Day 3 of Summer Goal: Power Forward: Zayd Saleem, Chasing the Dream

The Vlog Transcript

Slide 1: Hi! My name is Kate Narita. Today is day three of my summer 2019 #bookaday challenge. Today I'm going to talk to you about a book called Power Forward by Hena Khan. Before I get to the book I want to tell you how I came to have a copy of the book in my hands.

Slide 2: In Madison, Wisconsin there's this amazing place called the Cooperative Children's Book Center. It's throught the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education. If you go there you can get free advanced reader copies (arcs) for your classroom. If you teach in an upper elementary classroom, third through sixth grade, you definitely want to go check this place out. The books are totally free, and they're new releases. Last year I went there. It was the summer of 2018, and I was able to get twenty-five free books. I could have taken more but I only had so much space in my bags. I was able to give each one of my students a free book when the school year started. If you live in Wisconsin or the Chicago suburb area, I highly recommend taking a trip to CCBC. If you don't teach and you write, I still recommend taking a trip there because they have all the new releases in picture books and novels. If you're looking to find out what's selling, there's no better place to go. Anyway, I was cleaning out my cabinets and came across the book Power Forward.

Slide 3: None of my students had chosen to take it home last year, and I hadn't catalogued it or put it into my library. I read the blurb on the back, and I was immediately intrigued. It's about a boy who dreams of being a basketball star but has to take violin lessons. The violin lessons are before school which prohibits him from practicing basketball with his friends before school. That's where the plot thickens. I thought, huh, I'm definitley interested in this book. Basketball is my favorite sport, and my older son started playing the violin when he was four-years-old. Let's see what this book has to offer.

Slide 4: The other reason why I was intrigued by this book is because I read one of Hena Khan's previous books, Amina's Voice, I wanted to see if Power Forward was as good as Amina's Voice because I had really enjoyed Amina's story.

Slide 5: Power Forward will appeal to readers in your classroom if they like books about sports with spare text and if they like books about family. As I said earlier, the plot centers around the main character's ability to play basketball. Also, the text is really spare, it's only about 123 pages (138 actually). There's a lot of white space between the lines and the font is large. This is a great book for reluctant readers who are off put by a thick novel. They'll feel really good about reading this book. It's fun and doesn't talk down to readers. I highly recommend this book for struggling readers. Lastly, this book will appeal to students who like to read about the complexities of families. This is a close, tight-knit family and there are expectations. It does a great job of showing how communication between family members is necessary so that everyone's needs are met.

Slide 6: I would like to say that not everyone puts their instrument aside for sports. As I mentioned earlier, my older son started playing the violin when he was four-years-old. He continued on for fourteen years. He switched over to the viola, and he just had his senior recital. I've included the links here in case you enjoy listening to high quality classical music.