World Read Aloud Day Challenge - Week 2

Ladies and gentlemen...welcome to the first two consecutive weeks that I have ever blogged in my life... EVER!

Again, I give thanks to @LitWorld and @MatthewWinner aka The Busy Librarian for continuing to provide my muse. (I can be so poetic when I want to be!) :)

Q1: I think everyone in the world should read....

Well, I think the students of my school are the best to answer this one for me. Of course it's THE HUNGER GAMES SERIES. Violence aside, this series really spoke to me on a personal level. These books basically are all about our humaneness and how important it is to value and treat everyone in the manner they deserve. I am still not over Rue. And Prim...WHY PRIM?!!? And I love Peeta. If I was a teenager, I'd totally want to marry him.

Q2: If I could listen to anyone in the world read aloud to me it would be.....

Mo Willems. I was familiar with the pigeon series so I bought them for my children at Christmas. The package I bought from scholastic also came with a DVD that animated some of Mo's work with him providing the voice overs.  I fell in love. I don't think I've laughed so hard. (Ok, well, I have to admit THE LEGO MOVIE was pretty good at this too). My children and I have just discovered the "Piggie and Elephant" series....I would LOVE to hear those read aloud too!

Q3: When I read aloud, my favourite character to impersonate is:

Well, any character from a Mo Willems book actually. They just have so much character! I can feel their emotions emanating off the page for heaven's sake! The man has a gift for bold, giant, italicized font!! What else can I say!?!?!

Q4: The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is:

Well...I just noticed that a lot of my sentences begin with well. I'll have to work on that. Well...HA HA...just kidding.

I'm a middle school teacher librarian so most of the books on my bookshelf are young adult fiction of the dystopian sort. World collapse due to unnatural disasters, man created world plagues and the zombie apocalypse also fill in a few of the available spaces. I'm a sucker for anything the kids at my school read. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em ....right? (YA fiction is SO much better than when I was young...and we had to read uphill BOTH ways!) (I hope people really get that joke)

Q5: My fav part about reading aloud or being read to:

I'd have to say (notice that I didn't begin that sentence with well) that my favourite part about reading aloud is looking at the looks of wonder on my students or my children's faces. I love reading their expressions to see if :
- they're enjoying the story
- they're getting what I'm reading
- I have to stop and explain (because they're looking lost or confused)
- we can make personal connections to the story
- I've spit accidentally on their faces. (Yah, it happens...sometimes I get excited when I read!)

I hope you'll join the world on March 5th and lend your read aloud voice to raise awareness for global literacy. More than ever, I am believing that words can change worlds.

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge - Week One

Ok, I admit. I've been really bad about this whole blogging thing. Then along came my colleague Mrs. Fernandes who introduced me to +LitWorld and World Read Aloud Day.

I am empowered again! And ready to blog it out for the next four weeks! Let my voice be heard in support of global literacy! Over the mountaintops, across the valleys....(ok, ok, I admit - I'm easily carried away)

We all have the right to learn, to read, to write and let our words change the world. I hope I can help empower any of you reading to do the same.

Week one's question asks: What is your earliest or fondest memory in which someone read aloud to you?

I'm sure my parents read aloud to me. I'm SURE they did. (but I don't remember it...sorry!)

What I do remember quite vividly however, is my grade 4/5 split teacher Mrs. Sudicky who read aloud to us every day. Why is it that I remember this most vividly? I'm sure other teachers read aloud to us, I'm sure my teacher librarian did. Why this one? Why, why, WHY?

Well, uh...for starters I remember being fascinated with the books she began reading aloud to us. I remember being disappointed when she would end a chapter and tell us we had to go on to our regular school work. I remember her asking the class if we had books we loved - we could bring them in to be read aloud. Maybe that's because I brought one of my own in and we read it out loud to the class. I remember it was about this boy - he was a redhead - who got into modeling. He was very sporty and was photographed for an underwear commercial - and everyone teased him for it. (While I may not remember my parents reading to me, I distinctly remember how readily my father would fork out money to buy me books. Our house was FILLED with books. As is my house today :)

I remember hearing her read "Call of the Wild" by Jack London. I remember "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl. Maybe I remember this one as well because I remember reading to the class from it. I distinctly remember some words in the book that didn't make sense. I stopped reading and told her this...I remember her saying back..."Now you know what it's like to read Justin's printing sometimes".

Looking back, read aloud time got us excited about stories and about sharing stories. Reading aloud gave everyone the  same opportunity to access texts no matter our reading skill or level. Reading aloud was just plain fun to listen to and helped shape me into the reader I am today.

So thank you Mrs. Sudicky ... wherever you are.

Now I'm off to read Captain Underpants (which I secretly love) to my son. I hope he remembers this 30 years from now.