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- Nov 23, 2020
- 5 min
9 Books Considering Culture: Coming of Age as Children of Immigrants
by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) In this bookish fave, I wanted to share some of my favorite middle grade and young adult lit recommendations that comment on the experience of children of immigrants. While each story is unique and their life experiences are all quite different, these books have common threads, such as an examination of the different facets that create identity and an exploration of the periodic tension between the parents' native culture and
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- Oct 26, 2020
- 4 min
Graphic Novel Roundup
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) This year has been a great one for me to dive into some wonderful graphic novels, graphic memoirs, and comic books. I read differently with these, using a different type of interpretation than when I'm looking solely at text. My boys, who are 10 and 13, love graphic novels, and I can always count on them to pass on the ones they love. Here are some recommendations from my reading this year: Molly Knox Ostertag's The Witch Boy trilogy (The Witc
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- Oct 13, 2020
- 4 min
Pub Day Shout-Outs! for October 13, 2020 featuring Harrow, Favilli, and Roanhorse
by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Here are three books coming out today that I'm excited to read! Alix Harrow's The Once and Future Witches Description from Publisher: "In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history in a Hugo award-winning author's powerful novel of magic amid the suffragette movement. "In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witchi
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- Oct 6, 2020
- 4 min
Pub Day Shout-Outs! for October 6, 2020, featuring Mbalia, Faruqi, and Gansworth
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) All right, book lovers, this is one of those pub days that overwhelms me, so I'm feeling obligated to share some extras today. I have FIVE books pre-ordered today, FOUR that I've already read thanks to NetGalley, and THREE more than I can't resist mentioning. Here we go: Pre-Ordered Books Jerry Craft's Class Act - My boys and I are SO excited about this follow up to the award-winning graphic novel New Kid. Tana French's The Searcher - French i
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- Sep 1, 2020
- 4 min
Pub Day Shout-Outs! for September 1, 2020, featuring Woodson, Cole, and Zoboi and Salaam
by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Here are three books coming out today that I'm excited to read! Jacqueline Woodson's Before the Ever After Description from Publisher: "National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson's stirring novel explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed. "For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone's hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he's as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays
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- Aug 4, 2020
- 4 min
Pub Day Shout-Outs! for August 4, 2020, featuring Emezi, Garber, and Leong
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) Akwaeke Emezi's The Death of Viveh Oji Description from Publisher: "One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suff
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- Jul 20, 2020
- 7 min
Some of Ashley's Favorite Reads of 2020 (So Far)
by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Oh my goodness, I'm already having A LOT of trouble choosing only five books, which is the sign of a great reading year so far! (Perhaps total life chaos leads to me loving books more... I certainly suffered from a reading slump when quarantine first started, and I'm still missing audiobooks and sometimes feel distant from the books I'm reading, but I have generally gotten back into reading after the initial transition... and
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- Jun 2, 2020
- 4 min
Pub Day Shout-Outs! June 2, 2020 featuring Bennett, Brown, and Johnson
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) As we struggle to learn more in response to the injustices we're seeing across the United States, we are highlighting three works by Black authors that are being published today. Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half Description from Publisher: "The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is di
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- May 25, 2020
- 2 min
Building on the Classics: Middle-Grade Reads to Add to Your Shelves
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) We recently had the chance to chat with Jill Hames, director of the James L. Hamner Public Library and host of the Connections podcast. Our agenda? To think about classics--like Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, Wilson Rawls's Where the Red Fern Grows, Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and Fred Gipson's Old Yeller--and develop a list of books that we could recommend to fans of these tried-and-true options. (For the record, we endorse the
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- May 20, 2020
- 22 min
126: Plugging into Bookish Communities Online with @readwithtoni from Instagram
In this week's episode of Unabridged, Ashley, Jen, and Sara talk with Toni about the power of developing an online bookish community. Toni--who posts @readwithtoni--shares her own bookstagram journey, what she loves about buddy reads, and the books (like Homegoing and All the Ugly and Wonderful Things) that have resulted in some great conversations. We also each share some great, bookstagram-made-me-do-it reads. Bookish Check In Ashley - Lyssa Kay Adams’s The Bromance Book Cl
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- May 4, 2020
- 3 min
5 Graphic Memoirs You Should Read Immediately
by Sara Voigt (@meaningfulmadness) Some of us (me!) might be having a hard time getting through books. What better way to get through some books than to read some really great graphic memoirs? If you are not familiar with this sub-genre, I think you are going to be happy you found it. The great thing about graphic novels is that they are quick and have beautiful artwork to enjoy along the way. The great thing about memoirs is they are raw, truthful, and often share moments of
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- Apr 21, 2020
- 3 min
Pub Day Shout-Outs! April 21, 2020 - Finney Boylan, Rai, Tran
by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) Here are three books coming out today that I'm looking forward to reading! Jennifer Finney Boylan's Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs Description from Celadon Books: In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking column went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving
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- Mar 25, 2020
- 2 min
118: Hopeful Books to Engage Students - What Can I Recommend to Students Right Now?
In this episode, we consider books that we'd recommend to students as great choices to read independently. As the world around us has drastically changed and continues changing, we decided on this topic and talked about some of our favorites, including R. J. Palacio's Wonder, Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before series, Nicola Yoon's books, and anything by Jason Reynolds, as well as some other favorites. We focus our discussion on books we think students can access w
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- Feb 3, 2020
- 1 min
Best Reads of 2019 - Jen's Picks
Oh, friends. I gave 51 books five stars in 2019, so this was tough for me! Ultimately, I settled--somewhat arbitrarily--on a top 15, ranging from middle-grade reads like Kelly Yang's Front Desk to Michelle Obama's brilliant memoir Becoming to a stunning multi-genre novel in Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive (which I really need to re-read!). Anyway, here are 15 of the books I loved in 2019, in COMPLETELY random order (you can find reviews for all of them on Instagram,
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- Jan 22, 2020
- 2 min
Welcome - Introduction and Overview
Just getting started with Unabridged Podcast? Welcome! We're Ashley, Jen, and Sara, and we are teachers and podcasters who are passionate about books. We have four kinds of posts here on our blog. On Mondays, we post about our Bookish Faves, on Tuesdays we do Pub Day Shout-outs, on Wednesdays our episodes drop, and on Fridays, we post book reviews. (Be on the lookout on Thursdays, too; we sometimes have an extra post then!) There are many ways to connect with us! In addition
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- Oct 25, 2019
- 1 min
Rainbow Rowell's PUMPKINHEADS, illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks -- Jen's Review
Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the egalley chapter sampler of Rainbow Rowell's Pumpkinheads! Rainbow Rowell is one of my favorite authors, and Pumpkinheads promises to be a fabulous addition to her oeuvre. Based on this chapter sampler, her graphic novel with illustrator Faith Erin Hicks offers realistic, vulnerable, charming characters in a perfect setting for a YA focus. Josiah and Deja are embarking on their last day working at the pumpkin patch before they leave for coll
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- Oct 11, 2019
- 2 min
Kami Garcia's TEEN TITANS: RAVEN, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo -- Jen's Review
Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Kami Garcia’s Teen Titans: Raven, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo, in exchange for an honest review. The book released on July 2, 2019. I know next to nothing about the Teen Titans, other than what I learned when watching of Teen Titans Go! to the Movies with my boys. Kami Garcia and illustrator Gabriel Picolo’s graphic novel Teen Titans: Raven does a beautiful job communicating the backstory of Raven . . . even to the uninitia
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- Jun 19, 2019
- 1 min
78: Laurie Halse Anderson Highlight - It Is Okay to Fight
For our last Unabridged Highlight episode of season 2, we're discussing the influence of one of our favorite YA authors, Laurie Halse Anderson. After seeing her at the Virginia Festival of the Book and reading her new memoir in verse Shout, we were inspired to consider her place in YA literature. It's the 20th anniversary of her seminal work Speak, and the new edition features some excellent resources and an afterword by Jason Reynolds, another Unabridged favorite. We were al
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- Dec 12, 2018
- 1 min
51: Our Kids' Current Reads - It Is Just So Precious
-Alternate Titles- Over and over and over and over
OR
We’re always making fun of him
OR
He has a ghost writer Works Mentioned in Episode Jen - 11-year-old Stuart Gibbs’s series, particularly Spy School books Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christopher Paolini’s Eragon 8-year-old Jeff Smith’s Bone series Geronimo Stilton’s Kingdom of Fantasy series Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series Ashley - 2-year-old and 4-year-old Susan Verde and artist Peter H. Reynolds’s I Am P
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