So Many Books, Not Enough Time
Feedback requested as we finalize our 2025 book list!
Happy Sunday everyone,
Hope all of you are having a wonderful break. I’m working on a longer newsletter that outlines my game plan for 2025 (January-June), but the focus of this update is simple — BOOKS! Let’s get right to it.
Finalizing our 2024-25 Project LIT Book Club Selections: In short, we’d love for you to help us narrow our list of 130 outstanding titles to a more manageable number before we “reveal” our official list in the new year. Thanks to everyone who has contributed thus far — it is greatly appreciated. The plan is to add 25 Middle Grade (MG) and 25 Young Adult (YA) titles to our existing collection; shout out to Danielle for updating this spreadsheet. A quick warning: this process is not going to be easy! It could also be costly, so be sure to order from your public library instead of adding all of these beautiful books to your cart :)
Here’s how you can get involved right now:
Review our Middle Grade (MG) slideshow and our Young Adult (YA) slideshow — and be sure to share these slideshows with students as we continue to add titles to our 2025 TBR lists!
Share and discuss with students, and then, when you’re ready, VOTE HERE by January 10! This round of voting will help us determine the “locks” (books that will definitely end up on our official list), and then we’ll follow up with one final ballot.
Here’s a 2025 Reading Challenge I just created for students and staff in our school. I’m going to encourage all of my eighth-graders to check off at least 3 or 4 by June (with an extra special prize for everyone who completes all nine). Feel free to tweak and modify for your crew!
The 10 Best Books I Read in 2024 (in no particular order): There’s Always This Year; Hello Beautiful; Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; Rez Ball; Tom Lake; Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention; Wellness; Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball; A Rover’s Story; and Poetry Comics.
Mid-Year Survey: Please take a few minutes to complete this survey — thanks to everyone who has done so already. As I mentioned last week, I am incredibly grateful for this community, and I cannot wait to collaborate with many of y’all on some exciting projects, whether it’s finalizing our book lists, organizing our AoWs, developing a bank of WRAP prompts, curating a poetry collection, or planning our next Project LIT Summit. So yes, please take this survey!
In the aforementioned survey, I asked: What was the best book (picture book, MG, YA, professional, etc.) you read in 2024? Here are your responses!
MG= And Then...Boom! and Louder Than Hunger; Professional= your book!; PB= my boys would say The Spider in the Well
Just Read It!! (Obviously), The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Twenty Four Seconds From Now by Jason Reynolds, The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, As Long As Lemon trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh, Any short fiction by Claire Keegan, especially Small Things Like There, and Accountable by Dashka Slater, Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
Gone Like Yesterday, Heaven Breaker
Best picture book: Knight Owl; Best Nonfiction: There's Always This Year; Best MG/YA: A Work in Progress; Best fiction: Demon Copperhead
Professional - Just Read It; MG - And Then, Boom!, The Labors of Hercules Beal, The First State of Being, Kareem Between, Something Like Home, The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, We Are Big Time, Shark Teeth, Deer Run Home. YA - The Color of a Lie, The Sunbearer Trials, Stealing Little Moon.
The Hate You Give; A Wish in the Dark
The Anxious Generation; Stolen Focus; Digital Minimalism
Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh
All My Rage
Lunar New Year Love Story, The Bletchley Riddle, The Passport Project, Louder Than Hunger, Just Read It!
Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
Demon Copperhead
Here One Moment -L Moriarty, What Alice Forgot- L Moriarty, Monday's Not Coming-T Jackson (YA), The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry-J Comer, None of This is True-L Jewell, The Women-K Hannah, Go as a River-S Read, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow,
The Last Cuentista
Adult: Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune YA: Snowglobe Middle Grade: The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman & the City Spies series!
The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon
UPDATES & REMINDERS
I somehow missed this SLJ review of Just Read It (published on May 1). Their verdict? “A must-purchase for professional collections. English instructors, school librarians, and others focused on promoting literacy through independent reading in middle and high schools will find valuable resources to use throughout the school year.”
You can order JUST READ IT on Amazon or here (use the code HOLIDAY25 for 25% + free shipping). Corwin has also shared an excerpt from the book; check out Chapter 1 here. Thanks again to everyone who has purchased a copy, spread the word in your school/district, facilitated a book study, shouted out Just Read It on social media, shared a Goodreads review, or sent me a kind message or email. It means more than you know.
I recently recorded a webinar that outlines my Read & WRAP framework and general approach to the ELA block. You can check it on Corwin’s YouTube channel here. (I’m excited to collaborate with many of y’all to develop a Read and WRAP sequence, among other things. Stay tuned for that invite!)
I was honored to join Natalie Daily, Stephanie Wilson, and Amy Hermon, the incredible host of the School Librarians United podcast. You can listen to our conversation here.
If your school, district, or organization is planning a JUST READ IT book study or would like for me to deliver a keynote address and/or lead a PD session/workshop in 2025 or 2026, please reach out. I love connecting with fellow educators and supporting/strengthening your team’s literacy efforts.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete both surveys — our Project LIT ballot and mid-year planning form. This work is impossible to sustain alone, which is why I am so appreciative of our mighty community. Wishing you, your students, and your families a healthy, happy new year.
Jarred