Unabridged Podcast

Welcome to Unabridged, the podcast where teachers take on books! Every week, Sara, Jen and Ashley (shown left to right in the photo) talk books, share recommendations, and celebrate all things bookish. On our blog (see our posts below!) we share bookish faves, pub day shout-outs, show notes, and book reviews each week.

Want to get more involved? Check out our 2022 reading challenge, join our buddy reads on Instagram, or sign up on Patreon!

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Jason Reynolds's WHEN I WAS THE GREATEST- Pardon Me While I Fangirl--Sara's Review

Apr 10, 2020
3 min

Jason Reynolds's WHEN I WAS THE GREATEST- Pardon Me While I Fangirl--Sara's Review

I am SO excited to write today, because I have an amazing book to talk to you about for the young people in your life! Full disclaimer, I LOVE Jason Reynolds. If you aren't familiar with Reynolds, he has a pretty prolific array of quality middle/high school work that tackles hard topics in an accessible way. If you follow him on Twitter (@JasonReynolds83), you know he is a delight and such an advocate for children and reading. When I Was the Greatest follows Ali, a 15- year-o

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Pub Day Shout-Outs! April 7, 2020 - Alvarez, Carr, War

Apr 7, 2020
3 min

Pub Day Shout-Outs! April 7, 2020 - Alvarez, Carr, War

I (Jen) had a really hard time narrowing my choices today to just three--so if you scroll down, you'll find that I cheated and recommend a few extras (sorrynotsorry). Julia Alvarez's Afterlife Description from Algonquin Books: "Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted b

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Roots of INTERNMENT: Perspectives on Internment during World War II

Mar 30, 2020
1 min

Roots of INTERNMENT: Perspectives on Internment during World War II

Samira Ahmed's Internment was our Unabridged Buddy Read for March and Book Club Pick for April. Our episode releases this Wednesday, April 1. In the novel, the protagonist and her parents are taken--in the near future--to an internment camp for Muslim citizens of the United States that is located near Manzanar. Frequently, Ahmed references WW II internment camps like Manzanar as historical context for her novel. Here are other sources--some own voices and some not--that provi

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118: Hopeful Books to Engage Students - What Can I Recommend to Students Right Now?

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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Hopeful Books to Engage Your Students -- The Long List

Mar 23, 2020
2 min

Hopeful Books to Engage Your Students -- The Long List

In Wednesday's episode, we're discussing books we think would make great recommendations for the students and young people in our lives. These books, including works by some of our favorite authors such as Jason Reynolds, John Green, R. J. Palacio, and Nicola Yoon, would be great books for students to read on their own during this difficult time in our world. Some of these books are middle grade whereas others are solidly YA literature, but they are all excellent books with h

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115: Kevin Wilson's NOTHING TO SEE HERE - Learning by Fire

Mar 4, 2020
1 min

115: Kevin Wilson's NOTHING TO SEE HERE - Learning by Fire

For our March Unabridged Book Club discussion, we're focusing on Kevin Wilson's excellent Nothing to See Here (which was also a Book of the Month pick!). Listen to catch up with what we're reading now and to hear why we chose to pair books like Ninth House, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and Young Jane Young with Wilson's novel. Finally, we're thinking about movies from our childhood in our Give Me One segment. Timeline Bookish Check In: 00:00 - 05:40 Book Club Discussion: 05:4

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113: Why Teach YA? - There's Nothing I Want More than for Kids to Love What We're Doing

Feb 19, 2020
2 min

113: Why Teach YA? - There's Nothing I Want More than for Kids to Love What We're Doing

In this episode, we focus on classroom teachers and talk directly about how and why we incorporated Young Adult literature into our classrooms. We talk about series we saw our students loving like Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, and Veronica Roth's Divergent, and we talk about seeing our students fall in love with books. From classics like S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders to A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants, we talk about using YA lit in our clas

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Best Reads of 2019 - Jen's Picks

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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92: All about the Journey - Bump It Up on the List

Sep 25, 2019
1 min

92: All about the Journey - Bump It Up on the List

For this short episode of Unabridged, we thought about journeys. Nearly every book contains some sort of journey--emotional, moral, time--but we wanted to focus on the physical journeys that often lie at the heart of novels to symbolize or catalyze something else. Our TBR lists explode (or shuffle, at the very least) as we each recommend two books with journeys at their centers. Listen to Jen remember our website's url, Sara get past not really loving journey novels all that

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Aisha Saeed's ALADDIN: FAR FROM AGRABAH - Jen's Review

Sep 6, 2019
3 min

Aisha Saeed's ALADDIN: FAR FROM AGRABAH - Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Aisha Saeed’s Aladdin: Far from Agrabah in exchange for an honest review. I requested Saeed’s new novel for two reasons: (1) I (and the other hosts of Unabridged--check out our episode here) absolutely adored her #ownvoices novel Amal Unbound, which was one of the 2018 Global Read Aloud selections, and (2) Aladdin is one of my favorite Disney movies ever. I can’t count the number of times my best friend and I watched that fil

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87: Get to Know the Hosts - A Great Story of Friendship

Aug 21, 2019
1 min

87: Get to Know the Hosts - A Great Story of Friendship

There's a little bit about books and a whole lot about us in this Unabridged Short episode. Learn what books we loved to teach, what scares us, and what we do outside of reading. (This is more of a stretch for some of us than others!) Feel free to share other questions for us on social media! And let us know: what's the scariest thing YOU've ever done for fun? what are your hobbies (outside of books)? what's your favorite podcast or social media follow . . . that's not book r

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85: Global Read Aloud 2019 - I just have to read this quotation

Aug 7, 2019
1 min

85: Global Read Aloud 2019 - I just have to read this quotation

For the second year, we are excited to explore three of the Global Read Aloud books. (You can find out more information about the Global Read Aloud here.) We'll discuss Kelly Yang's Front Desk, Padma Venkatraman's The Bridge Home, and Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves. We are thrilled to begin Season 3 with a discussion of these three amazing novels for middle grade, middle school, and young adult readers. Timeline Introduction and General Discussion: 00:00 - 01:16 Cherie

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79: Our Recommendations to Each Other - I Just Love This Book

Jun 26, 2019
1 min

79: Our Recommendations to Each Other - I Just Love This Book

The Unabridged crew took time in our most recent short episode (#unabridgedshorts) to recommend books to each other, which was fun . . . and a little scary! (It's weirdly vulnerable.) Check out what we chose to recommend for each other, and let us know if you have other books you think we'd would appreciate (or, of course, if you think we got something really wrong!). Jen’s Recs For Ashley - Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s Fruit of the Drunken Tree Sujata Massey’s The Widows of Mal

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72: Worth All the Tears - That Book Enriched My Life

May 8, 2019
1 min

72: Worth All the Tears - That Book Enriched My Life

In this #unabridgedshort episode, we recommend books that made us cry--we're talking ugly tears!--but are worth the sorrow that accompanies them. These are favorite books that made us feel all the things. Want a cathartic experience? Pick up one of these brilliantly evocative novels. We also invite you to share some of your favorite tear jerkers. What books have made you cry but been worth it? Let us know @unabridgedpod! Our Recommendations Ashley Celeste Ng’s Everything I Ne

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70: Rachael Lippincott's FIVE FEET APART Book-to-Film Adaptation - That Star-Crossed Lover Thing

Apr 24, 2019
1 min

70: Rachael Lippincott's FIVE FEET APART Book-to-Film Adaptation - That Star-Crossed Lover Thing

In this Unabridged Short episode, we discuss the book-to-film adaptation of Five Feet Apart, a book that began as a screenplay. Our opinions are quite varied on this one, so check out our take on the film, and then let us know what you think on social media! Mentioned in Episode Rachael Lippincott's Five Feet Apart with Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis (book) Five Feet Apart (film) Beth Vrabel's Caleb and Kit John Green's The Fault in Our Stars and The Fault in Our Stars mov

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69: VA Festival of the Book (Jason Reynolds, Laurie Halse Anderson, & More!) - Loving Every Minute

Apr 17, 2019
1 min

69: VA Festival of the Book (Jason Reynolds, Laurie Halse Anderson, & More!) - Loving Every Minute

In this Unabridged podcast episode, we focus on our field trip to the Virginia Festival of the Book, held in Charlottesville, VA, from March 20-24. We offer our impressions of four sessions, including a dream conversation between Jason Reynolds and Laurie Halse Anderson and a serendipitous afternoon when we got to see the April Book Club Book authors Beth Macy (with Chris McGreal) and Jarrett Krosoczka in back-to-back sessions. You can find out more information about the annu

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56: Unabridged Awards - I Will Qualify Them All

Jan 16, 2019
2 min

56: Unabridged Awards - I Will Qualify Them All

-Alternate Titles- Address the nervousness OR Anticipating it is exciting OR Not a lot of table space for a drum roll OR I guess that was obvious OR What is wrong with you? OR We're going to take a bit of a dip OR Just phenomenal Favorites by Category Mentioned in Episode Jen - Most devastating, gorgeous novel that alternates between time periods - Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers Most satisfying end of a long series that I’ve been reading for years - Sarah J. Maas’s King

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51: Our Kids' Current Reads - It Is Just So Precious

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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48: Graphic Novels and Comic Collections - Stay the Course and Go for It

Nov 21, 2018
1 min

48: Graphic Novels and Comic Collections - Stay the Course and Go for It

It's fear that makes us lose our conscience. It's also what transforms us into cowards.” ― Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis Works Mentioned in Episode Jen - March Trilogy by John Lewis with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson Runaways by Rainbow Rowell and Kris Anka Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 by Joss Whedon (Author), Georges Jeanty (Illustrator), Andy Owens (Illustrator), Jo Chen (Illustrator) American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang T

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