Here’s what I found bookish & interesting on my tour around the Internet this week:
I’m celebrating my 500th post with today’s Saturday sum up. That’s a lot of book talk, people!
Do you judge a book by its cover? Of course you do. Buzzfeed has posted 22 Absolutely Stunning Victorian Book Covers
I actually love this idea for the classroom – at the end of the year, I’ll have have students choose a book from my library that they loved and wrap it up for students to choose the following year. It’s something I actually planning on doing in the spring.
I watch my students choose books all the time. The students who don’t really care about reading just walk over to the shelves and grab a book – barely even looking at the cover. The keen readers do what I do: look at the cover, read the blurb on the book, maybe even check out the first paragraph before deciding to take it. More and more students are asking me for my advice – and they all know that I LOVE to offer it.
Not that I ever have any trouble deciding what to read next – I practically have a bookstore’s worth of unread titles in my house – but if you’re someone who isn’t sure what should be next on your tbr pile, check out What Should I Read Next, a handy site that lets you enter your current read into a search engine and then spits out a variety of titles which might interest you. It’s very cool.
And did you know there is actually a book cover archive? 
Book covers are actually one of the reasons (okay, call me superficial) that I prefer physical books over virtual ones. My reading life is like art…and looking at my heaving bookshelves never fails to give me pleasure.
I’d like to celebrate my 500th post with a little contest. Leave a comment below, or follow my Ludic Reader Facebook page (link on the right) and I’ll enter your name in a draw to win a bookish prize pack. Contest closes tomorrow (Feb 16) at midnight (Atlantic time).
Have a great Saturday!
The Ludic Reader 
I look forward to your Saturday Sum-Ups. It a bit of cross-curricular by bringing numeracy into literacy!
It’s kind of a mash-up with education…I guess that’s where my brain’s at these days!
The book cover that made the biggest impression on me was Nancy Drew..The Mystery of the 99 Steps. I read every single Nancy Drew as a young girl but that cover haunted me so much that for one art class at school where we had to copy a picture, I picked that cover. I just found those steps, well, so mysterious!! I was so engaged by them on that cover that for the first and only time in my life (this was grade 3) I drew something that I was proud of. Funny, don’t remember the story at all!
Do you still have the picture?!
Covers can be so evocative, can’t they?
Thanks for stopping by and posting about this on FB! xo
Hi Christie….Karen V posted this to FB and I only clicked because I was mislead by the Ryan G photo. Disappointing that it had nothing to do with Ryan but great site nonetheless…..Maura. P.S. I really don’t like to read but keep posting Ryan photos and I will visit again 🙂
It is well known to all that Ryan is my pretend boyfriend. I will make an attempt to use him more if it means you’ll visit more.
Hey,
When I was a kid, I loved the paperback cover of “Grey Seas Under” by Farley Mowat so much that relentlessly pestered him to read it to me. Its a fantastic book for a young lad and every bit as exciting as the cover would lead one to believe. Dunno if it’ll work, but eere’s a link to the cover:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/XWq5tOroPQNux-_RN3oqhqYlBXp3mTMkILHypRM68x4=w539-h852-no
Hey Doug! I am not familiar with that Mowatt book – but I am always looking for good books for my classroom, especially books for boys, so I’ll keep my eyes open for this one.
Hope you’re keeping well on the West coast – we are on snow day number two here in the East!