Alicia
Really difficult to distinguish between many characters when their lineage patches (???) are tiny and all clothing is in various greys. I was unfamiliar with the history and feel like this adaptation requires some working knowledge of the era and the social and cultural mores. I really would have liked a short glossary with information about what a samurai versus ronin is.
Packed with information and activities for a range of ages: some activities, like drawing and leaf rubbing, are appropriate for first and second graders, but the text is too involved and scientific for those ages on the whole, although you may be able to pull basic information and some fun observations and trivia from the book for those learners. I learned quite a bit reading through this book, and could see it in use in a classroom setting for fourth or fifth grade students.
Words are defined as they are introduced in the text, some bolded (concepts that will be repeated and important for understanding later information). Unfamiliar words, especially Latinate terms so common in natural sciences, are accompanied in the text with parenthetical pronunciation guides. Unfortunately, the glossary at the back does not have pronunciation information.
The layout of this book is extremely frustrating and confusing. Because of the amount of supporting material included within the text (images with extensive captions, activities which may take up a full page or more, and boxes with additional information), the flow of paragraphs of the main text can be hard to follow. In some instances, sentences are split after only a word or two and continued pages later. The usability and reading experience would have benefit greatly from more intuitive and cleaner design.
Thank you to Goodreads and Chicago Review Press for the review copy.
A great handwriting practice book for all kids, regardless of their reading and writing skill. Well-organized and full of fun phrases and affirming sentences for a range of abilities, with standard handwriting practice lines for each exercise. Three sections for kids to trace and copy, simply copy, and finally free-write are full of fun, different spelling words, and excellent writing prompts.
In the first section, once a child has practiced a single letter in upper- and lower-case for a full page, clever alliterative phrases follow. Imaginatively picturesque phrases like “elegant elephant,” “invisible ingredient,” and “wacky welcome” will produce some giggles, and parents and teachers will be happy to see positive reinforcement of good manners and kind words in practice lines like “exercise every day,” “have high hopes,” “mother, may I?” and “that takes talent.”
Each page in the second section, where learners copy only, is themed. A visit to the circus (“Hello, ringmaster.”), pool parties (“Is diving allowed?”), favorite colors, pets, school, and more mean lots of specialized vocabulary learning along with the handwriting practice.
Finally, the third section has 65 writing prompts for the learner to produce their own, personal writing, practicing their handwriting and creativity when answering questions like “Describe your favorite game,” “Imagine a city that you'd like to visit [and] [d]escribe it.”, and “Describe something that you wish you could do better.” Prompts vary from statements of favorites to more introspective “why” questions that older learners will enjoy sharing.
Because of the way the first two sections of this book are laid out, this would make a great resource for teachers to photocopy for use in class. Pages have a nice wide margin that makes copying much easier. This book will be going to my 7-year-old nephew, and I am looking forward to hear what he comes up with once he gets to the writing prompts, and to seeing his handwriting progress as he uses the book.
Thank you to Goodreads and author Julie Harper for the review copy.
Clear language and easy to follow steps introduce the basics of coding in analog and digital exercises. Good for kids with basic geometric math understanding (degrees of 0, 90, 180, and 360, shapes and distance).
Also, I am absolutely delighted that the robotic guide through the book is named Ada, after Ada Lovelace, and that her namesake is the single reference to gender made through the entire book: all of the writing and instruction is in the second person.
It's just so so so good. Thoughtful without getting too deep into the theoretical weeds of how this world works. Intensely intelligent and well researched (what's up, comic-book OB/GYN who can actually talk about birth control!!) and sex positive and still enough silly, sloppy fun to make you guffaw. Everything I never knew I wanted in a comic book series, delivered.
Chilling. The villain's machinations and motives have been crafted like a diabolical puzzle box, fascinating and frustrating. Our heroine has been drawn with enough specificity that her circumstances are coherent (within the confines of the fiction), but also with enough imprecision to just barely edge the reader into a kind of terror by association. She is unlike me enough that I can continue to read, and she is like me enough for me to be afraid to stop reading; to continue reading is to continue this person's horror, and to stop is to strand her unresolved and unsafe.
Chapters alternate between the past and the progressing present the reader is quickly catching up to and on, illuminating tiny lightbulbs of realization as we reconcile that which we thought we knew then with that which we have become privy to now. This structuring unsettles in two ways: the more information we have, the less we are sure of what we have read, and the more sure we become that this story will become much more disturbing before it's seen to its end. Go ahead and Google the definition of “gaslighting,” if you don't know it already. It is rare for an author to be able to manipulate in their readers the same psychological distress and distrust that they create in their characters; B.A. Paris has constructed a narrative that will cause you to second guess your perceptions of the reality of this story from one moment to the next.
Trigger warnings: psychological, social, and emotional abuse; imprisonment; threat of physical and psychological endangerment of a person with an intellectual disability.
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Thank you to Goodreads and St. Martin's Press for the review copy.
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This review originally appeared on my website, www.lettherebelux.com
So kind and so crucial. I want to buy fifty copies of this book for every single elementary school library in this country.
George is a girl. She was born with the parts of a boy, but she knows she's supposed to be a girl - wearing skirts, playing with makeup, giggling with girlfriends, and definitely not using the boys bathroom at school. What George doesn't know is how to tell her mom, her brother, her best friend Kelly, her teachers.
An opportunity. The school play. George desperately wants the role of the wise and beautiful spider in Charlotte's Web. And Kelly encourages her to audition for the part.
“I think you've got a great idea... Ms. Udell will love that you care so much about the character that you want to play her onstage, even though she's a girl and you're a boy. Plays are all about pretending, right?”
“Um...” was all George could say. Playing a girl part wouldn't really be pretending, but George didn't know how to tell Kelly that.
“They're jerks,” said Kelly. “You're not a girl.”
“What if I am?” George was startled by her own words.
Kelly drew back in surprise. “What? That's ridiculous. You're a boy. I mean” – she pointed vaguely downward at George – “you have a you-know-what, right?”
“Yeah, but...” George trailed off and looked at the ground. She kicked a small rock that skipped into a tuft of grass. She didn't feel like a boy.
“George, I don't want to find you wearing my clothes. Or my shoes. That kind of thing was cute when you were three. You're not three anymore. In fact, I don't want to see you in my room at all.”
