I've been thinking a lot about the books I've been reading.  As I look through my blog posts and the personal summaries on my Annotated Bibliography, I notice a common thread.  Long before I'm done reading, I'm sold on the book!  One common thread I haven't mentioned often is that when I first begin many of these books, I'm not sold on them.  My thinking is this is because they aren't books I just chose on my own; they had to be from award-winner lists and weren't necessarily my "type" of books.  I'm currently working on When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead and am experiencing the same thing.  Although I'm almost halfway through it, I'm only mildly interested in it.  For some reason it just doesn't grab me.  The story isn't awful; it just isn't that deep - at least so far.  However, I'm sure children will enjoy it.  There is a mystery developing.

The point I think I'm reaching as I type this is that usually I end up enjoying these stories very much.  How often do I hear students say after reading only a few pages of a book, "This is boring.  I don't want to read it."  If I can motivate children to give them a fair shot, chances are they will end up enjoying the stories as much as I have.

Also, I'm noticing that when I think about how the first part of a book isn't interesting, at least so far I've been proven wrong.  Every book I've read so far has value and I'm glad to have read them.  Most often I absolutely love them!  Of course, maybe that's what I should expect.  After all, I'm only reading award-winning books at this time.  What's kind of funny is that I've got a new list going of other award-winning books I want to read based on my classmates' recommendations and personal summaries.  My list of the books remaining on my Annotated Bibliography sits by my recliner.  I cross off the titles as I complete them.  My new list awaits and I find that I can hardly wait to get to it. 

          

Happy reading everybody!!!