Book Tastings- hook, chapter 1 reading, read aloud, circle time, picture books, YA Fiction, YA Books, classic books, relevant books

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Walkin' the Dog" by: Chis Lynch. In a family of strong personalities with very strong points of view, Louis is what his mother lovingly calls "the inactivist," someone who'd rather kick back than stand out. He only hope...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Across the Desert" by: Dusti Bowling. Twelve-year-old Jolene spends every day she can at the library watching her favorite livestream: The Desert Aviator, where twelve-year-old "Addie Earhart" shares her adventures flyi...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?    Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the book "When Bad Things Happen" by: Donna Carr Roberts.   Join Mr. Fuzzy Ears and his family on a journey that transcends the boundaries of life and death. In this beautifully illustrated tale filled with laughter and tears, we all learn...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "The Adventure is Now" by: Jess Redman. Sometimes it's hard to be Milton P. Greene. He says all the wrong things, his family is falling apart, and everyone at school avoids him because of the very embarrassing Bird Brain...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?    Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the book "The Adventures of Dori: A Rescue Pup" by: Conway and Ellis.   Embark on an enchanting journey with Dori, the Rescue Pup, in this delightful children's book. Follow Dori and her friends as they explore the beach, highlighting the...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?    Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the book "Pisa Loves Bella" by: Kimberley Lovato.   Welcome to Pisa! I'm thrilled you dropped by. I'm Bella the bell tower- Eight stories high! And so begins this uplifting rhyming tale told by Bella, Italy's famous Leaning Tower of Pisa....

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Hummingbird" by: Natalie Lloyd. Twelve-year-old homeschooled Olive is tired of being seen as "fragile" just because she has osteogenesis imperfecta (otherwise known as brittle bone disease) so she's thrilled when she fi...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Attack of the Black Rectangles" by: Amy Sarig King. When Mac first opens his classroom copy of Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic and finds some words blacked out, he thinks it must be a mistake. But then when he and h...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "A Rover's Story" by: Jasmine Warga. Meet Resilience, a Mars rover determined to live up to his name. Res was built to explore Mars. He was not built to have human emotions. But as he learns new things from the NASA scie...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "A Duet for Home" by: Karina Yan Glaser. It's June's first day at Huey House, and as if losing her home weren't enough, she also can't bring her cherished viola inside. Before the accident last year, her dad saved tip mo...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "How to Win a Slime War" by: Mae Respicio. Alex Manalo and his dad have just moved back to Sacramento to revive their extended family's struggling Filipino market. While Alex likes helping at the store, his true passion...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "The Apartment House on Poppy Hill" by: Nina LaCour. Welcome to 1106 Wildflower Place: It is no ordinary apartment house, but you, reader, are no ordinary visitor. So, please, come in! Two new tenants have just arrived,...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Outside Nowhere" by: Adam Borba. Charming and funny, Parker Kelbrook can wriggle out of anything he doesn't want to do. So when he's forced to take a job at the local pool--a threat to his beach-filled summer plans--he...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first 15 pages of "Game Changer" by: Tommy Greenwald. Thirteen-year-old Teddy Youngblood is in a coma, fighting for his life after an unspecified football injury at training camp. His family and friends flock to his bedside to support hi...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the 15 page of "Odder" by: Katherine Applegate. Meet Odder, the Queen of Play: Nobody has her moves. She doesn't just swim to the bottom, she dive-bombs. She doesn't just somersault, she triple-doughnuts. She doesn't just ride the waves, she...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "The Line Tender" by: Kate Allen. Wherever the sharks led, Lucy Everhart's marine-biologist mother was sure to follow. In fact, she was on a boat far off the coast of Massachusetts, collecting shark data when she died su...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "The Night War" by: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. It's 1942. German Nazis occupy much of France. And twelve-year-old Miriam, who is Jewish, is not safe. With help and quick thinking, Miri is saved from the roundup that take...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "The Mystery of Locked Rooms" by: Lindsay Currie. Twelve-year-old Sarah Greene wants nothing more from her seventh-grade year than to beat the hardest escape room left in her town with her best friends, West, and Hannah....

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Balto and Togo: Hero Dogs of Alaska" by: Helen Moss. It's the winter of 1924 and a diptheria outbreak is threatening the population of Nome, Alaska. The only way to stop the deadly illness from causing a full blown epid...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Across So Many Seas" by: Ruth Behar. Spanning over 500 years, Pura Belpré Award winner Ruth Behar's epic novel tells the stories of four girls from different generations of a Jewish family, many of them forced to leave...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "The Wild Journey of Juniper Berry" by: Chad Morris and Shelly Brown. Eleven-year-old Juniper Berry lives in a cabin with her family deep in the wild woods. Living off the grid is usually exciting, like the time she chas...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "15 Secrets to Survival" by: Natalie D. Richards. When classmates Baxter, Abigail, Turner and Emerson break a school rule, they're forced to travel to the middle of nowhere for an extra credit project. They think things...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "The Doughnut Fix" by: Jessie Janowitz. Tristan isn't Gifted or Talented like his sister Jeanine, and he's always been okay with that because he can make a perfect chocolate chip cookie and he lives in the greatest city...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Gregor the Overlander" by: Susanne Collins. When Gregor falls through a grate in the laundry room of his apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland, where spiders, rats, cockroaches coexist uneasily with hum...

Hey there teachers, in the classroom and those at home, need someone to help you get the kids into reading?  Join me in this week's episode while I read aloud the first chapter of "Ferris" by: Kate DiCamillo. It's the summer before fifth grade, and for Ferris Wilkey, it is a summer of sheer pandemonium: Her little sister, Pinky, has vowed to become an outlaw. Uncle Ted has left Aunt Shirley and, t...