This week I am featuring an author focus on Arnold Ytreeide! HHCS students in grades 4 and up are very familiar with Mr. Ytreeide’s books. In grades 4,5, and 6, the classes rotate reading a different Christmas-themed book of Mr. Ytreeide’s for each year that they are in the junior division. This year all of grades 4,5, and 6 are reading Bartholomew’s Passage! I am teaching grade 6A Bible this year and we are really enjoying this book, set in the time that Jesus was born. Mr. Ytreeide’s 4 Christmas-themed books can be read during the Advent season and have short devotional reflections at the end of each chapter. These stories are adventurous, funny, and thoughtful. The students love being surprised by the recurring characters’ appearances and by the many dramatic twists and turns in Mr. Ytreeide’s writing.
In spring of 2020, as we moved into our first lockdown of the pandemic with online learning, I wrote to Mr. Ytreeide, who was so kind as to send us a personalized video to say hello to the students. I then had the students come up with some questions to ask Mr. Ytreeide about being an author and about his books and he sent a video message back again to us answering those questions. He also sent us some of his Mike Danford books (see below) for our library. It was so great for our students to be in contact with an author whose writing they really appreciated!
Amon’s Adventure is going to have a sequel, published in 2022! Apparently there have also been some conversations about having one of Mr. Ytreeide’s books made into a movie one day! Which book do you think should be the first to be a movie??
RAR #123: A Family Story for Easter, with Special Guest: Arnold Ytreeide
Check out this interview with Mr. Ytreeide on one of my favourite reading websites- The Read Aloud Revival!
Mr. Ytreeide also writes other types of books besides his Advent series and the Amon books. We have the first 3 books of the Mike Danford series in our school library, and the number 5 book just came out!
Here are some articles from Read Brightly about some book-ish Christmas activities! Some great ideas here for making book-themed Christmas ornaments! Don’t forget to start working on your ornaments for our library Christmas tree, HHCS! Have a great week!
