Book Review: Beginning Chapter Book, Advanced Friendship

Ivy and Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go by Annie Barrows

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Neither the character development nor the illustrations were quite as compelling as in the first book, but it remains head and shoulders better than those beginning-chapter book standbys, Magic Tree House and Junie B. Jones. Volume 2 does benefit from having a boy character appearing periodically, but the series probably remains too feminine with the partially pink cover to convince many boys to try it, which will certainly be their loss. Ivy and Bean remain two wonderful kids who overflow with imagination and friendship and errors in judgment, a winning combination for any reader.



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Book Review: High Seas & Big Top Chicken Adventures

Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If anyone could imbue a chicken with a personality worthy of an epic journey it would be Kate DiCamillo, but even she may not quite be up to such a challenge.  However, although Louise may not have the personality of Gollie, Mercy, or Despereaux, her tale is just as charming.  And really, should we expect any author to truly see into the soul of a chicken?

Louise yearns for the adventures that we all regularly encounter our dreams.  Since she is actually living out those dreams, when she returns home she is able to sleep "the deep and dreamless and peaceful sleep of true adventurers."  The excitement of each chapter ends with that rhythmically written image of peaceful sleep, including the epilogue-like final chapter, making this a good bedtime story read in pieces or in its entirety.

As a picture book, there is plenty of visual context to support an ELL in understanding the words.  This is particularly important when the story has several severe breaks from the normal A to B to C progression of a simple tale.  A chicken on a farm - no, on a ship under attack by pirates - no, auditioning for a circus.  It would be reasonable for an English language learner to doubt their own understanding with a tale like this. (The unusual use of chapters will also help readers come to terms with the shifts in narrative.)

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Book Review: Who is the Audience?

13 Words by Lemony Snicket
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let's be clear right now, because I don't want you confused by the charming blue bird on the cover into thinking that this is a beginning vocabulary book.  No, this is a Lemony Snicket book.  That means that after "teaching" us the word bird, we are confronted with the second word: Despondent.  The bird is despondent.  Too much, too soon?  Okay, Snicket backs off and gives us cake and dog.  However, the reader would be wise to listen to the little voice telling them that words like haberdashery and panache are lurking around the corner.

Maira Kalman's brightly surreal art is a perfect match for Snicket's prose.  There is something in-jokey about the illustrations and I found myself searching in vain for figures from American Gothic or the Boy in Blue.  The bizarre characters leaving you feeling like anything is possible in this world, and isn't that great?

Would the art be quite so appealing to a young reader?  That is my fear with primitive styles where perspective and proportion are shifted in a way that appears to be an imitations of a child's painting.  It is the right choice for this world where a bird must paint eleven ladders ten colors, but it leaves me wondering if this is one of those books that adults will appreciate more than children do.  Snicket's writing always has humor designed to particularly appeal to adult readers, but I simply don't know if this one has the kid-appeal to match.

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Book Review: Wordless Magic

Chalk by Bill Thomson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another wordless gem blending childhood with magic, Bill Thomson's Chalk has photo-realistic art and a mundane opening to lull you into a false sense of normalcy.  But the chalk discovered on a rainy playground by three children is anything but normal.  A quickly sketched sun dries up the real rain and monarchs crawl out of the pavement to flutter past the astonished friends.

Of course, when drawings are coming to life, there are certain things you shouldn't draw, and the last friend sketches out a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Here Thomson's extreme and forced perspectives are put to best use, as the kids scramble around the climbing gym looking for safety.  Troublemaker becomes problem solver with a cleverly simple idea.

The interest of this book lies in what the magic chalk can do, and the story is able to follow a clear, linear narrative without twists and turns to keep readers hooked.  That makes this an excellent wordless book to share with an ELL student for the exercises described in the BPPG review of David Wiesner's similarly charming and useful Sector 7.



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Book Review: Interactive Book, No Electricity Required

Press Here by Hervé Tullet

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If all goes well, this book will be destroyed. A tablet in book form, the author encourages readers to blow, tilt, shake, and press a series of dots.  Yes, you read that correctly: readers really do simply "press here."  They do so with an enthusiasm previously reserved for yelling at Mo Willems' pigeon, and we're not just talking about kid readers here.  And lest a reader be careful when shaking a book, the next page tells them to do it again, harder?  Have both tape and a relaxed smile close at hand.
As an ELL teacher, this is a fun way to get a sense of a students' understanding of basic command sentences.  The casual language ("Hmmmm.  Interesting." "That's funny!") provides an opportunity to witness a reader's prosidy, too.  This is a boon for those early meetings where the need to assess competes with the need to set students at ease.  It also provides insight into new students' personalities: who enthusiastically throws themself into the task, who is disappointed to realize that their actions don't actually affect the outcome, who is self-conscious about seeming silly?
Then when the day is done and you are alone in the room, you, too, can Press Here.


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Weekend Fun: Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year was on January 23 this year, but the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, has saved the best for last.  From 10:30 to 4 on Saturday, February 4, the PEM will have a series of performances, story times, and an art activity for all ages (the film The Fate of Old Beijing is listed for adults and teens only).

Visit the PEM Calendar for details of all the New Year fun that waits for your family this Saturday and visit their Family Visit page for the many other things to see at this wonderful museum.

Happy year of the dragon, everyone!

Book Review: Can't Dystopia at Least Have Gender Equality?

Among the Betrayed by Margaret Peterson Haddix

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The third novel in Haddix's Shadow Children series leaves Luke/Lee to focus on a new protagonist.  

Nina was a minor character in the second book, a girl at a neighboring school who apparently betrayed Luke and other illegal third children.  This book quickly establishes the mistake in that perspective, a device which helps draw the reader in towards sympathy faster than usual.  Haddix has the difficult task of showing Nina's reactions to a world which the reader actually understands better than she does.  We know from the first two books, for example, that one character's public persona as a member of the third-child hunting police force is actually s double agent working to protect the kids, but Nina does not. Haddix handles it well enough so that the suspense of worrying whether she will trust the right person at the right time is not flattened by our prior knowledge.

Having a female narrator highlighted one glaring imbalance which, once I realized it, colored my reading experience through the rest of the seven-book series: there are no women in traditionally powerful, male roles.  The population police are all men; the politicians are men; the families get their identities from the men.  It is nothing so blatant as written here in black and white, but it does give the impression of men's work and women's work, and it falls uncomfortably along traditional gender roles.

ELLs will find this book no harder than the previous two.  Grammar and vocabulary are not gratuitously difficult, but Haddix is trying to communicate some pretty difficult ideas about ethics, governance, trust, and more, and simpler language wouldn't have been sufficient.


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Book Review: Big Issues in a Mid-Level Book

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This first in the Shadow Children series would have been better if it had not intended to stand alone, unlike the satisfying "the story is just beginning" conclusion to Lois Lowry's The Giver, so it may be fortunate that Haddix has since written six further novels in this dystopic world. Reviewing it now, without having read the rest of the series, feels like reviewing just the first third of a book.

The suspense is bit heavy-handed, which may forgivable since little action can happen in a novel establishing the premise of Shadow Children. Luke is an illegal third child and must stay hidden at all times; most of the book is about the tension between frustration at his confinement and fear for his survival. Within that limitation, Haddix manages to keep the story moving and this reader interested, but the climax lacks the emotional reward of a stand-alone novel.

Like many dystopic novels, Among the Hidden assumes knowledge of current culture and politics which will challenge some ELL readers more, but the vocabulary and grammar are otherwise appropriate for advanced ELLs. In fact, the characters themselves struggle with new words and concepts in a way that some may greet with relieved sympathy.



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Book Review: Kids were different back then

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Avi's characters often mature in flawed, youthful ways, and Charlotte Doyle as a girl not particularly good at self-reflection is no exception. She grows significantly (more than would likely be historically accurate; more on that in a moment), but rarely through an accurate internal monologue - though part of her growth is in fact the improving accuracy in how she critically evaluates her world.

Most historical fiction about girls choose to either flout strictures of the time regarding girls' behavior and expectations, or to limit the plot by working within such limitations. Charlotte begins as just such a limited character in just such a limited world, but the adventuresome plot takes her well beyond such behavior and expectations. While the openness with which she confronts her world later in the book may not be the historic norm, it functions appropriately to make the story interesting and relatable for modern readers.

ELL's may enjoy the appendices labeling the parts of a ship and showing the timetable for keeping watch. The other vocabulary is similarly advanced, but knowing that the nautical words are just as unfamiliar to fluent English speakers may encourage ELLs to dive in (pun intended). Connecting that vocabulary to dictionary pronunciation guides or online sound files will be essential for such words as forecastle and gunwale. Although not an easy book, it still contains yet-deeper maturity of plot and characterization that will keep readers from feeling like they are reading a tale intended for younger children.



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Book Review: A Wordless Book for the Imagination

Sector 7 by David Wiesner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wiesner's wordless books epitomize the complexity and dream-like nature that illustrations can achieve when not bound by the conventions of language.  This may seem to make them more difficult to use for story-telling, but they consistently inspire readers to rise to the challenge; if the adult isn't up to the task, the children are likely able to fill in.

This time, Wiesner's tale of an Empire State Building field trip includes the discovery by one student of a hidden world which may further delight those readers familiar with Rick Riordan's The Last Olympians.  The boy travels to a factory in the sky where clouds are made; he uses his drawing skills to spice things up, and readers familiar with Wiesner's other books will see some familiar creatures coming to life. This story takes the familiar activity of searching for patterns in the clouds one step further, imbuing the game with magical possibilities.

ELLs can use wordless books in several ways: as extended writing prompts, as "texts" which will allow them to tell the story at exactly their level of fluency, and as material to take home and share with parents and other family members who may often struggle against their own language barriers in supporting their child's schoolwork as fully as they would like.


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Book review: An original voice

Savvy by Ingrid Law

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A delightful swim in the mind and family of Mibs Beaumont. The Beaumonts are a family of get special powers, their savvies, on their thirteenth birthdays and their story falls somewhere between a tall tale and a Cynthia Voight novel. A Wizard of Oz motif adds flavor and meaning without committing that literary sin of drawing a series of parallels and allowing the referenced work to do all the heavy lifting. And there certainly is heavy lifting as Savvy touches on first love, family loss, alienation, and overall the teenage odyssey to find one's true self.

Although a wonderful book, its deft use of colloquial and idiomatic English for characterization will sadly be lost on all but the most fluent ELL readers. If you have the patience, save this gem until later in your studies, when you become familiar with regional differences in American English.



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Book Review: A Satisfying Sequel

Scumble by Ingrid Law

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When a book is as original and delightful as Ingrid Law's Savvy, it is usually hard not to be disappointed by the sequel.  Somehow, Law has avoided that trap, creating a follow up that keeps some of what made Savvy wonderful but also moving forward to fresher fields.  Scumble is not only a satisfying read on its own, it withstands comparisons to its predecessor.

Thirteen year old Ledger Kale is Mibs Beaumont's cousin and just coming into his own savvy.  Most pleasing for the reader, Ledge has some of Mibs' highly original narrative voice, but not so much that it becomes precious.  He is her cousin, and their voices are clearly cousins, too.  The book opens with another road trip, but that's quickly completed and the setting this time is the Wyoming ranch of another cousin.  Ledge's personality and his story are more focused on himself, proving that an adolescent's self-discovery doesn't need to have a strong external force to be compelling.

ELLs may find Scumble easier to read than Savvy because Ledge's way of speaking is less regional, but it will still require readers from other cultures to have patience navigating a highly idiomatic narration.  For those advanced students who do read it, they may find some personally familiar themes of upheaval and adjustment, as well as the frustration of trying to care for family and self in an unfamiliar setting.


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Book Review: A "Multicultural" Book That Actually Incorporate Multiple Cultures

Naamah And The Ark At Night by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the tradition of the best bedtime stories, Naamah feels comfortably familiar before the first reading is done. This "lullaby" uses the ghazal, an Islamic poetic form, to create a gentle rocking reminiscent of a ship at sea or a parent's arms.

Meade's paper collages use a heavy card stock to create a dimensionality, and the simple shapes allude to the obscuring shadows or backlighting moon, even when watercolors fill in greater detail.

With the word "night" ending each line, and internal rhymes across the couplets, this book would be great to read aloud together with the most beginning ELL student, or to examine the oddities of English spelling with others. It also has that exotic-yet-comfortable atmosphere which many students respond well to when they are still adjusting to a move.

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Book Review: A necessary sequel

Among the Impostors by Margaret Peterson Haddix

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A much-needed sequel to Margaret Peterson Haddix's Among the Hidden, hero Luke Grant had moved out of hiding and now must confront the challenges of an isolated child thrust into a strange and possibly hostile situation. Haddix illustrates the characteristics of someone who has spent his life hiding in fear for that life, while also capturing something of the boy who has been unquestioningly loved and protected within his family, unfolding these elements well as the plot progresses.

Luke is full of questions, wanting to consider all sides of an issue and all possible consequences in this unsafe worl, which helps keep the reader involved and participating in the heavy moral issues raised by this dystopic series. However, in this second of seven book, the answers are not yet available.

ELLs will find that the vocabulary isn't any easier that in the first book. Now the author has added characters with hidden motives or distrusting personalities which mean even deciphering the specific worlds may not yield a accurate understanding unless the reader's fluency allows her to capture the connotations of "a sharp stare" or "make a beeline."



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Book Review: For kids who love Diary of a Wimpy Kid and parents who don't

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Appealing to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid crowd, but with more subtle revelation of plot (perhaps merely having a plot will distinguish it from Kinney's works) and a non-didactic message of acceptance. The tale is broken into very short vignettes which may particularly help reluctant readers, as might the design which is intended to look like pages right out of a kid's notebook.

ELL readers will appreciate the doodles which help provide information about the text, although they are less supportive than traditional illustrations. The casual tone may be difficult for some, and this is not a book which will appeal to most adult readers. However, for more advanced young ELLs who also want to figure out how to fit in to a new school, this book may make them feel a little better prepared.



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Book Review: 17 Things I'm Not Allowed To Do Anymore

17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore by Jenny Offill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Full of ideas about sisterly antagonism, beaverish obsession, and go-your-own-wayness (that would be to school, backwards), one kid manages to learn the wrong lessons from the angry, worried, or baffled adults who must follow in her wake.

Carpenter enhances her pen and ink illustrations by replacing some elements of the drawing with photographed versions of the offending objects: a stapler, cauliflower, a one-dollar bill featuring a portrait of a beaver. This focuses the eye in a way which is similar to an adult's reminiscence of a childhood memory, so much so in fact that a second reading may be required to notice the innocent, beleaguered, and occasionally guileful face of this heir-to-Ramona herself.

The repeated "I had an idea to ... . I am not allowed to ... anymore" works well for ELLs and easily lends itself to a ”17 More Things" writing assignment.



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