A July Round Up: Blogiversary, Photo Journal, Reading Challenges, July Winner for AWB Reading Challenge and Much Much More

This is actually one of our dreaded tasks as we make an attempt to synthesize everything that we have done so far during the month. It’s tedious work, yes, but ultimately gratifying to see how far we have come, I think.

First of all, we missed celebrating our 2nd Blogiversary this July! We have been so busy we have totally forgotten about it! Dear oh dear. Well, Happy 2nd Birthday, Gathering Books! And more to come!

Book Hunting Expeditions

We have just recently introduced our own feature here which we do every Sunday, called Book Hunting Expeditions (BHE) where we blog about bookstores we visited and the recent treasures we have unearthed over the past weeks or so. Since I have been traveling during the past month, I managed to cover three cities here (New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas) and some of my loot from our own library here in Singapore.

• BHE (7): Book Hunting in New York – Featuring the Strand and Book Off in New York, New York!
• BHE (8): Goosebumps Hunting and Green Apple in San Francisco
• BHE (9): Book Hunting in Vegas? Impossible? Think Again – First of 2 Parts
• BHE (10): Book Hunting in Vegas – Second of Two Parts
• BHE (11): Library Loot

Photo Journal

We love our Photo Journal section and so we have joined several memes that would lead us to like-minded individuals.

Frizztext hosts a weekly A-Z Photo Challenge every Tuesday which we join religiously since we enjoy being a part of this warm, welcoming, and incredibly talented community. Here are a few of our posts so far:

• Photo Journal/Photo Challenge: A is for Aerial, Awash, Ablaze
• Photo Journal/ Photo Challenge: B is for Boston!
• Photo Journal / Photo Challenge: C is for Cirque de Soleil
• Photo Journal/ Photo Challenge: D is for Downtown Vegas
• Se7en Super Shots

Other Weekly Photo Challenges

There are also other weekly challenges that we join such as the one hosted by The Daily WordPress and Ailsa from Where’s My Backpack? Occasionally, we post our own Photo Journal special as well. Here are a few of those posts:

• A Fourth of July Ellis Island Photo Journal Special
• Photo Journal/ Weekly Photo Challenge: Movement – The 3 Doors Down Concert in Vegas
• Photo Journal/Travel Theme: Night
• Photo Journal/ Weekly Photo Challenge: Dreaming
• Photo Journal/ Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside
• Photo Journal/ Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple

Conferences, Gatherings, Arts Corner and Other Miscellany

Since our website is also a celebration of artistry and talent across different domains, we also share a few announcement posts, miscellany, and a few random thoughts that we find particularly noteworthy. Here are a few of those that we have shared during the month.

Children’s Literature Association Conference in Boston: The Philippine Team

Paintings by Francis Tanseco in London

Cynthia Alexander in Finland: Narrative Inquiry in Music Education Conference – A Quest for Funds

Launch of Bimonthly Theme: Dusty Bookshelves and Library Loot

GatheringReaders: A Book Club in Singapore!

GatheringReaders 1st Session: BookTalk!

A reader’s quest

A New York Public Library Special

Bimonthly Themes and Kidlitosphere Meme

We were at the tail end of Festival of Asian Literature and the Immigrant Experience theme until the middle of July, as such we did have a few reviews connected to that theme. We have also just recently launched our new theme Dusty Bookshelves and Library Loot which would run until the middle of September. Here are the reviews we have done so far:

Child Labor: Iqbal Masih’s Courage

Allegory and Artwork in John Marsden and Shaun Tan’s “The Rabbits”

The Foreigner in Armin Greder’s “The Island”

Amos & Boris by William Steig

Artie Bennett and Mike Moran’s POOPENDOUS! (The Inside Scoop on Every Type and Use of Poop!)

Nonfiction Monday: Music for Alice by Allen Say

Nonfiction Monday: Tomas and the Library Lady

Nonfiction Monday: Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine and Kadir Nelson

Poetry Friday: No Longer There

Poetry Friday: This is my house by Richard Macwilliam

Poetry Friday: A Homecoming of Sorts

Poetry Friday: In The Library by Charles Simic

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, March/April, May/June of this year. So far, here are the numbers:

• January – 30
• February – 33
• March – 46
  
• April – 34
• May – 13
• June – 13
• July
  • Myra – 17 books
  • Iphigene – 5 books
  • Total for July: 22 books

• Grand Total: 191

We need to read 174 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: 26 out of targeted 12 – completed
• Picture Book Challenge: 74 of 120
• AWB Reading Challenge:  69 of 35 – completed
• Caldecott Challenge: 12 of 24 
• Newbery Medal Challenge: 2 of 12 – {no progress}
• Reading the World Challenge: 5 of 7
• Persons-of-Color Reading Challenge: 28 of 25 – completed
• Novels in Verse Reading Challenge: 6 of 10 
• Immigrant Stories Challenge: 15 of 6 — completed

July Winner for the Award-Winning-Books Reading Challenge

We always try to make our awarding process fair and square as much as we can.

Thus, the more entries you share in our monthly database (click here for the July AWB Database), the greater the chances of your getting the book prize.

Congratulations Tin of Rabbitin for your review of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

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

What about you? What’s your July like?