Archive for the ‘Gifted’ Category

Book review: The Invention of Air

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

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Author:Steven Johnson
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 8 and up
Genre:Non-fiction
Year of publication:2008

A lovely biography of Joseph Priestley, a scientist, theologian, and political thinker.

In these days when we are trying, finally, to get the politics out of science, this book argues that the reverse, having scientists care about politics is deeply ingrained in the fabric of the United States and Britain. Not that kings and princes always wish it so.

Note to sensitive readers: Priestley's experiments often involved the use of live animals and plants, some of which died in the absence of oxygen.


One of Priestley's great strengths was in his ability to create experiments and to note details that signaled where his results might be followed up by further experiments. Priestley was less adept at giving up on assumptions that he brought into the experiments to begin with.

Another great strength was his ability, in fact, his obsession, with exchanging information with other scientists.

This biography serves as a tribute to the scientific method (which Priestley did not really follow), Joseph Priestley, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and, in an interesting way, John Adams.

Highly recommended.

-- Emily
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Invention of Air, The

Book review: Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind

Monday, May 25th, 2009

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Author:Daniel Tammet
Reading Level (Conceptual):Sophisticated readers
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Sophisticated readers
Genre:Non-fiction: Science
Year of publication:2009

Daniel Tammet is autistic, intellectually gifted, and synesthesic. This book, a follow-on to his autobiography, is billed as a
"...book about the mind -- its nature and abilities. It combines ... the latest neuroscientific research with [Tammet's] personal reflections and detailed descriptions of [his] abilities and experiences. [Tammet's] ... intention is to show that differently functioning brains ... are not so strange ... and that anyone can learn from them ... [and to] clear up many misconceptions about the nature of savant abilities and what it means to be intelligent or gifted."

Great intentions; I agree they are worthwhile. But, I fear, a disappointing execution.

Or, perhaps, I am not gifted enough to understand the arguments. But, really, to use the outcome of the US Presidential Election of 2000 to "prove" that the Electoral College works? Without mentioning that this election was decided by the Supreme Court and not really by the Electoral College? Seems to me that using the ideas of one person, even one admittedly highly gifted person, as a model for the prototypical smart person from whom we can all learn to think is -- misguided?

Well, anyway, I certainly admire and even envy many of Mr. Tammet's abilities and accomplishments. And, again, I sympathize deeply with his goal of helping others less gifted than he is learn to observe the world around them more intently and reason out their opinions rather than blindly accept "common wisdom", which is often not correct.

On the other hand, and this is something that both of my gifted daughters had figured out by the time they were 11, if not before, Just because someone is gifted, that doesn't mean they know all the answers.

Judging from the stated premise of this book and its execution, I am not sure that Tammet is actually as smart as my high school student.

If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind

Book review: Home

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

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Author:Marilynne Robinson
Reading Level (Conceptual):Sophisticated readers
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:2008

Beautifully written, desperately sad novel that seems to prove that love, family, friendship, faith, words, and circumstances sometimes collude to defeat well-meant efforts to escape the trap of alcoholism.

The book traps readers too. It is not divided into chapters. So there you will be, at 2 in the morning, just waiting to get to the end of the chapter. And, an hour or two later, you realize -- there hasn't been one.

-- Emily Berk

If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Home

Book review: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

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Author:Mark Twain
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Sophisticated readers
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:1884

When i started this book i had to get used to the language and it went along rather slowly, but as i continued to read it, I sped up and by the end i was very satisfied.

Huck Finn describes a historical period (it's set during times of slavery) and i found it very interesting to be in the mind of a boy struggling with the moral problems of setting a slave free.

--Fizzy, age 14


Note from Emily:

It took Fizzy nearly a year to read Huckleberry Finn. It was not an easy read, and so, when something more flashy came along, say, Twilight, Fizzy would put Huck down.

And then the transition back was challenging. But every time she started reading Huck Finn again, she would say, "NOW I remember why I like this book." It is not just the dialog that makes reading difficult here. It is also about the concepts.

What is the difference between "owning a person" and taking responsibility for a person? What are the rights of parents and society over children, who do sometimes know right and wrong better than their elders? This is a deep, dangerous book, and not only for its time, but still, now, more than a hundred years later. Amazing.

In many ways it was like when she read Kim a few years back. (Except then I did help with the reading, this time, she read the entire book to herself.) LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Kim. Didn't really want to read more "grown-up" Kipling for a while afterward. Although, Jungle Book and "Just So Stories", which are not all that easy to read either, are still often in our minds.

If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The

Book review: The Goose Girl

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

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Author:Shannon Hale
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction, science fiction

This book is based on the Grimm's fairy tale about a princess who was betrayed by her maid and forced to be a goose girl. In the fairy tale, in the end the maid gets killed in a coffin filled with nails as revenge... I don't know why, but i expected the author to write an alternate ending to this story.

That all sounds very negative, but i did like this book, because it told the story of someone who was not good around people (she needed to "step up") but ended up rallying many sad people together to save all their lives.

--Fizzy, age 14

Note: As might be gathered from the description of the original fairy tale, the plot of this story involves death, humiliation, and great suffering on the part of the protagonist and her friends.
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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Goose Girl, The

Book review: Dragonhaven

Monday, May 4th, 2009

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Author:Robin McKinley
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 8 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 8 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:2007

This book was very slow for a long time in the beginning, but good. It is from the perspective of a teenage boy who lives in our world, which, it seems, has dragons in it. A protected species, of course. I know that sounds very cheezy, but it is well put together, and a fun, quick read (except the beginning).

Jake finds a dragonlet and then, all of a sudden, the novel gets interesting when it is up to Jake to save Smokehill Dragonhaven Natural Park...

--Fizzy, age 14

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If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Dragonhaven

Book review: Gifted

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

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Author:Nikita Lalwani
Reading Level (Conceptual):For grown-ups
Reading Level (Vocabulary):For grown-ups
Genre:Fiction, parenting

Unless you have been through it yourself, it is probably impossible to understand how challenging it is to parent a gifted child.

The gifted child in this story, the daughter of two immigrants from India, is identified in kindergarten by a teacher who seems not to understand that being a gifted child might not be an unmitigated blessing and that raising a gifted child may not be as easy as it would seem.

Rumika Vasi's father determines to honor her giftedness by yanking her out of the public school and forcing her to concentrate almost entirely on mathematics. Her mother is overwhelmed and threatened by British culture and defers to her husband.

By the time Rumika lives up to her father's dream -- being accepted to Oxford at 14 -- Rumika feels isolated, deeply resentful of her intellectual gifts, almost -- determined to throw them away.


The book comes off, a bit, as an indictment of raising a gifted child as an immigrant parent. But I think that parenting a child who is smarter than you are is difficult in any culture. Being culturally displaced may make that even more difficult, perhaps. But being the parent of any child who is vastly different from his or her peers is always going to be hugely challenging.

My review of another incisive novel about parenting a gifted child can be found here: excerpt.


If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Gifted

Book review: A Mango-Shaped Space

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

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Author:Wendy Mass
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction

I loved this book. It is about this girl named Mia who has this syndrome called synesthesia. Some different parts than usual are connected in her brain, so that letters and sounds have colors (this is real!) Her cat's name is Mango. In the book she learns that she is the "weird" one in her school and has to deal with it, because at first she thinks she's crazy.

Anyway, really good book: lots of emotions and colors. There is one really sad part, though.

-- Fizzy, age 14


If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Mango-Shaped Space, A

Book Review: Nation

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

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Author:Terry Pratchett
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 8 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:2008

My daughter has been censoring my reading lately. She refuses outright to allow me to read certain books, like Brisingr, the third book in the Eragon series and Inkdeath, the third book in the Inkheart series.

As for Nation.... "You won't like this book," my daughter said as she handed it to me. She meant that SHE did not like this book. "I usually would give every Terry Pratchett book I read a 10 out of 10. I give this one a 6, maybe. He is usually at least amusing, even when he is grim. This one is mostly just grim though."

My assessment is more generous than my daughter's. Nation is intense. And contains significantly more mayhem, death, and destruction than most Pratchett stories, for adults or children. And rage at the universe. Along with Pratchett's customary skewering of the silliness of every society and religion he happens across. With, perhaps, a little more bitterness than usual.

I could not put Nation down. And as I parsed each angry word, I thought that if I were Terry Pratchett, brilliant author of unforgettable stories, and I had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, well I would be raging at the Universe as well.


I did find much that I found amusing in Nation. But it is more serious than Pratchett's other stories for children. Nation is about growing up fast and taking on responsibilities that appear crushing because you have to, because there is no else to do it. It is about tolerating the idiosyncrasies of others because you need them. It is about using religion to get people to do what you need them to do and about whether it is alright to do so even if you do not yourself believe. And, as per most Pratchett books, it also touches on the flimsiness of the differences between civilization and savagery, manners vs. self-control vs. the power to break free of convention when necessary.

So given that my daughter did allow me to read this book when she has physically prevented my putting hands on so many others in the last few months, I will say that we both recommend this book to gifted, sophisticated teenage readers with a good tolerance for death and destruction.

-- Emily

If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Nation

Movie/musical Review: Oklahoma (London stage version), the musical

Monday, April 13th, 2009

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Author:Rogers and Hammerstein 
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 8 and up
Genre:musical
Year of publication:1999

X-Men have been, and remain, our favorite super-heroes. We watch the movies; have not gotten into the comic books. Have recently also enjoyed Hellboy. Some of us really admire The Incredibles (but some of us do not).

We must write our homage to X-Men someday. After all, this is a group that thinks that hiding out in a school for the gifted will somehow shield its members from bullies. A creative, if foolish, concept.

Plus, they have both Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman. And very cool superpowers. And great special effects.

We are waiting with great anticipation for the release of the latest X-Men movie, Wolverine. Although, judging from the previews, it's probably going to be depressing as anything. And meanwhile, since we love and admire Hugh Jackman (have started watching Australia), and we love and admire musicals, we sat down and watched this production of Oklahoma.

Plot spoiler alert: plot spoilers follow below...

As we have pointed out before, Broadway musicals, at least the good ones, are much more than song and dance. Musicals' pretty costumes and music often disguise powerful messages.

Oklahoma is an odd one -- the messages are truly of their original time -- 1955.

  • There's a guy named Jud. He's got some unattractive habits. (Kind of like the X-Men -- they accidentally kill you with their thoughts, he impulsively brandishes switchblades.) Plus no one normal likes him. (Kind of like the X-Men, huh?)
  • Then there's Laurey, Jud's young woman employer. She is not yet ready to commit herself to her true love, Curly, and instead teases Curly by agreeing to let Jud take her to the barn-raising. Teasing is not nice. And so Laurey gets everyone into real trouble.
  • There's also a loose woman and the two men who love her -- Will Parker (a cowboy) and Ali Hakim (a Persian peddler, played with an accent that seems to waver between NY and who knows where by Peter Polycarpou). Wow, Persian. Put there in the 1950s. An outsider from the Middle East with enough money to buy whatever he wants, but -- perhaps we shouldn't let our women get involved with guys like him. And yes, Ali Hakim IS Persian in the original.
  • And "Why is it that Aunt Eller runs the town? Did any woman wield that kind of power in those days?," my daughter didn't think that was in any way realistic. I speculated about there not being many women surviving childbirth into "old age" in the days before OK statehood; but then, in this production at least, there are a LOT of women -- they overwhelm the wedding scene, for example.
So how DO our musical Oklahomans deal with this bully? (Even if he's one that they've sort of created. Or, maybe he's just crazy and not really their responsibility, just a problem for them to dispose of?)

If you are Curly and just want Jud gone, perhaps you sidle over to Jud's hovel and sing him a song encouraging him to suicide. ("Is this FORESHADOWING?," my daughter asks.) And when that does not work, you and Laurey try various other things, all of which end up infuriating the bully further. And then .... Go here to skirt spoilers

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You accidentally kill the guy (see! it WAS foreshadowing) in self-defense, stage a trial in a convenient venue, are let off in seconds (since everyone, even the farmers, KNOWS for sure that the murder was in self-defense), and then you get on with your happy life. You settle down and become a farmer. Oklahoma settles down and becomes a state.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What DID we actually think of this version of the musical?

Well, the famous songs are famous for a reason. The choreography is by Agnes del Mille. My daughter found it a bit intrusive. "So now here comes the next DANCE number." Laurey's dream sequence is VERY disturbing. Hugh Jackman does not disappoint. Shuler Hensley, who plays Jud Fry, has a remarkable voice and keeps us vacillating between sympathy and digust for his character.

The filming decisions were odd too. We see the audience clapping after most scenes, and that is ok. And we get to see SOME of the stagecraft (much is made of the revolving stage). But the peeks into the stagecraft made my daughter want to see MORE of the stagecraft, and she came to doubt that we were actually seeing the musical as it was presented to a real live audience. We noticed some shoe changes -- boots to toe shoes to boots -- that we found very confusing.

Should your sophisticated children watch Oklahoma? If they have an interest in musical theatre, absolutely. But, beware: Musicals' pretty costumes and music often disguise powerful messages. And the messages of Oklahoma are -- hmmm -- disquieting. As messages of musicals often are.
Similar books

If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (London Stage Revival)