Archive for the ‘Conceptual level’ Category
Monday, December 18th, 2006
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| Author: | Edith Pattou |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, myth |
| Year of publication: | 2003 |
When my daughter chose to read East, we did not know it was based on the story collection called East of the Sun, West of the Moon (EOTSWOTM) and we had not read any of the Norwegian fairy tales in that beautiful collection.
We loved East, which describes in great detail, the life of Rose (called Karen in EOTSWOTM), who, like Beauty in Beauty and the Beast, comes to love the beast (in this case a white bear) who forces her to leave her home and loved ones. |
If this sounds like what happens to young women who marry "A man shall leave his mother and a woman leave her home...", well, it is a fairy tale, and many do believe that fairy tales serve didactic purposes. And, as in the Norwegian tale, in East also, the abducted girl is required to allow the bear, unasked, to sleep next to her each night. When the girl cannot bring herself to do this, and instead lets her mother know of the conditions of her confinement with the beast, she puts in jeopardy the life of the beast and her future happiness.
At least, in East, unlike in the fairy tale, this particular girl is a special one, a person of great initiative and many talents. Her ability to weave, to teach, to learn languages and survival skills, and to endear herself to others, human and other-worldly, and her love of adventure, make it possible for Rose to save her family, herself, and her true love.
East mostly overcomes its origins in a tale in which subordination of women by men and the tearing of the bond between mother and daughter is implied to be necessary to the success of a marriage. It is one of those stories that we loved reading, although we did not necessarily buy its underlying message in its entirety. |
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: East |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Monday, December 18th, 2006
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| Author: | Nancy Farmer |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1994 |
In this Newbery Honor Book set in Zimbabwe in the year 2194, three siblings hurdle through a science fiction-y Africa and learn that even the most magical humans are not always honorable and even the most wicked exploiters can sometimes come through for you, but that family is family. |
The story gets a bit long sometimes, but because nearly every one of the many characters is blessed by Farmer with a complicated mixture of strengths and weaknesses, humanity and human frailties, readers will find themselves barely able to put the book down. |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Ear, The Eye, And The Arm, The |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Culture, Dealing with bullies, Fairy tales, Fiction, Reading level: age 8 and up, Science Fiction | Comments Closed
Monday, December 18th, 2006
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| Author: | Nancy Farmer |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2004 |
Nearly-Christian, Saxon apprentice-wizard boy is abducted by Vikings and learns that even Berserkers (who live to create mayhem) are human and that ancient gods are to be respected and, often, feared, even if one does not worship them. |
Nancy Farmer's fairy tale about the intersection of the ancient Norse and Celtic gods with Christianizing Norse folk is awe-inspiring. Unlike the characters that populate other similar stories, Farmer manages to make her characters both archetypal and idiosyncratic. |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Sea of Trolls, The |
Posted in Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Dealing with bullies, Death is a central theme, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Fiction, History, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Saturday, December 16th, 2006
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| Author: | Rudyard Kipling |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Sophisticated readers |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1901 |
When we finally read (and then re-read) the last page of Kim, my barely 12 year-old said to me, "I loved this story. I love Kim. But no more Kipling for a while. It is too hard."
We started reading Kim together in early fall. We finished in mid-December. The difficulty of:
- The language (and there are many languages used here: British English, of course, but also Irish, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, others we probably don't know the names of...)
- The concepts: Tibetan Buddhist vs. Hindu religious beliefs, Islamic concepts, the differences between Catholic and Protestant attitudes, and
- The politics: What are the Russians, French, British, and the various native Indians trying to accomplish in all their complicated plots
made reading the book a long-term investment. Some days, we could manage only a few pages, because we had to pause to analyze what had happened, or because we couldn't understand a religious practice, or the meaning of a word distracted us.
Kim is like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell meet James Bond meet Harriet the Spy, only harder.
Not a book to be read when one is tired. |
The novel describes Kim's path to enlightenment, adulthood, and employment as a British spy. We walk with Kim, the young, orphanned son of an English soldier, as he grows up to be Friend of All the World, the perfect chela (caregiver to a Tibetan monk), and player of The Game (spy). And as we adventure with Kim and the lama with whom he strives to "escape the Wheel", we come to know representatives of nearly all the religious sects and political players in colonial India.
Highly recommended for very advanced young readers.
-- Emily Berk |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Kim |
Posted in Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Fiction, Gifted, History, Reading level: Sophisticated reader | Comments Closed
Monday, November 27th, 2006
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| Author: | Kathleen Tyau |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups
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| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups
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| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 2000 |
The Chinese-Hawaiian narrator tells, in her own (sometimes-pidgin) words, what it was like to come of age as an Oriental, but not Japanese, in Hawaii in the days just before and after Pearl Harbor. Eye opening. |
-- Emily Berk |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Makai |
Posted in Conceptual: for grown ups, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, History, Reading level: Grown up | Comments Closed
Saturday, November 18th, 2006
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| Author: | Diana Wynne Jones |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 8 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2005 |
Either Diana Wynne Jones must have had a truly rocky relationship with her uncle, and found that her mother did not protect her from him, or else she's just got a thing against uncles. In any case, evil uncles are major drivers of plots in Jones' intriguing set of worlds, as Conrad Tesdinic, the 12 yr. old narrator of this book, learns. Conrad's uncle is every bit as evil in his own ways as Christopher Chant's (who becomes the Chrestomanci in Diana Wynne Jones' universe) was to him.
A 16 yr. old Christopher Chant and his future wife, Millie, play supporting roles in this, the eventful, but not frenetic story of how Conrad avoids the terrible fate his uncle attempts to foist upon him and instead finds himself a mentor. |
My now-11 year old and I really enjoy our glimpses into Diana Wynne Jones' multiple alternative universes, in which the outcomes of historical events led to the preeminence of technology in some universes and the preeminence of magic in others.
Although Conrad's Fate stands well on its own, we recommend that readers enter this interesting and complicated universe by reading at least A Charmed Life and then The Lives of Christopher Chant before reading this one. |
| Similar books |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 6: Conrad's Fate |
Posted in Conceptual: 8 and up, Dragons and/or mythological beasts, Fairy tales, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up, Science Fiction | Comments Closed
Friday, November 3rd, 2006
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| Author: | Sharyn McCrumb |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 12 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 8 and up |
| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 2002 |
The book is actually the history of a song, rather than a story about a person who catches songs. And/or it's the story of how a song gets caught. |
In telling the tale of the song, McCrumb helps us learn the history of a special region of Appalachia -- the beautiful, remote, hilly part that straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee.
We learn, in "their own voices", of the boy who was stolen from his home island in Scotland and so brought the song to the New World, of his hard life during the Revolutionary War, and of his journey to Appalachia. The song then leads us into the mind of a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, which in this part of the country, literally pitched neighbor against neighbor, few of whom cared all that much for the Northern OR Southern cause. Because the song continuously eludes capture by the songcatchers, we then follow its course through family of a young girl in the early twentieth century and then into the mind of another soldier in World War II and then into the later twentieth century.
In each historical period, the song's lyric "When she/he came home, she was a-change-ed, oh" proves true both for those who go to war and for those to whom the war comes home.
Highly recommended for advanced young readers.
Note: The violence, suffering, and death caused by wars are described in short, sharp, riveting, but horrifying bursts that punctuate many of the stories told by the song's custodians.
-- Emily |
| Similar books |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Songcatcher, The |
Posted in Biography, Child-raising, Conceptual: age 12 and up, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, Reading level: age 8 and up | Comments Closed
Sunday, October 29th, 2006
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| Author: | Martha Sherrill |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups
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| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups
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| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2006 |
Not a travel book (Ruin can be taken to mean many things in the story, including the last name of the girl narrator), but a fairy tale about parenting in the maelstrom of drugs, sexual freedom, alcohol, style, and serial divorce that was California in the 1970's (and perhaps still today).
The moral of the story? Perhaps that teaching one's children to observe closely and act on their observations is more important than preaching a strict morality that is no longer adhered to by grown-ups, teenagers, or even those who preach it.
-- Emily Berk
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Ruins of California, The |
Posted in Child-raising, Conceptual: for grown ups, Culture, Female protagonist, Fiction, Gifted, History, Parenting gifted children, Reading level: Grown up | Comments Closed
Thursday, October 26th, 2006
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| Author: | E.B. White |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Children 5 and up |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Children 5 and up |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1970 |
I won't label this a book about matter-of-factly overcoming one's disabilities; it's so much better than that. I guess what it really is is a book about how one voiceless swan found his bliss (and his voice), and it provides lessons in how we can find ours. The book on 4 CDs narrated by the author is worth many listens.
-- Emily
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Trumpet of the Swan, The |
Posted in Animals, Conceptual: age 5 and up, Culture, Fiction, Gifted, Parenting gifted children, Reading level: age 5 and up | Comments Closed
