I got a box in the mail this week. Books! Yes, I’d ordered them myself. No, I hadn’t yet finished the ones that came 2 weeks ago. But still…I came home glowing! I put the whole stack next to my bed because I couldn’t decide which book I wanted to start next.
I was almost done with Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Before Christmas my 6th and 7th graders had read her novel Ghost Boys, and the students had loved it. One asked if the classroom library had Towers Falling, another novel by the same author, advertised in the back of the book. No, but I assured her I’d get it. I did, and she loved it—she did her fall term book talk on it, making amazing connections. I really wasn’t sure 21st century Japanese would relate to a Black girl in New York City discovering her family’s connection to 9/11. However, here’s what she said to her classmates: “The teacher in the book said, ‘Write for me…why does history matter?’ And I thought this is what Mrs. Essenburg would say to us, ‘What does it mean to be Japanese or wherever you’re from?’ Think of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. In 6 minutes there were 18,000 dead. Think of the people that affected. Covid will be that for us.” I ordered this book and am reading it for her. I’m sure she’ll snatch it up as soon as I've finished it.
I’d already finished The Hunt—the final book in the Hatchet series by Gary Paulsen. I have several 6th and 7th graders who have loved that series. When I brought it into class, one student snatched it up immediately—while she was still reading another Gary Paulsen novel, The Voyage of the Frog. Unfortunately for her, another student who is also a Gary Paulsen fan finished his book first. I asked if she’d relinquish it for the other student, and she did.
I’d also already finished Home of the Brave—a beautiful novel in verse about a Nuer boy from Sudan who finds himself a refugee in Minnesota. It was recommended in Becoming a Globally Competent Teacher, which I’m discussing with my EFL department colleagues. (Applegate also wrote The One and Only Ivan, which I had read, and many others, which I will now have to read!) It was interesting to me as an EFL teacher to read the thoughts of this boy struggling to master English. The 7th graders may be interested because they know a little bit about Sudan and the Nuer people—last year we read A Long Walk to Water.
Another book I’d already finished was The Kings of Clonmel, book 8 in the Ranger’s Apprentice series. I’d read that first because while a number of 6th grade boys are moving steadily through that series—originally recommended to me by a former colleague and math teacher in response to an earlier blog post—one boy had walked into the room the first day after Christmas vacation and asked if I had gotten the book yet. I'd promised him I’d order it soon, so I had to get it into his hands.
Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story was definitely on the top of the list, but that would only take me 15 minutes. Actually, finding out about this book was the reason I’d placed the second order before I was finished with the first. Why did I not know about this book before? I knew the story of the Japanese diplomat to Lithuania in the 1940s who risked and eventually lost his job and status for ignoring direct instructions from his government, wrote transit visas through Japan for thousands of European Jews fleeing the Nazis. I’d learned his story through years of teaching Night, a Holocaust memoir, to 10th graders at an international school in Japan. Why did I never know there was an accessible children’s version?
A Single Shard—I ordered that one because 6th and 7th graders just finished reading When My Name Was Keoko by the same author, so they may be interested in this one that is about even older history of Korea. Also, I shared with them an interview with Linda Sue Park where she tells about a boy who asked her to sign his tattered copy of the Newbery winning novel. He said that after 62, he’d lost count of how many times he’d read it. So she thinks of that boy whenever she sits down to write. She has to make every sentence worth reading 62 times. I read it several years ago, so I think I can put it on my shelf without reading it again.
Sunny by Jason Reynolds won. Friday evening I finished Paradise on Fire, read Passage to Freedom, and started this third book in the Track series. There’s a 5th grade student who devoured Ghost and is now into Patina. When I told him there were more books, his eyes lit up like Christmas. I want to have Sunny ready to hand to him when he finishes.
After that will be The Faithful Spy, a semi-graphic novel about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the German resistance to Hitler. I was reminded of this book on the list where I discovered Passage to Freedom. I’m always on the lookout for books that offer moral heroes to my students—and even better when their heroism was fueled by their faith in God. The excellent but giant biography by Eric Metaxas is definitely not accessible for my 4th - 8th graders. Even the YA book The Plot to Kill Hitler by award-winning author Patricia McCormick may not grab them. Maybe this version will introduce some of them to this inspiring story.
Last of all, I’ll get around to Halt’s Peril, book #9 in the Ranger’s Apprentice series. That one eager beaver boy will just have to wait to get his hands on it. I know for a fact that he has already finished #8. Maybe I can get him to read The Faithful Spy in the meantime.
So that’s how I build my classroom library, and my classroom of readers—one book, one breathless request, one inspired discovery at a time. I follow the interests already there, and also push new ones. I try a variety of genres—novels in verse, graphic novels, fantasy, biography, historical fiction, and more. And I have to be the most motivated reader in my classroom.
I was going to write a blog post about how to be that model reader—but I discovered it had already been written. I really have nothing to add, so please read Growing Your Expertise in Children’s Literature by Lynne Dorfman and Linda Krupp on Middle Web. Instead, I decided I’d just share how I’ve chosen the last stack of books I’m working on adding to my classroom library.
How do you choose books for your readers and your classroom library?
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