Book Recommendation

When I try to look back on the past books I read I feel like very few were really young adult novels because in school they tend to have you read more classics.

In my ninth grade English class though my teacher picked 4 to 5 young adult novels and had a chose one that we wanted to read. We then formed groups based on the novel that we choose and had like book groups in class were we discussed different things that happened in our books every week and then when the book was finished we did a final project as a group. (I included this for those that might be interested in how these novels can be incorporated in a new way into the classroom) Anyways the book I picked was "Speak". This book is written by Laurie Halse Anderson (the same author of Wintergirls that was read to us on the first day of class). The book discusses how a young girl comes to terms with something horrible that happens to her in the beginning. It is all about how she grows as a character, while navigating through high school. It had some intense content that could be considered inapproriate in a classroom. However I thought the way it was used in our classroom was better because we really only had to discuss the issues in our groups and not as a whole class. Overall the book was very good and even was made into a lifetime movie. Kristen Stewart plays the main character Melinda.

On another note I was walking around my placement class today, which is 8th graders and I saw that one of the girls was reading Does My Head Look Big in This. I enjoyed talking to her about the book and felt like I could connect with her because we had read the same thing!