No, The Lightning Thief is not a Newbery winner, but it was so good that I felt it deserved a review here anyway. This book is now my new favorite read-aloud book. It has action designed to hook you right from the start, engaging characters, hilarious dialogue, and a brilliant irreverence for the characters of…
Category Archives: My Newbery project
A Gathering of Days (1980)
My rating: 3.5/5 stars A Gathering of Days was a very quick read, being only about 145 pages and written in the form of a teenage girl’s diary with frequent breaks. This would be a great book to read with elementary students who are learning about 19th century New England because it chronicles a year…
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1959)
My rating: 4/5 stars I am fairly certain that I originally read The Witch of Blackbird Pond when I was in elementary school. As it’s historical fiction, it seems likely that it was assigned to me to learn about colonial history. In any case, I remembered none of it, so I figured it was time…
Rifles for Watie (1958)
My rating: 4/5 stars Finished reading Rifles for Watie a couple days ago. It is about a boy from Kansas who joins up with the Union army because he and his family want the Kansas territory’s slavery status to be determined by the settlers, not by people crossing over from Missouri to stuff the ballots….
A Project
Every year I tell my elementary students to create reading goals for themselves. Mine, I tell them, is to read every Newbery book. They look unimpressed until I tell them how many that is – 88! That doesn’t even include the ones that receive Newbery Honors each year. I’ve tried over the years to keep…
