It’s the second day of the new year already, and I AM going to keep up with my reading! My “One Little Word” is CULTIVATE, and I am taking action and nurturing my reading life with care and excitement. There were so many excellent books published in 2022, and many more to come in 2023. This week I plan to read some titles I didn’t get to in ’22.
Physical Books: Love From Mecca To Medina by S.K. Ali and A Planet Like Ours by Frank Murphy, Charnaie Gordon, and Kayla Harren are both on my desk.


NetGalley: If you know me, you know I’m bad at keeping up with NetGalley, but with my intention to CULTIVATE more time for reading, I’m off to a good start this year (I know; it’s only day 2!). I’m reading A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga. I’m usually interested in the moon, but Mars and the Mars Rover stories have been intriguing to me since the news reported on them recently.

Libro.fm: I’m currently listening to Apartment 713 by Kevin Sylvester and finishing The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty (which is not a children’s title, but the author is from my city). I love it when authors are also the narrators of their own audiobooks.

Extra! Bonus! Happy Book Birthday, Kwame Alexander! An American Story publishes tomorrow! This is the first of my “Picture Books are Perfect for Middle School” titles for 2023. It’s not like anything Kwame has ever published, and you NEED to read the story of America…the ACTUAL American story of slavery. Dare Coulter’s vivid illustrations are like paintings – so beautiful and haunting all at once. History and social studies teachers everywhere should acquire and read this book with their students. Families should share this book with each other. I cannot recommend this one highly enough.

Happy New Year! It’s Monday! What are YOU reading?

It’s Monday! What are you Reading? is a weekly blog hop I co-host with Kellee and Ricki from Unleashing Readers. The original IMWAYR, with an adult literature focus, was started by Sheila at Book Journeys and is now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date.
It’s a great way to share what you’re reading and get recommendations. We encourage you to write your own post sharing what you’re reading, link up below, leave a comment, and support other IMWAYR bloggers by visiting and commenting on at least three of the other linked blogs.