top of page

Something Wonderful This Way Comes


The first day of school is fast approaching. I'm excited, but I'm sad about the end of summer. Summer more than any season represents the passage of time for me. It could be because summer is so focused on family and fun. When it finally comes to an end you look up and your children have grown just a bit older. Although, I feel like I've grown just a bit younger, maybe from all the lovely, lazy days. The same is true for the children we teach - the part about growing just a bit older. They leave us in June and when they arrive in September they have grown in visible and invisible ways, and you wonder what you missed. Luckily, you have 180 days to get to know them again - at least in my case.

My 6th graders are now 7th graders, and I am moving with them. I'm excited to start the year with them, but their thoughts on the subject will remain a mystery for 16 days more. Our first unit is Thrills and Chills - mystery, suspense, horror, thrillers, and narrative writing, so amazing. Now that my unit plan is firmly in place, both in my head and mostly on paper, my thoughts have turned to independent reading - not that my thoughts ever stray far from choice in the classroom. I would never confine my students to a specific genre, but I have decided to book talk some great classic and contemporary mysteries. Some of these titles are on the list of my all time favorite reads.

The only question is how to a take a list of 30, which was whittled down from 107, to a list of ten? Wish me luck. If you're curious about the list of 30 it's below in no particular order.

P.S. - Nine days is far too many days. I'll do better. I find the days leading up to returning to school far more chaotic that the school year. Lesson planning, bulletin board designing, and lamenting the end of another summer take a lot of brain power. As does reading . . . and napping.

  • The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

  • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  • Murder on the Orient Express

  • Anna Dressed in Blood

  • One of Us is Lying

  • The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

  • The Clockwork Scarab

  • Gilda Joyce Psychic Investigator

  • Down the Rabbit Hole

  • Code Name Verity

  • Paper Towns

  • The Raven Boys

  • We Were Liars

  • The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone

  • You Killed Wesley Payne

  • Chasing Vermeer

  • The Case of the Missing Marquess

  • The Crossroads

  • The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour

  • Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief

  • Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos

  • Three Times Lucky

  • Strangers on a Train

  • A Study in Scarlet

  • The Hound of the Baskervilles

  • Moonstone

  • The Woman in White

  • The Secret of the Mansion: Trixie Belden #1

  • Out of the Easy

  • Nancy Drew 58: The Flying Saucer Mystery

bottom of page