Free Reading Online

Check out the Useful Sites tab on the right of this page. I have started to collect free reading and reading games sites. Check back often as I hope to add more on a regular basis, and if you have some you'd like to add, let me know!

Graphic Novels

 Some people think that graphic novels are just comic books. Well, they ARE comics, but a great graphic novel is also a really great read with pictures that totally support the text. The can be funny stories, mysteries, tales of friendship, adventure, history, mythology...

We have a pretty good selection here in the library. Check out the 741.5 section and see what's there.

Here are a few of my top pix:

Retells in graphic novel format stories from Greek mythology about the exploits of Aphrodite, including her birth from the sea foam and her role in the Trojan War. We have other books in this amazing series.



 In Kansas in the year 1937, eleven-year-old Jack Clark faces his share of ordinary challenges: local bullies, his father's failed expectations, a little sister with an eye for trouble. But he also has to deal with the effects of the Dust Bowl, including rising tensions in his small town and the spread of a shadowy illness.

 Two roller-skating best friends--one tiny, one tall--share three comical adventures involving outrageously bright socks, an impromptu trek to the Andes, and a most unlikely marvelous companion.

    From sixth grade through tenth, Raina copes with a variety of dental problems that affect her appearance and how she feels about herself. This book won the DCF award several years ago and is a GREAT read!

MORE!!!

The give-away cart is getting very full. There are lots of well-loved titles and books with tons of interesting information, biographies, a few picture books, some chapter books. Stop by during conference time or school sing and take a book or two away with you. The cart is right outside the library.

Parrots Over Puerto Rico

 

Parrots Over Puerto Rico

by Susan Roth and Cindy Trumbore

collages by Susan Roth

The first thing you notice about this book is that there is no title on the cover. It is a bold display of three bright parrots, a collage of cut paper so textured you can practically feel the feathers, almost imagine the birds flying off the page.

When you open the book, the orientation is lengthwise, giving an impression of height and depth, perfect for the setting of this story of near extinction. You can sit with the parrots in the treetops, soar with them in the blue green sky, get a bird's eye view of village life in 5000 BCE.

This book chronicles the birds' demise, from their original habitat, to them being hunted for food, given as gifts to royalty, battling against red-tailed hawks, and then fighting for survival against other predators brought to the island by settlers. They lost their homes to people who needed the trees to build their own dwellings and kept being edged out bit by bit. In 5000 BCE there were hundreds of thousands of them. By 1967 only 24 remained.

This is their story as well as the story of bringing them back, and a short history of Puerto Rico, to boot, all in one gorgeous, small, readable and engrossing book. There is an afterward about the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program, a timeline of Puerto Rican History and the parrots, an extensive bibliography, and pictures you could look at forever.

What more could you want in a book? Available in the library!

DCF Voting Coming Soon!

Students in grades 4-6 have been reading books from the 2013/14 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Childrens Choice Award list. These books are available from the school library and the public library as well as bookstores. You can get this year's list by clicking on the bibliography link on the right (annotations are also available from this link). AND you can get next year's list too! It's not too early to start reading those books, and not too late to read this year's.

Any student who reads 5 or more books from the list is eligible to vote. They can read online (many of the books are available on the District Follett Shelf), can hear audio versions of the book, or can be read to at home (many titles make GREAT family read-alouds).

Voting will be during the week of April.

Some of MY personal favorites are:

The One and Only Ivan

Shadow and Bone

One for the Murphys

Same Sun Here

May B

Little Dog Lost

Bomb

Temple Grandin

Fourmile

Liar and Spy

Book Suggestions and donations

If you have a title that you think would be good for the Oak Grove Library to have, please let me know. Donations are also accepted, with many thanks. Books that are copies of ones we already have will be put in the end of year give away.

You can contact me at andra_horton@wsesu.org or drop books off in the front office.

Thanks, in advance!

Seed Dreams

 

Snow you say? A foot or so? Why let it get you down? There's always room to dream about a warm and fertile garden, seeds and shoots, and flowers and fruit. Here are a few books to stir those dreams up. All available at the school library. 

 

A Seed is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston: beautiful drawings to linger over, as well as information about the life cycle of plants.

 

The Gardening Book by Jane Bull: tons of information on what can grow in your vegetable garden and how to do it

 

It's our garden – from seeds to harvest in a school garden: a picture book featuring students, teachers, volunteers and community members as they harvest a garden on the grounds of a an elementary school.
 

  Packet of Seeds by Deborah Hopkinson: When a pioneer family moves west the mother misses home so much that she will not even name the new baby until her daughter thinks of just the right thing to cheer her up.

 

And then it's Spring by Julie Fogliano: Simple text reveals the anticipation of a boy who, having planted seeds while everything around is brown, fears that something has gone wrong until, at last, the world turns green.