Episode 3 – The Joys of Summer Reading



In this episode, Lori Johnson interviews her daughter, LCA alumna Alexandra Johnson who is a senior at Calvin College studying to be a secondary English teacher. Alex is a serious reader and a podcast fanatic. By the time this episode airs, she will have read over one hundred books this summer, along with working full-time as a camp counselor to five and six-year-olds at Meadow Breeze Day Camp and consolidating her research for her honors thesis on the topic of freshman writing genre study and the use of college writing centers.

Alex and I will be sharing some of our favorite young adult and middle-grade books that we read this summer in hopes that you may read them too and share the list with your students. Summer is a great time to catch up on the new books that have been published during the school year when it is difficult to read them while keeping up with lesson planning and grading. We hope you enjoy the episode!

Topics:

  • 01:02 – How to discover good books that you may want to read
  • 01:58 – Favorite fantasy genre books of the summer
  • 04:50 – Realistic fiction for middle grades
  • 10:00 – Global Read Aloud
  • 12:50 – African American Literature

Resources Referenced in the Podcast:

  • GoodReads: www.goodreads.com
  • Moonglow by Michael Chabon
  • Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
  • The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
  • Posted and Ms. Bixby’s Last Day by John David Anderson
  • Gary Schmidt (author of Okay For Now, Wednesday Wars, etc.)
  • Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder
  • Refugee by Alan Gratz
  • Global Read Aloud: https://theglobalreadaloud.com/
  • Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
  • All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
  • The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds
  • Track series: Ghost, Patina, Sunny, Lu by Jason Reynolds
  • Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson
  • I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
  • Picture us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert
  • Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
  • Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe