Lookee! Five of our librarians give the inside scoop on the 10 titles included in this school year’s Global Reading Challenge.
And here are the same 2012 Global Reading Challenge titles with links to our Library catalog:
- Seaglass Summer by Anjali Banerjee
- Extra Credit by Andrew Clements
- The Magician’s Assistant by Kate DiCamillo
- Jackie and Me by Dan Gutman
- George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt by Lucy Hawking
- Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
- Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School and Other Scary Things by Lenore Look
- Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan
- Becoming Naómi Leon by Pam Muñoz Ryan
- The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John
The Global Reading Challenge is one of my absolute favorite things about the Seattle Public Library — and I felt this way long before I became a librarian here. I used to volunteer in the Olympic View Elementary library, and each year around this time I’d try to make one of my volunteer shifts coincide with the day that the Global Reading titles were announced. I won’t go so far as to say it was like announcing the Academy Awards — because it wasn’t; rather, this was exciting, sweet and sincere. Fourth- and fifth-grade readers would squeal as each new title was announced.
But not even that was the best part of it all. In the following months, I saw groups of students collaborate, coach each other, praise one another and get super excited about the books they were reading. I saw fifth-graders blossom as team leaders and cross-classroom teams work together to make sure that every member was an “expert” on at least one of the books. I saw introverts gain confidence to speak up about “their books” and extroverts learn some restraint to give others a turn. I saw hesitant readers gain better fluency and practically beam when recognized for being an “expert” on a particular book.
I wish you could all be inside a school — even just for a day — to see how incredible the Global Reading Challenge is.
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