Athens Community of Readers

 This week all rising CMS 6th, 7th and 8th graders should come by Clarke Middle School's Baxter Street Entrance between 11-6 on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday 8/26/2020-8/28/2020 to pick up their Scholar Distance Learning Bags, which will include school supplies plus your math textbook.   If your student has a working device from elementary school or from another middle school in the district then just keep this device and use it for this school year at CMS! If your student has a device that is not working or if your student does not have a device at all, please see below: During the CMS Scholar Bag Pickup Mrs. Hinger will be providing device support for students without a device or for students who have a broken or a malfunctioning device. In order to receive assistance on this day we need you to fill out this form as a reservation, so we can prepare a device for pickup that day. Once you pick up your bag, please proceed forward to the assigned area for student device h...

For this week's live booktalk on Google Meet, I talked about Birdie and Me .  This is a new book by a brand new author.  It's a middle grades book, which I've been reading a lot of lately for some reason.  I've found that middle grade authors have really stepped it up a notch to include characters and topics that could interest the YA and adult crowd, which I really love.  Birdie and Me is told from the point of view of the main character Jack.  Jack is the big sister to her gender creative brother Birdie.  The story begins with the two siblings waiting to be picked up on "moving day", which happens to be their second one in less than a year.  The two siblings lost their mother less than a year earlier and are currently being cared for by one of their two much older uncles.  This book is full of unique characters and is all about understanding and accepting one another as well as coming to terms with loss and grief.  I highly recommend...

I love, love, love the ELA teachers I work with at Clarke Middle School.  I was super lucky to have Ms. Frederking send me her booktalk, and now Ms. Sherman has sent me one on the book she just finished up reading.  If you have not read it yet, get a copy of On the Come Up   by Angie Thomas and read it now.  I enjoyed this book as much as Ms. Sherman did.  Angie Thomas announced her new book will be coming out next year and it's a prequel to The Hate U Give, so get pumped up to read more Angie Thomas soon.  Watch the video below to hear Ms. Sherman talk about this book.

One of my favorite things about working as the School Library Media Specialist at Clarke Middle for so many years is that I get to know families.  Over the years I have had lots of parents and grandparents of my students volunteer with me for several years in a row as all of their brood matriculates through CMS. One of my favorite grandma volunteers has stayed two year past her last grandchild being at CMS (this is the third grandchild at CMS, so she's been with me for a LONG time), and I am lucky enough to call her my friend.  It doesn't hurt that not only does Ms. Hester Meyers straighten books in the library for us she also is a former librarian and she is always bringing in book suggestions for me.  Since we've been out of school for the COVID-19 virus I've really missed her, so it was super awesome to get an email from her this week with, what else, but a book recommendation.  With her permission, I've published what she wrote to me in the email below....

This week in my live session I book talked Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed.   This was a book I'd had in my to read stack for a really long time so I was super excited to finish it up last week and got a chance to talk with some of our CMS Owls in Google meet during my Tuesday live session.  This book was set in modern day Pakistan and Amal and her family are farmers in a small village.  Amal is lucky enough to go to school unlike many of the other girls in her village as educating females in Pakistan is not a priority.  Her family does own the land they farm, but they are, by no means, wealthy.  She has several siblings and due to poor crop production for several years, her father is very much in debt to the wealthy family that basically owns the whole village and all the area around them.  Amal's mother has had another child and she is now expected to stay home and help out for several months from school and she is frustrated about this when she encou...

Today I had the opportunity to do a live booktalk with my students on this sweet new book that is set to be published in a few weeks.  Avid Bookshop was kind enough to lend me an advanced reader copy.  I just love the way this book, like George before it, has universal themes that any middle schooler can relate to yet very specific as well that might be just the right mirror that some students really need when they may be feeling all alone. I just finish the book Rick by Alex Gino, the author of the book George. This book comes out on April 21st, but I got an early copy of it from Avid Bookshop. It's a very quick read and it has some of the same characters in it that are from the book George. Just like the book George before it, Rick, has some universal concepts that are important to middle school age students. The idea of how it's OK to not have a clear concept of what your identity is at that age as well as the idea it's ok to change and seek acceptance and un...

My daughter Kate read one on the ARCs I received from Follett and did a review for me.  She really enjoyed the book When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed.  The book is due to be released April 14th.  Read her review below: “When Stars Are Scattered” Authors: Victoria Jamieson & Omar Mohamed By: Kathryn Hinger “When Stars Are Scattered” is a wonderful graphic novel about friendship, hardship and love. It is a beautiful reenactment of the day to day life of Omar Mohamed from his journey in school and education to his brother, Hassan’s, story. I would recommend this book from 3rd grade and up. I Believe it has everything a good book needs to win a Newberry Honor just like “Roller Girl”which was written by the same author. Omar the main character and his younger brother, Hassan, have lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for most of their lives. The life of a refugee is hard and bleak due to the fact there is little food, it’s extrem...

One of my FAVORITE authors Kwame Alexander is reading from his book Crossover on Monday morning!  Please go and watch it with me on Instagram.  Please check out his Tweet below and go watch it on his Instagram at the link below! And  the link to his instagram  where he'll be doing the read aloud.

Ms. Frederking, one of our awesome 8th grade English teachers, sent me her booktalk on this touching book by Jennifer Longo, What I Carry . It's a YA realistic fiction novel, which is right up my alley. Please watch her booktalk, and then you'll probably be like me and want to go read the book! Mrs. Frederking is looking for book recommendations for her next read, so make sure you comment below here with suggestions for her next book!

Today I added a new resource to our Media Center eBooks Page.  It's called Capstone Interactive.  Consider viewing this screencast on accessing these interesting books.  One of the most interesting ones I found today were part of the 10 minute series in which they instruct you in how to make 10 Minute Art Project, 10 Minute Duct Tape Projects and the like. Hope you enjoy this new resource for eBooks! Go to bit.ly/cmsmediacenter Click on eBooks to Read From Home (link in the middle of the page and at top navigation) Login ID: continue Password: reading

Good Morning Owls!   Below is the screencast I made this morning on ways to access eBooks on the CMS Media Center Website.  Please watch the video and then go to bit.ly/cmsmediacenter to use these tools!

Thanks to First Books our students have access to FREE eBooks using the Open eBooks App.  I had my younger daughter, Kate, a 5th grader from Timothy Road, test it out today for you guys.  Here's the step by step process and a little info from Kate about what she read today using the app. 1.  Email Mrs. Hinger at hingers@clarke.k12.ga.us and get a login ID and password 2.  Download the app Open eBooks 3.  Login using First Books, use barcode and pin from Mrs. Hinger after you've emailed her 4.  Browse all the great books. x 5.  Open and read any book you would like, you may download up to 10 books. Kate was very excited to learn that Open eBooks has many books from a series she has been reading in book format over the last year or two.  This is a series of non-fiction graphic novels called  Science Comics.  She read  Robots and Drones: Past, Present, and Future today and really enjoyed it...

Hello everyone! This is the first post of many, I hope, in which we can begin to share a conversation about the books we are reading.  I had an idea about starting a blog for our students back a couple of months ago and the current distanced learning situation just made my spark of an idea seem like a fire.  And so it begins... I would love for students (CMS and from other schools around the community), parents, community members and teachers to send me book reviews (written or video), pictures of themselves reading etc. to share within our community and beyond. I will focus most of my reviews on books available online since we don't currently have access to our libraries, but feel free to share about books you have at home or books you've ordered online (  Avid Bookshop can ship to your home and they are offering some scheduled pickup at their store) or found at the Little Free Libraries around town (I'm driving around and placing books in those every few days so i...