Books for Middle School students

STRASSER, Todd. Fallout. Candlewick. 2013. ISBN 9780763655341. JLG Level: C : Advanced Readers (Grades 6–9). It’s 1962. Every day at school you hear rumors of attack by the Russians. Bombs are coming! Your teachers train you to duck under your desk. You learn to cover your face with your arms to protect you from nuclear fallout. Your father prepares for the worst by building a bomb shelter. Food and water, along with emergency supplies, will keep your family protected until it’s safe to come out. People laugh at your doomsday attitude. Then the sirens go off. Your family of four heads for the shelter. The problem is that your family has theonly shelter. Can you really shut everyone out, knowing that outside will surely lead to death? If you let them in, food for four will have to be shared among more. How long can your family last then? Don’t miss Fallout, a what-if tale that asks the really hard questions.

Author Todd Strasser uses his personal experience to create an end-of-the-world historical revision tale about the Cuban Missile Crisis. On his website, he shares his personal pictures of his family fallout shelter. An official Fallout website has great resources including a tab on memories of 1962 (with a link to the Duck and Cover movie). The Candlewick book page features curated links to multiple resources. Be sure to listen to the audiobook sample and check out the ready to use discussion guide. You might also view Jenny Sawyer’s Book of the Week. While it’s not a book trailer, it will surely get your student’s interested in reading the novel. Pair this title with The Fire-Eaters (Delacorte, 2004) by David Almond;Rex Zero and the End of the World (Farrar, 2007) by Tim Wynne-Jones or Countdown (Scholastic, 2010) by Deborah Wiles. Check out Wiles’s Countdown Resources Board on Pinterest.

WESTRICK, A. B. Brotherhood. Viking. 2013. ISBN 9780670014392. JLG Level:  C : Advanced Readers (Grades 6–9). It’s been three years since the War Between the States ended, yet the Southerners in Richmond still feel like they’re under siege. The Yankees control the Reconstruction era, keeping law and order. Freed slaves now walk the streets and compete for jobs of white men. A secret group organizes, vowing to protect the elderly and widowed. When Shad trails his older brother Jeremiah one night, he is forced to join the Brotherhood. Little did he know, the secret group is the Richmond KKK. Falling into an opportunity to learn to read at a Negro school?, the young boy decides to take the risk, knowing that going to that school will be dangerous for a white person. Shad begins to agonize over the KKK he swore to follow and what he knows is right. Westrick lives near Richmond, Virginia and walked the streets that led to her wondering about her own Southern ancestors. Readers can find out more about this debut author by reading her website and learn about the craft of writing on  her blog. An excellent historical novel to use in the classroom, there’s also a free discussion guide. Reflecting the attitudes of the period, students will have much absorb on post-war civil rights. Viewing the book trailer also sets the stage for conversation. Be sure to check out the Blendspace page on Brotherhood. It’s an amazing resource in using the title as a collaborative effort.

http://www.slj.com/2014/01/collection-development/jlg-booktalks/must-read-middle-school-book-club-novels-%E2%94%82-jlgs-booktalks-to-go/#_

15 books…

Penguin has a book for every type of reader—use this infographic to find the right read!

http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/youngreaders/children/middlegrade_infographic.html

Book vs. Movie Debate

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/books-vs-films-infographic_b81287

The Bestselling Books of 2013

Hard Luck, the eighth book in Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid series, was the bestselling book across all print formats in 2013, selling over 1.8 million hardcover copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks roughly 80% of print sales. It was also the third most popular title among print books purchased on Amazon. Yet the book didn’t crack the top 100 on Amazon’s Kindle bestsellers list. In 2012, The Third Wheel, the seventh book in the series, performed similarly on each of the lists—an indication that the immensely popular, illustration-heavy series for middle graders isn’t one that translates to digital. On the other hand, last year’s bestselling young adult novels in Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, which have shown cross-generational appeal, appeared on all three lists. The first book in the trilogy, Divergent, landed at #6 on Nielsen’s ranking, #2 on Kindle’s, and #19 on the Amazon print list. The second title, Insurgent, appeared at #8 on the Kindle list, and the third book,Allegiant, hit #11 on Nielsen’s list and #7 on Kindle’s.

The 2013 charts revealed, once again, that fiction is the genre of choice for customers who read e-books: the top 20 bestselling books on Kindle’s list were all novels. In fact, the highest-ranking nonfiction title on the Kindle bestseller list for 2013 was Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven at #47, followed by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing Jesus at #52. The performance of the books in the Kindle ranking stands in stark contrast to their relative positions on Nielsen’s print list. Killing Jesus wound up at #3 on that list, which indicated sales of over 1.1 million copies for the title.Proof of Heaven landed just behind it in Nielsen, at #4, selling over 935,000 copies throughout the year.

Movie adaptations moved the needle in 2013 for titles new and old. Originally published in 2010, the movie-tie-in edition of Nicholas Sparks’s Safe Haven was the sixth bestselling Kindle title in 2013 (the film version was released in February). With a movie adaptation released in the fall,The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, originally released in 2006, finished at #10 on the Kindle list and #15 on Amazon’s print list. Ender’s Game, which hit the shelves in 1985, was brought back into the fold thanks to its film adaptation, which opened in November. The movie-tie-in version of Orson Scott Card’s novel sat in the #15 slot on the Kindle chart. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, released in 1925, was set to screen by director Baz Luhrmann, in a film version released last spring, sending the American classic back to the bestseller charts: it hit #16 on Nielsen’s list, which indicated print sales of over 560,000 copies for the title this year. Gatsby also appeared on the Kindle list at #12, and on Amazon’s print list at #9.

Nielsen BookScan Top 20

1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck by Jeff Kinney (Amulet)

2. Inferno by Dan Brown (Doubleday)

3. Killing Jesus by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (Henry Holt)

4. Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander (Simon and Schuster)

5. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan (Disney Press)

6. Divergent by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

7. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson)

8. Sycamore Row by John Grisham (Doubleday)

9. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney (Amulet)

10. Happy, Happy, Happy by Phil Robertson (Howard)

11. Allegiant by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

12. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (Knopf)

13. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton)

14. Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer (Crown Forum)

15. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (Scribner)

16. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner)

17. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead)

18. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (Vintage)

19. Si-Cology 1 by Si Robertson (Howard)

20. Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Gallup Press)

Amazon Kindle Top 20

1. Inferno by Dan Brown (Doubleday)

2. Divergent by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown)

4. Sycamore Row by John Grisham (Doubleday)

5. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty (Putnam)

6. Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central)

7. Allegiant by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

8. Insurgent by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

9. The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland Books)

10. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

11. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead)

12. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner)

13. The Hit by David Baldacci (Grand Central)

14. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton)

15. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (Tor Books)

16. Hopeless by Colleen Hoover (Colleen Hoover)

17. Entwined with You by Sylvia Day (Berkley)

18. Never Go Back by Lee Child (Delacorte)

19. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)

20. Alex Cross, Run by James Patterson (Little, Brown)

Amazon Print Top 20

1. Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Gallup Press)

2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (Knopf)

3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck by Jeff Kinney (Amulet)

4. Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims by Rush Limbaugh (Threshold Editions)

5. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson)

6. Inferno by Dan Brown (Doubleday)

7. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan (Disney Press)

8. Things that Matter by Charles Krauthammer (Crown Forum)

9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner)

10. Killing Jesus by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (Henry Holt)

11. Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander (Simon and Schuster)

12. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (American Psychiatric Publishing)

13. The Official SAT Study Guide, Second Edition (College Board)

14. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton)

15. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

16. Wonder by R.J. Palacio (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

17. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman (Northfield Publishing)

18. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition (Amer. Psychological Assn.)

19. Divergent by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

20. Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids by Rob Elliott (Revell)

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/60516-the-bestselling-books-of-2013.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly&utm_campaign=8ff619ce29-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0bb2959cbb-8ff619ce29-304424309

For Hogwarts fans – Professor Snape’s office in miniature

 

 

 

http://snapesoffice.kathysminis.com/

Famous Writers’ Sleep Habits vs. Literary Productivity, Visualized

by Maria Popova

“In both writing and sleeping,” Stephen King observed in his excellent meditation on the art of “creative sleep” and wakeful dreaming, “we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.”

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/12/16/writers-wakeup-times-literary-productivity-visualization/

Bleeding Cool’s 11 Best Graphic Novels of 2013

Note: The graphic novels may have mature content; be advised.

See link to article at the end of the post.

Looked interesting:

. The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil, from Jonathan Cape, written and illustrated by Stephen Collins

A book to make you sing with the genius of it, and a conceit that makes spot blacking swathes of heavy pencil across the page really work, and annoyingly Stephen Collins’ first longform work. He has set the bar high – and the beard low. The story of a man with just one hair on his face (and not on his head) lives in a place without such follicle fancy. Until his beard emerges and dominates both his life, but the lives of those around. As a hirsute gentleman myself, I was possibly personally touched by this tale of out of control hair in a world where such a thing is unthinkable. It then grows monumental proportions, pushing him out of house and home and threatening the security of the state with its size and unruliness – and in the lesson it gives to the rest of the country, who also begin to act in an unruly fashion. It’s the end of the world as they know it and the state turns to Dave (it would be Dave) as the source of the uprising. And something must be done. A book of revolution, and a beautiful story told with imagination, grace and a lot of pencil lines. And you feel the hard effort on every page. Those individual hairs don’t draw themselves.

The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, from Dark Horse Comics, written by Vivek J. Tiwary, with pencils, inks, and colors by Andrew C. Robinson and Kyle Baker, letters by Steve Dutro

This single-volume work was a late-blooming runaway trend-setter of 2013. Those who were in the know had been waiting for it for quite some time, but to new readers it appeared meteorically generating exponentially-growing buzz, first as a New York Times Best-Seller, then as a movie property in short order. But the substance of this graphic novel goes well beyond the hype. The artwork is something unusual and highly memorable, a fusion of experiment and homage that challenges the way we traditionally represent the past in comics. Brian Epstein’s life is presented in not only a warm, bright way to engage readers, but suggests a degree of sensory perception that enables the narrative to jump between points in time without losing that reader-engagement. It’s a highly emotional book without telling you directly that it’s a highly emotional book, and it’s an intellectual book in an even more subtle way by commenting on artistic success and fame through carefully chosen phrases, not through  4th  wall-breaking rhetoric. In the end, it’s a volume that forms an expansive, encapsulated narrative for readers that leaves a lasting mark. And it may well spark renewed interest in bringing the history of other art-forms into the well-suited comics medium

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/12/30/bleeding-cools-11-best-graphic-novels-of-2013/

What A Hot Mobile Device from the 16th Century Tells Us About 2014

From The Atlantic

This miniature book was meant to be worn like a holstered Blackberry. Those two holes across the top were for the string that would attach to one’s girdle or belt. The book provided the Psalms in English, courtesy of translator John Croke. It measures 1.6 inches by 1.2 inches.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/what-a-hot-mobile-device-from-the-16th-century-tells-us-about-2014/282714/

Silent Reading

On a Beam of Light: The Story of Albert Einstein, Illustrated by the Great Vladimir Radunsky

by Maria Popova

The charming visual tale of an introverted little boy who grew up to become the quintessential modern genius.

Given my soft spot for picture-book and graphic-novel accounts of famous lives, including Charles Darwin, Julia Child,Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Feynman,Ella Fitzgerald, and Steve Jobs, I was instantly taken with On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein (public library). Written by Jennifer Berne and illustrated by none other than Vladimir Radunsky— the same magnificent talent who brought young Mark Twain’s irreverentAdvice to Little Girls back to life in 2013, which topped the list of the year’s best children’s books and was among the year’s best books overall. This charming picture-book tells the tale of how an unusual and awkward child blossomed into becoming “the quintessential modern genius” by the sheer virtue of his unrelenting curiosity.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/12/30/on-a-beam-of-light-albert-einstein-radunsky/