Tag: middle school
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Book Review: The Love Haters by Katherine Center
First, thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC ebook of this new novel, soon to be published on May 20, 2025. For Katherine Center fans everywhere, I am sure this will be another smash hit! This is my third book by Katherine Center, who by her own admission is a writer…
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Book Review: I Only Read Murder by Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson
With a busy week where I was spending a lot of time at my former school directing an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew (written by my daughter, allow me a moment to brag), I had very little time to read, and when I did settle down after wrangling middle schoolers, I was out…
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Book Review: Janie Writes a Play by Heidi E. Y. Stemple and illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight
For those of you who have been following my book reviews, this will be a bit different for you. Today I read a book to be published on February 11, 2025, a children’s picture book with only 40 pages, short paragraphs on each page, and bright, colorful illustrations on every page. This is a bit…
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Book Review(s?): The Rom-Commers and Hello, Stranger by Katherine Center
A colleague of mine recommended a book to me at the start of this school year, Hello, Stranger by Katherine Center. She said it was one of her favorites and that I should read it. So, in December, I did. And I liked it. It was about something I didn’t know anything about, face blindness,…
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Shielding our Differences
The summer before my first year of full-time teaching in middle school literature and English, I looked over the textbooks I would be using. As a second-career teacher with no formal education courses behind me, I had no idea how to plan a unit, but I knew how to read and analyze a piece of…
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Cross on Over to Nerdy Book Club!
After teaching The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, I wrote about the experience–and and the man behind it–for Nerdy Book Club. Please read it here and let me know your thoughts!
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Who’s Your Favorite?
These “top 10 of this” and “favorite 5 of that” lists are very popular these days. Someone is always posting a list of these types of things on Facebook: list your favorite book (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier), favorite song (“Your Song” by Elton John), favorite color (pink), favorite day of the week (Sunday), favorite…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 