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 The Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman

This book is great for practical ideas for teaching students reading strategies. I read it once through and had three strategies that I could use right away with my students. The point and slide technique really helped my students with decoding unknown words and it was so simple. In the book there are many adult examples of how the reading process works. I am reading it again to get even more out of it. .

Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools by Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels and Arthur Hyde

This book provides glimpses into classrooms where the teachers and students are implementing new ideas in education. Here is the text basis for all those lists we have seen previously: What things to increase in our classrooms and what things we should decrease in our classrooms. This book is very uplifting because it gives real life examples of teachers actual doing the things that are changing education.

Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children by Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell

This book has been recommended highly to me. It supports the trend toward "balanced literacy" and helps teachers to design small group instruction for their primary readers. I will buy this book soon and tell you more about it. :-)

Poppy by Avi

This children's book has everything! There is action, suspense, MURDER, brave heroines and dastardly fiends. The main character is a little mouse who finds herself in a life and death battle against a mean old owl. During the book we discover Poppy (the mouse) is very brave, and that old Mr. Ocax has some fears of his own.

The Discovery of Dragons by Graeme Base

Hi, I'm Caleb and I'm going to tell you about a book called The Discovery of Dragons. I don't want to tell you the whole story, but it has letters in it about people who saw dragons. Read it yourself. I guarantee that you will like it.

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

This is one of my all time favorite books. The story is set during slave times where ships from Africa traveled the deadly middle passage to the new world. The best part of this book is the element of fantasy and magic that overcomes the reader and the characters. This story is also beautiful written and I recommend it highly to anyone who appreciates a well crafted tale.

A Lesson before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

This is the only one of Oprah's book club books that I was tempted to read. This book speaks to what the human spirit is capable of achieving more than any other book I've ever read. It tells the story of a black teacher who is enlisted to bring some "dignity" to an uneducated black man sentenced to death for a really stupid crime. The last few pages reminded me of James Joyce's stream of consciousness. Those pages are written in the dialect of an uneducated man, but in the way his words are strung so crudely together, the reader is lifted up to an altered state of reality. We hear from this being who is supposedly less than human and he has the most beautiful soul. I cried through the whole last of the book because it was so achingly beautiful and sad.

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