An April Round-Up: Reading Challenge Updates, Progressive Poetry, April AWB Winners and More…

It’s now the first of May in our part of the world, a holiday! Woohoo! I’m delighted to once again do our usual monthly round up just to check our progress and to sum up kidlitosphere/blogosphere events that we joined as of late. Let’s begin with April being National Poetry Month.

We are reeling with so many activities in celebration of poetrypoetrypoetry!

Kidlit Progressive Poem

Such a joy to participate in the Kidlit Progressive Poem, the brainchild of Irene Latham of Live Your Poem (check out the entire schedule here). Talk about a poem that grows each day. It was lovely seeing the lines unfold before our very eyes as we move from one blog to the next. Click on each of the line to be taken to the blogpost which gave birth to it.

Book Spine Poems

We also got into a huge book-spine-poem frenzy. This one is hosted by Travis Jonker’s Book Spine Poems over at 100 Scope Notes. Generally, the idea is to create a poem from book titles/book spines. We made several as you can see in the links below:

• On Mischief and Misdemeanors
• On Postcards and No Tomorrow
• On Secret Identities Revealed by Fats
• Men and Women
• Of Magic, Flights of Fancy, and Food for the Soul
• Of the Bizarre and Fantastical
• Of Hauntings, Apocalypse, and a Mission to Save the World

Bloggiesta Fever, Olé!

It was also our first time to join Bloggiesta, an event which spilled over on the 1st of April. This event is hosted by Danielle’s There’s A Book and Suey’s (It’s all About Books). Here are some of our posts as we dipped our feet into this challenge around the blogosphere.

• Bloggiesta Fever this Weekend: To Do List
• Bloggiesta Quests: Let the Fun Begin!
• Bloggiesta Update: Mobilize Challenge
• Bloggiesta Minichallenge Update: Goodreads, Pinterest, and Shelfari
• Bloggiesta Minichallenge: Freshening Up Content
• Finish Line for Bloggiesta

Meet the Storyteller: Margarita Engle

We are very privileged to have award-winning Margarita Engle as our featured storyteller for our bimonthly theme on Girl Power and Women’s Wiles. Here are two of our interviews with Margarita.

Margarita Engle’s Wild Verses in The Wild Book

The Women [and Poetry] in Margarita Engle’s Writings

Academic Nook

It was also a thrill to have the highly-acclaimed and formidable Madam Ninotchka Rosca to visit GatheringBooks for our bimonthly theme. Click on the link below to be taken to our interview with her.

Literary Journeys of Ninotchka Rosca

Photo Journal

We have just recently added this feature on to our site. We thought that since the three of us (Iphigene, Fats, and myself) are coming from three different countries (Philippines, San Diego USA, and Singapore respectively) and we also enjoy taking photos, we might as well make it systematic and post it as part of a new offering for everyone. And thus Photojournal was born. Thus far, here are some of our posts:

• The Pulau Ubin Experience
• Thean Hou Temple, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• P is for Prayer and Places of Worship
• Q is for Quiet, Quirky, and Quizzical
• Lake Perris, CA

Kidlitosphere Meme

We also try to actively participate in daily meme around the blogosphere. Here is a summary of posts that we have done this April.

A Fool’s Love and Library Loot

The Science Fiction and Hardcore Fantasy Edition

Goosebumps, Graphic Novels, and Adult Lit

More Library Love and Girl Power themed Books

Loot from Singapore Book Exchange 2012

Fa Mulan by Robert D. San Souci and illustrations by Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng
Beautiful Warrior: The Legend of the Nun’s Kung Fu by Emily Arnold McCully
Just Being Audrey by Margaret Cardillo and Illustrations by Julia Denos
A Seed is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston and illustrated by Sylvia Long
Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels, and what the Neighbors Thought by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt

The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
Katniss Everdeen: The Girl Who Lived On

Teaser Tuesday: A Korean Novel
Teaser Tuesday: White Cats and Losing Things

A Lenten Reflection with Anna Akhmatova
A Love Poem from Marguerite Burnat-Provins
Midwife by Alice M. Sun-Cua
Woman to Man by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We have just fairly recently joined Susanna Leonard Hill’s Perfect Picture Book Fridays, and we are so happy to be welcomed by such a gloriously-affirming community. Here are some of the links that we have shared for PPBF which we usually post on Saturdays, our time here in Singapore (still Friday evening in the States).

Imogene’s Last Stand by Candace Fleming and Illustrations by Nancy Carpenter
Birdie’s Lighthouse by Deborah Hopkinson and Illustrated by Kimberly Bulcken Root
Stella, Star of the Sea by Marie-Louise Gay

Imogene’s Antlers by David Small

Reading Challenge Update

365 Reading Challenge. We continue with our tradition of documenting the books we have read for the year and making sure that collectively, the three of us should be able to read 365 books this 2012. Here are the books we have read for January/February of this year. So far, here are the numbers:

• January – 30
• February – 33
• March – 46
  
• April
  • Myra – 18 books
  • Iphigene – 3 books
  • Fats – 13 books
  • Total for April: 34 books

• Grand Total: 143

We need to read 222 more books til end of December to complete our own personal challenge. Here’s our running update for the other reading challenges we have participated in for the year:

• Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge: 16 of 12
• Picture Book Challenge: 53 of 120
• AWB Reading Challenge:  43 of 35
• Caldecott Challenge: 8 of 24
• Newbery Medal Challenge: 2 of 12
• Reading the World Challenge: 3 of 7
• Persons-of-Color Reading Challenge: 14 of 25
• Novels in Verse Reading Challenge: 4 of 10 
• Immigrant Stories Challenge: 2 of 6

April Winners for the Award-Winning-Books Reading Challenge

Tin of Rabbitin for her review of A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly and Linda Baie of Teacher Dance for her review of E. L. Konigsburg’s Throwing Shadows.

Congratulations to the both of you! Please email us your postal mail details so we can send your book prize over to you! Many thanks again to Pansing Books for donating one of the book prizes this month.

What about you? What’s your April like?