Ms Rush Reads

copyright date: February 2010 primarily marketed for: intermediate and middle school readers (5 th -8 th ) A Mrs. Rush-Levine confession:   I had to wear headgear when I was in middle school (thankfully, not to school, but I did have to wear it overnight).   I am wondering if the fact that I feel like this is a book about my own youth might not be the reason I am madly in love with RainaTelgemeier ’s graphic text Smile.   Somehow, Smile made me see the humor in my own humiliating past.   Smile is an autobiographical story of the author as a young girl.   It is drawn in full-color comic strip style illustrations and tells the story of Raina’s dental woes, beginning when she knocks out a tooth in a nasty spill.   The initial damage causes a large gap in the front of her mouth and leads to multiple dental procedures.   The rest of the book continues to follow the story of perfecting her now imperfect smile at the ...

copyright date: September 2011 primarily marketed for: intermediate readers (age 10 and up) I bought this book prior to the announcement that it won the 2012 Newbery Award.  I have to admit, once I heard it won the award I was less interested in actually picking it up to read it.  I mean, sure an award of that caliber denotes a certain standard of literary quality, but it doesn’t always ensure the same high standard of interest.  In short, I expected Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos to be: boring.  Luckily, I was wrong. What finally nudged me to pick the book up was seeing Jack Gantos speak in Springfield at the Illinois Reading Council Conference.  He is a master storyteller, and he is filled with stories to tell.  He spoke to a room filled with us teachers about how to get our students to turn their personal journals into stories the way he did.  Here he is with his current journal of choice: This is the map he drew of his childhood ...