 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
Archive for the ‘Child-raising’ Category
Book review: Gossamer
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007Book review: Cheaper By the Dozen
Monday, July 2nd, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Frank B. Gilbreth |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | non-fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1948 |
Skipping grades in school was part of Dad's master plan. There was no need, he said, for his children to be held back by a school system geared for children of simply average parents.My 12 year old loved almost everything about this true story about how a couple of pioneering efficiency experts raised their 12 children. Except the ending. Although I tried to warn her about the ending by pointing out some of the foreshadowing and emphasizing that this is a true story, she was pretty much devastated by it. | |
Homeschooling parents and those seeking ideas for enriching their children's learning opportunities will re-read this humorous collection of family anecdotes, written by two of the children themselves, often. Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreth, efficiency experts that they were, strove to ensure that even times of "unavoidable delay", such as when their children used the bathroom, were used for learning. For example, the father painted the constellations on the bathroom ceilings, hid messages in Morse Code throughout their vacation home, insisted that the children listen to phonograph records in French and German for the entire time they spent in bathrooms, etc., etc. The story of the mother of the twelve children, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, is told in the biography, Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth -- A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen". -- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Cheaper By the Dozen | |
Book review: The Higher Power of Lucky
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Susan Patron |
| Illustrator: | Matt Phelan |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2006 |
As a lover of fairy tales, it was probably impossible for me not to love reading this sophisticated story, simply told, which pretty much turns every fairy tale convention on end:
| |
Highly recommended for fairy tale lovers who are somewhat more worldly (older) than is typical. | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Higher Power of Lucky,The | |
Book review: Ginger Pye
Friday, June 22nd, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Eleanor Estes |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Learning to read |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1952 |
A brother and sister pick a dog, earn the money to buy him, raise him, and search for him for months when he is stolen. Newbery Winner, 1952 My then-11 year-old guessed who the "Man In the Yellow Hat" was long, long before the siblings discovered the culprit. And, in fact, she became quite frustrated with the young protagonists as they searched for their dog in such a disorganized fashion. | |
Nonetheless, we both found the descriptions of the children's life in a small town at the turn of the century charming. Probably best for readers significantly younger than 11 and/or older than 20. A great choice for a very precocious young reader.-- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Ginger Pye | |
Book review: The Ogre Downstairs
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Diana Wynne Jones |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1991 |
A magical chemistry set unites the five children in a newly-blended family, and, eventually, helps three of them learn to respect and trust their new father, who is big and loud enough to be an ogre. | |
As usual, Diana Wynne Jones successfully combines magical and mundane realities in highly creative and unpredictable ways. -- Emily | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Ogre Downstairs, The | |
Book review: A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Janna Levin |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | Fiction, biography |
| Year of publication: | 2006 |
What must it be like to be so intelligent that you can't trust anyone enough to believe him or her? So confident that you are right and that everyone else is wrong that you ignore the woman who loves you when she tells you that you must eat (and assures you that the food is really, truly not poisoned)? What must it be like to know that you are moral, that you have saved civilization, but to be convicted of immorality and forced to deny your true self? Janna Levin (our madman who is not at all mad) worms us inside the minds of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing and forces us to look out into the world through their eyes. When we hear Gödel's story, we may be tempted to think that paranoid insanity is part of terrific genius. But then what are we to think of Alan Turing (yes, he clearly was on the autistic spectrum, but he was not crazy and not harmful to himself or to others), who only wanted to solve very hard problems and love the occasional man and was forced to ingest hormones that destroyed his body and his self-respect? | |
A very sad, but important book. A reminder that we must, must, must help our gifted children find communities in which brilliant minds are nurtured and supported and cherished for their idiosyncrasies. | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, A | |
Book review: The Anansi Boys
Saturday, March 31st, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Neil Gaiman |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2005 |
Fairy tale for us grumps about two sons of Anansi, the Spider God. | |
The upbeat moral: We all have all we need inside us. We just need to know that to be able to find it. -- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Anansi Boys, The | |
Book review: Stranger in a Strange Land
Saturday, March 31st, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Robert Heinlein |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Sophisticated readers |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Sophisticated readers |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1961 |
Winner of the 1962 Hugo Award. Story of a human child, raised by Martians on Mars, who comes to Earth and starts a sexual revolution. I guess it was revolutionary for its time. But re-reading it 40+ years after its release, it strikes me as as preachy as anything by Asimov, with an attitude toward women that holds over from the fifties, and as sexually innocent (not) as The Harrad Experiment. | |
Of course, The Harrad Experiment was written more than 10 years later, so that is some proof that Stranger may have been ground-breaking.... Some have suggested that Valentine, the Martian-human Stranger is a metaphor for an Asperger-spectrum gifted learner, who groks nearly everything he studies better and faster than any other human, but who also lacks social skills and an understanding of how humans are expected to behave. | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Stranger in a Strange Land | |
Book review: The Velvet Room
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Zilpha Keatly Snyder |
| Illustrator: | Alton Raible |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, history |
| Year of publication: | 1965 |
Gentle but involving story about young girl whose family has lost its farm, but not its love, principles, or dignity, in California in the Great Depression. One of the notable and wonderful things about this novel is that most of the adults, and most of the children, consistently act in honorable and thoughtful ways. The plot is driven principally by the harsh circumstances of the times. | |
Details are provided about the life of the itinerant farm workers at an apricot farm. No doubt there were some landowners who were less kind to their workers. Even so, life was clearly not easy for many children or adults in those years. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Velvet Room, The | |
Book/musical news: Wicked
Sunday, March 11th, 2007 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
Wonderful piece about the author of the book Wicked
My now-12 yr. old has loved the musical since she first saw it when she was around 9. But we (her parents and older sister) have suggested that she not read the book until she is older, although we agree that the book is much more wonderful than the musical.
— Emily
\”Before seeing the Broadway musical “Wicked†for the 25th time, Gregory Maguire, who wrote the novel “Wicked,†was in the lobby of the Gershwin Theater last month persuading people not to read it. Granted, the people were 9, 10 and 13, and Maguire was telling their respective mothers that the book could be “a destination read for freshman year in college.†But when he saw the girls’ hangdog faces, he conceded that, if their mothers read it first and approved, they might try it at 16 instead. …\”
Mr. Wicked by ALEX WITCHEL