Archive for the ‘Reading level: age 12 and up’ Category

Book review: Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

Friday, March 21st, 2008

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Author:Simon Winchester
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:non-fiction
Year of publication:2003

Simon Winchester does what he does better than any other science writer I know. He starts with one well-known natural disaster. Introduces us to many of the people affected by the unfolding events. Then weaves in information about the geography, geology, history, state of technology, and then puts it all together and tells the story of the disaster.

In this case, Winchester provides many details about the effects of the eruption of Krakatoa on the air around the world. This eruption also caused a sea-surge, which also killed many people. He also discusses the "top ten" (I think it was ten) volcanic eruptions in history.

This book also provides a great overview of the history of the theory of continental drift, which I think is currently thought to be the cause for volcanism in much of the world.

Obviously, not for the squeamish. But a must-read for everyone else who lives on Earth.

-- Emily
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Book review: Deep Secret

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

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Author:Diana Wynne Jones
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:1999

We here are huge fans of Diana Wynne Jones. We admire the magical worlds she creates and her characters -- human, wizard, and fantastical -- captivate us. We find the plots of her stories unpredictable but plausible, at least in the magical environments in which they take place. One of the coolest things about her stories is that although the plot of each of her novels is really unique, characters and laws of magic overlap in intriguing ways in the many worlds described in her many stories.

We enjoyed reading Deep Secret, mostly because we became interested in Nick Mallory, who is a protagonist in another of Jones' many novels, The Merlin Conspiracy. However, it is not one of our favorite Diana Wynne Jones books.

For one thing, Deep Secret seems to mostly target adults, perhaps because it seems to be Diana Wynne Jones' tribute to science fiction conventions. The plot -- regarding a Magid (a powerful wizard whose undercover job is to keep magic under control in some sector of the multiverse) in search of a student -- is certainly compelling for certain young readers. But Jones unnecessarily throws in words (such as "orgy") that young readers are likely to ask their parents about.

Anyway, Nick is a nice, seemingly ordinary teenage boy with a witch (in all senses of that word) for a mother and a touching relationship with his ne'er-do-well cousin Maree. When my daughter and I first "met" him in The Merlin Conspiracy, he was looking for someone to train him to control his wizardly gifts. In Deep Secret, Nick seems not to be consciously aware that he needs training.

We enjoyed learning more about Nick and Maree and the Magid Rupert Venables and many magical creatures, including some fascinating centaurs and phantasmagorical chicks, but might not have found ourselves so riveted if we were not already familiar with many other stories in the Diana Wynne Jones opus.

This might be a good read-aloud for older readers. It was fairly easy for me to just omit the few paragraphs that alluded to activities at science fiction conventions that would not be appropriate for young people.
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Book review: Letters From Rapunzel

Friday, February 29th, 2008

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Author:Sara Lewis Holmes
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:2007

Abandoned by her parents (her father, a long-time sufferer from chronic depression has disappeared; her mother is just not around), constrained by overly restrictive homework assignments that she can't or won't complete, condemned to spend long, long hours in detention, terrified that now that she has been identified as gifted, she will be forced to hang out with the nerds in the gifted pull-out class, Candace frantically tries to metaphorically grow hair long enough to provide an escape.

While not a fairy tale in the ordinary sense, Letters From Rapunzel brilliantly demonstrates the power of those ancient stories to help us understand our seemingly mundane lives.


The descriptions of the father's illness did not unduly upset my relatively sensitive 13 year old, but I would not recommend this book for young readers.

Highly recommended for adolescents.

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Book review: Dark Lord of Derkholm

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

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Author:Diana Wynne Jones
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:1998

"The cool thing about Diana Wynne Jones is that we've read many of her books, but her stories are all very different. She doesn't repeat herself. This one goes from amazing to intense, maybe it's even a little too intense," says my 13 yr. old.

As you can tell, we here are huge fans of Diana Wynne Jones. We admire the magical worlds she creates and her characters -- human, wizard, and fantastical -- captivate us. We find the plots of her stories unpredictable but plausible, at least in the magical environments in which they take place.

Dark Lord of Derkholm is about a planet that is used as a playground by a imperial power, in the person of one "Mr. Chesney". The inhabitants are compelled to stage elaborate wargames, games in which they and the tourists who pay to join them risk losing lives, families, and livelihoods. (Lest this be thought of as a metaphor for the American adventure in Iraq, please note that this story was written back in 1998, before our Mr. Cheney lead us there.)

I have a friend whose brilliant son graduated from college and then promptly enlisted in the military. "Maybe I won't get sent to Iraq," he told her. "Yeah, and why are they teaching you Arabic?" she asked him. There are young people who need to truly understand how terrible war can be. And maybe we should try to communicate this to them before they are old enough to sign on the dotted line of that enlistment contract.

But what about the kids who have already drunk the Kool-Aid? Those who know that war is not a game. Do they need to know that mercenaries sometimes rape innocent children? That sometimes heroes die in battle? That those who sponsor the wars often profit vastly from the carnage? Maybe not. But I think I'd have been happier if my friend's son had thought about these things before he enlisted.

So, do we recommend Dark Lord of Denholm? Not for sensitive children. Because they will fall in love with the griffins and the dragons and flying horses and annoying geese and Derk and his human children and then they will read about how all these gorgeous characters suffer just because they live in a society that plays at war.

Do I think our children ought to read books like this one? Even though they can hardly bring themselves to read on? Yes. In a country where our leaders feel comfortable cheerfully singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the melody of a Beach Boys song, our children need to read about how a downtrodden society can pull itself together and say "No" to war.

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Book review: Journey To the Centre of the Earth

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

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Author:Jules Verne
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 8 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:1864

A perfect novel for science geeks of all ages.

Brilliant geologist and his apprentice/nephew discover, de-crypt, and then, with their imperturbable guide Hans, follow the directions in a Renaissance manuscript that describes how they can travel to the center of the Earth.

My 12 year old warns that the "old-fashioned" language might be off-putting to some, but that the story is so involving that it pulls you along. For young readers, you might want to start by reading the story aloud, or listening to the audio book.

Although the scientific theory (that the Earth's core is not hot) "proven" by the scientists/adventurers in the story has turned out to not be true, science lovers will appreciate the intellectual discussions, the process by which the predictions of the professor and his less sophisticated apprentice are laid out and then "tested" experientially, and the warning against blowing up the Earthly space in which one stands. (See also the Pottery Barn Rule, which could be re-stated as, "Plan carefully before you blow something up.")

-- Emily

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Book review: A Beautiful Mind — The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

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Author:Sylvia Nasar
Reading Level (Conceptual):For grown-ups
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:Non-fiction, biography
Year of publication:1998

Biography of the brilliant mathematician, John Nash.
"How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner.

"Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did," came the answer. "So I took them seriously."

In this workmanlike biography of the brilliant mathematician John Nash, Sylvia Nasar, a journalist, describes Nash's pioneering early mathematical discoveries, his decent into madness, and his eventual recovery and receipt of a Nobel Prize in Economics.

Along the way, Nasar describes:
  • How MIT and Princeton became celebrated research institutions.
  • How members of the mathematical community, many of whom had not been well treated by Nash, even when he was well, cooperated to make sure he survived when he was too ill to work.
  • The story of Alicia Nash, Nash's ex-wife who at tremendous cost to herself made sure that Nash was cared for throughout his life.
  • How the Nobel committee decided to award its prize in Economics to Nash (sounds like the process was as lovely as the making of sausage).
Nasar is much less successful at explaining the mathematics, Nash's as well as everyone else's. In fact, she seems to often resort to just listing mathematical disciplines and then saying that they are hard to do.

It reminded me of a visit to a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit we paid a bunch to visit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry last summer. The exhibit consisted of quite a few obviously very expensively produced wooden models of sketches of machines that Da Vinci drew in his journals. Next to each model was a large poster explaining in text and diagrams what the machine was supposed to do. I think that the word "genius" was used at least once, possibly several times, in each of these posters. However, the posters never actually stated whether the machine would actually do what Leonardo intended it to do.

Yeah, so Leonardo was a genius. And with that and, what is it now, $1.50, you can get on the subway.

The cool thing about Nash was that he was a genius who did truly work at his craft. He specifically chose problems that people he respected labeled as being difficult. (Nasar seems to look down on Nash's problem selection process, or perhaps she felt that Nash's colleagues did.) Once Nash had chosen a problem, he worked on it diligently and only gave up if he realized that the problem had already been solved.

The not so cool thing about Nash was that for the first nearly 70 years of his life, he was downright nasty to pretty much everyone he met or interacted with.
  • Does meanness go with genius?
    Based on my experiences with some exceptionally brilliant people, I don't believe it has to.
  • Does madness go with mathematical genius?
    Well, Godel was certainly suicidally nuts. Turing was driven that way, but seems to have been pretty sane for most of his life. Nash's explanation, that his mathematical intuitions "just appeared" in exactly the same way as the voices in his head, makes a lot of sense to me.
    I often know things will happen long before they do. And I am often accused of "jumping to conclusions", or "being overly pessimistic", or thinking differently. And family members who think that my ideas are overly controversial are certainly quick to let me know they think I'm crazy to express them.
  • Can madness be overcome through sheer will?
    Seems like maybe Nash has succeeded in doing this, but maybe it's only because of his genius that he did. In explaining his recovery, he talks about how he now post-processes his thoughts and kind of throws away the ones that seem not-normal.

A Beautiful Mind is not a book for young readers. It describes a brilliant man's entire life (and if his mind was indeed "beautiful", it seems to me that it was beautiful in the way it processed mathematics, not beautiful in its humanity or generosity), including his homosexual experimentation, his fathering of a child outside of wedlock, his refusal to marry or even care for his mistress, and his neglect of his child. However, it gives interesting insights into the functioning of the intellectual community (and it most certainly is a community) and the advantages and disadvantages of being an unusually gifted person in our society.

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Book review: A Crack In the Edge of the World — America and the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Monday, June 18th, 2007

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Author:Simon Winchester
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:non-fiction
Year of publication:2005

Simon Winchester begins and ends with the San Francisco earthquake (and fire) of 1906, but by the time he gets around to it the second time, he's provided descriptions of earthquakes and tsunamis throughout the world so detailed that I was almost afraid to finish the book. But how could I not?

Winchester's descriptions of the people and places affected are compelling. For example, the Cassandra in me was moved by the story of the fire chief of San Francisco, Dennis Sullivan, who argued "for years that the city was a tinderbox waiting to be struck.... He must have felt vindicated when, in October 1905, the National Board of Fire Underwriters declared that San Francisco's water-supply system... was in such poor shape that the hydrants would not be able to halt anything approaching a major fire." "[T]he San Francisco fires raged, at first wholly unchecked, for ... three days" after the earthquake. Within 12 hours, half of the city had been completely burned. "Time and again, since almost every one of the hydrants proved to be dry, the firemen could only look on impotently and suffer the jeers of the crowds which at first could not understand why nothing was being done to contain the inferno."

Winchester's explanations of the geology are clear and frank. The appendix about the Richter Scale is worth the price of admission.

Obviously, not for the squeamish. But a must-read for everyone else who lives on Earth. And not just for those who live in California. Look up New Madrid in the index.

-- Emily
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Book review: Stravaganza: City of Masks

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

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Author:Mary Hoffman
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:2002

City of Masks
is about a teenaged girl named Arianna who lives in 16th century Talia, who wants nothing more than to be a mandolier, and a boy named Lucian, who lives in 21st century England, and has an incurable case of cancer.

As Lucian suffers, his dad gives him a beautiful notebook from what seems to be very early Italy. When he fell asleep one night holding the notebook in his hand, he finds himself in 16th century Italy (Talia).

There he meets Arianna, and learns that how he got there was by what the experts call stravagation (which is how he was transferred from his world to this new one). So quite suddenly he is thrown into living two lives, one as a sick kid in modern England during the day, and the other as a perfectly healthy young man in Talia.

I recommend this exciting, kind of mysterious book for people who like fantasy and books that you don't want to put down.

City of Stars is an amazing book, the first in a series of 3. It is so wonderful for many reasons, one of which is that this book surprises you, (in a good way). While you're reading it's hard to guess what is going to happen, until it does, or nearly until it does. 

Also, I liked reading this book because there were many characters that you got to know, but not too many to be overwhelmed. Each character has his or her own personality and feelings. After reading this book I went on to read the other two books in this series right away.
--Fizzy, age 12

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Book review: Fire and Hemlock

Monday, March 5th, 2007

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Author:Diana Wynne Jones
Reading Level (Conceptual):Children 12 and up
Reading Level (Vocabulary):Children 12 and up
Genre:fiction
Year of publication:1985

There are just a few authors that my 12 year old and I trust implicitly.

After having raced through umpteen of her novels, we placed Diana Wynne Jones in that category. Sure, The Magicians of Caprona was kind of stupid.... But if you locked us in a library, with a short deadline in which to emerge with a book we were willing to read, it might very well be one by Diana Wynne Jones.

Fire and Hemlock is quite a bit different from other Jones' novels. For one thing, it is SPOOKY. It is, in fact, so intense, so spooky that if my daughter and I hadn't trusted Jones as much as we did, we would never have finished reading this story.

On the other hand, many of the characters do resemble other Jones characters we've met in her other stories. For one thing, every young woman of child-bearing age is at the very least utterly self-involved and uncaring about her children.

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Some helpful thoughts about Bridge to Terabithia

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

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My 12 year old just gags every time she sees a commercial for this movie. 

She really hates books in which majorly bad things happen \”suddenly\” to one or more protagonists.   Mr. McCabe, her 5-6th grade teacher, sent this link to me: http://www.slate.com/id/2160370/pagenum/all/#page_start  He was the one who \”made\” her read the book.  (Which I STILL have not read.  Think dear daughter and I share a genetic link?)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0064401847?tag=armadilloassoc0c