Today was all about books. Breaking Dawn was released last night at midnight and we bought a copy this morning before noon. Borders had one after our first stop at Barnes & Noble. Emily read as we drove to the Oak Park Library book sale. We were on a mission to help build my niece’s classroom library. As a newly minted LBS1 working with 8th graders, she is looking for high interest books for students who have historically experienced reading difficulty or who have yet to find a book that makes it worth the hard work to decode. So, we book picked for her as she and my sister drove Grandma home (to South Dakota). I think I got the better duty. We found some good ones, and I’ve dropped them off at her house already, but I can remember:

Tangerine by Edward Bloor

Running Loose by Chris Crutcher

The EarthSea trilogy

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Two great Susan Cooper books

Some classics (Secret Garden, Wizard of Oz) tucked in next to Iva Ibbotson and Donna Jo Napoli.

So, if I could start from scratch, if someone would give me unlimited funds, what would I buy?

The Alex Ryder books, Artemis Fowl, the Lightning Thief and sequels, Heir Apparent, books by John Greene, Cory Doctrow’s Little Brother, the Georgia Nicholson series, Gary Paulsen’s My Life in Dog Years and Harris and Me, all the Harry Potter books, McHale’s Bobby Pendragon books, the Twilight saga, The Dark Is Rising sequence. I’ll have to think about this and add more as they come to me

I should have Breaking Dawn in my hands by tomorrow. My daughter’s a fast reader.