Time Without School

I am currently sitting quietly here at home, enjoying the first day of our vacation. Teachers here go back to work on January 5th, while students return on January 7th. The day before yesterday, I got on the website for the local public library and put a number of books on hold, and that same afternoon went to pick up many of them. I am happily reading Kristin Cashore's Graceling right now, and am loving every second of it. I stayed up way too late last night reading it and woke up way to early this morning reading it, and should be done with this rather large young adult novel probably tonight or tomorrow. I'll do a review when I'm done.

This blog has been a great experience for me, something that I've been happy to do and has introduced me to some great minds in the field of children and young adult literacy. I've had dozens upon dozens of benign postings about personal issues or about how to either improve literacy practice in the classroom, as well as a number of how-to's, and I've had a few posts that have been fun and have ruffled some feathers by way of me airing out some personal opinions on classic books, practices, etc.

I only recently began being contacted by book companies or authors with offers to send me review copies of children and/or young adult books that are soon to be released in order for me to review them and post those reviews on my blog here. This is a very exciting prospect for me, because I've always wanted to do this. I already have a standard reply to these companies that involves the fact that I will be honest and impartial in my review, if I like the book, I'll say it, and if I don't, I'll say it. The first of my books arrived in the mail last week, and I'm going to read it when I'm done devouring Graceling.

Those of you who have been blogging about children and ya lit for a long time, have you been contacted to review books for companies or authors? I'm just curious as to the prevalence of this.

Anyways, apart from all of that, I want to thank those of you who continue to read these things that I write, and will continue to come back in the future. I'm only in my fourth year of teaching, and the first year of my doctoral studies, so I hope to continue with this, and see where experience and education take me and my own thought process. Thank you all again, and have a Merry Christmas (of course, hopefully I'll post again this week, if I can find things to discuss). If you have any possible topics, let me know.