June in Review and Summer Reading

Have you entered my Reading Road Trip giveaway yet?

June was a fun month. BEA, of course (gah! Still owe you a recap!), and that weekend I took Best Girl to Disney for a spur of the moment weekend trip. I desperately needed to get away for a few days. Yes, my problems were still there when I got home, but for a few days I was able to step away.

Anyway, in June I read 12 books--not bad. I was able to knock 6 titles off of my 2012 Standalone Challenge, and 2 for the 2012 Sophomore Challenge. I also discovered my #2 favorite book of the year--Every Day by David Levithan (#1 is still See You at Harry's by Jo Knowles).

I also spent the bulk of June preparing for summer reading at my library. I was lucky enough to be able to single-handedly create the summer reading list for the 7th and 8th grade middle school in my district. !!! I'm not much of a bragger but I have to say the list looks pretty awesome. All told there's about 130 titles on the list--standalones, series, nonfiction, boy books, girl books, both books, books for kids reading on a 5th grade level up through 9th grade. I have had, so far, a 100% success rate of pairing books with teens.

Some of the titles I included, in case you were interested:
All of the Weenie books, and Dunk, by David Lubar
The Pull of Gravity by Gae Polisner
The Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner
Candy Bomber by Michael O. Tunnell *nonfiction
They Called Themselves the KKK by Susan Campbell Bartoletti *nonfiction
Al Capone Does My Shirts or Al Capone Shines my Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko
The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot

Those are only a few of the titles on the list. I spent a lot of time creating this list, and a lot of time making sure the Summer Reading cart has books on it, so it's absolutely amazing to have parents and teens give me such positive feedback. Makes my heart happy.

Enjoy your reading!
Christi