Goodreads for Kids?

After my literacy classes these last few quarters; working with K, 1st, and 6th grade readers; and reading tons of books and articles about literacy (notably Routman, Tovani, and Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer - the result is that I have literacy on my mind a lot. I recently discovered the website Goodreads, which allows you to create online libraries of books you have read, are reading, or want to read. I started keeping a list of the books I finished reading back in 2007, when I found myself living in China and had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. I started reading for pleasure, something that had not happened during the five years I was in college. It was during this time that I rediscovered the pleasure of reading a good book. I think I started keeping the list in order to help remember the books I had read.
Fast forward 4 years, and here I am still keeping lists. But now, as I am about to embark on my career as a teacher, I want to pass on my love of reading to my students and to encourage them to become avid readers. In order to do this, I have started to incorporate the child and young adult literature into my personal reading lists. The idea was not original, I borrowed it from Miller, who created in-roads with her students by reading their recommendations. Then, students were more likely to take her recommendations.
As I look around my classroom (well, my student teaching classroom) I see a lot of the students reading the SAME book or series over and over again. I want to encourage them to read a NEW book, but find that most of my suggestions are books they have already read. I have also realized that in the 20 years that have passed since I graduated from 5th grade, many new books have been published. So, I find that I don't even know the names of current books and authors. How can I recommend books to my students if I am so out of touch with their literature?

When I am a teacher, I plan to employ Miller's strategy of requiring my students to read a lot of books (I think her requirement is 40), and I want to find a tool that will help the students keep track of these books and allow them to make recommendations to their classmates. I would love to use Goodreads, but I am a little leery of using it since it requires an email address to create an account. I want to protect the students' privacy and I was so hoping to find an EDU version of Goodreads. Any suggestions??

I also plan to have my students give book talks on a rotating basis (one student each day) for the entire school year. I am working to implement this into the classroom where I currently student teach. My goal is to create a strong literacy program in my future classroom and to encourage students to become life-long readers.

6th Grade Reading Buddy

What have you learned about your buddy’s needs, abilities and interests?

My 6th grade buddy is an ELL student. He likes to read about dragons. He chose a book to read that is beyond his ability. He needs help selecting a just right book to read and he needs to be taught some comprehension strategies. His spelling and word-reading ability are both at grade level.

As a result of this knowledge, what learning objectives and materials are you considering using for your lesson?

For my lesson, I plan to use Tovani's book (chap. 4) as a guide. I plan to ask my student these questions:
How do you know when you are confused?
What do you do when you are confused?
Looking at his text, we'll read a passage together and then I will ask him to retell the passage and what it means. If he is unable to, then I will ask him to go back and identify where he starts to become confused. I will then provide several pages of text and ask him to highlight what he does and does not understand.