I just finished reading The One and Only Ivan, if you are looking for a book to read that has recently won the Newberry Award Medal, I recommend this one.  SO good!!!
Check out this link!
http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/books/One-Only-Ivan/

Late for School by Steve Martin

So I just got done reading Late for School, by Steve Martin.  It even came with a CD of him playing a banjo with his band and singing the words to this book.  SO funny!  It is about a little boy who is running late for school.  I highly recommend!
Check out this hilarious video.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=chr-greentree_ie&ei=utf-8&ilc=12&type=519169&p=late+for+school+by+steve+martina+nd+song

Link to book with free preview.
http://www.amazon.com/Late-School-Steve-Martin/dp/0446557021

Chapter 12 - The New Litericies: The World Of Online Childrens Literature

We live in a digital age! This chapter focused on the many ways we can incorporate technology into our classrooms.  Although I hate technology and I am not totally comfortable with it.  It is important for me to learn how to "blog" and create webpages and web quests, and virtual field trips.  The first reason is, Our students are comfortable with these things and if we do not incorporate them into our lessons, we are not preparing our students for their future education.  I have created a web quest and two virtual field trips.  They are not what I expected them to be. Like the teacher said in the how to blogging video, there is a lot of information on the internet.  We don't just want to hand them a computer and let them roam.  We want to give them a list of topics to research and websites to visit.  We want to give them objectives and them assess them.  So technology can be a useful tool or a disastrous mess if we are not careful when using it.
Also when using technology like digital texts, it can be very beneficial.  For example, last semester, I rented an e-textbook.  I forgot my bag one day and all I needed was to log onto any computer and pull up my book.  Plus as our book explains, you can increase the font size. and some have the capabilities to linked to pages that pertain to our reading or questions relating to the text.  One amazing resource that our book recommends is the International Children's Digital Library.  This library has a plethora of books that relate to different cultures, religions, and differences, and they are already categorized!  The last thing that I learned about that I would love to use with my future class, is a Virtual Author Visit.  I met Lois Lowry when I was in grade school and she signed my book "Number the Stars", I remember it being such an inspiration to me.  Here in Southwest Florida we are lucky because we have the reading festival that brings authors from all over, but many of our students are not able to attend.  It is important that we can still expose them to authors that they have read from so that they are able to ask questions and have a meaningful experience.

Chapter 11 Diverse Perspectives in Childrens Literature

This chapter reinforced a lot of great ideas that we have witnessed first hand in our classroom observations or learned in RED.  Books are a great way to discuss difficult or sensitive topics without making any one student feel isolated and singled out. For younger children you could do a read aloud of the book "A Bad Case of Stripes" by David Shannon and for older kids, like 5th grade you could use "The Moorchild" by Eloise McGraw to discuss individuality and acceptance.  When we face situations where we have a new student from another country it would benefit our classroom environment to display and discuss a few books relating to that country to educate our students about some cultural differences. I experienced this first hand in my world religions class.  There was a young girl who was Muslim and when we started reading excerpts from the Qur'an and discussing the Islam religion,  I was able to see past the differences in our beliefs and recognize the similarities.  It did not convert me, but educating myself on her religion helped me understand the symbolism and importance of a Hijab which I did not previously know.  It was through this experience that I decided that I wanted my future students to feel comfortable enough in their classroom to ask questions and get answers about anything that they were not familiar with in their culture. I do not think that I can use a Qur'an, but our book has a blurb about a book called, "Mosque" by David Macaulay and I am sure there are many more.