This year I have challenged my students to  do the 40 Book Challenge. Now I got this idea from Donalyn Miller's book The Book Whisperer. I highly recommend this book to any teacher that is trying to get their students to read and get excited about reading. This is my first year trying it so I already have things I want to change for next year, but overall I think it is going well. I have read quite a few books so far that I want to discuss.

The first book i read was Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. I thought this book was amazing. I liked how ti was set up and how the story was told. The way the story built was steady and effectively done. I would highly recommend this book for middle school students. The book does deal with some very delicate and important issues and i would advise you to read the book before suggesting it to people, but it brings up some good points and important discussion points.

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulson was another good read. it is a very quick read and would be a good book to help struggling readers in middle school get started. It is a very cute book and did not take long to read at all.

I was surprised at how much I liked Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I thought it was an interesting book about a futuristic world. It is usually not my type of book but it was pretty entertaining.