Book Review: I am the Weapon (aka Boy Nobody) by Allen Zadoff

I am the Weapon (aka Boy Nobody) by Allen Zadoff

I was introduced to I am Weapon (Previously published under the title Boy Nobody) a few weeks ago when it showed up on the 2015-16 Abe Lincoln Book Award nominee list.  My teammate had previously read it and said that it was one her reluctant readers really enjoyed.  When a copy became available at our school library, I grabbed it.

Summary by Goodreads:

They needed the perfect assassin.

Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school in a new town under a new name, makes a few friends and doesn't stay long. Just long enough for someone to die -- of "natural causes." Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, moving on to the next target. 

But when The Program assigns him to the mayor of New York City, things change. Somewhere deep inside, Boy Nobody is somebody: the kid he once was; the teen who wants normal things, like a real home and a girlfriend; a young man who wants out. And who just might want those things badly enough to sabotage The Program's mission.

In this action-packed series debut, author Allen Zadoff pens a page-turning thriller that is as thought-provoking as it is gripping, introducing an utterly original and unforgettable antihero.

My Thoughts:

Here is my warning:  Once you start I am the Weapon, you won't want to put it down.  Zadoff writes in a way that gripped me and pulled me in.  Within the first twenty pages "Ben" kills his first target and from there it only gets more exciting.  Who wouldn't want to read about a teenage assassin who deep down wants what every teen wants:  a family to love him/her, a place to call home, friends that he/she can count on, and a normal life? 

What I loved most about I am the Weapon is that I never fully knew where the story would lead.  The author takes us through several plot twists that I did not predict would be coming yet made sense once they arrived. The story isn't too deep and the character development is thin, but I was engaged in this book and had to keep reading - so engaged that when I took a quick break from reading, I hopped on my computer and checked to see if book two - I am the Mission was at my library (It was!!!!).

Who will like this one?  Anyone who is looking for an action-packed thriller!  Everyone I have talked to who has read it, liked it.  I know that both my reluctant readers and my good readers will gravitate to this one, because of how fast paced this story moves.  And even more exciting... the third book in the series comes out in June!  If you are like me, I hate when I start a book and realize it is a series where the next book isn't coming out until the following year.  

If you haven't read I am the Weapon yet, I definitely recommend adding this to your to-read list!

Professional Book Review: Read, Write, Teach by Linda Rief

Read, Write, Teach:  Choices and Challenges in the Reading-Writing Workshop by Linda Rief

Summary by Goodreads:

Veteran teacher and author Linda Rief has inspired thousands of practitioners across the nation to lead adolescent students on a journey to becoming lifelong readers and writers. In "ReadWriteTeach," Linda offers the what, how, and why of a year's worth of reading and writing for middle and high school students with a framework that is as flexible as it is comprehensive.

". . . This book isn't a compilation of tear-out reproducibles designed to help us replicate Linda's practices,"" writes Maja Wilson in the foreword. ""Instead, it's the most powerful gift that a master teacher can give us: the story of her thinking and feeling as she teaches." "Linda's insights and beliefs are woven throughout a comprehensive overview of best literacy practices, which include: essentials in the reading-writing workshop grounding our choices in our beliefs getting to know ourselves and our students as readers and writers.

Students' voices, through examples of their writing, drawing, and thinking, resonate throughout the book and characterize the thoughtful readers, writers, and citizens of the world that they become under Linda's guidance.

My Thoughts:

After reading the first 42 pages of this book, I posted my first thoughts on Goodreads:  

If you are a fan of Kelly Gallagher, Penny Kittle, and Donalyn Miller, you will find comfort in Linda Rief's words. I have already uncovered a few new ideas to share with our English teachers using a reader/writer workshop approach.

Normally I tend to have an urgency to complete a book quickly.  I want to read it and move on to the next one.  Because Rief's book is filled to the brim with real world ideas that I could see myself using in the classroom (or sharing with teachers), I wanted to slow down and read this bit by bit.  Instead of reviewing this resource as a whole, I want to share some of my favorite parts from a few chapters.

Chapter One: Grounding Our Choices in Our Beliefs

Linda Rief is a firm believer in giving students choice in their reading and writing.  In order to make this manageable, she uses a Readers-Writers Workshop.

Writing Conference Questions (pg 19):

• How did this writing come to be?
• Where did you get the idea?
• What did you do, and why, as you went from one draft to the next?
• What problems did you encounter:
• How well did you solve those problems?

Reading Response Questions (pg 21)

• What did this reading bring to mind?
• What did you think or feel or learn as you read?
• What questions came to mind?
• What in your own experience is similar or different?
• How does this make you view the world?
• What did you notice the author did as a writer?

Chapter Five: Immersion in Writing (and Reading)

In this chapter, Linda Rief shares some simple, short quickwrites to help her students brainstorm writing ideas.  A few of my favorites are:

A Positive-Negative Life Graph (pg 77-83)

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/107180098/Positive-Negative-Life-Graph

A Likes/Dislikes Chart (pg 83-85)

http://readwriteandreflect.blogspot.com/2014/08/purpose-and-authenticity.html

Reading/Writing Memories 

A perfect beginning of the school year set of questions to ask students (pg 84):

• What kept you reading?
• What stopped your reading?
• What kept you writing?
• What stopped your writing?

Chapter Six:  Immersion in Reading (and Writing)

Linda Rief believes in choice.  Her students have time to read in her classroom and their homework is to read thirty minutes a night (four days a week) outside of school. If you have read, Book Love, by Penny Kittle, she follows a very similar format of introducing new books to her students through book talks.  My two "take-aways" are:

End of the Year Book Recommendations (pg 108)

Students are asked to recommend a book to next year's class which includes the following:

• a color copy of the book
• a short summary of the book
• a passage so we can hear the style of writing
• their reasons for recommending the book

Letters About Literature (pg 116-118)

Did you know that the Library of Congress sponsors a contest asking students to write a letter to an author of a book, a play, a poem, or a speech, telling the author how the work changed their lives in some way?  Our freshman English team is in the process of revising our curriculum and assessments to incorporate more "real world" writing.  This contest would be a perfect assessment to teach argumentative writing and incorporate choice reading!

My hope by sharing a few of my favorite ideas from Read, Write, Teach is that you will go out and buy this book.  If you are a middle school or high school English teacher exploring or using Reading- Writing Workshop, you will want to have this resource at your fingertips.  Linda Rief's book is now shelved right next to books by my favorite authors:  Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Kylene Beers, and Donalyn Miller.  It is in a place where I can reach for it at a moment's notice when a teacher is searching for "brilliant ideas" to engage his/her students!

Book Review: Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys) by Amy Spalding

Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys) by Amy Spalding

I received this ARC from NetGalley and was published on April 7th.  When it became available on NetGalley, I knew I had to read it.  This type of story is my favorite young adult genre and I needed a fun, light-hearted novel to read.

Summary from Goodreads:

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist meets Easy A in this hilariously realistic story of sneaking out, making out, and playing in a band.

After catching their bandmates in a compromising position, sixteen-year-old Los Angelenos Riley and Reid become painfully aware of the romance missing from their own lives. And so a pact is formed: they'll both try to make something happen with their respective crushes and document the experiences in a shared notebook.

While Reid struggles with the moral dilemma of adopting a dog to win over someone's heart, Riley tries to make progress with Ted Callahan, who she's been obsessed with forever-His floppy hair! His undeniable intelligence! But suddenly cute guys are popping up everywhere. How did she never notice them before?! With their love lives going from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye, Riley and Reid realize the results of their pact may be more than they bargained for. 

My Thoughts:

Bloggers have compared this book to Nick and Norah's Playlist and even to the Scooby Doo "gang."  Me? I definitely agree. I thought Spalding created a very realistic set of characters that any teen who enjoys "YA Chick Lit" will fall in love with. I am not sure why, but I tend gravitate toward books with music, friendships, and love.  This one was definitely an easy read. Not my favorite chick lit book, but good enough that I kept reading.

What I Liked:

The characters and their stories...

Lucy, Nathan, Riley, and Reid are in a rock band and are playing gigs all around town. After Riley and Reid caught Lucy and Nathan together, Riley acted like most teen girls I know and stopped talking to her best friend out of pure anger.  How could she not be angry - her best friend kept a secret about a boy from her.  So what does Riley do?  Her and Reid created a pact/journal together to share their escapades finding love interests of their own.  

If you are looking for a laugh out loud, so very high school story, definitely check out Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys).  I will be book talking this one in our English classes for sure!

Book Review: My Best Everything by Sarah Tomp

My Best Everything by Sarah Tomp

I received a copy of My Best Everything by Sarah Tomp from Netgalley.  It finally was published at the beginning of the month and I can't wait to share it with my students.

Summary by Goodreads:

You say it was all meant to be. You and me. The way we met. Our secrets in the woods. Even the way it all exploded. It was simply a matter of fate.

Maybe if you were here to tell me again, to explain it one more time, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so uncertain. But I’m going back to the beginning on my own. To see what happened and why.

Luisa “Lulu” Mendez has just finished her final year of high school in a small Virginia town, determined to move on and leave her job at the local junkyard behind. So when her father loses her college tuition money, Lulu needs a new ticket out.

Desperate for funds, she cooks up the (definitely illegal) plan to make and sell moonshine with her friends, Roni and Bucky. Quickly realizing they’re out of their depth, Lulu turns to Mason: a local boy who’s always seemed like a dead end. As Mason guides Lulu through the secret world of moonshine, it looks like her plan might actually work. But can she leave town before she loses everything – including her heart?

The summer walks the line between toxic and intoxicating. My Best Everything is Lulu’s letter to Mason – though is it an apology, a good-bye, or a love letter?

My Thoughts:

My Best Everything is told in 2nd person so right off, I was trying to figure out who the main character was and who she was describing in her story.  For teens who don't normally read books in 2nd person, this may confuse them.  But, once I was able to get into Lulu and Mason's back stories, I really fell in love with the characters - real life characters, ones that I can picture being students just graduating my high school, trying to figure out their lives.  I was rooting for them to find a happy ending in the never ending struggles that they both faced over the course of the book.  

Warning:  For freshman/sophomore level English teachers, drinking and partying do take place in the story.  While I don't ever want to encourage the students partake in these activities, they will read about the effects that alcohol can have on teens and adults including alcohol abuse and rehab.

I enjoyed this book.  It was a quick read for me and I highly recommend it to those looking for a coming of age story that will pull you in and keep you reading until the end.

My Favorite Resources for Mentor Texts

My Favorite Resources for Mentor Texts

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of posting about my experiences building a culture of readers on one of my favorite blogs that I religiously follow, Three Teachers Talk.  Several of our teachers have transformed their classrooms from a traditional whole class novel English class to a readers/writers workshop approach.  One of the hardest tasks for teachers when making the switch is finding mentor texts to use in place of the whole class novel.  Here are some of my favorite resources that I have found texts for the teachers I work with:

Three Teachers Talk

Amy Rasmussan, Erika Bogdany, Shana Karnes, and Jackie Catcher (@amyrass, @ErikaBogdany,  @litreader,  @JackieCatcher) are four high school teachers who firmly believe in using readers/ writers workshop in their classrooms.  Each morning I wake to find a post that I can use to support the teachers that I work with in our English department.  They share resources like 51 Beautiful Sentences and how they use them to teach author's craft. They share excerpts from books like Brown Girl Dreaming, The Glass Castle, and Impulse and how they use them to teach rhetorical devices and book talk books at the same time. Their ideas and lessons are simple and easy to adapt to any level English class.  I highly recommend following their blog if you are looking for ideas.

Moving Writers and Mentor Text Dropbox
My other favorite teacher blog to follow was created by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell (@RebekahOdell1, @allisonmarchett). These two teachers have focused their blog on writing workshop resources and lesson ideas. What I love most about their blog (beyond the posts) is the Mentor Text Dropbox that they have created. You can find articles by genre, technique, topic, etc. in this folder.  When teacher's are looking for something specific, I send them here first.

Twitter
Twitter can be very overwhelming if you don't have it organized.  I tend to use Hootsuite to follow hashtags like #engchat, #elachat, #nerdybookclub, #aplangchat, and #aplitchat.  Teachers are constantly posting ideas and articles to use in the classroom.  Don't feel obligated to check it all the time.  Even when I open it up once a week, I find wonderful resources here that I can share with teachers.

Newsela

If you haven't checked out Newsela for nonfiction articles, you are missing out on current events that can be read at multiple lexile levels.  I tend to turn to Newsela for current events and articles of the week as the topics are very appealing and relevant for students to understand. Newsela also posts Pro/Con articles which helps our students look at a topic from multiple perspectives. All of the articles are free and you can create a class account (our students sign in with Google) where you assign specific articles to the students to read.  What I love most is that I may say to the students that they have to read the article at ____ level to take the quiz, but they can start at any level that they prefer.  Many of the students will start at a simpler level to get a basic understanding and then read it at the assigned level.  

Flipboard

Another place I find unique articles to share with staff and students is on Flipboard.  Flipboard is a tool I use to create multiple "magazines" with various topics.  It used to be only available on the iPad, but now can also be used on the web so our students have access to it 24/7 from their Chromebooks.  The best part of Flipboard for me is that it does the curating of articles for me under the topics I have tagged to search.  I can open up Flipboard and have resources at my fingertips.  I am even working with a teacher right now who is having his freshman AP World students collect reliable resources for their themes using Flipboard.  

Book Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Book Two of my 2016 Abe Lincoln Nominee to-read list is finished! 5 Stars! If you are looking for a historical fiction story that takes place at the same time as WWII, definitely read this one!

Summary from Goodreads:

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives.Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.

My Thoughts:

I LOVED Between Shades of Gray.  Ruta Sepetys writes this beautiful yet heartbreaking story in a way that helps the reader understand the consequences of the Soviet Union taking over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.  Many innocent people - men, women, and children - were murdered, sent to prison or slave camps where they were expected to work in harsh conditions with little to no food. As I was reading I couldn't help but compare their experiences to those of the Jews in Nazi interment camps. What amazed me throughout the book was Lina's determination to keep herself, her brother, and her mother alive all while trying to find her father.  If you are a fan of The Book Thief, Number the Stars, etc, you will enjoy this story.

After reading this Between Shades, I now am going back to read Sepetys's book, Out of Easy. I have heard wonderful reviews and I can only imagine it is just as good.