Stella Diaz Has Something To Say (Angela Dominguez)

This will be a great book for Grade 3 Book Club. The lessons are quite overt and easy to find, which is a great way for children to learn to discover the theme in a story. We could practice it as a class. This is also the Global Read Aloud book for this year. I am tossing around the idea of connecting with another class and also reading it aloud.  It was also a quick work to find Notice and Note Signposts.

Goodreads says:

In her first middle-grade novel, award-winning picture book author and illustrator Angela Dominguez tells a heartwarming story based on her own experiences growing up Mexican-American.

Stella Diaz loves marine animals, especially her betta fish, Pancho. But Stella Diaz is not a betta fish. Betta fish like to be alone, while Stella loves spending time with her mom and brother and her best friend Jenny. Trouble is, Jenny is in another class this year, and Stella feels very lonely.

When a new boy arrives in Stella's class, she really wants to be his friend, but sometimes Stella accidentally speaks Spanish instead of English and pronounces words wrong, which makes her turn roja. Plus, she has to speak in front of her whole class for a big presentation at school! But she better get over her fears soon, because Stella Díaz has something to say!

Stella Díaz Has Something to Say introduces an infectiously charming new character with relatable writing and adorable black-and-white art throughout. Simple Spanish vocabulary is also integrated within the text, providing a bilingual element.

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now...you just might discover your next “must-read” book!

I always check out what Teach Mentor Texts is reading and who's talking on the Nerdy Book Club.

This is the book for my book club this month. I keep on just finishing the book minutes for book club so this month, instead, I decided I'd read it first. Nothing like a good Canadian author!

This is my pick for the first grade 3 book club meeting in September. Today we're having "Sneak-a-Peek" and I get to tell our incoming students about it. It's part of the Global Read Aloud. I'm really looking forward to it!

Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbitt)

It's been a while since I've read this book. I still love it. I think I've read it more than two times - but it might have been before I started tracking on GoodReads. I read it again this year with my class...and I cried. This group has been an interesting group. Usually, my class tires of me reading it aloud and asks if they can read some of it on their own. These guys are perfectly happy to have me read and so I read the ENTIRE thing aloud. Maybe that's why it touched me a little more. I did my very best to read with good expression. LOL It's full of drama!

p 62 (chapter 12) Tuck to Winnie, on the pond in a fishing boat: ....Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frog is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is."

p 63: That's what us tuck are, Winnie. Stuck so's we can't move on. We ain't part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing. You, for instance. A child now, but someday a woman. And after that, moving on to make room for the new children."

"....dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of teh whole thing, that's the blessing. But it's passing us by, us Tucks. Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. It don't make sense. If I knows how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road."

Goodreads says:

Doomed to - or blessed with - eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less a blessing that it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.