I have the conversation a lot with friends, especially moms, who can’t find books that their boys like too much. These are boys who like to read, and eat their books whole when they find one palatable. It seems they are very hard to find in any great quantity, unlike the seemingly infinite stream of princess girl and friendship girl clones. The difficulty increases as they age.
Yesterday, I actually recommend (more…)
Coffee remains my last principle addiction, having left several others behind as I grew older. I found this passage in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The House of the Seven Gables”, chapter 7. Hawthorne couldn’t have described the brightening qualities of that potent elixir better:
In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed it eagerly. The subtle essence acted on him like a charmed draught, and caused the opaque substance of his animal being to grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than hitherto.
“More, more!” he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to escape him. “This is what I need! Give me more!”
Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance that took note of what it rested on.
Ah, yes! I love my coffee. (more…)
Yesterday I wrote how great I thought Trenton Lee Stewart’s book The Mysterious Benedict Society was. There are many good reviews of The Mysterious Benedict Society to check out if you’re unfamiliar with the book. Sherry Early has written a good review at her blog Semicolon, and she links to a couple others in her review. Kids Lit also has a positive review in the same vein, as well as do Kidsread.com, and Becky’s Book Reviews.
The publisher’s site for the book has interiviews with the author, games, activities, tests – for children looking for special opportunities! – and puzzles. Enjoy!
I just read on ShelfAwareness that Elijah of Buxton has won the 2008 Scott O’Dell
Award. Somewhere in a box of books on my reading list I’ve got an advanced reader’s copy of this and it was going to make it to my nightstand (currently occupied by several finished books and one in process) for the new year’s reading lineup. I’ll speed up the read.
I’ve read nothing but good things about this book on other blogs, so I expect it to be good.
From ShelfAwareness:
Christopher Paul Curtis has won the 2008 Scott O’Dell Award for Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic), a novel set in 1860 and narrated by an 11-year-old who is a first-generation free-born child, living in the Canadian town of Buxton, roughly 40 miles from Detroit, Mich. The award, established in 1982 by O’Dell (author of The Island of the Blue Dolphins), honors a work of historical fiction and includes a $5,000 prize for the author.
I was reading author Gail Gauthier’s blog today and she was writing about an article she had read concerning reviews in general-something we’ve all noticed- that they are on their way out at newspapers.
Gauthier makes a point that I wholeheartedly agree with. She says
Traditional book critics provided an education for their readers, too. Sure you always had your elitist folks who seemed mainly interested in showing off what they thought they knew to the lesser mortals who read their work. But you also had people who truly shared what they knew. You really could learn something from reading book reviews.
Reviewing well is quite a talent, and a good reviewer generally knows a bit about the landscape in the general area that they review. They have a lot to contribute to making the book, or movie, or play more interesting and compelling. This is what I experience, at least, when I read a good review. It is also one of the primary features that I look for daily in the Wall Street Journal (what? that Business rag? Yup-they have great reviews of books (an army of reviewers), movies (Morgenstern rocks the cinema!) and theater (Teachout, whose appreciation of good theater and acting everywhere it’s found has made me appreciate local theater even more!)), as well as many other newspapers that I can find online.
If these types of reviews disappear, where will we ardent, hungry fans go? Most book and arts blogs don’t really attain this crucial aspect of the review. Certainly my reviews here don’t. I just write about something that I like, point out why I like it, and say if I think you might like it. I really don’t have time for that heavy lifting that goes into making a great review, nor do I have that temperament. Thank God for the ones that do!
Nancy Pearl was interviewing Father/Son writing team Arthur and Alex Dorros on her Book Lust podcast where they talked about their new book Numero Uno. Numero Uno is the tale of two men, Hercules and Socrates, who find themselves in an argument over what is most important: the brawn of Hercules or the brains of Socrates.
The villagers, tired of the continuous argument, devise a clever contest to settle the question of who is número uno once and for all, and the results surprise everyone.
The discussion about this story really caught my interest, Especially since it first took form as a 6th grade writing assignment for Alex. His father, Athur, an established children’s author and illustrator, recognized the excellence of the story and they pursued the published version together.
As I was listening, I thought “Who is this Arthur Dorros?”, not recognizing the name. I found his website and saw that he was the author of When The Pigs Took Over”, a very entertaining tale of two brothers, one of whom always thought more was better. I highly recommend it. Now I’m going looking for Numero Uno, as well.
The New York Times has reported on an important new study prepared by the National Endowment for the Arts showing how the decline in time spent reading for pleasure is directly correlated to a decline in reading comprehension test scores. As our children age, the read less for the fun of it and as a result their ability to comprehend written material declines. The results apply to adults, too.
That shouldn’t surprise anyone. But why should this be alarming? Do we really need to spend our time reading just for the fun of it when there are so many other things to do? Well, stating that folks reading for the sheer pleasure is value laden and perhaps shouldn’t be put in those terms. Clearly people are finding more pleasure in watching TV or surfing the web or in video games.
Decline reading comprehension does hit the pocket book, however. Life whizzes by, and things change constantly. Everyone needs to retool just to stay in the same place, and the pace is quickening. Reading is the key to this.
Having taught many years at a community/technical college, I met many older students left without a job when the company closed down. Others could see the handwriting on the wall. Those who could read well, did well. Those who couldn’t had limited, and unappealing economic prospects waiting outside the door. Employers find a world of better readers a world away in India, China or Russia.
It’s busy around here. It seems that there is no time for fun anymore. I still read, but only at times when I can, when I really should be sleeping. I just finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Yeah, I’m racing right through that series. I want to be ready when the Deathly Hallows comes out. Truth is, it was looking at my daughter’s copy of The Deathly Hallows that spurred me to reading them again.
Last night I started two much smaller books that I picked up at the Midwest Booksellers Association trade show. Both are from Mackinac Island Press. The first is The Adventures of Pachelot: Last Voyage of the Griffon, by Wendy Caszatt-Allen (ISBN-13: 978-1934133088). Pachelot is a dog, quite the talented one, who finds she is able to talk with certain people. Incongruously, she is an Australian Shepherd in North America during the days of the French Explorer LaSalle sometime before 1700. So far, at two chapters in, I give this one a strong recommendation for any boy or girl just beyond the first-chapter book phase. If your kid is reading Nate the Great or Cam Jansen with no problem, hand them this one next.
The second is Secret Sabertooth, the third in the PaleoJoe’s Dinosaur Detective Club series, also by Wendy Caszatt-Allen, along with Joseph Kchodl, the real-live PaleoJoe (ISBN-13: 978-1934133101). I’m one chapter into this, and its got me. But first I had to snatch it back from my daughter, who snagged it the moment she saw it, since she had liked the first, The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue, so much. In chapter one, Dakota has a crazy nightmare that he is plummeting through the air to the ground after sky diving with his backpack instead of his parachute. The PaleoJoe series is very fun, smart, and something to look for. My thoughts on the first one are here and here.
I expect both of these books to be well worth the time. I’ll say more about them when I’m done.
I’ve also been reading randomly from Meticulous Attachment, a book of poems by Mary Logue which won Honorable Mention last year from the Midwest Booksellers Association. It was a book I picked it up at the trade show last year, and inexplicably put away in a box. Late the summer I was cleaning up and opened the box, found this, along with many other excellent books, and began reading it. It is very good. I have it sitting on top of a pile on my desk where I can grab it and read and re-read her poems. Go out and find it. This year I picked up two more books by Mary, both detective novels. They’re upstairs, so I don’t have the names handy. One she co-wrote with her partner Pete Hautman, author of Rash, a sort of distopic view of our risk averse society. I met them both briefly at the trade show, where they were signing books. Good fun and nice folks.
Everything else is programming. I don’t really have anything to recommend here, though the books I’m working with are generally good and helpful. You’d think that I’d get my website in shape, but I’m working on too many things at once. My wife and I are still working on establishing our store, and I’m doing much of it myself. I’ve broken down and decided that I’ll have the actual site done by professionals, but I still have much to do myself. Along the way, I’ve improved my skills with Dreamweaver, CSS, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks, along with SQL, Apache, PHP and MySQl, but all my work is still sitting safely on my home server. And my desks, both at home and at work, are piled with software manuals. Senor Parrot remains ignored for now, along with my pile of books.
England is without a doubt one of the most significant cultures of the modern world. Its language and cultural heritage
infiltrates and influences every corner of the modern world. Its writers and philosophers and scientists created much of the foundation of our modern thinking. Its writers are among the world’s favorite and enduring. A grasp of the literature of this great civilization is a significant key to understanding how our diverse world has pulled together commercially, politically, and technologically along lines one would never have anticipated one hundred years ago when Great Britain’s global colonial structure was clearly declining in the face of growing powers elsewhere in the world.
The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN: 978-0195077292) edited by noted education historian Diane Ravitch and her son, Michael Ravitch, is an ideal introduction for a college bound student in the upper high school grades. Its a splendid “first taste” of the spread on the table in the next room beyond. At 512 pages, this anthology of English literature and thinkers manages to cover a lot of ground. At 512 pages, a high school student would also get an introduction to lugging around just one of the many big books they’ll acquire in college (more…)
Jan Brett’s new book, The Three Snow Bears (Penguin Young Readers Group, ISBN-13: 9780399247927) is bound to
please her fans, new and old. This story is a new twist on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and set in the frozen north. The young Inuit girl, Aloo-ki , is searching for her lost sled dogs when she comes across the empty igloo of the three snow bears. This is a perfect wintry-tale for snuggling and reading with a young child.
Every fan of Brett’s will recognize her book immediately. If you’re not a fan yet, you will be soon after opening it up. The illustrations are classic Brett. Each page illustrates the main story and the side pictures animate the back. This signature formula of Brett’s is a wonderful invention for adding detail that excites a child’s imagination and stimulates their own story-telling abilities, so important when they learn to read.
Here are some more pictures from the book.
What’s your favorite by Jan Brett? Mine is her illustrated version of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat.
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