More Summer Reading Ideas

If you've been through Paideia's Summer Reading Lists and still need more ideas for what to read next, check out the Summer Reading 2010 posts at the blog Rebecca's Pocket. Blogger Rebecca Blood has put together a list of links to a dizzying variety of reading lists and articles.

How about "Summer Titles that Will Take You Back in Time" from Maureen Corrigan at NPR? Or "Good Books Almost Nobody Has Read," a New Republic article from 1934. Or "Great Expectations: Sixteen Reads the Book World is Betting On," an article from the Wall Street Journal that gets you all excited to read books that aren't even published yet (but will be over the summer).

For kids and younger teens, check out "The Summer 2010 Children's Indie Next List" from the American Booksellers Association (the other ABA), or "Top Ten Summer Reading Lists for Kids and Teens: 2010" from About.com, an annotated list of links to yet more great reading lists.

So many books, so little time. Even in the summer. Happy Summer Reading!

New for 2010:Junior High Summer Reading Bowl

At the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, junior high homebase classrooms will be competing in the Summer Reading Bowl, which consists of questions based on the the reading selections in a quiz bowl format.

To be eligible to play, rising 7th and 8th grade students are required to read 3 or more of the books on this Summer Reading Bowl List.

• Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
• Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealor
• I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
• Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

Students should read a minimum of 6 books overall to fulfill the summer reading requirement. A guide to great summer reading choices is the Paideia Library's Junior High Summer Reading List (link downloads the list as a .pdf file) which includes hundreds of annotated book descriptions, and hundreds more books listed by title.

You can click here or here for links to all three of the Paideia Library reading lists.

It's Summer Reading Time

It's that time of year again . . . The Summer Reading booklets were distributed to all students before the end of school, and once again we spent lots of time with students and parents, helping them choose their summer reading choices. It's sort of like personal shopping for the reading customer, and is one of the best parts of the job.

Paideia Library allows (and encourages) families to check out books and audiobooks for the summer vacation. The policy is that all summer checkouts go on a parent library account (because of the quantity of items and duration of the circulation period); junior high and high school students just need written or e-mailed permission from the parent, while elementary students need to have the parent present for checkout. This year, all summer checkouts are due on September 3, 2010.

Why let books go out over the summer? Lots of reasons:

• we want to encourage and facilitate student reading when they're not in school;
• we can help students find several books they may not have heard of but they will probably enjoy;
• the long circulation period helps families who go out of town (one family heads to Norway for the entire summer, complete with a huge suitcase full of Paideia Library books);
• the books would just sit here over the summer since we're not open anyway;
• and
• fewer books sitting in the library means fewer items to scan at inventory time.

With hundreds of titles included, the three Summer Reading lists -- Elementary, Junior High and High School (links will download lists as .pdf files) -- are more like "reading guides" than a prescribed list of books that must be read. We do have summer reading requirements:

• Elementary (grades K-6): read (or have read to you) 5 books
• Junior High (grades 7 & 8): read 6 books
  
• High School (grades 9-12): read 4 books

New this year for Junior High is the Summer Reading Bowl, which does have a list of 6 specific titles. Any rising 7th or 8th grader who wants to participate in the Summer Reading Bowl in the fall should read at least 3 of these books, or preferably all 6!