by Andrew Palmer

I recently reviewed Bomb: The Race to Build-And Steal-the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon which was the 2013 Robert F. Sibert Medal winner. Electric Ben was one of the three Sibert Medal Honor books for this year. I am really excited to see such great informational books being offered to a young adult audience!

Electric Ben is only a forty page picture book. Because of this, I was under the assumption that it was more appropriate for an elementary audience. I am excited to say that it is not, and it is perfect for middle level readers. Honestly, I think readers of all ages would appreciate this book. I really enjoyed it. I was amazed at how much information about Franklin was included in this text.

Robert Byrd is a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and he illustrated this book, as well. He has a very unique style that I think would really attract kids to this text. The drawings have rich color and a bit of a humorous feel to them in places.

I have to admit any time a university professor writes a book about one of our founding fathers I get a little nervous. I could detect no bias or any attempt to disparage Franklin. I thought that Byrd did an outstanding job of delivering who Franklin really was. The book could be an excellent resource for a middle level student doing a research project on Franklin.

I think one of the best parts of this book is how disarming it is to the middle level reader that may not be interested in American history. As I mentioned above, the great illustrations draw you in and the length of the text is not daunting. This definitely is not a “boring” history book. I think this text could very much be a gateway for that middle level reader to discover a curiosity about those that founded this great nation.

Buy a copy of Electric Ben in our Amazon Store!

Reblogged from Opine I will:

I teach my students that their reputation is the most important asset they own. Your reputation is determined by your actions, your deeds, and also how you are viewed by others. Therefore, it is vital that  you understand that your reputation ultimately defines you. Success is not judged by how much you make, but rather, real success is judged by your character and how others view your actions and deeds.  

Read more… 1,208 more words

Seven Wonders

I am not a big fantasy reader. Most fantasy books I start usually get abandoned, but this book kept me entertained and engaged. I really enjoyed the  narrative voice of Jack. It is humorous and witty and keeps you smiling throughout the story. I thought the book had solid characters as well. Jack, Marco, Aly, and Cass have unique personalities that I think will allow different types of readers to connect to.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the mixture of the history of the seven wonders of the ancient world with the fantasy elements. This novel takes the kids to the Greek island of Rhodes (The Colossus of Rhodes). I love science fiction, and Lerangis has mixed a little bit of science into the plot that helped with my buy-in. The kids all have a special genetic marker (G7W) that will cause the kids to die when they turn 14. To cure themselves they must gather all of the Loculi that are hidden around the world at the locations of the seven wonders.

Peter Lerangis

There’s nothing groundbreaking about this book, and it is not a book that has deep thematic elements.  In an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, Lerangis’ editor, David Linker, calls it, “Indiana Jones meets Percy Jackson.” This is a pretty accurate description of the book. There is even an allusion to Indiana Jones as the kids enter a volcano with a hidden maze inside of it. It is a fun read, and would be good for the avid middle level reader that just wants to be entertained. Fans of Percy Jackson, Harry Potter and the Michael Vey series will enjoy this book. Overall, it’s a solid first effort of what looks to be a decent series.

Lexile=580

Check out the official book trailer from HarperKids:

Buy a copy of The Colosuss Rises in our Amazon Store!

From the AAE newsletter:

Teachers, are you interested in a great new resource for your social studies or history classes? The Constitution Reader is a free, interactive, searchable, and customizable website centered around The U.S. Constitution: A Reader. It contains the same material taught in the Hillsdale College’s core course on the Constitution. In addition to containing a fully digitized and searchable version of the Reader, The Constitution Reader also contains:

• The topics that are most important to understanding American government
• The key debates between the Founders, the Progressives, and others
• A database of quotes drawn from the Reader
• An illustrated timeline of American constitutional history

Visit http://constitutionreader.com/

by Andrew Palmer

While I do enjoy reading a great fiction book, I would much rather curl up with non-fiction book and learn something. I realize that not all readers are like that, and young adult readers are often very reluctant to read non-fiction texts. If more writers wrote non-fiction books like this one, more of you would want to join me, and more of our teens would be interested in history.

In the biography in the back of this book, it says that Steve Sheinkin “has dedicated his life to making up for his previous crimes by crafting gripping narratives of American history.” On the surface this is a humorous quip, the reality is this is a sad truth about American history textbooks. Frankly, most of them suck. They do not engage students in any meaningful way, and they never inspire kids to investigate more. Add in an uninspiring history teacher, and it is no wonder you have a society that is apathetic and knows very little about its own history. Sheinkin has another book out that has been fairly popular with some of my students, it is called The Notorious Benedict Arnold. 

In Bomb, Sheinkin takes three different story lines surrounding the development and building of the world’s most dangerous weapon and weaves them together. The first is the Americans trying to build the atomic bomb. The second is the Soviets and their attempts to steal the bomb through spies. I was fascinated with this part of the book. I was excited to see this written into a book for young adults. Sheinkin also includes a little information on the reality of who Stalin was. Young adults need to hear the truth on who the Soviets really were. Finally, the third story line was the Allies attempts to sabotage the German bomb program. This was really interesting, too. The details of these missions are sure to impress any reader.

Bomb is written in narrative non-fiction. For those that don’t know what this is, it is a genre that takes a historical event and tells it like a narrative story. It is such a valuable genre for getting readers to be interested in history. Those of us that are passionate about history know that it is best told in a story format. I wish more authors would write books in this manner for the young adult book market.

Bomb was a 2013 National Book Award Finalist, a Newbery Honor Book for 2013, a winner of the Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award from YALSA-ALA, and it won the Robert F. Sibert Medal for best informational text. Sheinkin should be applauded for his work in this text.

Consider buying a copy from our online store!

Ender’s Game is set in a dystopian future on earth. The world has already had one fierce battle with a race of aliens referred to as “buggers.” The world is scared. The International Fleet is created to draft and train the next generation of military leaders to fight the “buggers.”

Ender’s Game is a unique story because the new military leaders in this futuristic world are actually childhood geniuses. To an adult reader, this has an odd feel at times. The characters in this book, especially Ender, have knowledge and wisdom way beyond their years. I found myself trying to remember that this book was written for a young adult audience. The fact that this book was written for young adults is why it matters so much. For a teenager, a challenging part of adolescence is feeling like you don’t have a voice or are not respected by adults. Having a voice requires demonstrating that you actually deserve it. Ender is an intelligent, character-driven leader who shows teens what is required of them to be listened to by adults.

I love the themes in Ender’s Game! Much of this book is about leadership and Ender learning to be a leader. Ender is an advanced kid who is years beyond his peers. Because of this, he has to learn how to deal with bullying from those that are intimidated by his abilities. The discussions that Ender has with himself as he deals with his situations are very valuable to a young adult, especially a student that is “gifted”.

Another theme in the book is the development of the individual. As Ender grows he has to come to terms with the fact that he is a unique individual. Out of the struggles with the other students at battle school, Ender forms an identity that carries him through to his decisions during the climax and the resolution of the story.

Another positive of Ender’s Game is the political themes that run through the book. A reader will think about the relationship between the state, families, and individuals. Ender is a “third.” There are population laws in place. Only the first two children are provided an education. Parents are taxed as they have more children. Religion has been squelched by the international government. People that still practice religion are termed “non-compliant.”

Finally, a lot of the book deals with good versus evil. Ender and his brother, Peter, both walk a fine line between the two throughout the story. The plot events encourage the reader to think a lot about these two concepts and what they mean.

While the book has nothing to do with the topic, Orson Scott Card is an author religious conservatives should be aware of. He has taken much heat for being a defender of traditional marriage and the family. He is also a devout mormon. 

Buy a copy in our online store!

Reblogged from COMMON CORE:

Sadly, kids and young adults rarely get excited about history. Part of the reason is because history is often not taught to them in a way that engages them. It often comes off as a collection of meaningless dates and facts. As many of us know, history is usually filled with fascinating, engaging stories that illustrate the reality of human nature. I have often found that historical fiction is a way to get a kid to read something on history. David Patneaude should be applauded for his effort with this book. It is an example of what historical fiction can and should be.

Thin Wood Walls tells the story of a Japanese-American family before and during America’s involvement in World War II. The story is told in the first-person narrative of Joe Hanada, the youngest of two sons in the Hanada family. Joe starts out the story as a normal eleven-year-old kid living in a town near Seattle, Washington. The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and suddenly his family is at the center of scorn of an entire nation.

A couple things stood out to me in this book. First, I loved the fact that it tells the truth about this ugly period of American history. The fact is, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the beloved progressive Democrat, through Executive Order and no congressional approval, tossed 120,000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps in the Mountain West. The first-person narrative really drives the point home of how cruel this was. You really get angry reading this as this young person tells his perspective of what is happening to him and to his family. Not only does this family get put in a camp, but the father is sent to another camp away from his family for three years!

Second, whether intentional or not*, I love the theme of being fearful of your government. Joe’s Grandmother has no love for governments. She left Japan because of the government, and as events unfold, she has no faith that the American government can or should be trusted either. It seems to me that many young adults in America are being conditioned to have way too much trust in their government. This book shows just how dangerous governments can be. They are ran by human beings, and human beings can be quite fallible. Our constitution was designed to actually protect us from the government. FDR and other progressives violated the constitution and trampled the civil liberties of these American citizens during this period of American history.

Thin Wood Walls is appropriate for kids as young as upper elementary. The younger reader may need a little background on the subject matter of the text, but I think they could handle the book quite well.

Lexile=620

Buy a copy of Thin Wood Walls in our Amazon Store!

*By all appearances, the author of this book is not a conservative. You can check out his blog on the second amendment where he demonstrates he has absolutely no clue what he is talking about. Guns are a plague, and our founding fathers had many inappropriate ideas, and the second amendment has something to do with muskets. Oh, brother…. He also gave Rachel Maddow’s book 4-stars on Goodreads. I debated not putting this review up, but I decided against it. This book is a good read. It has its place in the young adult library. Unlike many on the left, we know our history.

Reblogged from COMMON CORE:

Jeremiah Chaffee.  Gerald Conti.  Kris Nielsen.  Stephen Round.  Paul Horton. Susan Wilcox.  Anonymous Utah Teachers.  Anonymous California Teacher. Paul Bogush.  David Cox.  Chasidy White.  Pat Austin. Stephanie Sawyer. Renee Braddy. Warriors. Heroes. Freedom Fighters. Teachers.

Common Core is a tragedy.  Wake up, America.  Listen to these teachers.

Some teach now; some have retired over Common Core. 

Read more… 511 more words

Neal McCluskey writes how the Federal Government seems to be directing testing in the Common Core consortia.  From Saying Common Core Not Federal a Joke, but Joke’s on Us:

Last week I posted video from an American Enterprise Institute conference featuring supporters of national curriculum standards—the Common Core—dismissing concerns that implementing the standards might cost lots of taxpayer arms and legs, and laughingly brushing aside concerns that the Common Core might lead to federal control of school curricula. The latter emanated largely from Chester “Checker” Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, whose organization is a leading national standards supporter.

Yesterday news came out that made clear just how serious—and unfunny—concerns about a federal takeover are. According to Education Week, the U.S. Department of Education will start a “technical review process” for the Department-selected consortia creating the national tests to go with the standards. And what will that review look at? Not compliance with accounting standards or something administrative, but test “item design and validation.” That means, most likely (in-depth information from the Department was off-line as of this writing) reviewing the specific questions that will go on the tests. And what is tested, of course, ultimately dictates what is taught, at least if the test results are to have any concrete impact, ranging from whether students advance to the next grade, to whether schools gain or lose funding. Since the ultimate point of uniform standards is to have essentially uniform accountability from state to state, they will have to have some concrete impact, rendering this a clear next step in a major Federal incursion into curricula. (MEW bolded)

Now, maybe Finn wasn’t aware of any of this last week when he blew me off with knee-slapping zingers about the U.N. taking over the Common Core, but I doubt it: according to Education Week, one of Fordham’s employees, Kathleen Porter-Magee, will be on the federal review team, as will frequent Fordham collaborator William Schmidt of Michigan State University. So either Finn is an extremely hands-off manager, or as he summoned his inner Don Rickles last week he knew very well that federal tentacles were inching even deeper into America’s schools.

Ha, ha, America. Joke’s on you.

 
What does the law state about the Federal Government’s involvement in education?  From findlaw.com:

20 U.S.C. § 3403 : US Code – Section 3403: Relationship with States

(a) Rights of local governments and educational institutions
It is the intention of the Congress in the establishment of the
Department to protect the rights of State and local governments and
public and private educational institutions in the areas of
educational policies and administration of programs and to
strengthen and improve the control of such governments and
institutions over their own educational programs and policies. The
establishment of the Department of Education shall not increase the
authority of the Federal Government over education or diminish the
responsibility for education which is reserved to the States and
the local school systems and other instrumentalities of the States.
(b) Curriculum, administration, and personnel; library resources
No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or by any
other officer of the Department shall be construed to authorize the
Secretary or any such officer to exercise any direction,
supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of
instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational
institution, school, or school system, over any accrediting agency
or association, or over the selection or content of library
resources, textbooks, or other instructional materials by any
educational institution or school system, except to the extent
authorized by law.
(c) Funding under pre-existing programs
The Secretary shall not, during the period within eight months
after May 4, 1980, take any action to withhold, suspend, or
terminate funds under any program transferred by this chapter by
reason of the failure of any State to comply with any applicable
law requiring the administration of such a program through a single
organizational unit.

Do you remember of know of any law passed granting the Federal Government powers pertaining to those programs appearing in red text?  No? Then why is this “technical review process” allowed to go forward and exist?