Books, books, books!

Next year looks to be quite the roller coaster ride.

I'll be teaching 7th grade ELA, 8th grade ELA, a journalism and yearbook class, and a reading class with a focus in American literature. Yesterday, the other two ELA teachers and I sat down to order books, and I had only just learned that 1) I would be teaching American lit. and 2) we could spend $5,000 on new books! Talk about being happily overwhelmed!

So far, I plan to order class sets of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie, knowing that my class will consist of some of the best readers in the school. Now I need to figure out what else, what else, what else...how do I narrow the many wonderful choices into three or four classroom sets of books, and how do I create a classroom library that represents the gems of multicultural and classic American literature?

This is a moment of geek love! I am revelling in this anticipation of introducing new words, new thoughts, and new ideas to young readers. If anyone has any suggestions, especially less obvious choices, let me know. I'm going to try to connect some of my reading choices to their history classes: World War I through the War on Terror.