Check In #1

I have been reading for 4 hours and 30 minutes so far as a part of Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge. 

Finished Killer Pizza by Greg Taylor two hours in.  While not my usual genre of choice it was in my pile because it is on the 2010-2011 Maine Student Book Award list.  In his debut novel Taylor provides some fantastical horror that fifth-eighth graders will love.  Fifteen year old Toby Magill , a Top Chef want-to-be, gets a summer job at a new pizza joint in town, Killer Pizza. Hoping to learn some cooking skills, Toby believes  his new position will lead to bigger things but soon discovers that the establishment is actually a front for a secret monster-hunting organization, and he, along with two co-workers,  are the newest recruits. Their job shifts from making pizza to weapons training and stakeouts as they try to uncover the leader of a pack of grotesque monsters that can transform into human shape and are preying on innocent people.  I have to say, I did end up really liking this story...even though I started reading kicking and screaming!   I can see the book drawing in those reluctant readers in grades 6 through 8.

I also started and finished The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, another title on the 2010-2011 Maine Student Book Award List.  (Description from the book jacket) Thirteen-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated community without questioning the fact that her father has three wives and she has twenty brothers and sisters, with two more on the way. That is, without questioning them much---if you don’t count her secret visits to the Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her meetings with Joshua, the boy she hopes to choose for herself instead of having a man chosen for her.  But when the Prophet decrees that she must marry her sixty-year-old uncle---who already has six wives--- Kyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family forever.

While I found this book to be an extremely well written, riveting read, because of its' content, I don't think this was a good selection for a 4th-8th grade reading list. I won't be including in my classroom library but I am glad I read it and would definitely recommend it to students in grades 9-12.

So here are my stats so far:

Time started:  6:30 p.m.

Time now: 11:30 p.m.

Total pages read:  427

Time spent reading:  4 hours 30 minutes

Time spent blogging/commenting: 45 minutes

Books read: 2 

Currently reading:  About to start Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles