13 Clocks; Work Hard. Be Nice.; Hunger Games
1 | Comments (2)52. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
The 13 Clocks is a fun fairy tale. It reminds me of The Princess Bride (perhaps PB was modeled after 13 Clocks?) A prince arrives at the castle of a mean, mean Duke, incognito, to find a way to win the hand of the Princess. The Duke sees through his disguise (via his secret spies) and sends the prince off, as he has many other princes in the past, on an impossible mission. But the prince has a helper, the Golux, who is helpful, though he often makes things up.
A new addition to my favorite books of all time list!
53. Too Tall Alice by Barbara Worton
Alice is four inches taller than anyone else in her class and she
doesn’t like it. One night, she overheard her parents talking with her
friends about her height. Alice cried and cried until she finally fell
asleep. She began to dream. In her dream, she was among other tall
girls. The girls helped her imagine what it would be like when she was a
grownup. Everything looked wonderful. Alice had new happy feelings about
being tall.
The pictures in this book are very child friendly. The story reflects
the feelings many children have about being tall and could help readers
come to understand the benefits of height.
54. Our Abe Lincoln adapted by Jim Aylesworth
Jim Aylesworth hits the high points of Abe Lincoln’s life in his
adaption of a popular song of Lincoln’s Day, “Our Abe Lincoln,” sung to
the tune of “The Old Grey Mare.” The story is very simple but should
reinforce the most cogent parts of Lincoln’s life with young children.
The pictures are clever and appeal to kids.
55. Work Hard. Be Nice. By Jay Mathews
I always love to read about schools where kids do well. This is one such story.
It’s the story of the KIPP program that began in Houston in 1995, started by two committed Teach for America teachers.
Here’s a brutal fact: If poor children are going to learn at the same rate as affluent children, they need more school days. Ugh. That hits me where it hurts. This is a brutal fact teachers can’t bear. One of the perks of being a teacher is summers off. Summers kill poor children’s achievement. Eek.
So, give me another way we can improve student achievement without taking away our summers? Yep, KIPP has another answer: longer school days. Another brutal fact that we teachers can’t bear. Please, give me something else?
Well, KIPP teachers help kids with their homework…in the evenings! Eek. This is getting worse and worse.
KIPP offers answers to improving student achievement among poor children, but the answers are not easy.
56. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
When I first heard about this book, the plot sounded derivative, already used in books like Ender’s Game and Surviving Antarctica. I kept hearing so much good buzz about it that I went ahead and read it anyway.
The plot is derivative, but with the book’s great characters and a heavy dose of hearty action, The Hunger Games is a strong read. Like most dystopian novels, this one pushes the warning buttons on the reader’s brain and sends your brain synapses a jolt that keeps the reader thinking long past the close of the book.
I’m looking forward to book two.
(JMHO, but I can’t see this book in libraries with younger readers. Lots of violence.)
Catching Up
46. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang
Chang spends three years in China, following the lives of several young women who have moved from rural China to find jobs and money and success and love in urban China. This is not the story I’d been expecting; city life turns out to be a big plus for most of the women in this book. Those for whom city life is not so well suited quickly return home, usually to try again on another day. For the most part, the women have a place to stay and are earning money. There are sad stories, too; companies close down and fail to pay their workers and women find they are working incredibly long hours for minimal pay. But the women generally begin to adjust to the six day work week and the long hours per day. Soon the women want to find ways to improve themselves and move up in the company hierarchy. This, too, is possible in the big city.
The only jarring note for me was Chang’s side story about her own family; why was this included in this book? No one in Chang’s family was a factory girl. Had I been Chang’s editor I’d have saved this story for another book.
47. The Amateur Gormet: How to Shop, Chop, and Table-Hop Like a Pro (Almost) by Adam D. Roberts
Roberts, like an increasingly large number of young authors today, keeps a blog about his experiences in learning to cook. The book is composed of pieces taken and expanded upon from the blog. It’s not a bad book, given that it is one man’s attempts at becoming an amateur gourmet. It’s not the end-all of books about learning to cook and shouldn’t be read with that expectation. It was a gentle little read, but nothing more.
48. Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat by Hank Cardello (with Doug Garr)
I wish Cardello hadn’t needed a writer to help him with this book. The book suffers a bit from the writer-helper’s attempts to polish up Cardello’s thoughts. But it obviously would have been much worse without the additional writer. And it is not a bad book. It’s not a beautifully written book either, but that’s okay. It gets its points across. The strength of the book is the expertise Cardello the insider offers the reader. And does Cardello ever have insider knowledge. The food industry comes across as morally indifferent to the tremendous increase in the size of the average American over the past thirty years. Should it be indifferent? Cardello nods his head, asserting that the food industry is only obligated to be concerned with increasing its profits. Where then can we turn? How can we slow or stop the growing obesity of our country? Cardello states that we must make it profitable for the food industry to be concerned with Americans’ health.
49. Epilogue: A Memoir by Anne Roiphe
Roiphe’s husband dies unexpectedly and she is terribly lonely. Her daughters try to help her by taking out a personal ad for her. She tries to help herself by going online and using a service. She gets calls and she goes on dates. It is all a tremendous disappointment.
Time passes and Roiphe gives up on the outside dating help. She gradually comes to find a peace in her solitariness. She decides to wait and see if love comes to her.
50. Testimony by Anita Shreve
Three young men at a private school ruin their lives when they get drunk and are videotaped in compromising situation with an underage girl. This book is the story of the young men and their families and their teachers and the young girl.
I found the strength of the book to be in the way it was told. I liked the way the author told the story in chapters using various points of view. It felt very real.
I thought the tale was a bit too Oprah-ish, the social problem of the week. None of the characters was terribly likable, except for Silas who seemed to have been caught up in the drinking amid family difficulties and was a victim of circumstances.
All in all, a ho-hum Shreve.
1 | Comment (0)
