Reading can be fun!!!

I never thought some of my greatest fits of laughter would come from the reading logs I make my students fill out every night. Each nights students must read for 20 minutes and record a summary, a prediction, a connection, or a question about what he/she read.

Often, new fourth graders forget to put their names on homework assignments so as I am checking off reading logs each day, I regularly have to ask something like this, "Who is reading Harry Potter? You forgot to put your name on your paper. Pay me a ticket, please." This happens almost every day, but most often at the beginning of the school year. Today I had NINE no name papers. I sat at my desk reading off the titles of the books on the reading logs and got a great deal of joy each time I collected a highly-valued ticket from those forgetful students.

Teacher: Who is reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid?
Student: Me!
Teacher: Sorry, you owe me a ticket. Please remember to put your name on your paper next time.

Teacher: Who is reading the San Francisco Chronicle Sports Page?
Student: Me . . . argh!
Teacher: Ticket please!

This went on for a while and I finally reached the last no name reading log.

Teacher: Who is reading . . . . huh?? Is this a real book? {chuckles} Seriously, boys and girls, who on earth is reading a book called . . . The Day My Butt Went Psycho?
Class: BAHAHAHAHAH!!
Teacher: BAHAHAHAHA!!!
Student: Oh, that's me.
Teacher: Is that even a real book?!
Student: Yep! I'll bring it in when I'm done with it!

I can guarantee the most popular book this year will now be The Day My Butt Went Psycho.

(Note: After looking this book up on Amazon, I discovered the author also has two other books title Zombie Butts from Uranus and Butt Wars: The Final Conflict.)

(Even better note: Amazon.com's Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book. The SIPs for The Day My Butt Went Psycho are: butt shelter, false butt, methane madness, butt launcher, pink toilet seat cover, jungle twine, flying butts, white butt, first butt, main vent, other butts, side vent, utility belt, brown lake, leaf blower)

I am so reading this book.