Earlier this week, Donalyn Miller wrote her annual Nerdy Book Club Nerdversary post. In this post she does a call for nominations for our annual Nerdy Book Club awards books. I’ve been working on the books that I am going to nominate. It is so hard narrowing down some of these categories. Below you will find my current list. I’m sure one or two books might change between now and when I nominate. I still have some 2017 books to read!

Be sure to let me know what awesome 2017 books that I missed in the comments below.

Note: I did not nominate any books in the MG/YA nonfiction category because I don’t feel like I read enough books in the category to feel comfortable nominating anything. I need to do a better reading nonfiction next year. 

Picture Books Fiction

This House, Once

By: Deborah Freedman

After The Fall

By: Dan Santat

The Book of Mistakes

By: Corinna Luyken

Claymates

By: Dev Petty and Lauren Eldridge

All The Way to Havana

By: Margarita Engle and Mike Curato

Picture Book Nonfiction

A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider

By: Barbara Herkert and Lauren Castillo

How to be an Elephant

By: Katherine Roy

Can an Aardvark Bark?

By: Melissa Stewart and Steve Jenkins

 

Sergeant Reckless: The True Story of the Little Horse Who Became a Hero

By: Patricia McCormick and Iacopa Bruno

What Makes a Monster?

By: Jess Keating and David DeGrand

Early Reader/Chapter Books

A Boy Called Bat

By: Elena K. Arnold

Ballet Cat: What’s Your Favorite Favorite?

By: Bob Shea

Beatrice Zinker, Upside Down Thinker

By: Shelley Johannes

The Good For Nothing Button!

By: Charise Mericle Harper

It’s Shoe Time!

By: Bryan Collier

Graphic Novels

Real Friends

By: Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham

Swing It, Sunny

By: Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

All’s Faire in Middle School

By: Victoria Jamieson

Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt

By: Ben Clanton

Dog Man Unleashed

By: Dav Pilkey

Poetry and Novels in Verse

Animal Ark

By: Kwame Alexander and Joel Sartore

Bravo! Poems About Amazing Latinos

By: Margarita Engle and Rafael López

One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance

By: Nikki Grimes

Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets

By: Kwame Alexander with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth

Illustrations by: Ekua Holmes

Tony

By: Ed Galing and Erin E. Stead

Middle Grade Fiction

I couldn’t cut this category down to five, so I listed six. Not sure which book I’ll cut when I fill out my ballot. This is so hard!

Orphan Island

By: Laurel Snyder

The War I Finally Won

By: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

The First Rule of Punk

By: Celia C Pérez

The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora

By: Pablo Cartaya

Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

By: Rita Williams Garcia

wishtree

By: Katherine Applegate

Young Adult Fiction

The Hate U Give

By: Angie Thomas

Piecing Me Together

By: Renée Watson

Long Way Down

By: Jason Reynolds

Turtles All The Day Down

By: John Green

 
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It has been about four weeks since I last did a VLOG. I forgot how much I love doing them. Today’s vlog comes from my school day on Thursday. It was a great day. The vlog focuses on literary essays, reading aloud ghosts, and an awesome new nonfiction picture book for kids. Thanks for watching! (video below)

Catch up on previous VLOGs below!

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I had the best time interviewing Andrew Clements at the National Council for Teachers of English Annual Conference in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago. We talked about his book The Loser’s Club for The Yarn podcast. During the interview he talked a little bit about how all four of his grown children love reading. I’m always fascinated when a parent raises a bunch of readers, so I decided to ask him about it for my series One Question with Mr. Sharp. (video below)

Be sure to catch up on previous episodes of One Question with Mr. Sharp in the playlist below.

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It has been pretty cool to see advanced copies of The Creativity Project being read by kids and educators. A lot of wonderful people have asked me if I had any extra copies that I could send them. Unfortunately, I do not. If I could, I would send everyone a copy that wanted one. I’d even pay for shipping!

While I do not have a copy to send to you, my wonderful publisher (Little Brown) is giving away 10 copies on Goodreads. Isn’t that nice of them?

Just click the image below to head to the Goodreads page for The Creativity Project. From there, you can enter the giveaway. Good luck! I hope you win a copy.

Click the image below to sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter. Each newsletter will include a giveaway, a book talk, and a story!

I haven’t done an IMWAYR post in a while, and I’ve really been missing it. I thought it might be fun to try talking about my reading in a live video. The video below, talking about my reading,  I tried streaming on Facebook Live and YouTube. It went…okay. I talked way too fast, but it was fun.

Books I talk about in this video.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Candace Fleming last week at NCTE for The Yarn podcast. After we finished up our interview I asked Candace if she’d be up for a quick video interview. I was very happy that she said yes. I asked her if she could share some tips for writers wanting to select great topics for nonfiction writing.

At the beginning of the video I share an embarrassing story of how I first met Candace.

Video below

Catch up on previous episodes of One Question With Mr. Sharp below.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the community that I grew up in and now teach in. The video below holds a special place in my heart. PARMA FOR LIFE!

Last week at the National Council For Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Conference I had the opportunity to sign copies of The Creativity Project for the first time.

The anticipation of the signing caused me a lot of anxiety. I hadn’t really thought much about people actually wanting me to sign the book. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve tried to prepare for what to expect during the signing. I asked a bunch of authors if they could share any tips for having an effective signing. The piece of advice that I received the most was to try and stay in the moment. Each person willing to take time out of their busy conference schedule deserves to know that you appreciate them wanting to get a copy of your book signed. I hope that I did a good job showing everyone how much I appreciated them spending a few minutes standing in my signing line. Each time a friend came through the line my heart filled with joy. Equally amazing, was seeing new friends make their way to the front of my line. It was humbling to see them excited and curious to read the book.

The hour long signing flew by, and I was amazed by how much I was able to block out the craziness of the exhibit hall. It felt like I was in a tunnel alone with the person whose book I was signing. I loved asking people about how their conference was going, and what books they are excited to read. Everyone seemed so happy!

After the signing ended, and I stood up out of my chair, I realized that The Creativity Project was about to head home with a bunch of educators. The thought that all of these wonderful educators might read my book caused me to both smile, and throw up in my mouth a little bit. My hope is that everyone is able to find something of value in The Creativity Project. A whole bunch of people, put a whole bunch of time into making it the book it has become.

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Below you’ll find a video from when I first held a copy of The Creativity Project.