & BONE by Leigh Bardugo
BORN WICKED by Jennifer Spotswood
EVE & ADAM by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant
THE DROWNED CITIES by Paolo Bacigalupi
THE BOY RECESSION by Flynn Meaney
CURVEBALL: The Year I Lost My Grip by Jordan Sonnenblick
BOY21 by Matthew Quick
NOW IS THE TIME FOR RUNNING by Michael Williams
LOVE AND LEFTOVERS by Sarah Tregay
ROCK ON by Denise Vega
SECRET SATURDAYS by Torrey Maldonado
AU REVOIR, CRAZY EUROPEAN CHICK by Joe Schreiber
BLOOD RED ROAD by Moira Young
BETA by Rachel Cohn
ORIGIN by Jessica Khoury
RED GLOVE by Holly Black
BEAUTIFUL CHAOS by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
DARK EDEN by Patrick Carman

My personal #bookaday challenge will run from June 12th-August 26th, so my goal will be 76 books this summer. I don’t know if I’ll make it, but it sure will be fun trying! Will you be joining us this summer?

This summer they created The Summer 2011 Diversify Your Reading Challenge

From the website:
“This summer, we’re challenging readers to read books that feature a diverse world, to read beyond their comfort zones, and to just plain dive into some wonderful stories.”

I think this it’s always a good idea to push ourselves to read more diverse characters and stories because you just never know which books are going to be the ones that speak to you. Especially for me as a teacher, I feel it’s important to read these so that I know what’s out there for my students that may need/want to read about various themes.

I hope you’ll consider joining the challenge!

One of the blogs that I read and heard about a lot when I started my book review blog was Kristi’s aka: The Story Siren.  She reviews a lot of YA books, and does some awesome community building of YA bloggers and promoting of books and authors.  You’ve seen my In My Mailbox posts which link back to her site as the originator of the shared posts, and now I’m joining in another one of her lovely book ideas.  I’m going to be participating in The 2011 Debut Author Challenge.  


The challenge is to read at least 12 young adult or middle grades novels in one year – from authors who are releasing their first book book in that genre that year. Then, each month, the book reviews from all participating blogs get linked on The Story Siren. See…community building! Read more about it at The Story Siren 2011 Debut Author Challenge.  So…from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011, I’m challenging myself to read 12 books from first time young adult or middle grades authors. That would amount to one debut author book each month (and I’m sure I’ll read more than that!). I’ll be posting the reviews as normal, but stating that they’re for the 2011 DAC. I’m excited to start a new book stack!  


As of now (and it could change) these are the titles I’m most looking forward to reading and reviewing from debut authors for 2011:
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis
UNEARTHLY by Cynthia Hand
THE LATTE REBELLION by Sarah Jamila Stevenson
WHERE I BELONG by Gwendolyn Heasley
LEVERAGE by Joshua C. Cohen
THE FOURTH STALL by Chris Rylander
LIKE MANDARIN by Kirsten Hubbard (also a Contemps Challenge book)
BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY by Ruta Sepetys
TEN MILES PAST NORMAL by Frances O’Roark
THE EMERALD ATLAS by John Stephens
DIVERGENT by Veronica Ross
FALLING FOR HAMLET by Michelle Ray