Reviews

Emily Writes

January 18, 2020 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Who doesn’t know Emily Dickinson? A beloved poet born in Massachusetts in the 1800’s, she pushed the boundaries of poetry. She has been loved ever since. A new generation of children are waiting to meet her in Emily Writes. Jane Yolen shows us a delightful young Emily Dickinson. Let’s dig into this review shall we?

What I am Reviewing

Emily Writes: Emily Dickinson and her poetic beginnings by Jane Yolen is a walk into the early years of Emily Dickinson. 40 pages of engaging art work were provided by Christine Davenier. These delight the senses as we wander through Emily’s early days. Children aged 4-8 are invited to follow Emily as she discovers her own love of poetry.

Step into United States history as you read this biography of an important American Poet. Emily Writes was published by Henry Holt & Co. I am reviewing this advance readers edition on behalf of Raincoast Books.

The Details for Emily Writes

Emily Writes is an imagined story of Emily Dickinson’s early life. Elements from different stages of her life were included in this one day of her life. Was her first poem really what it was? I don’t know. 🙂 But it does showcase her love for poetry from an early age.

And as the author explains at the close of the book, her envelope poem as captured above wasn’t actually written until some 40 years later.

Every page is filled with colour, with ample white space so as to not overload the senses or crowd out the words. Her yellow dress dotes the face of almost every page. This is Emily’s day.

We catch glimpses of how it was to live in her family. An older brother Austin who also loved poetry, a hard-working, not particularly attentive father, a sickly mama and a younger sister.

Recommendation

I love how the illustrations by Christine Davenier really help to make this story. This is an imagined walk through one day in Emily’s life. We see her wandering through the pages in her yellow dress. She enjoys life, visits with her family, and more. We get to see everything she does. It inspires conversation between adult and child.

They help us see Emily’s fascination with making her first poem. The joy she had in walking through the garden. It was easy to see the fun she had with the housekeeper. There is so much in this book to make for a nice story. Images to expand the story line and the joy in words Emily shared.

This is a good first book to introduce children to Emily Dickinson. Enjoy Emily Writes!

Fever Year

January 15, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

Last year when my son and I were studying WW1 we learned about the Spanish flu. What a horrifying disease. Raincoast recently sent me a book to review called Fever Year. Using graphic novel format, Don Brown sets out to educate middle schoolers about this world-wide flu.

What I am Reviewing

Don Brown is the author and illustrator of Fever Year: the Killer Flu of 1918. A hardcover graphic novel of 96 pages published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The talented Whitney Leader-Picone did the jacket design.

This book is written with youth 12 years of age and up. It is factual without being overly dramatic. The goal is the help middle schoolers understand the horror of this disease, and how frustrated the medical profession was at trying to find a cure. I am reviewing Fever Year on the behest of Raincoast books.

The Details of Fever Year

The war is raging in Europe. The battle is being fiercely fought, and now America has entered the battle. But ….. people are getting ill, dying in droves. What is this threat? It’s the Spanish flu.

This is the story of how the battle unfolded. The frustration of the medical personnel. The fear of the common people. It was a hard time. Through clear, careful illustrations Don Brown brings these emotions across. With colours ranging in sepia, tan, dark shadings you can sense the horror of those days quite keenly. This isn’t a happy book, but it is instructive.

It is divided into three parts, the first act when it first showed up in 1918. Act two it’s movement around the globe, and finally act three with flare ups in 1919 through to 1922.

The shades of black and brown add to the tone of this informative book. It’s less of a story than a walk through the progression of the disease. A discussion into the curious nature of it’s movement. It could move across a continent in a day affecting the lives of 100’s of people, and yet take 3 weeks to traverse 80 miles.

The reader learns the life cycle of the influenza virus as well as the technical names that go with it. For a student looking for an introductory book into the wonders/horrors of the Spanish flu, this book would top my list. It asks good questions, provides interesting answers and begs the reader to ask more.

Should you get it?

I know that Fever Year will not be everyone’s cup of tea. It is not an easy read. The topic is difficult and the ending leaves one feeling concerned for the future. Setting that aside though, the information about the plague, the struggle to endure, the mystery of how it spread, and how it disappeared again. Such a really interesting story.

If you have any interest in learning about the Great War and one of the many factors affecting it. If you have a strong curiousity in history, medical or otherwise, Fever Year is a great primer into exploring the questions surrounding The Spanish Flu. This reviewer thoroughly enjoyed it and would happily read other books by Don Brown.

Gloom Town

January 11, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

My current review is about Gloom Town, a sad town sitting on a seaside coast. Everything about this book bespeaks a grim sad life where everything is a struggle. Gloom Town has little to draw to it and fewer opportunities indeed. Then Rory gets a job! He’s able to help him single-parent mom out! This story is about what happens next.

What I am Reviewing

Raincoast BooksClarion Books published this intriguing read Gloom Town by Ronald L. Smith. This 32 chapter book rounds out to 288 pages. I received a trade paperback advanced readers copy to review. It will be released in February as a hardcover. Reviewed on behalf of Raincoast Books.

Gloom Town contains some horror, magic and suspense all at a middle school level. You’ll find humour to break up the tension as together together, Rory and his friend Isabella set out to uncover exactly what Foxglove and his otherworldly accomplices are planning. Can they devise a strategyto defeat them?

The Details of Gloom Town

Two best friends form the foundation of Gloom Town. One brave enough to work at the scariest place in town. The other learning skills that most don’t know about. Together they learn the importance of friends working together to solve problems.

This illustration at the beginning of the book spells out the tone really well. When I opened up this page I wondered what type of book I was getting myself into. The characters proved interesting, the bad individuals chilling, and the helper lads were a mixed bag with humour mixed in.

You’ll find some surprises hidden within the pages. Moves that you might expect a character to make the didn’t happen. Events transpiring that make you think what? What just happened there?? One such instance was how the whole story ended, it was totally not one that I had anticipated.

Recommendation

It’s honestly not the sort of book I would normally read. I don’t tend to read scary or creepy books well. I think that Gloom Town being a middle school read was it’s saving grace. It means the creepy stuff isn’t as bad and you know that somehow they will get through it.

I loved how they needed to use their wits, build upon skills they already possessed, and count on each other. Friends who KNEW they were friends and could totally count on each other. Good stuff in that.

Review: Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership

January 9, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

Are you looking for a complete curriculum, all in one place, where one price meets the needs of your entire family? Let me introduce you to SchoolhouseTeachers.com. It is my pleasure to once again review their Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. In this membership you will find a variety of video-based, printable text-based, and/or interactive courses.

Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership, image for review

What I am Reviewing

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a premier homeschooling site, particularly if you use their Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. It is host to a complete PreK-12 education. Loaded with resources for child, youth, teen and their parents you will find it a treasure trove of information. Many of these courses are video-based, others are PDF’s, and yet others are interactive lessons. You get parent resources and access to World Book Online (a fascinating resource).

You can find SchoolhouseTeachers.com on facebook, twitter, and pinterest. Normal price is $179 for the Ultimate Membership, or $19.95 monthly. Stayed tuned for the current sale later in this post!

Learn more about SchoolhouseTeachers.com

SchoolhouseTeachers.com has so much potential to explore. There is quite literally something for everyone.

I would like to show you two of the programs we are actively using. My son is a high school student, and this past semester he is using French.

My son loves that he gets to hear the French spoken, and has easy to print off PDF’s. He saves them to his laptop and then prints off what is needful. This class is just PDF’s to download and listen to, standard worksheets to fill out and learn from. I would love to show you some of his work, but my 14 year is becoming quite private in his studies (at least in an online format).

I’ve been investing some time in learning the Inkscape program. This is a video series that walks you through the different aspects of using a graphic design course. I started it back in October but then hit a spell of bad health and am just picking it up again. Learning how to make rectangles and ovals all over again. 🙂

Future Plans

Next semester I will pick up a bible class called foundations for teens. Videos from RightNow Media along with worksheets makes a class that sounds appealing to my lad.

schoolhouseteachers - foundation for teens banner

We will also be doing a daily grammar, working through the world war materials in the World Book Encyclopedia Online and Dr.D’s geometry course over the next semester. Plans are in the works to take Latin down the road as well.

Doing the courses is easy, you can do a couple of things depending on the class. Go straight to the class lessons, or open the lesson plan.

Most of the courses have a lesson plan which is a suggested plan of action for completing the course. Just like with anything homeschooling though, tweak as needed. Most of the time you’ll find an overview, and then a daily activity list. Some courses will have both, others will just have the overview, it all depends on the needs of the course.

My son gains access to these courses easily by using the bookmarks feature. This feature is found through the member dashboard. You can make a new section for every member of your household. My son has a desire to take Latin down the road, will be taking geometry with Dr. D in semester two and is currently studying WW2. We’ll be adding the foundations for teens to his collection.

Focused Learning Centres

One of the interesting parts of SchoolhouseTeachers.com that many people are not aware of is the focused learning centres. These focused centres narrow in on one topic such as math, reading, science, highschool, careers and seasonal just to name a few.

Opening up the highschool centre led me to discover the mirade of help for highschool like making transcripts, exploring careers, and figuring out the scope and sequence of each grade level.

Flexible and Customizable

One of my favourite things about SchoolhouseTeachers.com is how you can make it your own. You can make a curriculum for your children just by letting them pick what they want to learn (with your guidance). Alternatively you can use the scope and sequence to choose.

They present their material in a variety of formats. You can look under subject matter, grade level, or see all the courses in the grade level chart.

Below you can see a comparison of the various math courses (just part of the list).

schoolhouseteachers.com - grade level chart

Whatever method works best for you, use it. The process of choosing curriculum is made as user friendly as possible.

Video Library

If you can think of a topic, the chances are high that it will be covered somewhere in SchoolhouseTeachers.com video library. Art, bible, history, math and so much more. Watch for fun, watch to learn.

Do I Recommend?

I’ve been using The Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership by SchoolhouseTeachers.com for much of my son’s educational needs. We don’t use it for everything as we are Canadian, therefore we need more Canadian content in our learning. 🙂

I could easily have my son do most of his schooling through SchoolhouseTeachers.com even without the wanted Canadian content. Perhaps, I should help create more Canadian focused content on SchoolhouseTeachers.com just to make it even better. What do you think? 🙂

Promotion

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is currently running a promotion. The Fresh Start sale where you can get the year for $99 (only99 is the code you’d use). Or monthly for $12 (need code only12). My affiliate link for this deal.

The Illustration Idea Book

January 8, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

Just think for a minute how helpful it would be to have a guide walking you through the types of illustrations you need for a your book, or project. Today I reviewing a helpful book called The illustration idea Book. A fascinating look into the why and how of illustrations from around the world.

What I am Reviewing

The illustration idea book: inspiration from 50 masters serves as an introduction to the key elements of good illustration. This simply done up book presents 50 different approaches by illustration masters from all over the world.

Seven themes covered include creating characters, symbol and metaphor, illustrated lettering, inventing worlds, and caricature. This results in an accessible, inspiring guide helping you to use professional techniques to illustrate your materials.

Put together by Steven Heiler and Gail Anderson, The illustration idea book: inspiration from 50 Masters is a trade paperback of 128 pages. This book design guide helps you gain skills to help you in illustration and graphic design. Published by Laurence King Publishing, I am reviewing it on behalf of Raincoast Books.

The Details about The Illustration Idea Book

The Illustration Idea Book contains seven themes.

Play with Lettering (six examples)
Create Characters (nine examples)
Invent new Worlds (seven examples)
Experiment with Caricature (seven examples)
Transform Cliches (seven examples)
Use symbol and metaphor (ten examples)
Visualize Data (four examples)

Each new theme is introduced by blue pages that list the theme and the masters that you’ll be learning from. There is no explanation about what each of these sections concerns beyond what you can infer from the title.

Each lesson by a master includes a one page write up with an illustration to go with it. In the write up the master will give an explanation about the illustration provided. The master will then explain why it was created and what the illustration is all about.

Thoughts/Recommendations

The Illustration Idea Book encourages graphic designer to think outside the box (and sometimes within it) in order to create just the right image. It’s not really for the beginner student, more for the advanced student who has some skill but needs to refine them. There are no direct walk-throughs, you’ll find explanations as to the why behind each illustration.

I personally think it’s very interesting reading about the hows and whys, seeing the thought behind the creation. It is difficult to say how helpful it would be to illustrators though.

I would suggest that it’s at least worth a look through. It’s good to be inspired by the thoughts and creations of others Seeing where that will take you is such an interesting process. How it will influence your future efforts, I really couldn’t tell you. 🙂

We are All Greta

January 4, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

Valentia Giannella wants to inspire us to take action just like Greta has. Together we can work to save the world. Therefore she put together a book called We are All Greta. I took the time to read it back when I was really sick for a week. Today I take the time offer my review for you.

Who Is Greta?

Greta is a 16 year old girl from Sweden. She was an ordinary girl, enjoying life until she was 8. At that time she noticed her parents disliked waste of electricity, food and water. She learned about climate change and how it was affecting the planet. By 11 years old she became depressed and was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and selective mutism. She became very focused on climate change, so much so that she did a Ted Talk on the topic.

What I am Reviewing

We are all Greta: Be inspired to save the world, written by Valentina Giannella is 128 pages long, written with middle schoolers in mind. It is filled with infographics, charts, illustrations and treaties to encourage us to treat the world better in a variety of ways. 18 chapters round out We are Greta along with references and a bibliography.

The Details about We Are All Greta

18 chapters round out the pages of this stiff paperback book.

Chapter 1 tells us who Greta is and why we should care about her words.

Chapters 2-16 talk about different aspects of living the world and how they relate to climate change. Topics include such things as living in cities, fossil fuels, water, plastic and more. No specific action is suggested in these chapters.

Chapter 17 gives ideas about specific things a person can do.

Chapter 18 defines words and gives links to sites.

Pages that are coloured are ones that are encouraging action. Turning of lights and appliances you don’t need. Not replacing things if you don’t have to and other such advice.

Thoughts

We are all Greta is a thought-provoking book, guaranteed to get youth thinking about the world we live in and how to a thoughtful part of it. We do need to not be wasteful or thoughtless about what we do.

My problem with the book is this. I don’t believe in climate change. I just don’t. So when I read books like this an inner part of me scoffs at the poor science and the fear-mongering it provides. But that said, I appreciate books that work to create thinking individuals. People who can look at how to create sustainable agriculture with open eyes. Individuals who can better ways of handling the waste we produce… from reducing the amount we make to better utilizing the remains of society.

With that thought in mind, yes, please do read We are all Greta. Stop and think about what is being talked about. Then go read some opposing opinions. Do some indepth research. Come to your own conclusions. And think. Just think.

I am Perfectly Designed

January 1, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

I am Perfectly Designed speaks to a father’s love for his child and his acceptance of who that child is. Commitments made to be with the child throughout life, and the child promising to care for his dad in turn.

What I am Reviewing

I am Perfectly Designed was written by Karamo Brown along with Jason “Rachel” Brown. Anoosha Syed is the illustrator. Geared at children 4-8 years old, this picture book aims to help promote self-esteem in children while opening the doors to LGBT issues. 40 pages of a dad and his son having a back and forth conversation. Remember when? This is a beautifully illustrated hardcover picture book that I am reviewing for Raincoast Books. Published by Henry Holt & Co.

In this empowering ode to modern families, a boy and his father take a joyful walk through the city, discovering all the ways in which they are perfectly designed for each other.

The Details of I am Perfectly Designed

Sample page of book I am perfectly designed

Check out the colour in these illustrations eh? Isn’t it marvellous? Those deep, rich tones. A good combination of white space to colour. I loved the variation in text colour to show who was speaking.

If you are expecting a story that runs from beginning to end you won’t really see that. What you will see is progression from baby to older child. Comparing the when to the now. You’ll see a child remembering how Dad cared for him, and Dad agreeing with him. There is always a glimpse to the future. We often see dad reminding his boy that he is perfectly designed just as he is. A tenderly written book of a boy and a man sharing treasured memories.

My Thoughts

This is a hard book for me to review to be honest. As a person of faith, I hesitate to recommend books where I disagree with a person’s lifestyle. That’s just there eh? I have to separate that thought from the actual book at hand.

I am Perfectly Designed does NOT delve into lifestyles, it celebrates family. Of family accepting each other, talking over the past, and looking forward to the future.

There is SO much to celebrate in family, from our similarities to the different things we do, and how we support each other. From a parent reminding a child they are fine just as they are emotions and all, to a child reminding their parent that when time comes he/she will support them! Celebrate that, and remember you are fine as you are.

Is there a soft-sell into LGBT issues etc? Possibly, if you look for it. BUT if you only see this book a way to remind children of parental love and support, of the importance of family, and build conversations around that, that soft-sell doesn’t need to come into the picture. I am perfectly designed will do just that. 🙂

Reviews

Emily Writes

What I am Reviewing

The Details for Emily Writes

Recommendation

Fever Year

What I am Reviewing

The Details of Fever Year

Should you get it?

Gloom Town

What I am Reviewing

The Details of Gloom Town

Recommendation

Review: Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership

What I am Reviewing

Learn more about SchoolhouseTeachers.com

Future Plans

Focused Learning Centres

Flexible and Customizable

Video Library

Do I Recommend?

Promotion

Read More Reviews

The Illustration Idea Book

What I am Reviewing

The Details about The Illustration Idea Book

Thoughts/Recommendations

We are All Greta

Who Is Greta?

What I am Reviewing

The Details about We Are All Greta

Thoughts

I am Perfectly Designed

What I am Reviewing

The Details of I am Perfectly Designed

My Thoughts

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Reviews

What I am Reviewing

The Details for Emily Writes

Recommendation

What I am Reviewing

The Details of Fever Year

Should you get it?

What I am Reviewing

The Details of Gloom Town

Recommendation

What I am Reviewing

Learn more about SchoolhouseTeachers.com

Future Plans

Focused Learning Centres

Flexible and Customizable

Video Library

Do I Recommend?

Promotion

Read More Reviews

What I am Reviewing

The Details about The Illustration Idea Book

Thoughts/Recommendations

Who Is Greta?

What I am Reviewing

The Details about We Are All Greta

Thoughts

What I am Reviewing

The Details of I am Perfectly Designed

My Thoughts

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