It's Monday, What Are you Reading? August 3, 2020

Please visit the amazing blogs: Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers who host this terrific meme each week.

Here are a few books I read last week at the lake. Click on the covers to go to the book's page on Goodreads.

A nonfiction graphic novel showing how women (very slowly) became part of space exploration in the US. 

I fell in love with the main characters, but all of the characters are extremely well-developed. The many story lines weave together beautifully and Pennypacker does an excellent job of making the setting feel like a character. 

This one was not for me.

This book is quite different from many historical fiction books. The reader travels through time with a sharecropper family from the Mississippi south. I was invested in the characters and wanted to see how it continued to develop. 

Obtained from Netgalley.

I read the digital galley, which did not have all the images quite yet so I did not get to see all the maps and illustrations. It is filled with really interesting facts about the staff that have supported the First Family for decades. 

Obtained from Netgalley.

Wow! A beautiful collection of old and new poems by the US Poet Laureate, Noami Shihab Nye. My faves were Always Bring a Pencil and Gate A-4. 

Obtained from Netgalley.

Currently Listening

Currently Reading

National Geographic kids-Famous Fails! by Crispin Boyer

Famous Fails! Mighty Mistakes, Mega Mishaps & How a Mess Can Lead to Success!
by Crispin Boyer
Published October 2016
National Geographic Children's Books
Nonfiction
128 pages
Review copy provided by publisher


Goodreads Summary
This fun book of quirky failures and famous flops will keep kids laughing while they learn the importance of messing up in order to get it right. Science, architecture, technology, entertainment -- there are epic fails and hilarious goof-ups from every important field. Silly side features help to analyze the failures: "Lesson Learned," "It Could be Worse!," "Losing Combinations," and a "Fail Scale" to help readers navigate the different kinds and scope of the mistakes made. The stories will include what went wrong, what went right, and what kids can learn from each failed attempt.

My Thoughts

There are several books about learning from mistakes, but this one is one of the most interesting and comprehensive I have seen. It contains hundreds of real, relatable examples of mistakes, mishaps and misconceptions that turned out differently than expected. This book is not afraid to show fails that ended badly and were never completed successfully. However each "fail" is accompanied by a "Lesson Learned" box that shows what we can all take away from the experience. It is organized into eight chapters such as Poor Sports, Botched Buildings, and Pop Culture Catastrophes. 

This book is visually interesting with photographs, colored text "boxes" of varying shapes and multi-colored backgrounds. The index and table of contents help the reader locate information. The text is a bit small at times and youngest readers may need help reading from adults.

Personal photo taken of pages 84 and 85 of the book. 

My students love books about facts. I can see them enjoying this book and sharing facts they learn with their friends. I would recommend this book for children ages 8 and up. 

See what others have to say about this book:

Always in the Middle 

Kristi's Book Nook