Links I Loved Last Week: A Round-up of Online Reading 1/1/17

Betsy Bird’s 31 book lists to round out 2016 have caused my own TBR list to explode. Be sure to check out her list of Best Picture Books of 2016.

Just in case you don’t have quite enough reading to do, Carrie Gelson’s list of 16 Favorites from 2016 is full of wonderful titles.

And just one more: I want to read every book on Book Riot’s Best Books of 2016 list. (And maybe I’ll just do that in 2017 as a fun reading challenge.) I appreciate Book Riot’s commitment to highlighting diverse titles.

One great pleasure of owning a picture book rather than checking it out of the library is getting to take the cover off and see what’s underneath. I love a surprise under the cover! Design of the Picture Book honors terrific cover book design with The Undies award.

Jess Lifshitz’s description of her Mock Caldecott unit is one of the best I’ve seen online. I’ll be borrowing some pieces for my college students next month! (Also, what a brilliant way to make that difficult time before winter break productive, meaningful, and engaging!)

I adore preservice English teacher Rachel’s way of building her TBR list each semester: show up to the first class of the semester to cadge the reading list!

Kelly Jensen, YA book blogger and reviewer extraordinaire, learned some interesting lessons when she chose to read only women writers in 2016.

Kwame Alexander makes a plea for the importance of books as windows to help readers build empathy.

The bloggers at Stacked have developed a charitable plan to give monthly to an organization that supports the rights of people who will be even more vulnerable under the new administration. Book bonus: they share a reading list related to their charitable choice.

David Farenthold takes the reader behind the scenes of his investigations into Donald Trump’s charitable work. Absolutely fascinating.

Signature Reads has a good interview with psychologist Rick Hansen about how to be happy. Spoiler alert: be more loving!