I began the assignment by clicking on Resources for K-12 Teacher's Literature on the resources for Teachers web page. After browsing through a couple of sights, the Children's Literature Web Guide seemed to have a few useful links. Here I found Bantam Doubleday Dell Teacher's Center most helpful. I also browsed through the Children's Literature Association of Utah web site. It too had many useful links like the Newbery Medal Home Page, Caldecott Medal Home Page, Reading Corner, Book Lists of Children's Literature, 101 Out of this World books for Kids Ages 8 - 13, Amazon Books, and Powell's Books. Many of these sights listed the age level and a short synopsis of the book. Looking at the Do's and Don'ts site found on the first web page, I discovered Jim Trelease's Book Lists. It had many of the above sites plus more useful information. Finally, the Doucette Index - K-12 Literarture Based Teaching Index was very useful in finding out more information about a particular book.
I chose the books for my book list in a variety of ways. I started with authors that were familiar to my students and myself, like Beverly Cleary and E. B. White. Some books just caught my interest like It's All Greek To Me by Jon Scieszka since all my students are of Greek decent. Of course I wanted a few award winning books so my students could see examples of excellent story telling. After reading these books I plan to have the students discuss the reasons they think the book won the award and express their opinions on whether or not the book should have received the award. I also selected books by themes like "chocolate" or "adjusting to third grade." I choose a few books because their setting is one of the countries the third grade studies in social studies. Some books were selected because they are a part of a series. If they liked the first book, hopefully they will want to read more of the series! Since the children in my class have different reading abilities, I chose books on a second to fourth grade reading level.
