The Green Eyed Reader

Soar Written by Joan Bauer  Overview: Jeremiah is a twelve-year-old boy from Indiana. At least, they think that he is. He was adopted by a single man named Walt Lopper after he was found next to his office's coffee pot. Jeremiah grew up to be a normal boy until the age of 10. He got sick with a virus that was attacking his heart. In order to survive, Jer had to have a heart transplant. Since that operation, his life changed drastically. He had to watch his heart rate constantly and keep away from germs as to not get sick. Jer learns how to deal with all of this in this touching story about what he absolutely lives for: Baseball. He moves to Ohio with Walt and he ends up finding his place by encouraging the new city to not give up on its love of baseball.  The interesting writing style and length of this book make it a great choice for 5th-6th graders who might love a great book with baseball woven into it. A read aloud of the first few chapters to introduce this boo...

The Day the Crayons Quit Written by Drew Daywalt & Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers Overview: One day in class, a little boy named Duncan took out his crayons and found a stack of letters with his name on them. Each letter was written by one of his crayons. The red crayon, the pink crayon, the green crayon, and so on. Each crayon had written Duncan about he felt in regards to their overuse or underuse in his drawings or other issues that they felt needed to be addressed. When Duncan was finished reading all of the letters he tired to think of a way to appease all of his crayons and decided to draw and incredibly creative picture with all of his crayons. Duncan got an A+ on his drawing! This book takes a comical look at creativity from a crayon's perspective. This entertaining book can be read by 2nd graders and would make such fun read aloud for children.  Awards: 2014-2015 Bluebonnet Award To order your own copy:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-day...

The Girl Who Drank the Moon By Kelly Barnhill Overview: This story begins in a town called the Protectorate. Every year, for hundreds of years, the "Day of Sacrifice" comes and the youngest baby of the town is left in the forest for an evil witch to claim. If the town does not leave a baby, the town will be destroyed by the witch. Or so all of the townspeople are told by the elders of their town. This turns out to not be the truth at all, and the elders are just trying to keep the town in submission by having them live in fear and sorrow. However, there is a witch in the woods: a good witch and her name is Xan. Every year on the same day, Xan travels outside of the city of the Protectorate where she finds a baby. She does not know why the mother has abandoned the child, but she does know that the baby needs to be taken care of. So, she collects the baby and brings the children year after year to the Free Cities on the other side of the Bog, her home.   On one of th...