I was a Mystery Reader for a 2nd Grade Class Today !

One of the things I love the most is reading to groups of kids.  I was soooooo bummed out last month because my Mystery Reader stint was cancelled due to a massive blizzard that resulted in schools being closed for a week.  Urgh! 

But today I got another chance and it was fun!  I had a terrible time picking out a book to read. Last night I had, like, a couple dozen books all spread out around me that I read through trying to pick just one.  Eek!  Decisions, decisions ...

Due to a near terminal inability to make up my mind, I ended up carrying three books with me to the school:  

Redwoods by Jason Chin,  

If An Armadillo Went to a Restaurant by Ellen Fischer and illustrated by Laura Wood, and  

Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts.


I had the kids in the class vote for either Redwoods or Rosie. There was a bit more interest in Rosie Revere, so I read that book first - to a very enthusiastic audience. The helium pants in particular were the source of much amusement. We also decided that cheese-power might not be the way to go for serious inventions.

Afterwords we had a nice discussion about Rosie the Riveter and the idea of an iconic image. 


And bonus!  The kids were all still having lots of fun with me so the teacher let me read another book! (Which mean that I ran overtime - oops!  Sorry.)

I got a chance to try out If An Armadillo Went to a Restaurant with an audience finally. As I suspected, the kids thought it was pretty funny.  And they were great - shouting out the large print "No Way!" responses to the silly dining suggestions. My one quibble with the author is that "Improbable" and "Highly Debatable" were too tough for my second grade audience.  If these were simpler for the kids to read and shout out, that would have been much more fun.

All in all, it was a lovely time. I didn't even mind leaving the school to find that there was a localized blizzard - well not too much.