ABCs of Reading
Come Fly With Me
by
Satomi Ichikawa
Primary
From the Publisher: When Woggy, the stuffed dog, and Cosmos, the wooden airplane, decide it is time to get away from the toy box and to go Somewhere, they figure the only way to go is to fly, and the only way to fly is together. So in a grand adventure, out and up they swoop, Satomi-style: whirling up stairs, and past sleepy apartment windows, and over enchanting rooftops. Until they meet the Cloud Monster....
This ear-flapping, propeller-spinning twosome is, quite simply, adorable. And the surprise at the end of the book will take your breath away. It did theirs!
Charming in its simplicity, this is another Ichikawa book children will love.
Into the Dark
by
Peter Abrahams
Intermediate- Middle School
From the Publisher: In Echo Falls, secrets buried in the past don't always stay there.
An idyllic day of snowshoeing on Grampy's land with Joey Strade turns out to be less than idyllic when thirteen-year-old super sleuth Ingrid Levin-Hill stumbles upon a body lying in the snow. This discovery sends the town of Echo Falls into a tailspin in which secrets long hidden are revealed and Grampy gets sent to jail. While Ingrid works to clear Grampy's name and uncover what really happened to the man in the snow, she discovers even more secrets she wishes she never knew. Just like the character Gretel, whom Ingid is playing in the Prescott Players' production of Hansel and Gretel, Ingrid must go deep into the darkness to find the truth.
In the third book in the Edgar Award-nominated and national bestselling Echo Falls series, Peter Abrahams's talent for building suspense shines as Ingrid embarks on her most harrowing adventure yet.
ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool
by Elisha Cooper
High School
From the Publisher: Elisha Cooper spent a year hanging out at a Chicago high school-- listening, watching, questioning, and sketching the students. He followed eight kids in particular, mostly seniors, through their entire year, and by telling their specific stories--of classes, extra-curriculars, friends, romances, and family--he gives us a more general picture of what it’s like to be a high school student today. Part documentary, part soap opera, part sketchbook, this is an eye-opening, thoroughly entertaining account--one that will appeal equally to readers who are looking forward to high school and those who are looking back.
Mudbound
by Hillary Jordan
High School - Adult
From the Publisher: A gripping and exquisitely rendered story of forbidden love, betrayal, and murder, set against the brutality of the Jim Crow South.
When Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, she finds herself in a place both foreign and frightening. Laura does not share Henry's love of rural life, and she struggles to raise their two young children in an isolated shotgun shack with no indoor plumbing or electricity, all the while under the eye of her hateful, racist father-in-law. When it rains, the waters rise up and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud.
As the McAllans are being tested in every way, two celebrated soldiers of World War II return home to help work the farm. Jamie McAllan is everything his older brother Henry is not: charming, handsome, and sensitive to Laura's plight, but also haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, comes home from fighting the Nazis with the shine of a war hero, only to face far more personal—and dangerous—battles against the ingrained bigotry of his own countrymen. It is the unlikely friendship of these two brothers-in-arms, and the passions they arouse in others, that drive this powerful debut novel. Mudbound reveals how everyone becomes a player in a tragedy on the grandest scale, even as they strive for love and honor.
Jordan's indelible portrayal of two families caught up in the blind hatred of a small Southern town earned the prestigious Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded biennially to a first literary novel that addresses issues of social injustice.
Table of Contents
About the Literacy Newsletter
FOR-PD's Literacy newsletter deals specifically with literacy and learning for K-12 teachers of Florida's public schools. As you read and review our newsletter you will find information on local, state, and federal literacy news, upcoming conferences, celebrations, sources of funding, resources on the World Wide Web, and resources you can use with your students. The participant section answers pertinent questions participants have about the course and provides helpful tips for successful completion. We hope that this newsletter will provide educators with useful information to support their literacy development and the work they do with Florida students.
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Last Updated:
April 10, 2008
