edh's reviews
352 reviews

While I have to admit that the concept was clever and the wordplay fun, I just found Un Lun Dun to be non-compelling in the extreme. At no point was I genuinely worried about the two protagonists, and the fearsome parts (killer giraffes?!?) seemed like slapstick to me. The best adjective I could use for this book was *self-conscious.* I didn't feel that lovely submersion that I usually feel when reading good fantasy.

I know this was a BBYA title, and no doubt it will find readers. But I thought this skewed incredibly young for it to be marketed as a YA title. I think it's firmly for the proficient 8-12 y/o reader.

"I went to sleep dreaming of Malawi, and all the things made possible when your dreams are powered by your heart."

William Kamkwamba lived in an Africa of contradictions, where witchcraft bumped against faith in God and Allah-- where famine followed drought and officials denied the people's mortal hardships. The worst contradiction of all was that his family could work hard all year to plant a good crop just to see nature sweep it away from them; a people who barely subsisted hand to mouth. And when William believed he would never return to school for a lack of money, that was when his real learning began... sparked by the connection between bicycle light dynamos and his fascination with a library book describing how to build an "electric wind."

Henry Adams himself could not have been more fascinated by the potential of a simple dynamo to conquer darkness, thirst, and hunger. William's motivation was to change his family's fortunes through a new harvest of abundant and free wind power-- but he ended up tapping into his own talent to pull a community from the edge of poverty with nothing more than bits of junk and scrap metal.

I first heard about William's story through AfriGadget & TED, and I also saw his work featured at the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry! Getting to read about his family and his hopes for a better future makes his accomplishments seem even more staggering. There is something magical about learning as you go, being driven by need and love, and the insistence on innovation despite naysayers and failure. His story will certainly inspire many people to dream of a better tomorrow... and to know that they can make it happen with little more than a book, some spare parts, and persistence.

I immediately requested that we purchase a book club set of this title for our library to lend out. Anyone bemoaning the state of reading in America needs to read this book, then take action.

Donalyn Miller teaches English and social studies to Texas 6th graders in a school that uses block scheduling (this explains how she's able to pull off her approach to reading). Her students start out the year reading at least 15 minutes a day in class, then increase to no fewer than 30 minutes EVERY DAY. She has successfully created a reading culture for her students that works because it is based wholly on self-selection. The goal is for students to read 40 books over the course of the year, but she totally celebrates the ones who simply read more than they did the year before (which was zero for some, sadly).

The sacrifices she's made are many, from purchasing a massive classroom library with her own money to throwing out all her novel study lesson plans (where the whole class reads one book at a time simultaneously). There aren't any crafts based on the book, no fillers, and no frills. She doesn't buy motivational posters, she buys MORE BOOKS. And her students ace the TAKS evaluations every year.

There were three really powerful quotes that I think are the essence of this book:

1) "Endless test prep is the number one reason students come to my class hating to read. They don't think test prep is one kind of reading; they think it is reading."

2) A former student has a conversation with her about spending all his money at Barnes & Noble. "Matthew, why don't you go to the school library?" He replies, "My teacher never takes us to the library. The only way I can go is before or after school, and I am always rushing. Whenever I find a book I like there, it is the third in a series or something, and they never have the first one."

3) "We who work with children every day... across America have an obligation to live the reading life ourselves." (That's from the afterword by her principal!)

There are two things that adults need to do in order to help kids become readers: We need to read for pleasure and share that culture with kids, and we need to surround them with books that they can pick and choose from freely. Miller makes a wonderful case for stripping away the elaborate points systems and the lesson plans that over-elaborate every possibly literary device that can be wrung from a novel, and replacing all that with simplicity itself: more books, and time to read. This is a great complement to Readicide.

Also: Hear Donalyn talk about reading habits online!

Celeste lives in Unity, a polygamist sect. Having nearly reached a marriageable age, she prefers to daydream about boys her own age instead of the older husband that the Prophet is sure to pick for her. Taviana is a teen runaway (and former prostitute) taken in by Celeste's family but who attracts too much attention to their community. And Celeste's sister Nanette is only 13 but is incredibly eager to begin her new life with an assigned husband and babies. You know this isn't going to end well...

The strengths of Sister Wife are many, including the realities of childbirth (one character dies, another suffers from preeclampsia) and the delights and stresses of large families with many small children. Boys old enough to act as competition for the affections of marriageable girls are cast out of the community, and some leave before they can be forced to do so. The community is not totally sealed off from the outside world, and the temptations of secular living prove to be many. If you have fans of Jodi Picoult-esque stories, this one will definitely fit the bill.

Check out others' reviews - I liked this far better than, say, Blue Balliett's mysteries & I think the late Dowd was a wonderful writer. I'm going to put on my nitpicky mystery reader's hat now...

************SPOILERS AND PLOT HOLES AHOY*******************

While the writing was lively & compelling, I was really bothered by the way that cousin Salim disappeared into thin air. His whole plan depended being separated from his mother when getting on the Eye (as his mom would surely recognize his friend after he shed the disguise up in the air). But that was a chance decision initiated by his aunt. She was the one who decided that the wait was too long and volunteered to wait at the coffee shop with his mom.

Additionally, I didn't buy that Kat & Ted would forgo their own ride on the Eye. They had the money, and their mothers were expecting a ride of their own once the tickets were bought. The whole point of their outing was to enjoy a ride together, so it seemed out of character for a couple of kids to just let their cousin run off for a ride (despite it being free) and then for them to deny themselves the pleasure of riding too.

If anyone can help me see the light, I'd appreciate it :) While these points are not enough to dissuade me from recommending this book (the rest of the plot is fast-paced and quite clever in spots), it just bugged me as a mystery fan to see the whole plot hang on dubious coincidences.

You know, I always knew there was a concept like "choice architecture*" but I could never name it. This book really helped give me a vocabulary for lots of the things that we *don't* do (but could be doing, and doing better) in libraries. We are in the public service business, and for so long we have focused on the concept of abundant information choice rather than helping patrons close off the irrelevant information choices that hamper their knowledge-gathering. I think I am going to have to sit on these ideas for a while and let them percolate...

*choice architecture is the way in which you present choices to people and how that presentation affects their eventual decisions. This can be used for good and evil, of course, and the authors say they subscribe to libertarian paternalism which means they believe in trying to gently steer folks towards the decisions they might have made themselves with enough time & resources to consider everything fully. I guess I am wary of this concept because it has the potential to be abused, and easily so. At any rate, I expect I will keep considering these ideas for some time to come!

I heard about this series and although it was an interesting premise (basically anecdotes from one day-in-the-life of titular Moxy) I didn't really think it lived up to the hype. Although the story arc was believable, the light-hearted and breezy storytelling didn't match its gravity. (Moxy & brother end up being denied a trip to see their father, now divorced from their mother, b/c he has blown them off for a "big Hollywood opportunity.") I think that this writing style works best when the content is congruent with the concept.

This could be a great quick read for proficient readers in 3rd to 5th grades. After all, hasn't everyone had to learn about spraypaint the hard way?

Like his favorite character, Alice, David Small leads the reader through a kaleidoscopic wonderland in his memoir Stitches. But this is no technicolor animation - young David's journey is a painful hell punctuated by emotional and physical estrangement that has obviously had a formative effect on his art. The adults in his life loom over him like leering eyeless zombies as he discovers that nobody's supposed to call his grandmother "crazy," and that the supposedly harmless surgery he needs has turned into a nightmarish tumor removal that leaves him nearly mute. Finally, David is rescued from the brink of insanity (and expulsions from boarding schools) by his own White Rabbit, a psychiatrist who helps him come to terms with his family's dysfunction and his own confusions.

Expressively told in wavering lines washed with gray pools of shadow, David Small morphs his memories from reality to fantasy and back. Theatre seats become teeth in a mouth; a cavernous void which he cannot use to express himself (literally or figuratively). A recurring dream in which, Alice-like, he is forced through smaller and smaller doors only to emerge in a scene of chaos and destruction gives his narrative more figurative depth. Ultimately, this is a story of hope - his epilogue goes on to give a bit more backstory to his parents' lives and his determination to escape the cycle of denial that had been percolating for several generations. Give this one to anyone who needs proof that art (however you define it) has the ability to set you free.

I'll wait until more people have read this to go into more detail, but suffice it to say that there's an ominous baddie, a pretty researcher lady, and the regular cast of characters familiar to Brown fans on the run in this thriller set in D.C. Professor Langdon is on the trail of ancient Masonic lore in the attempt to free an old friend from the clutches of evil. Say what you will about Brown's formulaic writing style - the man knows how to make every chapter a cliffhanger! When you're done, you will definitely feel like a symbologist - the whole world is an open book, if you just know how to read it :)