Reviews

Review: More Deadly Then War

April 19, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Sometimes you meet a book where the cover inspires a boys interest in knowing more. The lad saw “more deadly than war” and his interest was immediately peaked, heading to his favourite youtube to learn more. “More Deadly than War” tells the story that the Spanish Flu took during World War One. This was a history that I did not know, but my lad was very happy to tell me all that he learned about it.

Kenneth C Davis writes an account that is filled with details outlining the toll that the Spanish Flu took, killing 20% of the world’s population before it was done. Striking people without rhyme or reason, and if not outright killing, inflicting them with serious side-effects from the flu. It was a devastating disease.

Mr. Davis carefully weaves true life stories into the facts of the flu and the effects that it had. From slowing down the war, to the sheer loss of life, and confusion of the medical world. How heart-breaking it was for the doctors and nurses to have no idea about how to treat this deadly disease.

He brought to bear the difficulty of dealing with the demands of war (including the selling of war bonds and the parades, parties, and meetings that entailed) while trying to fight a deadly disease. Families devastated, children orphaned, children having to work in order to help their siblings survive, the Spanish flu forever changed the lives of the people it touched, even if they survived it’s attack.

Reading through this book one can just see the heartbreak this time caused around the world. One gal’s dad survived the flu, when discharged from the army and at home again his response to “what did you do in the war” was “I survived the flu”. So sad. So not an easy book to read. I learned so much.

The close of More Deadly Than War asks important questions of how we dead with disease. How we can prevent the spread, how we handle propaganda and governmental interference, and other hard questions. It’s a good thing to think about how we help people without causing panic, how to disseminate information without fear-mongering and overly sensationalizing the issues. People will blow facts out of proportion in order to make a buck, or to sell a paper, or to make a name for themselves. How does one prevent that and keep the public safely informed? Hard questions to wade through.

To help tell the story of the Spanish Flu numerous images flood the pages, bringing us back to the sights of the war, including recruitment posters, masks, hospitals, warfare and more..

My lad suggested I share this video with you to give you a brief rundown on the Spanish flu. The figuring is that if learning about the Spanish Flu intrigues, so will this video! 🙂 Like mom like son eh? 🙂

My Thoughts:

2018 marks 100 years after the Spanish Flu hit with devastating fierceness. This story is still relevant today with the potential for bird flu, swine flu and other flus able to spread across the world with ease. Mr. Davis helps us understand the horror of this disease with dramatic narrative that combines images with first hand stories from individual, medical staff and government individuals. I found it to be a captivating read that taught me as aspect of the war that I had previously not really understood.

More Deadly than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War.
Kenneth C. Davis
304 pages, trade paperback, ages 10-14
Spanish Flu, World War 1, non-fiction, history
Reviewed for Raincoast Books.
Where to find: Amazon Link.

Review: Not One Damsel in Distress

April 14, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Not One Damsel in Distress is a fun read with girls as the heroines in the story. The stories contained within the pages of this hardcover book come from all over the world. They are folktales for strong girls.

What you get:

Jane Yolen has done an excellent job of collecting these stories from Greece, Niger, Germany, Argentina, China, Scotland, France as well as others. There are 13 stories in all. The hardcover makes the book durable, with the well illustrated fly providing an instant way to bookmark your page. The hardcover itself is a plain blue backing. At the close of the book Ms. Yolen gives more information about the stories she included. In this section she mentions things that she changed from the original story (or made more clear) and any variations in the stories found (sometimes a story will have multiple versions). She will also mention where she found the story (often in old folktale books time has mostly forgotten).

How I used it:

To be honest…I just had fun reading the stories. Some of the stories I found more appealing than others, but that is the nature of books filled with stories, you rarely like them all the same. It was neat to read a folktale book filled with strong girls, they aren’t that common. I think my favourite story was Pretty Penny. A lass that could have badly been taken advantage of turns the tables of the miscreant. 🙂 Good to see a girl with her wits about her in a time of crisis. I did as I always do and ignored the forward (at least until I read another review about the author’s mindset presented). I don’t know the age of Jane Yolen, but I remember tales of heroines as a child, so don’t know why she think they were hidden away not to be found. Different experiences in life eh?

Some of the finer details:

The font size is lovely. If you wanted to sit and read the book with a group of children, the larger font size makes it easy to read without having to strain your eyes.

As you continue reading, you’ll find at least one image per story. They are all done in black and white and convey the story nicely. Aren’t the details nice and clear? I found they drew me into the story, and as I leafed through the pages they brought me easily back to my favourites.

Since these are tales from all over the world, they would be fascinating to read as part of geography or history series don’t you think? Giving glimpses into the history of a land as each story carries the flavour of the land it comes from. It would just round out the study nicely I think. 🙂

My Overall Thoughts:

It’s a well done book. Illustrator Susan Guevara does an excellent job with black and white images to convey the story. She helps us picture in our minds eye the story we are reading. Could the stories have survived without the images? Yes! The images fit so well though, they helped to tell the tale! I can easily see young ladies thoroughly enjoying the stories contained within the pages. The only issue I had was that sometimes she changed who the hero was in the story… sometimes it was originally a fellow. Are there not enough old folktales with girls/women as the heroine that you need to change the story included in this book? I don’t know the answer to that, just part of me is bothered by the changing of history to suit a present day mindset.

Not one Damsel in Distress
– World Folktales for Strong Girls
128 pages, hardcover, age 7-10
Folktales, girls, history, geography
Reviewed for Raincoast Books.
Where to buy: Amazon Link.

Fighting Parkinson’s….and Winning

April 12, 2018 By Annette1 14 Comments

Sometimes you have a chance to read a book because the subject matter touches your heart. I have too many people in my life who struggle with Parkinson’s. It is HARD to watch people deteriorate with this disease, therefore the title of this tome intrigued me, so I chose to review it. It would be fascinating and oh.. ever so wonderful to see someone Fighting Parkinson’s…and Winning.

About the Book:

In his memoir Fighting Parkinson’s…and Winning, Shifke describes life with Parkinson’s, his path to recovery and his life since he was declared free of the disease nearly eight years ago.

Howard Shifke knows a thing or two about Parkinson’s disease. He watched his mother deteriorate in body and mind for 24 years before finally succumbing to the disease. Two years later, he was told he also had the disease. But he took a different path than the one his mother had taken, devising his own healing plan from what he had learned in the 10 years he spent studying Chinese medicine.

“My philosophy of Parkinson’s is that I was out of balance physically, mentally and spiritually, and once balance was restored, full recovery took place,” Shifke says. “Western medicine’s view of Parkinson’s is that there are dead brain cells and depleted dopamine in the brain. My position is that the brain cells are not dead and the dopamine is not depleted, but that instead the dopamine flow is blocked.”

His recovery was swift. Within nine months of embarking on his bold plan, Shifke received a clean bill of health from the neurologist who repeated the same battery of tests that first revealed his disease.

In the nearly eight years since his initial diagnosis and his remarkable recovery, he has regularly posted to his blog and has heard from others who have followed his plan and experienced similar recoveries.

A native Floridian, Shifke and his wife forsook the Southeast two years ago for Oregon, where he reads, gardens and continues to coach people from around the world in his recovery methodology. “We have created a worldwide community of people wanting to recover from Parkinson’s who cheer each other on,” he says.

What you Get:

268 pages divided into three sections, one epilogue and two appendices.

Part One: Parkinson’s Disease: Where it all Began for me

Part Two: Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery: My methodology of recovery

Part Three: What has been happening subsequent to my recovery.

Appendix One: Daily Parkinson’s Journal

Appendix Two: Recipe for Recovery Ingredients

My Thoughts:

I have to admit, I am intrigued. I know that different ways of looking at the body and how to treat it can have amazing results. The way the body and the mind work together to bring about healing fascinates me. You can really see the dualism in this book….how the mental goes with the physical. Clearing your mind of negative paths of thinking and opening up your body pathways to encourage your body to work the way it should… it stimulates the thinking that perhaps another way will work.

I look at the routines outlined in this memoir and can’t help but think… if you know you have Parkinson’s and that you will over time deteriorate despite the meds a doctor can give you…what harm would it be to try it and see. To throw yourself into this methodology with everything you have in you to see if it would work. To work past the skepticism of trying medical care a different way. Wouldn’t it be amazing if it worked for you as well as it did for the author? Wouldn’t that be a risk worth trying?

I admittedly had a hard time picturing the exercises and how to do that so would dearly love to have some images to go along with the descriptions of the qigong exercises. If I were to try them I’m afraid my lack of understanding would get in the way of doing them correctly. I did find this video to help me get some idea. They don’t seem quite the same as what is written in the book so I don’t know for sure how accurate the video is.

Fighting Parkinson’s and Winning
– my memoir of my recovery from Parkinson’s Disease
Written by Howard Shifke
CreateSpace
268 pages, softcover
Memoir, Chinese Medicine, Parkinson’s Disease

Promoting Active Lifestyles in Schools

April 7, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

In a day and age when physical activity seems limited in many of our youth (due the love of technology and busy parent lives) having a book to assist teachers in promoting a healthy lifestyle seems a goodly thing no? Primarily written to the teacher in the public or private school system, Promoting Active Lifestyles in Schools, is also some benefit to homeschooling families as it gives parents talking points about having an active lifestyle with their children.

Promoting Active Lifestyles in Schools has been produced by Human Kinetics. Human Kinetics is focused on helping teachers teaching health and physical education to the best of their ability. Their whole goal in life is to produce quality literature to help you, the teacher, help your students be more physically active.

What do you get?

128 page softcover book divided into three sections with a total of 11 chapters.

Section One: Promoting healthy, active lifestyles in UK Schools
Recommendations for nurturing healthy, active children
Whole-school approaches to promoting healthy lifestyles
Physical education’s contribution to promoting healthy lifestyles

Section Two: Monitoring Health, Activity and Fitness in Schools
Monitoring health in schools
Monitoring physical activity in schools
Monitoring physical fitness in schools

Section Three: Health-Related learning in Physical Education
Involving all children in healthy, active lifestyles
health-related learning for 5 to 7 year olds
Health-Related learning for 8 to 11 year olds
Health-Related learning for 11 to 14 year olds
Health-Related learning for 15 to 16 year olds

Comes complete with glossary, references, and index. Each chapter starts with clearly delineated goals.

Authors Jo Harris and Lorraine Cale have produced a good book, geared to the teacher to help them to monitor the physical education levels of their students. Web-resources are included (with a password) to help teachers with quizzes, worksheets, and other helpful information. The physical book includes questions to ask their students, questions to ask themselves and much more.

Four themes are covered throughout:

Safety issues
Exercise effects
Health benefits
Activity promotion

Pictures dot the pages, helping to bring clarity to concepts.

Web resource images are provided throughout the book, the code presented in the opening section.

My Thoughts:

Though I haven’t read every word in the pages of this book, I have read much of it. I appreciated the discussion questions based on helping children see the need to be more physically active. How the questions to help the students changed depending on their age and level of understanding. Good to have help in that regard eh? I spent most of my time in the 11-14 year old category (as that fits my lad’s age). I thoroughly appreciated the huge variety of questions given to be able to assist my lad in understanding why being active is so important (it’s a good reminder to me as well eh?) Get off my derriere and get out walking or biking! All in all, an excellent book to help your students/children understand the benefits of physical education.

Promoting Active Lifestyles in Schools book cover

Promoting Active Lifestyles in Schools
Jo Harris and Lorraine Cale
Human Kinetics 
182 pages, softcover
fitness, physical education
Reviewed for Human Kinetics
Where to buy: Amazon Link.

Other Human Kinetics Books reviewed:

Elementary. Middle School. Highschool.

Review: Around the World in 50 Ways

April 5, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

My lad is really enjoying reading through non-fiction books as part of his required reading time. He’s not a huge reader (as videos are totally his thing). I like to cultivate his ability to read by giving him interesting books he might not otherwise consider. Around the World in 50 Ways is one book I gave him to read.

In Around the World in 50 Ways, you are to get ready to take a trip. You start in London, England and are invited to take a train, a bus or a boat…where will your adventures take you?

Will you end up in Kolkata? Or perhaps Toronto? What about Sydney or Victoria or even Havana? 50 different ways to travel, will you continue your journey or hit a dead end?

What do you do when it comes to a dead end?

You start your adventure all over again. Right back to the beginning planning a different trip around the world, maybe this time you’ll take in a canoe ride, or go on a gondola, a camel anyone? Along the way you’ll learn interesting tidbits about the cities/countries you are visiting.

Around the world in 50 ways is a choose-your-own travel adventure book. The reader makes a choice about which trip option they want to take to get from point a to point b. The full colour illustrations are filled with details about the location, from the shape of an island to the canals of Venice. The question is always presented “where next?” The choice in the hands of the beholder.

The Lad’s Thoughts:

“It was okay. I liked learning about all the different places in the world. I liked doing the adventures. But I really just wanted to learn about all the places in the world. I recommend that you do the adventures 3 or 4 times, and then just read it like an ordinary book.”

My thoughts:

I liked the variety of places visited, there wasn’t a continent not visited as far as I could tell. My lad just came in and said loudly “I visited everywhere!” So there you go. He liked that he got a chance to see glimpses all around the world. No one country was favoured over another. There was good variety in transportation, though admittedly most visits were done via plane (how else are you going to cross large bodies of water quickly?).

Around the World in 50 Ways
Dan Smith, author
Frances Castle, illustrator
Lonely Planet Kids
Flexibound, 164 pages, 9-12
Series: Choose your own travel adventure
Geography, middle school, travel, 
Reviewed for Raincoast books.
Where to purchase: Amazon Link.

Review: Creation Illustrated

April 2, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Three weeks ago I received the Pine Trees Unit Study ebook from Creation Illustrated. Since we have pine trees around our house I thought it would make for a nice little “time out from the normal” study with my lad. My thinking proved correct as my lad worked happily on the pine tree study rather than doing his normal course work, it’s good to have a break before Easter you know? 🙂 The Pine Trees study is part of the Creation Unit Studies that fit well with their magazine articles.

Who is Creation Illustrated?

Creation Illustrated is a company that focuses on showing God’s truth through nature. They do this via a magazine format. They have chosen to help students expand their knowledge of a topic in their magazine using a unit study. The unit study contains a link to the magazine. So not only do you get to read the article that corresponds to the unit study, you also get a chance to see what a great job they do with the rest of the magazine. This magazine is for all ages. Below is the cover to the spring edition.

What do you get?

I received two unit studies, Pine Trees and Snow, though my son only worked through Pine Trees. I thought though you would like to know if the unit studies are similar at all and they are! They at not identical in their set up, as in subjects are in a different order, some sections are longer or shorter and such like.

Some of the units you will encounter are:

List of resources
Brief introduction to topic
Vocabulary/Definitions/Spelling
Bible study
Geography/Science
Hands on lesson
Math
Art Aspect
Wordsearch

As you can see they do their best to make their unit studies well rounded. Teacher answer key provided.

How did we use it?

Before starting the unit study the lad and I went for a walk looking for pine trees. We found a variety in town, and a few on a favourite walk around the dam. I figured it would be a good thing to actually see the trees before we started so he’d already be able to spot differences in the trees before we started. 🙂 It was interesting to see the colour variations… some were light green, others dark, still others with a bluish tinge. The needles didn’t all feel the same either and noting the differences in the bark texture surprised my lad.

Each study encompasses several worksheets that the student fills out after reading and watching various resources provided. My son commented that some of the line spacing is too small. He’s still improving his cursive and struggles yet to make his writing fit narrow spacing.One issue we ran across in the Pine Trees study was the some of the bible verses provided didn’t seem to make any mention of Pine or fir Trees. We didn’t find that to be a big deal as it was more fun to go out and measure a pine tree using a pencil! 🙂 But to alleviate this concern for other parents, it would be VERY easy to just include the bible verses in print form. This unit study fit in well with the Fall 2017 Copy of the Creation Illustrated Magazine. The unit study about snow goes along with the Winter 2018 magazine. In that study you will, in part, learn how snowflakes are categorized and make some crystals.

Anyways, back to our study, after we did our nature walk we worked on the worksheets of the ebook. First I had my lad go through and see what he already knew. Then we looked through the various resources in order to answer the questions. My son choose to do all the easy worksheets one day and then write his essay the next.

All in all it took three days to complete the unit study. We could have stretched it out over a week doing a little every day, or used the questions as a stepping stone to dig deeper. Instead we enjoyed ourselves with a walk, took a partial day to learn about pine trees, and then worked on the finer details of writing an essay. It fit into our week well and the lad found it helpful.

Pine Trees
Creation Illustrated
Pricing: currently 30% off for the unit studies.
Series: Creation Unit Studies.
Unit studies are geared to grades 5-8.
New subscriptions to yearly membership to magazine are 25% off. 
Creation Illustrated. 
Creation, Nature, Magazine, Unit Study, all ages, faith based

60 families from the Homeschool Review Crew have reviewed The Snow and Pine Tree unit studies distributed by Creation Illustrated. Please check out their reviews here.

You can find Creation Illustrated on the following social media Platforms.

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/CreationIllustrated/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/creation_illustrated/
Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/creationnature/pins/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/CreationMag

The other unit reviewed was the Intricacies of Snow.

Review: Counting on Katherine

March 31, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Take a moment to be female and black, growing up as smart as a whip, and having no place to go to school. Imagine that your dad finds a way, and through it a spaceship was saved. Understand well why people would be “Counting on Katherine“. Learn the story of how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13.

Don’t you just loved when an illustrator of picture books captures a story really well? When I opened the pages of Counting on Katherine and saw all the white space surrounding full colour, simply drawn pictures I was drawn into the story of Katherine Johnson, watching her through her formative years and seeing her turn into a well respected lady.

Katherine was a mathematically minded girl who was as smart as a whip. Her papa had a problem, how could he get her the education that she needed. Katherine had a problem, what would she do with the education she received?

The simple drawings with plenty of white space helped bring life to the story.

We saw how women helped to shape the space program, working in the background on the computers, formulating numbers. It was very good to see by hard work, determination and accuracy, Katherine established a reputation as being reliable and dependable.

My thoughts:

Math and dreams filled with pages of this delightful book. I so enjoy a good tale and watching good stories of real life people succeed in their ventures of life. It’s good to be inspired by people who follow through on their dreams and to see the help they got along the way.

Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13 
Helaine Becker
Dow Phumiruk
Christy Ottaviano Books
40 pages, ages 5-9 
Biography, elementary
Reviewed for Raincoast Books. 
Where to find: Amazon Link.

Reviews

Review: More Deadly Then War

My Thoughts:

Review: Not One Damsel in Distress

What you get:

How I used it:

Some of the finer details:

My Overall Thoughts:

Fighting Parkinson’s….and Winning

About the Book:

What you Get:

My Thoughts:

Promoting Active Lifestyles in Schools

What do you get?

My Thoughts:

Review: Around the World in 50 Ways

What do you do when it comes to a dead end?

The Lad’s Thoughts:

My thoughts:

Review: Creation Illustrated

Who is Creation Illustrated?

What do you get?

How did we use it?

You can find Creation Illustrated on the following social media Platforms.

Review: Counting on Katherine

My thoughts:

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Reviews

My Thoughts:

What you get:

How I used it:

Some of the finer details:

My Overall Thoughts:

About the Book:

What you Get:

My Thoughts:

What do you get?

My Thoughts:

What do you do when it comes to a dead end?

The Lad’s Thoughts:

My thoughts:

Who is Creation Illustrated?

What do you get?

How did we use it?

You can find Creation Illustrated on the following social media Platforms.

My thoughts:

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