Well friends, these are very strange times for us, that's for sure. However, this is an amazing opportunity to spend quality time with our families as well as knock out that growing to-do list your parents/spouses have for you, to learn new things (I am most definitely doing that), and, my favorite, READ lots of books.
If you have a favorite author, illustrator, or manga creator, many of these people are positing so much online for us to benefit from. Art lessons, readings of their books, things they are doing to keep their families active and engaged. What many people are doing for the online community (which is pretty much ALL of us now) and ways people are making a positive impact in this anxious time is absolutely amazing and makes my heart burst with gratitude and joy!
If your public library card has expired, many libraries are offering to reactivate those cards for a month or so. Take advantage of the free audio books, ebooks, and online comics. I prefer reading an actual book that I can hold in my hands (and smell) but in a pinch, I will absolutely read on a device.
I look forward to finding out what everyone has been reading during this social distancing phase.
Happy reading!
What I'm reading now (or just finished):
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
From Goodreads: Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place-he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their timely ghostly teachings-like the ability to Fade. Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead? And then there are things like ghouls that aren't really one thing or the other.
Making Bombs for Hitler by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
I am trying to read all of her middle grade books now because she is coming to our school in the fall. This is the second one I have read so far.
From Goodreads: Lida thought she was safe. Her neighbors wearing the yellow star were all taken away, but Lida is not Jewish. She will be fine, won't she? But she cannot escape the horrors of World War II. Lida's parents are ripped away from her and she is separated from her beloved sister, Larissa. The Nazis take Lida to a brutal work camp, where she and other Ukrainian children are forced into backbreaking labor. Starving and terrified, Lida bonds with her fellow prisoners, but none of them know if they'll live to see tomorrow. When Lida and her friends are assigned to make bombs for the German army, Lida cannot stand the thought of helping the enemy. Then she has an idea. What if she sabotaged the bombs... and the Nazis? Can she do so without getting caught? And if she's freed, will she ever find her sister again?