Nonfiction Monday/ Middle Grade Monday

Hughes, Susan. Case Closed? Nine Mysteries Unlocked by Modern Science.

Nonfiction Monday was started by Anastasia Suen, and the round up today is at Apple with Many Seeds. Middle Grade Monday is the brain child of Shannon Whitney Messenger.

This is the sort of book I try to hand students instead of the graphic novel of R.L. Stine stories. It has pictures, too, but has more to read and more opportunity to learn things. As the title states, this covers nine different historical mysteries, the most well-known being Anastasia and Hatheshepshut, which were solved so recently that the books I have that include them don't really close the cases! I also like the coverage of the polar explorer Sir John Franklin (watch those lead lined food cans!) and the story of Ubar-- an interesting use of space technology. Each case is laid out along the same lines-- the background, case opened, interesting side bars about additional information, and case closed, but also a sentence on whether there is more information that might be discovered. This is mainly illustrated, but some photographs are included as well. Since each case is relatively short, I am hoping that students will spend a little more time actually reading the book. (You can tell what my struggle was last week!)

This week is book fair and conferences, two weeks earlier than usual! I spend the weekend making peanut butter buckeyes to sell during the book fair-- it's become a sort of tradition, but takes a lot of time, so I got nothing read!