Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

From Goodreads,

"Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.

Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? 

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live."

Goodreads - Tuesdays With Morrie

Favorite quote from Tuesdays With Morrie,

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

When I was in high school I really found my love for reading.  I went to a small high school and was blessed to have one of the most amazing literature teachers ever.  She helped me become a better writer.  I still remember having red marks all over my paper because I needed to do a better job.  I took everything she taught me and I have carried that with me into life.  Once I got to college I was very thankful I had been in her class two years in a row, because it honestly helped me survive all the papers I had to write.  She also introduced me to books that I would never dream of picking up.  Books such as In Cold Blood, The Great Gatsby, and even Tuesdays with Morrie.  I still remember to this day how the book was taught to us.  We would do round table discussions where we would move our desks into a big circle.  Each student was assigned a chapter and we had to discuss the meaning with the class.  I still remember the chapter I had, and even what I discussed.  I first read this book in 2009 or 2010 and I loved every moment of it.  I was constantly encouraging my Mom to read this book, but she never took the time.  A few years later my niece was in her literature class when they read this book.  We talked about it and sure enough, she loved it too.  My mom was convinced she needed to read it sometime.  During the summer of 2017 my Dad was admitted to the hospital.  I told my Mom I would pack anything she needed or wanted and bring it to her.  She asked for some books and I ended up packing Tuesdays with Morrie.  I still remember sitting in the ER room with my parents.  My Dad was resting, while my Mom and I were sitting by the door.  The lights were off in the room and all we had was the light from the hallway.  I sat and read the book to her and I remember us whispering and discussing the book.  I left the book with her and a few short days later she had finished it.  I decided I would go ahead and reread the book because it was summer and I didn't have much else to do.  It had been a while since I read it and I figured it would be fun to reread a book I enjoyed so much when I was younger.  I am so glad that I read it because there was so much that I took away from this book now that I'm at a different place in life.

This book is about Morrie Schwartz who was a professor at Brandeis University.  There he taught many students including Mitch Albom.  They were great friends while Mitch was in college and they always got together on Tuesdays.  Once Mitch graduated he got busy with life as a sportswriter and he lost touch with Morrie.  But one night, Mitch saw Morrie on TV.  Morrie was being interviewed on Nightline, which is when Mitch found out that Morrie had ALS.  They reconnected and Morrie decided to teach one final class where Mitch was the only student.

My favorite thing about this book is that there is SOOOOO much life advice in it.  There is something for everyone.  Mitch and Morrie talk about life and death, love and marriage, money and emotions, family and aging.  There's something that everyone can relate to.  But the secret to this book is that it isn't a "preachy" book.  It doesn't tell you what to do to save money or how to handle emotions.  This book is conversations between two very real people.  One person is well experienced at life and knows the end is coming, while the other realizes that he has life ahead of him with plenty of time to make changes to how he is living his life.  When I finished this book I was definitely asking myself if I was truly living life the way that life should be lived.  We live in a world where we are constantly on our phones, and I'm very guilty of this.  We don't ever take time to enjoy the friends and family who are around us.  We don't take time to enjoy what is around us in nature.  This book made me realize the faults in my own life and it made me really try to strive to live life to the fullest extent, because you never know when your time is up.

My favorite quote from this book was, "The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and how to let it come in."  We live in such a hate filled world.  We don't show love to each other.  We are at a place in the world where school shootings are becoming a normal in life, and I take this personally because I'm a teacher.  When they are describing the shooter you typically hear the words "loner" or "depressed".  What if someone in this world had showed them a little bit of love and compassion?  What if they had let love in?  Would we still be in such a hate filled place?  I like to think that we would have a better understanding for each other and we would be more willing to help each other.  There have been times when I've had a bad day and I go through the drive thru and I get a little snotty.  Is it their fault I had a bad day?  What if they are also having an equally bad day?  Everyone has something going on in their life and we all need to be a little more understanding and compassionate.

A lot of Morrie's beliefs were to let love in and live life to the fullest.  I know I personally struggle with loving everyone all the time, because sometimes you have a bad day.  I know that I don't live life to the fullest.  There are times when I trudge through the week looking for the weekend.  I need to change my perspective, and thankfully this book has started putting that into motion.  I loved this book the first time I read it, and I loved it even more the second time.  I give this 5 out of 5 stars and recommend it to anyone and everyone!

Hidden: A True Story of the Holocaust by Fanya Gottesfeld Heller with Joshua M. Greene

From Goodreads,

"In 1942, Nazi soldiers marched into Fanya’s town. She had to hide to survive."

Goodreads - Hidden: A True Story of the Holocaust

When I was in junior high and high school I feel like all we focused on was the Holocaust.  Year after year we read about it and discussed and dissected it.  After a few years of studying the Holocaust we all knew what had happened and why.  For me though, I always took this topic differently because my grandmother is German and was just a young girl when Hitler was in control.  She wasn't taken to a concentration camp and she was in no way responsible for what happened, but nonetheless I still feel like I have the slightest connection to the Holocaust through her.  She rarely speaks of the war, which is understandable.  There have been a few things that she has told me, and those things will forever stick with me.  One of the things she has shared was that the girl who lived next door to her was there one day and gone the next.  She can only assume what happened to her and her family.  It's the smallest connections that make me pick up books like this, even though I know they are all going to be the same general story over and over.

This book is a work of nonfiction that is told by Fanya Gottesfeld Heller.  It tells of a young Jewish girl and her family who goes into hiding during World War II.  The family ends up having to rely on people to help keep them hidden as they move from place to place trying to stay alive.

I have read quite a few books about the Holocaust, and some of them have been works of nonfiction.  This book was by far one of my least favorites.  The entire book was just Fanya and her family living in cramped quarters and hopping from place to place praying they wouldn't be found.  As I was reading I was constantly waiting for something exciting to happen.  There was absolutely no depth to this book and honestly everything about it lacked details.  I felt like all the people in the book were one dimensional and not real people.  I just find it hard to believe that Fanya's mother, father, or brother didn't have any wishes, hopes, dreams, or thoughts for themselves.  We didn't really even get a good description of the traits of these characters before they went into hiding.  The people in this book were real people, and I find it heartbreaking that they weren't all a little more developed in the book.

One thing that I did enjoy about this book was that it included a chapter to tel where everyone ended up.  We didn't have to sit and wonder what happened to all of the people from the book, because thankfully that was included by Fanya.  She chose to include reconnections with some of the people such as Hania or what happened to her brother Arthur.  I think that was nice to finally give the characters some realness, but it was a little late in the book to think about doing that.

This book is definitely written for younger students, but unfortunately I don't feel that any of my students would enjoy this book.  I think they would find it bland and boring.  I personally give this book 1 star.  It lacked details and character depth.  I would place in my library, but would find it very difficult to recommend to a student.

The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill

From Goodreads,

"Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey. 

One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule--but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her--even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known.

The acclaimed author of The Witch’s Boy has created another epic coming-of-age fairy tale destined to become a modern classic."

Goodreads - The Girl Who Drank The Moon

Awards:

• Andre Norton Award Nominee for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy (2016)
• Newbery Medal (2017)
• Charlotte Huck Honor Book (2017)
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (2018)

Favorite quote from The Girl Who Drank The Moon: 

"Just because you don't see something doesn't mean it isn't there.  Some of the most wonderful things in the world are invisible.  Trusting in invisible things makes them more powerful and wondrous.  You'll see."

As a teacher I am constantly encouraging my students to read more books and to find something that interests them.  I love making suggestions to kids and pride myself in reading books on their level.  I've even had students make recommendations to me, which I typically listen to and then consider purchasing or reading the book.  About a year ago, a student suggested to her teacher that she should read The Girl Who Drank The Moon.  Unfortunately the teacher responded with, "Oh I don't read that much.  You should tell her, she reads all the time."  The student looked disappointed with her teacher, but eagerly came to me and shared why I should read the book.  While it didn't seem like a book I would read I went ahead and purchased it through Scholastic.  I told the student and she was so excited that I took her recommendation and bought the book.  I took the book home with high hopes of reading it soon.  Fast forward a year later and I finally got around to reading it.  My boyfriend and I decided to take on the challenge of reading all the books on the Newbery Award list.  We wanted to start with the first book that received the Newbery Award, but couldn't find it in stores.  So we decided to start with the last awarded book which was The Girl Who Drank The Moon.  He actually started reading before I did, but shockingly I finished the book weeks before him.  (He still hasn't finished the book.)  It took me six short days to read this book and I loved every minute of it. 

This book starts with the village leaving a baby in the woods as an offering to the witch.  There are myths and legends around the witch and what she does with the children, but what they don't known is that the witch Xan isn't horrible at all.  She doesn't quite understand why they keep leaving babies in the forest, but she always rescues them and takes care of them as she walks them to the town on the other side of the forest.  She feeds these children starlight as they make the walk to their new home.  But one night she reaches up to the sky and accidentally feeds the baby moonlight.  This moonlight is much more powerful than starlight and the child is filled with a magic that cannot be contained.  Xan makes the decision to keep the child as her own, but the decision sets them on journey greater than they ever imagined.

My boyfriend started this book before I did and naturally he stayed ahead of me in the book for a few days.  We talked about the book until I passed him.  Once I passed him he asked me not to talk to him about it since he wasn't reading it.  He felt that the book was very slow at the beginning and that he was trying to figure out where the book was headed.  I do have to agree that the book started out slow, but once I finished it I realized that it was slowly laying the backstory for everything to come.  I ended up binging the book just a few short days after I started it.  I think a lot of my desire to finish the book quickly was because of two reasons.  One was that there were many characters and I wanted to figure out how they all fit together, and two the book progressed over a long period of time.  Since there were so many characters I was constantly trying to figure out how they all fit together and what their role was in this story.  I changed my mind on who the antagonist was at least three different times, and I honestly think a lot of that has to do with the slow progression of time.  Unlike most books that progress over weeks or months, this book progresses over years.  I was excited to see how all of the characters were going to age and mature, and what path they would go down.  The many characters and the book progressing over a long period of time really added a sense of excitement and mystery as I tried to figure everything out before I reached the end of the book.

As I said above, there were lots of characters in this book.  And while it was fun to figure out how they all fit together, it was difficult to figure out who each chapter was focusing on.  This book is not told by one main character.  Instead, each chapter is told by a different character in the book, which is nice because it gives different views, but is also a pain to keep up with everyone.  At the beginning it was easy to keep up with the characters who the chapter was focused on.  But as the book progressed more and more characters were focused on in the chapters.  There were a few times when I was wondering why we were even following the actions of a certain character because up until that point they had been just a secondary character in the book.  I found it confusing because we had so many different characters who we were following from chapter to chapter.  It didn't help any that there was no pattern to the chapters.  They honestly just bounced from character to character to character.  I think it would have been easier to keep up with if the chapters had been somehow labeled with who was telling each chapter.  

Overall, I understand why it was selected as the 2017 Newbery winner.  It is a book that has lots of depth and imagination.  This is a perfect book for some of the student's I have.  I give this book 5 out of 5 stars even though I struggled with the chapters.  Hopefully my boyfriend will get the book finished so we can finally talk about it.