In the summer of 2014, I retired from a 35 year career as an elementary school teacher. My first two years, I taught Prefirst and First grades. My last 33 years, I served as a Special Educator teaching students in several different grades.
One of my greatest pleasures as a teacher was the opportunity to read picture books to my students. I found that students of all ages and various developmental levels could benefit from their experiences with picture books.
One of my goals in retirement is to write picture books. This past year, I have been spending a lot of time reading recently published picture books, researching good mentor texts.
This year, in the month of March, I participated for the first time in ReFoREMo, The Reading for Research Month Challenge. This challenge was started in 2015 by Carrie Charley Brown “to help picture book writers reform writing by reading and researching mentor texts.” Check out reforemo.com to learn more about Carrie and the other contributors to this blog.
During March, I read over 100 picture books and gained valuable information from the blog posts and author comments.
The treasure I am sharing is that by going to this site you may still check out the reading list of the books I read in March. Have fun this summer immersing yourself in these books. Discover new books to share with your students and children.
I’d love to hear from you about your favorite picture books and memories about times you’ve shared these books. It will be fun to add to our treasure chest of great mentor texts.