Several years ago, I read The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. This book is about how to create a culture of reading in an elementary school classroom. The signature of this program is the 40 Book Challenge. Each student is challenged to read forty books on their own over the course of the school year. They are not graded on the number of books they read, but the idea is to stretch and read more frequently and widely over the course of the school year.
Recently this challenge came to my attention again (I don’t remember how, but here is a blog post from the author about it). I don’t plan on actually following the 40 Book Challenge, but I thought it would be fun to share the breakdown of genres here in case anyone is looking for reading inspiration:
poetry anthologies 5
traditional literature (fairytales, myths, legends) 5
realistic fiction 5
historical fiction 5
fantasy 5
science fiction 2
mystery 2
informational 4
biography, autobiography, memoir 2
chapter book choice 9
Have you read anything great recently?
I just read Nothing but the Truth by Avi (middle grade book, documentary novel) and it was excellent! For such a short book, really packed a punch.