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Slice of Life Challenge
I’ve seen the logo over the past few years, but never took the time to read up on what it was all about. The Slice of Life Challenge started in 2008 as a challenge for fourth grade students to encourage them to write regularly in their notebooks about their own…
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#blogbookaday: Idea Jar
Summary: “From the author of Warning: Do Not Open This Book comes a lively story about a teacher’s special jar where her students keep their story ideas—but watch out when those ideas go on the loose! The idea jar is where students keep their ideas—anything from a Viking to a space robot to…
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#blogbookaday: Also an Octopus
Summary: “It begins with an octopus who plays the ukulele. Since this is a story, the octopus has to want something—maybe to travel to faraway galaxies in a totally awesome purple spaceship. Then the octopus sets out to build a spaceship out of soda cans, glue, umbrellas, glitter, and waffles. OK, maybe the octopus needs…
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Book Review: The Bone Sparrow
The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon is the story Subhi, a refugee born in an Australian permanent detention center after his mother and sister fled the violence of their homeland. Subhi’s world is only what he knows inside the fence of the detention center, but his imagination allows him to…
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Book Review: The Night Gardener
Let me start by saying, I am not a huge fan of scary things – I don’t like scary movies, haunted houses, or creepy books, but when this book kept popping up again and again, I knew I’d have to read it. Irish siblings, Molly and Kip are in need…
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The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp
If you love classic storytelling and tall tales about creatures that such as The Abominable Snowman, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster, then The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp is the book for you. Kathi Applet uses a narrator that feels just like he’s talking to the…
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Starry River of the Sky
Starry River of the Sky is written by Grace Lin and is considered a companion novel to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. In both of these stories, Lin takes the Chinese folklore that she so desperately did not want to hear as a child and creates her own spin…
