Keep Reading This Summer with New Abe Lincoln and RFL Books

Looking for some good books this summer? Check out the 2023-2024 Abraham Lincoln and the 2023-2024 Read for a Lifetime books. Then sign up to participate in the Abe Lincoln and RFL programs in the BW Library when school starts in August.

2023-2024 ABRAHAM LINCOLN BOOKS

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli

Huda F are You? By Huda Fahmy

Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir by Tyler Feder

You Know I’m No Good by Jessie Ann Foley

You’d be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow

Heretics Anonymous by Katie Henry

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson

We are Not Broken by George M. Johnson

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado

Be Not Far from Me by Mindy McGinnis

#Murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Assignment by Liza M. Wiemer

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner

2023-2024 READ FOR A LIFETIME BOOKS

After Dark with Roxie Clark by Brooke Lauren Davis

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow

Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

Asylum by Madeleine Roux

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Chaos Theory by Nic Stone

Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan

Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards

Hide: The Graphic Novel by Kiersten White

Hollow Fires by Samira Ahmed

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Manmade Monsters by Andrea Rogers and Jeff Edwards

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

Nothing More to Tell by Karen M. McManus

Parachutes by Kelly Yang

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

Roxy by Neal Shusterman

Solito by Javier Zamora

They’ll Never Catch Us by Jessica Goodman

Three Girls from Bronzeville by Dawn Turner

Victory. Stand! Raising my First for Justice by Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, Dawud Anyabwile

We Are All so Good at Smiling by Amber McBride

What’s on your Summer Reading List?

The school year has ended, but that doesn’t have to mean an end to good books!  The BW English Department encourages students to enjoy reading this summer.

Students Read More than 4.25 Million Pages in 2022-2023

At the start of the 2022-2023 academic year, the BW English Department challenged the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes to a pleasure-reading contest.  How did they do?

Together, Belleville West students read 4,257,968 pages of pleasure reading in the 2022-2023 school year!  What does that mean?

If those pages were set out end-to-end, they would stretch 571 miles!  That’s all the way from Belleville to Minneapolis (via the interstate highway system)!

If you read one page per minute, it would take 2,957 days (that’s over eight years) to read that many pages—without any breaks to eat or sleep!

If you had a penny for every page that Belleville West students read this year, you would have more than $42,579!

(And it’s also 90,000 more pages than students read in the 2021-2022 school year!)

How did the classes stack up against each other?

The SENIOR CLASS finished the year with 768,265 pages of pleasure reading.  These senior classes read the most pages per student in the sixth triad:

Ms. Schaab, fifth hour – 619 pages per student

Ms. Thurnau, third hour – 501 pages per student

Ms. Thurnau, seventh hour – 453 pages per student

Mr. Lodle, fifth hour – 442 pages per student

Mr. Brunner, fifth hour – 426 pages per student

Mr. Brunner, sixth hour – 425 pages per student

The JUNIOR CLASS finished the year with 901,847 pages of pleasure reading.  (The juniors had their best triad of the year in the sixth triad, reading 174,079 pages in the final six weeks!)  These junior classes read the most pages per student in the sixth triad:

Mr. Brunner, second hour – 933 pages per student

Mr. Brunner, third hour – 888 pages per student

Mr. Spriggs, first hour – 836 pages per student

Mr. Schobert, sixth hour – 733 pages per student

Mr. Schobert, second hour – 694 pages per student

Mr. Garland, second hour – 665 pages per student

Ms. Chalmers, sixth hour – 560 pages per student

Mr. Garland, third hour – 520 pages per student

Mr. Brunner, first hour – 471 pages per student

Ms. Chalmers, seventh hour – 438 pages per student

The SOPHOMORE CLASS finished the year with 1,383,617 pages of pleasure reading.  These sophomore classes read the most pages per student in the sixth triad:

Mr. Johnson, second hour – 3328 pages per student

Ms. Schloesser, seventh hour – 2182 pages per student

Ms. Chalmers, first hour – 741 pages per student

Mrs. Lewis, first hour – 513 pages per student

Ms. Schloesser, third hour – 375 pages per student

Ms. Schloesser, second hour – 345 pages per student

The FRESHMAN CLASS finished the year with 1,204,239 pages of pleasure reading.  These freshman classes read the most pages per student in the sixth triad:

Ms. Thurnau, first hour – 1151 pages per student

Ms. Thurnau, second hour – 1033 pages per student

Ms. Mims, seventh hour – 838 pages per student

Mr. Herron, fifth hour – 678 pages per student

Ms. Mims, sixth hour – 544 pages per student

Mrs. Coyne, second hour – 521 pages per student

Mrs. Coyne, first hour – 487 pages per student

Ms. Schaab, first hour – 423 pages per student

Mr. Herron, sixth hour – 403 pages per student

CONGRATULATIONS to the SOPHOMORE CLASS and the FRESHMAN CLASS for reading MORE THAN ONE MILLION PAGES EACH!  Congratulations to all four classes on their pleasure reading totals for this year.  Keep reading this summer!

Belleville West Students Celebrate a Year of Reading

The Belleville West English Department and Belleville West Library hosted the annual Reading Celebration Day last Thursday, May 11.  The celebration included a breakfast for top readers, book chats, author presentations, a drawing for autographed books and e-readers, a book swap, word games, reading time, and distribution of new books for summer reading.