Buddy Reading- MS/ES

We celebrated Picture Book Month in the MS/HS Library by inviting our ES friends up to read with us.  Buddy reading is our most requested library activity (by both MS and ES students!)  Fun times were had by all.

Finding Bangladesh- Adnan M.S. Fakir

One of our Bangla teachers shared this TED Talk by Adnan Fakir with me titled Finding Bangladesh.  It's an interesting talk about how legends/lore from Bangladesh originated.  The first 2 minutes of the talk is the teaser from the movie that has been made: Finding Bangladesh 2: Tales of the South.
Learn something new about our host country!

Warcross by Marie Lu

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty-hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. To make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.

Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.

In this sci-fi thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu conjures an immersive, exhilarating world where choosing who to trust may be the biggest gamble of all.

Why you should read this book:

• If you are a gamer, you will find this book very interesting.
• It's on the YALSA Teen Top Ten List for this year- teens voted for Warcross to be on this list.
• Even though it is Sci-Fi/Dystopian, it seems like it could be a realistic future as gaming and virtual reality evolve.
• Warcross is the first of a two book series.  I am looking forward to reading the next one, Wildcard.  I hope it ends how I want it to. (No spoilers please! 😀)
• For me (not being a gamer) it was a slow start, but Warcross really hooked me in after a few chapter. Stick with it and you'll love it.

Find Warcross in our library at: SCI-FI F LU

Unbound: Celebrating Women's Voices

Our juniors, seniors, and teachers were graciously invited to an author event, Unbound: Celebrating Women's Voices, at the Indian High Commission, in collaboration with the Dhaka Lit Fest.  Some of our students kicked off the evening by reading poetry.  Of course, they were awesome! 
Thank you to the Indian High Commission for a lovely evening and to Ms. Jahan for organizing the trip.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

A Newbery Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award
An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017
A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017
A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Why you should read this book:

• This book is out of my "comfort zone."  I normally am not drawn to books in verse. Push yourself out of your comfort zone
• It's on the YALSA Teen Top Ten List for this year.
• I wonder what this life would be like?
• A quote that stuck with me:

but if the blood

inside you is  on the inside

of someone else,

you never want to 

see it on the outside of 

them.

Find Long Way Down in our library at: REALISTIC F REY

Mitali Perkins Visit

Grades 4-8 attended a wonderful presentation with Mitali Perkins this morning.  We are thankful to the PTA for sponsoring a visit to the school.  Her presentation entitled Stories on the Fire Escape  was about growing up and writing "between cultures" and the power of stories to keep us balanced.  It was very relevant for our diverse student population.  Thank you Ms. Perkins for taking the time to visit us!
If you missed seeing Mitali Perkins today or want to learn more, see her again tomorrow at the Dhaka Lit Fest!

Being in Grade 7 was hard!

The first books...11 years apart!

Rickshaw Girl is becoming a movie and was published in Bangla today!

Thank you PTA for sponsoring the visit!

Dhaka Lit Fest

Don't forget to attend the Dhaka Lit Fest this weekend.  It is always a fun event and there is much to do for all ages.
You can see another presentation with our visiting author, Mitali Perkins, who will be speaking there after visiting us.  Also, our own Ms. Jahan will be interviewing some of the authors attending the Lit Fest.
It's free to attend but you must register ahead of time. Register and find the program at the link below.

https://www.dhakalitfest.com/index.html