Time is ticking and the kick off to the 2021 Global Read Aloud is nearing.  I am so excited to once again be reading aloud with other educators around the world. If you have not pre-read the books you are doing with your kids, I would highly recommend you do so to make sure they are the right fit for your community. I hope this collection of information is helpful!

For a comprehensive FAQ post, go here

The dates are October 4th – November 12th, 2021 –   you can fall behind, just don’t read ahead.

SO WHO IS THIS YEAR’S PICTURE BOOK STUDY….

This year’s chosen creator is Duncan Tonatiuh!

Duncan was born in Mexico City and grew up in San Miguel de Allende. He graduated from Parsons The New School for Design and from Eugene Lang College in New York City in 2008. His work is inspired by Ancient Mexican art, particularly that of the Mixtec codex. His aim is to create images that honor the past, but that address contemporary issues that affect people of Mexican origin on both sides of the border. His book Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale is the winner of the 2014 Tomás Rivera Mexican American children’s book award. It is also the first book to receive two honorable mentions, one for the illustrations and one for the text, from the Pura Belpré Award for a work that best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in children’s books. The book was featured in USA Today, The Chicago Sun, The Houston Chronicle among other major publications because it deals with the controversial topic of immigration. His book Diego Rivera: His World and Ours won the 2012 Pura Belpré illustration award. It also won the 2012 Tomás Rivera. His first book Dear Primo: A Letter to My Cousin received an honorable mention from the Pura Belpré Award in 2011. It was named an Americas Award Commended Title and a Notable Book for a Global Society list.

WEEK 1:

WEEK 2:

WEEK 3:

WEEK 4:

WEEK 5:

WEEK 6:

YOUR CHOICE

I am so excited to dive into the fantastic world of Duncan Tonatiuh, there is just so much to uncover. Because Duncan has so many incredible books to choose from, you can also feel free to substitute other of his books in for the ones chosen above, some of his picture books are geared a little older so feel free to make the selections work for you. Please consider following Duncan’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores. If your school requires you to use Amazon to order the books, please consider using this link to place your order and support the GRA.

SO WHAT IS THIS YEAR’S EARLY READER BOOK….

When Jaxon is sent to spend the day with a mean old lady his mother calls Ma, he finds out she’s not his grandmother–but she is a witch! She needs his help delivering baby dragons to a magical world where they’ll be safe. There are two rules when it comes to the dragons: don’t let them out of the bag, and don’t feed them anything sweet. Before he knows it, Jax and his friends Vikram and Kavita have broken both rules! Will Jax get the baby dragons delivered safe and sound? Or will they be lost in Brooklyn forever?

THE READING CALENDAR WILL BE AS FOLLOWS:

Week 1: Oct. 4th – 8th : Chapters 1 – 3

Week 2: Oct. 11th – 15th: Chapters 4 – 6

Week 3: Oct. 18 – 22nd: Chapters 7 – 8

Week 4: Oct. 25th – 29th: Chapters 9 – 10

Week 5: Nov. 1st – 5th: Chapters 11 -12

Week 6: Nov. 8th – 12th: Chapters 13 – end

Don’t worry about falling behind, just don’t read ahead and if you need to start later, please do.

Please consider following Zetta’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores. If your school requires you to go through Amazon, please consider using this link to purchase the book in order to support the Global Read Aloud.

SO WHAT IS THIS YEAR’S MIDDLE GRADE BOOK….

Corinne La Mer claims she isn’t afraid of anything. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. They’re just tricksters made up by parents to frighten their children. Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest, and shining yellow eyes follow her to the edge of the trees. They couldn’t belong to a jumbie. Or could they?When Corinne spots a beautiful stranger at the market the very next day, she knows something extraordinary is about to happen. When this same beauty, called Severine, turns up at Corinne’s house, danger is in the air. Severine plans to claim the entire island for the jumbies. Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn to use ancient magic she didn’t know she possessed to stop Severine and to save her island home.

THE READING CALENDAR WILL BE AS FOLLOWS:

Week 1: Oct. 4th – 8th : Chapters 1 – 7

Week 2: Oct. 11th – 15th: Chapters 8 – 14

Week 3: Oct. 18 – 22nd: Chapters 15-21

Week 4: Oct. 25th – 29th: Chapters 22 – 26

Week 5: Nov. 1st – 5th: Chapters 27 – 39

Week 6: Nov. 8th – 12th: Chapters 40 – end

Don’t worry about falling behind, just don’t read ahead and if you need to start later, please do.

Please consider following Tracey’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores.  If your school requires you to go through Amazon, please consider using this link to purchase the book in order to support the Global Read Aloud.

SO WHAT IS THIS YEAR’S MIDDLE SCHOOL BOOK….

Narnia meets traditional Indigenous stories of the sky and constellations in an epic middle grade fantasy series from award-winning author David Robertson.

Morgan and Eli, two Indigenous children forced away from their families and communities, are brought together in a foster home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They each feel disconnected, from their culture and each other, and struggle to fit in at school and at their new home — until they find a secret place, walled off in an unfinished attic bedroom. A portal opens to another reality, Askí, bringing them onto frozen, barren grounds, where they meet Ochek (Fisher). The only hunter supporting his starving community, Misewa, Ochek welcomes the human children, teaching them traditional ways to survive. But as the need for food becomes desperate, they embark on a dangerous mission. Accompanied by Arik, a sassy Squirrel they catch stealing from the trapline, they try to save Misewa before the icy grip of winter freezes everything — including them.

THE READING CALENDAR WILL BE AS FOLLOWS:

Week 1: Oct. 4th – 8th : Chapters 1 – 5

Week 2: Oct. 11th – 15th: Chapters 6 – 10

Week 3: Oct. 18 – 22nd: Chapters 11 – 14

Week 4: Oct. 25th – 29th: Chapters 15 – 18

Week 5: Nov. 1st – 5th: Chapters 19 -22

Week 6: Nov. 8th – 12th: Chapters 23 – end

Don’t worry about falling behind, just don’t read ahead and if you need to start later, please do.

Please consider following David’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores.  If your school requires you to go through Amazon, please consider using this link to purchase the book in order to support the Global Read Aloud.

SO WHAT IS THIS YEAR’S YOUNG ADULT BOOK….

Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered.

Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and its dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started?

A breathtaking debut novel featuring an asexual, Apache teen protagonist, Elatsoe combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, fantasy elements, and is one of the most-talked about debuts of the year.

THE READING CALENDAR WILL BE AS FOLLOWS:

Week 1: Oct. 4th – 8th : Chapters 1 – 6

Week 2: Oct. 11th – 15th: Chapters 7 – 12

Week 3: Oct. 18 – 22nd: Chapters 13 – 18

Week 4: Oct. 25th – 29th: Chapters 19 – 24

Week 5: Nov. 1st – 5th: Chapters 25 -30

Week 6: Nov. 8th – 12th: Chapters 31 – end

Don’t worry about falling behind, just don’t read ahead and if you need to start later, please do.

Please consider following Darcie’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores.  If your school requires you to go through Amazon, please consider using this link to purchase the book in order to support the Global Read Aloud.

FACEBOOK GROUPS TO CONNECT WITH OTHER EDUCATORS:

Main GRA Facebook group

Picture Book Study Group

Early Reader Book Group

Upper Elementary/ Middle-Grade Book Group

Middle School Book Group

YA Book Group

TWITTER HASHTAGS FOR THE YEAR:

Picture book author study – #GRADuncan

Dragons in a Bag – #GRADragons

The Jumbies – #GRAJumbies

The Barren Grounds – #GRABarren

Elatsoe – #GRAElatsoe

GLOBAL READ ALOUD MERCHANDISE:

T-shirts and other merchandise supporting the project can be found here

To get your free sticker, see this post

RESOURCE SHARING – ADD YOUR IDEAS

Please remember and respect that the Global Read Aloud is trademarked and is established in the spirit of free collaboration.  Please do not create resources to sell for the project – it goes completely against the nature of the work and will result in you being barred from the project.

Do please share resources on this spreadsheet, make sure to not delete anything off it.  Also, please do not change the sharing settings on it.

To see the spreadsheet and add your own free resources, go here

You can also look for connections on the document if you want, this way you do not have to go to Facebook.

Welcome

There are so many great things already happening surrounding these read alouds. It is not too late to join, just get the books, join whichever groups work for you or find a connections in the Shared Resource Document and get ready to read.

I am humbled by the love and support as always that surrounds the GRA. Thank you for being a part of the journey.

Keep reading,

Pernille

This year, I am decididng to take things a little more slowly in order to really relish who the choices are. So little by little, the chosen books and authors will be revealed, I hope you don’t mind.

In a world that is upside down, still, I have found myself reaching for fantasy books more and more. As a way to learn about our past and consider our future, the realm of fantasy allows us to escape, dig in, and dream of what can be. While the worlds may be unfamiliar, their messages are not and we can find comfort, hope, joy, even in the darkest parts of their stories. Our Global Read Aloud choices offer up hope in the most human way; tales of overcoming, tales of finding your own strength, tales or relying on community to come together in order to defeat a common enemy. It is what the world has shown us in the past year as well, it is what has kept many afloat, many alive. And so we shall gather around these books and continue to build community. We shall share these read alouds as way to connect across city lines, country borders, and oceans. We shall hopefully find similarities within the heroic journeys of the stories we read that let us see how we, too, can be heroes in our way.

WHAT IS INFORMATION YOU MAY WANT RIGHT NOW?

• Kick off will be October 4th and the project will run for six weeks as usual, ending on November 12th. You can absolutely fall behind or start later, just don’t read ahead.
• The official hashtag for the year is #GRA21, other hashtags will be announced once the books are.
• The hashtag for Duncan Tonatiuh will be #GRADuncan
• For a comprehensive FAQ post, go here
• To join the main Facebook group, please go here. To join the picture book author Facebook group, please go here. This is where news will be posted for the most part.

So who is this year’s picture book study….

This year’s chosen creator is Duncan Tonatiuh!

Duncan was born in Mexico City and grew up in San Miguel de Allende. He graduated from Parsons The New School for Design and from Eugene Lang College in New York City in 2008. His work is inspired by Ancient Mexican art, particularly that of the Mixtec codex. His aim is to create images that honor the past, but that address contemporary issues that affect people of Mexican origin on both sides of the border. His book Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale is the winner of the 2014 Tomás Rivera Mexican American children’s book award. It is also the first book to receive two honorable mentions, one for the illustrations and one for the text, from the Pura Belpré Award for a work that best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in children’s books. The book was featured in USA Today, The Chicago Sun, The Houston Chronicle among other major publications because it deals with the controversial topic of immigration. His book Diego Rivera: His World and Ours won the 2012 Pura Belpré illustration award. It also won the 2012 Tomás Rivera. His first book Dear Primo: A Letter to My Cousin received an honorable mention from the Pura Belpré Award in 2011. It was named an Americas Award Commended Title and a Notable Book for a Global Society list.

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

Week 5:

Week 6:

Your Choice

I am so excited to dive into the fantastic world of Duncan Tonatiuh, there is just so much to uncover. Because Duncan has so many incredible books to choose from, you can also feel free to substitute other of his books in for the ones chosen above, some of his picture books are geared a little older so feel free to make the selections work for you. Please consider following Duncan’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores. If your school requires you to use Amazon to order the books, please consider using this link to place your order and support the GRA.

I hope you like these choices, and if not, that’s okay too, then come back next year.