Maria's Mélange

Welcome to my little corner of book heaven. Here's what I read the last two weeks. Don't forget to visit the lovely hosts of this meme -  Teach Mentor Texts  and  Unleashing Readers . There are links to a LOT of posts there! Cute picture book about knowing your own strengths - a car races trucks (comes out in May) YES! I love Captain Marvel and this volume of comics was excellent. Audiobook - the narrator was amazing. This story was SOOO good. It was my first A.S. King but it won't be my last. I really enjoyed this dystopian future novel. Lots of feminist elements. The main character's way of speaking reminded me of the characters in Firefly. Currently Reading: Currently Listening to:

As my boys are getting older, I've started shopping for hobbies. While I don't have a ton of free time yet, I know that the days are quickly approaching when I won't have my entire life consumed by homework monitoring and chauffeur duties. I posted a plea on my Facebook page - asking friends to give me some ideas about what to try. A few are on the back burner for now.. I SWEAR I'll rejoin Teachers Write this summer and pull out all my old notes and try to get that going again. I definitely want to find the time to take archery classes. I plan to sign up for a volunteer session at a local(ish) bird rescue so I can learn more about raptors. They have always been a love and maybe I can also use that knowledge in my writing. For now, though, I'm relearning a former hobby. In college, I took up crocheting. Oh, I know, I was a REAL party animal! It was soothing, and I got fairly good at it. Now, I have no real desire to make baby blankets or crochet mysel

Welcome to my little corner of book heaven. Here's what I read the last two weeks. Don't forget to visit the lovely hosts of this meme -  Teach Mentor Texts  and  Unleashing Readers . There are links to a LOT of posts there! It's been a bit over a month since I posted about my reading life, so I won't go through all the books I've read in that time. I'm going to just pick a few to share! Picture Books: We got to celebrate Special Delivery Day !  Middle Grade Graphic Novel This one will rate a full review - once I can get it back from the line of students who are currently passing it around my classroom.  Comics Don't miss the Star Wars series that are out now. There's a Star Wars title, a Darth Vader, and this AMAZING one about the best princess ever. Middle Grade Creepy This series rocks, and the CLIFFHANGER on this one.... seriously!  And more creepy.... bizarre and intricate and completely entrancin

My students are absolutely in love with the 13-Story Treehouse and the 26- Story Treehouse by Andy Griffiths. It's just the right mix of adventure and silly fun, combined with amazing illustrations. They kept asking me to find out when the next book would be released. Thankfully, I can tell them that way will soon be over! April 7th - just TWO days from this posting - is the day that we can all rejoice in another huge dose of excitement and creativity with the debut of... I love to create questions for these author interviews, but I knew my son and students would want to have the privilege this time. I asked them to tell me what THEY wanted to know and zipped those questions off to Andy Griffiths' publisher. What secret insights did he share? Read on to find out! 1) What will happen when the treehouse gets too heavy for the tree? (Or what is it that is keeping the treehouse from falling?) We will add a new level in the treehouse which con

I carefully selected a Must Read in 2015 list. A few titles ended up on the list after NOT getting read in 2014. A few are to help me meet the Pop Sugar Challenge. For my full list - check out this post:  http://www.mariaselke.com/2015/01/must-read-in-2015.html Read so far...  (12 done of 39)  Jump started.... I read these two in November 2014. I had already decided to put them on my list, so I'm still counting them. Feed - Maybe closer to 2.5 - mostly due to the audiobook narrator. I just couldn't take all the "duuuudes" and the valley girl style slang.  It's a shame - I was really looking forward to this one. The premise is fascinating, but I didn't feel like the things I really wanted to hear about got expanded on enough. Poisoned Apples:  Fascinating poems on feminism. I loved the fairy tale allusions. As always with a book of poems, some of them I liked better than others. Still, totally worth the time and attention to read t