My Favorite Books of 2013

Goodreads tells me that I read 64 books this year, but I'm not entirely sure how accurate it is, as sometimes it doesn't automatically time stamp the finish date. I also rarely log my picture books, because I read several of those per day. I'm sure 64 is close, though, as far as everything besides picture books goes. I've split them up into categories, and only picked one book per category.

If you're interested in what else I've been reading, check out my Goodreads page or my book quotes document.

Favorite Picture Book:

 

Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great by Bob Shea was by far my favorite picture book that I read this year. It is just so funny! I laughed out loud several times while reading it, and then laughed again and again as I read it to my K-2 students. The goat putting the plunger on his head and dancing around like a pretty little unicorn is an image that will stay with me forever, I think. The pictures are gorgeous, and you learn to love and accept both unicorn and goat. I think everyone can relate well to goat--there's always a unicorn in your life, someone who is constantly doing everything better than you are. But, as goat learns in the end, even unicorns have their struggles. 

Middle Grade:

I first read Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper in January. I absolutely loved it and handed it to every 5th-8th grader that I possibly could, and every single one of them loved it. Then, it was chosen for the Global Read Aloud for Fall 2013, and I couldn't have been happier. That means that every 4th-6th grader in our school heard this powerful story of Melody and her struggles and achievements while dealing with the cerebral palsy that had defined her for so long. This is such a powerful book that has a message that every student should hear, one of acceptance, belief and love. This book sparked so many quality conversations about how we treat people who are different than us, and what it means to be brave. 

Young Adult:

This was much too complicated to have to choose one, and since this is my blog and I get to make the rules, I'm saying that this trilogy, Divergent by Veronica Roth was my favorite YA read of 2013. I have never read books so fast, nor have I ever had as many heated conversations in as many places--Twitter, Facebook, real life conversations with students, friends, and strangers. My favorite conversation of 2013 happened with a student on Twitter about Allegiant. It was over 1.5 hours and over 70 tweets back and forth about the book. I invested several hours AFTER reading Allegiant reading review after review and tweet after tweet, plus reading all that Veronica Roth had to say about it in her blog. I just don't even have words to describe how much I love these books. Truly. 

Adult:

This was possibly the easiest choice for me, as adult books aren't my favorite. Honestly, I only read them when they are part of our book club. But this is by far my favorite book we've ever read for book club. The Storyteller was nothing like any other Jodi Picoult book I've read. I'm not a huge fan of hers, but I'm wondering if I've just read the wrong books by her that didn't pique my interest. This was a story of a German man who killed people in the Holocaust, and a bakery shop girl whose Jewish family was impacted by the very same man and how their worlds collide in a strange way when he asks her to kill him.

Professional:

I can't believe I hadn't read this until this year. Every pre-service teacher should be required to read this. Such a different approach to teaching reading, but one that I truly believe would help kids enjoy reading more, thus choose to read more. This is another book that I wrote so many quotes down from it that I practically rewrote the whole book--so many I had to create a separate Google Doc from my regular book quotes one. 

Goals for next year:

--75 books

--log more picture books