Review: The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2

As a writer, I have an inherent fascination with words. The idea that words have the power to change lives, and even the course of history, was probably one of the most intoxicating realizations of my educational career. Reading about the great speeches of important men and the impact of their words on people and nations made history more real, and more interesting, to me.

It wasn't until I reached adulthood that I realized how often we find ourselves looking at another person and wishing that we had the words to soothe their pain or ease their mind. The death of a loved one, diagnosis of a serious illness, the loss of a job or the end of a marriage are all situations that can change a person's life forever and times when most people find themselves at a loss for words. When the right words come, they offer comfort or inspiration or direction while easing the burdens and soothing the wounds of some of life's darker moments.

I wasn't certain what to expect from this book. I saw (and passed over) a well thumbed copy of the first volume at a library book sale about a week before hearing about the sequel. I found myself thinking about it again as we were preparing to check out and went back to the table only kick myself for not picking it up when it caught my attention in the first place. The thing that stopped me is that I have a serious dislike for glurge and have found that many of the anthologies of this nature that I've read definitely fit that mould.

When the book arrived, I flipped it open and read one of the essays more or less at random. The story of a father visiting ground zero and encountering a young man whose late father had been in the second tower was touching but I felt grateful that the title of the essay telegraphed so much of the contents. I'm sure that it is a personal failing, but I've had about as much as I can stand of having the personal tragedies and experiences related to 9/11 put forward to support or justify some agenda. I'm experiencing a backlash. Even when there is no agenda and no attempt to manipulate me into supporting some new atrocity.

Overall, I enjoyed most of the essays. "Jane Austin Meets the New York Giants" struck a particular chord for me and I really felt like I could identify with Nancy Roman's 5th grade experience even though I'd never been to Catholic school. There were love stories, and stories of courage, but there was an ordinariness to most of them that gave them an authenticity and a neighborly quality that removed them from the realm of manipulation. I appreciated the sincerity. It was a little like being stranded in an airport with a bunch of people of diverse backgrounds talking and sharing stories to pass the time and distract themselves while they wait.

I can't help feeling that the over-representation of 9/11 stories will leave the book feeling dated much sooner than it might otherwise, but if you are a person who loves to read heart warming stories, or you're looking for a gift for someone who is going through a rough time, this might be a nice book to tuck into a basket with some great tea, a cosy blanket, and a soothing cd.

This is the third of the sponsored reviews for Mother-Talk.com that I mentioned here. You can see the others by clicking on the review tag at the bottom of this post and following the links.

Review: The Bob Books from Scholastic

The information about this series came into my inbox at a particularly appropriate time. For some time, Sprout has exhibited many of the signs of reading readiness, including the ability to identify the letters of the alphabet in both upper and lower case, basic understanding of the primary sounds of individual letters, and (most importantly) a strong desire to move forward in her acquisition of language. She often asks what words are by spelling them, i.e. when we're driving and she sees a traffic sign she will read the letters off of the sign and ask what they spell. She also remembers many of the words that she's been exposed to previously. All of which is meant to say that, although Sprout is barely 3, I did not believe that it was too soon to try her on something like the Bob Books even though they are intended for an audience of 4-6 year olds.

When the box arrived, I was excited to open it and begin looking through the materials. I had already visited the Bob Books website and was a little disappointed that there was not more guidance from the site on how to get started. The support materials on the website were limited to a single PDF coloring page per 12 book box set. Unfortunately, the box and individual books didn't contain much further guidance.

Sprout did, indeed, read the first book with no problem. Unfortunately, the feeling of accomplishment didn't bring with it any desire to pick up the second book. I suggested that we read "Her Books" at least once every day for a week and she responded every time by saying that she wanted me to read to her and not the other way around. After several days, I tried another strategy, "We'll read the first two Bob Books together and then you can choose any 4 books off your bookshelf for me to read to you." She agreed, we breezed through the first book a second time and then made it through 8 of the 12 pages of the second book before she seemed bored with it and completely uninterested even in having me read the books she was supposed to choose from the shelves. It was beginning to seem as though the Bob Books were inspiring a lack of interest in reading.

I was a little uncertain of how to proceed. Surely I couldn't be the only parent who had ever gotten this reaction from the program. I could really have used more support materials from the website or the packaging inserts. I'd talked to a couple of the other moms on Sprout's soccer team and learned that one of them had tried the Bob series with great success. I asked a few probing questions and realized that she had a much more structured routine with her children than we've ever tried with Sprout. I tried to structure our "study" time a bit more but Sprout interpretted my efforts as a punishment and resisted even more strongly. I got similar responses to bribes ("let's read and then we can go to the park") and attempts to make it into a game by "Playing School."

To make matters worse, she had almost completely stopped many of her earlier reading readiness behaviors. She was no longer reading off the letters on traffic signs to ask what they said, no longer pointing to words that she knew when she saw them spelled out in the "real world." I abandoned the series mid-way through the 5th book for fear that maybe she just hadn't developed the attention span required to make it through the series and we'd be better off trying again in a year or so, once she had reached the target age for the books.

Sprout's soccer coach, "Miss B," has been homeschooling her older daughter for the last 2 years. Miss B's younger daughter, Em, is 4 and will be enrolling in a pre-k class in the very near future. I called Miss B and asked if she thought that she and Em might like to try the Bob Books. She was very interested in giving them a try. We talked very briefly after Saturday's soccer game and Miss B says that they've worked through the first couple of books in the series in the week that they've had them but indicated that she was having some similar problems getting Em to focus.

I've been trying to work out some games and activities that we can do to try to make the books more fun for Sprout. I've added to our collection of alphabet magnets and I'm thinking that we may be able to make the process of reading the books a little more interactive by using the letter magnets to act out the process of sounding out words. I may also try to encourage Sprout's impulse to build on the sentences in the books by composing additional lines of text using the magnets.

Lest you think that my feelings are entirely negative, they're not. I think that the Bob Books have a lot to offer. They're a great concept and the illustrations are simple enough that I'm thinking I can help Sprout write and illustrate new stories or build upon the ones we have. I don't know if my difficulties are a result of Sprout being so much younger than the target audience, or if perhaps our less structured lifestyle has left her ill-equipped to follow instructions and concentrate for a lesson. I'll be continuing to work with her some on the challenge of staying on task for a period of structured activity.

In short, I like the concept of the books, I like the approach and the execution. I'd like to see more support for parents from Scholastic via packaging inserts or web support. I also think that it would be quite simple to develop a series of related activities that built upon the books which could be delivered via the Bob Books website, something more than a single coloring page per boxed set of books.

The series has been around for something like 30 years and a great many people have enjoyed great success with it. If you're concerned that your child might have the same type of attention problems that Sprout has shown, it would be well worth checking to see if your local library has the books in their catalog. That said, the first set is not very expensive and I think that I would find it well worth the investment to have the flexibility to put the books away for a period of time and try again later.

This is the second of the sponsored reviews for Mother-Talk.com that I mentioned here. You can see the first review by following this link.

Review: Maximum Ride 3

When I started reading Maximum Ride #3: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, I wasn't really sure what to think. I think that a lot of the problem for me comes from the fact that I had not read either of the first two books. I can't recommend jumping into the series with the third book. There are quite a few moments in the book where allusions are made to events which occurred in the previous volumes which seem like they'd be more meaningful with greater knowledge of the series. Since I haven't read the previous books, I'll talk some about what I liked about this book and why I think that it might be worth picking up the first two and reading the entire series.

James Patterson is a very prolific writer with a rather impressive bibliography. It is particularly impressive to me that he can switch from suspense and crime novels intended for an adult audience to SF/Fantasy/Adventure intended for an audience of adolescents. I will admit that, as a grown-up, I found some of the plotting a bit facile and some of the dialog a bit forced, I'm really not the intended audience. Once I put away my prejudices and just turned myself over to the book, I found it very engaging and quite enjoyable.

I really admire the handling of technology in this book. It would be easy, given a corporate monster with the resources to build robots and genetically altered humans, to over-emphasize technology. While technology is present in the books, its use is more in keeping with the technologies that the kids reading the book use every day. Rather than using tech solutions, most of the conflicts in the story are settled with ingenuity and/or fists and kicks.

And speaking of fists and kicks. The fight sequences are fast paced and walk a delicate balance between graphic descriptions of adrenaline fueled fighting for survival and acknowledging that the audience may not be ready for graphic descriptions of injuries and/or brutality. (One of the problems that I had, having not read the previous books, was that I was uncertain on several occasions whether past events were glossed over because the author assumed that the reader had read the first books, or whether it was an artistic choice to leave the descriptions vague so as not to disturb the sensibilities of his younger audience and/or their parents.

Ultimately, I'm feeling positively about the series not so much because of anything that I can write up in a review, but because I closed the book wishing that I was a 14 year old girl with an unshakable faith I could change the world and that I am a vital part of an untapped resource for positive change. These feelings are what I believe will keep kids turning pages and inspire them to search out books that offer that kind of affirmation and encouragement.

In the end, I wanted to read this book because I wanted to see what was out there for the tween and teen children of my friends. A lot of people are asking right now about what will follow Harry Potter. I'm not sure that it matters what kids pick up next as long as they pick up something. Maximum Ride offers them a story with protagonists their own age who are setting out to make a tangible difference. We could do a lot worse.

[ETA -- I hate it when I save a post rather than publishing it...]

Too long no post

Last night I arrived home from the family Florida vacation. Sprout had a great time and really got the opportunity to get to know my sister who was visiting from Germany. We had a small family birthday party in the condo and Sprout got to swim in the ocean and in the pool at the condo at least twice a day. Her swimming is improving by leaps and bounds.

While there, I found the time to read the first book that I'm reviewing for Mother-Talk.com. I'll be posting my review on Wednesday. In the interim, some of the 100 bloggers participating in the blog tour have posted their reviews and you can read highlights or pop over to the blogs themselves from the blog tour post on the Mother Talk website.