Mesopotamia and Babylon

Myths & legends.
[ Book ] 398.2 PHI Philip, Neil
Published 1999

The last quest of Gilgamesh
[ Book ] 813 ZEM Zeman, Ludmila.
Published 1995

Ancient world
[ Book ] 930 CHA Chandler, Fiona.
Published 1999

Early civilization
[ Book ] 930 CHI Chisholm, Jane
Published 1991

Outrageous women of ancient times
[ Book ] 930 LEO León, Vicki.
Published 1998

The Kingfisher book of the ancient world: from the ice age to the fall of Rome
[ Book ] 930 MAR Martell, Hazel.
Published 1995

The Kingfisher book of the ancient world : from the Ice Age to the fall of Rome
[ Book ] 930.1 MAR Martell, Hazel.
Published 2001

- Ancient World (Usborn)

- World Mythologies (Minipedia)

- Ancient Mesopotamia (Susan Pollock)

- Myths of Mesopotamia (World Classics)

- Mesopotamia

- You Wouldn’t want to be an Assyrian Soldier (Rupert Matthews)

List II

Great wonders of the world
[ Book ] 031.02 ASH Ash, Russell.
Published 2000

Ancient civilizations, 3000 BC-AD 500.
[ Book ] 930 ANC
Published 1998

Hands-on ancient people, volume I art activities about Mesopotamia, Egypt and Islam.
[ Book ] 930 MER Merrill, Yvonne Y
Published 2002

Finding the lost cities
[ Book ] 930 STE Stefoff, Rebecca, 1951-
Published 1997

Lost civilizations
[ Book ] 930.1 HAR Harris, Bill.
Published 1993

Mysterious ruins : lost cities and buried treasure.
[ Book ] 930.1 PRI Prior, Natalie Jane
Published 1994

Wonders of the ancient world.
[ Book ] 930.1 WAL Walker, Charles
Published 1988

The earliest farmers and the first cities.
[ Book ] 935 HIG Higham, Charles
Published 1977

Step into-- Mesopotamia
[ Paperback ] 935 OAK Oakes, Lorna.
Published 2007

Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians.
[ Book ] 935 ROW Rowland-Entwistle, Theodore
Published 1986

Books on time management

Non-Fiction Books

School Smarts
by Nancy Golden
This book has lots of great tips for students on time management, studying, asking for help, and test-taking to help prepare young adults for life after high school.

Organizing from the Inside Out For Teenangers
by Julie Morgenstern and Jessi Morgenstern-Colon
Written by a mother and her daughter, this book explores ways of balancing schoolwork, friends, and extracurricular activities.

Helping Kids Get Organized: Activities That Teach Time Management, Clutter Clearing, Project Planning, and More!
by Robyn Freedman Spizman and Corbin Hillam
This book offers easy-to-use activities to challenge students to develop studying, writing, researching, and prioritizing skills by creating school files, playing memory games, using calendars, and setting short- and long-term goals.

Beat Procrastination and Make the Grade: The Six Styles of Procrastination and How Students Can Overcome Them
by Linda Sapadin and Jack Maguire
A guide for learning how to get more done faster and better, with time left over to enjoy your school experience.

Novels for a Middle Ages Unit

These books are aimed towards a Unit on the Middle Ages for grade 8:

* I have listed the suggested authors in brackets

1. Sir Percival (Sutcliff)
2. Joan of Arc (Garden; Nardo; de Wohl; Dana)
3. William the Conqueror (McGowen; Corby)
4. Samurai/ Bushido (Tamamoto, Tsunetomo)
5. Medici: "The Smile" (Jo Napoli)
6. "Leonardo's Shadow" (Grey)
7. Crudades: "Blood Red Horse" (Grant)
8. The Sword in the Stone (White)
9. Aladdin and the 40 theses
10. Arabian Nights (Burton)
11. Robin Hood (Green)
12. King Aurthur (Green)
13. "Arthur: At the Crossing Place" (Crossley-Holland)
14. Beowolf (Sutcliff)
15. Anne Bodwin
16. Charlemagne (Gelfand; Nicolle)
17. Tales of Genji
18. Harold Godwinson (Alder)
19. Viking
20. Tang Dynasty (Khubla Khan)
21. Thomas Becket
22. Herman Cortez
23. "Shadow Spinner" (Fletcher)
24. "Martin the Warrior" (Brian Jaques)
25. "Caspin" (Avi)
26. "Wild Magic" (Pierce)
27. "The Lost Years of Merlin" (T.A. Barron)
28. "The Edge of the Sword" (Tingle)


Hope that helps!

Around the World Lit

I am doing an "Around the World in 80 Minutes" lesson plan and thought I would post a list of books to choose from for such a unit:

1. The Breadwinner, Deborah Ellis (Afghanistan)
2. Pharoh's Daughter, Lester (Egypt)
3. Iqbal, Frances D'adam (Pakistan)
4. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry (Denmark)
5. Tree Girl, TA Barron (Mexico)
6. Heaven Shop, Deborah Ellis (Malawi)
7. Tiger, Tiger, Lynne Reid Banks (Italy)
8. Journey to Jo'berg, Beverly Naidoo (South Africa)
9. 1000 paper cranes, Eleanor Coerr (Japan)
10. Keeping Corner, Kashmira Sheth (India)
11. Red Midnight, Ben Mikaelsen (Guatemala)
12. Walkabout, James Vance Marshal (Australia)
13. Goodbye Vietnam, Gloria Whelan (Vietnam)
14. Forbidden City, William Bell (China)
15. The Railway Children, Nesbit (England)
16. Shadow Spinner, Susan Fletcher (ancient Persia)
17. Nkwala, Edith lambert Sharp (First Nations, Canada)
18. I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (England)
19. Akimbo and the Lions, Alexander McCall Smith (Zimbabwe, Africa)


Social Studies Lit

1. Boy in Stripped Pajamas, John Boyle (Germany- WWII)
2. The Wednesday Wars, Gary Schmidt (America/Vietnam)
3. Chains, Laurie Halse Anderson (American Revolution)


Hope that helps! Enjoy!

Willow Creek Summer by Kathleen Wiebe is the story of 15-year-old Mennonite Tina Wiens. It's 1970-something and Tina is trying to find her place in the world. Her sister becomes pregnant and has a baby without getting married. This changes Tina' perspective and she begins to question all that she's been taught. Nature facilitates an unspoken healing process when Tina spends a summer on her aunt's farm.

George's Marvellous Medicine: Another marvellous book by Roald Dahl in which George mixes up a terrific dose of "serves-you-right" to his really horrible grandmother. Very funny.

Whalesinger. Welwyn Wilton Katz is a Canadian writer of many YA titles. Whalesinger is an environmental mystery and involves young love and living on a sailboat.

Janey's Girl, Men of Stone, Losing Forever, The Isabel Factor, and For Now are all titles by Gayle Friesen. These books are about family. They are touching, funny, timely, and very, very readable.

The Blue Castle is an extremely romantic novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery. It's about Valancy Stirling, a well-bred Toronto old maid who discovers (wrongly) that she has a fatal illness. Valancy begins to live her life, spends a season as a housekeeper in Muskoka and takes up with a ne'er-do-well nature writer who turns out to be a wealthy heir. We're talking happy, happy, happy ending here. Better than the best fairy tale. And all done in inimitable LM Montgomery style.

Jane of Lantern Hill is my other favourite LM Montgomery book. This one set in Toronto and Prince Edward Island. It's the story of Jane who lives in Toronto with her society belle mother and formidable grandmother. Jane discovers that she has a father who lives on PEI and is demanding a visit from his daughter. This is a coming of age story, a story of reconciliation and love and self empowerment. The two locales contrast beautifully, with PEI appearing as Lucy Maud's usual symbol for hope, nurture, and generally all things good.

A list of books my grade 6 class are reading

The Pendragon Adventure is a young adult series of fantasy novels by D. J. MacHale. They follow the chronicles of Bobby Pendragon, a teenager who discovers that he, as well as his two best friends, Mark Dimond and Courtney Chetwynde, must try to save the universe. Each book switches between the first-person perspective of Bobby's journals and third-person narratives of other prominent characters. (link)

Sacred Leaf, Deborah Ellis: Sacred Leaf, which picks up Diego Juárez's story about a week after the conclusion of I Am A Taxi, sees the 12-year-old, having escaped the coca paste dealers, now temporarily staying with a cocalero family, the Ricardos. (link)

I am a Taxi, Deborah Ellis: Grade 5-8–Ellis's novel attempts to expose the strains that cocaine production and trade and the U.S War on Drugs have placed on Bolivians. Diego's parents have been wrongfully incarcerated for drug smuggling. While they serve their 16-year sentences, the 12-year-old, who would otherwise be homeless, lives in the women's prison with his mother and younger sister. He earns money as a taxi, running errands in the city for the prisoners. (link)

The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan, is a 2005 fantasy-adventure novel based on Greek mythology. It is the first book in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series, which charts the adventures of modern twelve-year-old Percy Jackson as he discovers he is a demigod, the son of a mortal woman and the Greek god Poseidon. Percy and his friends go on a quest to prevent an apocalyptic war between the Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. (link)

Uglies, Scott Westerfeld. This one is really popular, and until I read the following I was really scandalized by the concept: Set in a future post-scarcity dystopian world in which everyone is turned "Pretty" by extreme cosmetic surgery upon reaching age 16. It tells the story of teenager Tally Youngblood who rebels against society's enforced conformity, after her new found friends Shay and David show her the downsides to becoming a "pretty". Written for young adults, Uglies deals with adolescent themes of change, both emotional and physical, and dealing with the revelation that "some of what you’re taught isn’t true, your parents are flawed human beings and the world isn’t constructed for your benefit." The book is the first installment in what was originally a trilogy, The Uglies series which includes Pretties and Specials, which now has been extended with the publication of a fourth novel, Extras. (link)


Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney. This book is so popular with middle years kids! It looks completely accessible, and expecially popular with boys: (also known as Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley's Journal) is a realistic fiction novel. It takes me back to the days of Harriet the Spy (a classic!). "Synopsis: Boys don't keep diaries-or do they? The launch of an exciting and innovatively illustrated new series narrated by an unforgettable kid every family can relate to. It's a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you're ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary." (link)

Stephan King (not sure which one...) " It. Also, Carrie and The Talisman. King has never forgotten what it is like to be picked on in school. He understands about bullies and victims. In these books, we are rooted inside the consciousness of young teenagers. Carrie, of course, has extraordinary powers, which she neither understands nor is able to control, and takes inadvertent but hideous revenge on the casually malicious popular kids who have caused her pain. In both It and The Talisman, adults are oblivious to a danger only the kids are able to see, and therefore, they have the burden of saving the world. They feel hopelessly inadequate, but they know they have no choice, so they do it. These are wonderfully realized characters, and again, we are fully immersed in their sense of righteous grievance with the world." (link)

City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias in Spanish) is the first young adult novel by Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende, who's uncle is Salvador Allende, a former ruler of Chile. Published in 2002, the story is set in the Amazon rainforest. The novel was translated by Margaret Sayers Peden from Spanish to English. Walden Media is said to be producing a movie. (link)

Watership Down

My favourite is Watership Down. It's about a bunch of rabbits who leave their warren in search of a new home. They have a language that they speak to each other - I think the technical word for it is "anthropomorhized" - anyway, it's cool.