My goal this year was to read at least 25 books. In the past, my goal has been 50 but I hardly ever reach that, so I thought that 25 would be a good goal–it averages two books a month.
This year, I beat my goal but definitely with some help from my kindergarten class. In fact, uh, most of the books I read were children’s books? Whatever, stop judging me.
Here are the books I read in 2021:
- If I Had Your Face, Frances Cha
- Witnessing Gwangju: A Memoir, Paul Courtright
- Brief, Horrible Moments: A collection of one sentence horror stories, Marko Pandza
- Almond, Won-pyung Sohn
- My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store, Ben Ryder Howe
- Severance, Ling Ma
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Bill Martin Jr.
- Go Away, Big Green Monster!, Ed Emberley
- From Head to Toe, Eric Carle
- If the Dinosaurs Came Back, Bernard Most
- Highway with Green Apples, Suah Bae
- Bear’s Busy Family, Stella Blackstone
- My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh, Nick Sharratt
- My Messy Room, Mary Packard
- Hippo Has a Hat, Julia Donaldson
- The Pop-Up Dear Zoo, Rod Campbell
- I Broke My Trunk!, Mo Willems
- Lemons Are Not Red, Laura Vaccaro Seeger
- Can You Keep a Secret, Pamela Allen
- We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen
- Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, Mo Willems
- Can I Play Too?, Mo Willems
- Jasper’s Beanstalk, Nick Butterworth
- I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories, Bo-Young Kim
- The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, Linda Williams
- Don’t You Dare, Dragon, Annie Kubler
- The Odd Egg, Emily Gravett
- One Snowy Day, Jeffrey Scherer
- Amelia Bedelia’s Family Album, Peggy Parish
- The Lonesome Bodybuilder, Yukiko Motoya
- Bark, George, Jules Feiffer
- That’s Not Santa!, Leonard Kessler
- Wake Me in Spring, James Preller
Highlights of the year included Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, which I thought was beautifully illustrated as it placed 2D characters in photographs of the actual world, and the “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way to You” stories that began and ended the I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories. (Interstellar romance! Science fiction, but with romance added!) My students loved We’re Going on a Bear Hunt thanks in part to the great reading of it done by the author himself that you can find here. Overall, I didn’t read anything mind-blowingly good or anything terrifically bad this year. I’ve set my goal for 25 books again, hoping that I can fit in more adult books this year.
What did you read in 2021? What are your goal for 2022? Any book recommendations?
Koffee & Kpop 