A Net in Time

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Books for Canada: Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush

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I very much enjoyed this book about Jack London.   

If you don’t know who he is, he is the guy who wrote books such as “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang”.  Books that inspire us to know more about Canada’s northland and the critters contained therein.

Both of those books were favourites of mine as a youngster.   Calling me into the land of untamed wilderness and the heart of animals that are part of it.  🙂

BUT this book is NOT about those animals, but about the man who wrote the books.   A biography of a great author. His books required and desired reading among Canadian Students, speaking to the allure of the north.

Jack London who got swept up in the Gold Rush of 1897.

Filled with photographs of the day and the daring heroism of the men who set a goal.. GET TO THE GOLD!!!   Climbing over mountains, fording rivers, canoeing across large rivers, dealing with weather, and fording through the untamed wilds of Canada.

The sheer hardship they went through.
The number of men forced to turn back.
The fight against the land and the weather and the animals.

The sheer joy of striking it rich.
The thrill of making it through the rushing water.
The knowledge of the need to return home.  
The sorrow when riches weren’t found.

So many stories and adventures contained within one book.  

What else did I appreciate in this book?

The timeline in the back of the book.
running from 1876 to 1912.

His early life and his love of books. 

His work as a seaman. 
His vagrancy. 
Gold rush days.
Marriage to Bessie May Maddern.
And various books/stories written.

I appreciated that the author explained that he did take some liberties with the story.  Much in the book in included from writing from Mr. London and others who travelled with him.  

 Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush

188 pages
published by Henry Holt and Company
Written by Peter Lourie
Type: Biography
Written for ages 8-12.
Illustrated by Wendell Minor

Reviewed for Raincoast Books 

 Amazon.ca: Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush

 Amazon.com: Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush

A is for Sidney Altman

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Welcome welcome one and all.. to the first letter of the alphabet.

The letter A.  You’ll join Amanda and I won’t you?
 

I am so looking forward to seeing what others have to say.   It’ll be fun eh?

For my part, I am intending to be talking about all things Canadiana as we go through the alphabet.   Some will be obvious.. Like the provinces in our fine land, and others I am hoping, will be a bit more obscure.   All in all I hope that we all can learn more about my lovely land of opportunity….. CANADA!   🙂

Today we start with Sidney Altman, a scientist who received the Nobel Prize in 1989 for his work in Chemistry.

Born in Montreal, Quebec in 1939 the son of working class immigrant parents.   His dad owned a grocery store and his mom worked in a textile mill.   Learning from his parents the value of hard work and determination, which served him well in the long run.   As a youth he read anything he could get his hands on.  Reading a book Explaining The Atom by Selig Hecht got him hooked on science.

Educated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in physics, he later changed his major to biophysics.  He studied chemical compounds called acridines, focuses on how they affected the replication of viruses that infect bacteria.

He had many false starts and job changes over the years, eventually finding himself working in England, which is where he started on the path leading to the Nobel Prize.    His work led him back to the United States.   Working with RNA (Ribonucleic acid)  he, over a period of 20 years, discovers catalytic RNA, thus earning the Nobel Prize.

If you want to know more about this work


 
Mr. Altman remains a Canadian Citizen, though he is dual citizen with the USA.  His work with RNA continues. 
Sidney Altman, Canadian Citizen, winner of the Nobel Prize, Holder of the Letter A for this week of Blogging through the Alphabet. 

 

Feel free to link up your family friendly posts using the letter A this week. 
A Net In Time Schooling
A Net In Time Schooling

The Joy in Learning about World Civilizations

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Over the past month, as part of our bedtime reading, my lad and I have been reading a book called “The Children’s Atlas of Civilizations”.   I think I picked this book up at our bi-annual hospital rummage sale but really I am not certain…I just remember talking with a girl who was all “OOH!!!   If you don’t that book I’ll take it, I’m geeky enough I find these books fascinating.”   I turned down her offer but we had a nice chat about how fun it is to read dictionaries and overview books.. how we learn so much by doing so.

When we finished it, my lad’s response was “AW, we’re finished it?   But I liked that book!”   I need to find another we can read.

The question remains.   Why did we like reading this book?   What made it a joy to read?

Maps.

We got to see from page to page how each section of the world changed as nations rose and fell.  Borders expanding and contracting, see where people came from and how it changed the people conquered, and the back and forth between east and west.  It was so interesting.

Along with that came good text, explaining where people came from, what changes they made, how long they stayed in power and why sometimes countries fell again.

Each page came with a global image, to help with the “where it was the world”.   This helped as we moved from section to section, and gave an opportunity for me to say so we just finished the section here, now we are moving over here.   Gave a good distinction for us.

Tons of images filled this book of the different architecture and art from these different civilizations, along with explanations of why we don’t know alot about some of the different cultures (didn’t have any writing so we can only make guesses based on what we have dug up), or these cultures had a picture form of writing which no one can read so this is what we think it means, or why we know lot about a culture based their language is still understood and people wrote about it. 

It was intriguing to learn how religion changed cultures, how it shaped their artifacts and the decisions they made.

It was fascinating to learn how some cultures simply vanished.  They were there one day and then it was as if they simply weren’t.   AND there are no explanations as to why that happened. 

Cultures and people, as varied as the land that makes up this wonderful world that we live in.

My search is on to find another book that will intrigue us as much.

Do you have any suggestions for us?

Picture Books to Introduce Artists

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My son and I are currently reviewing a program called ArtAchieve.   We are enjoying the program since it comes in different formats, a slide show or a video.  We are finding both formats quite useful.   If you want to give the program a look over they have sample lessons that you can try out.

Anyways, I had mentioned to my contact at Raincoast Books some of the things we were going to be doing, and she graciously sent me some art books to review.  (How cool is that eh!)

First up we looked at a book called “Mary Cassatt – extraordinary impressionist painter” by Barbara Herkert.   This book is around 30 pages long, filled with full colour illustrations throughout.

Lovely book.   We learned about her early life, her determination, her friendships, her stepping outside of what was conventional for ladies in her day.  She was an opinionated and stubborn lady who was determined to be artist, and she did what she wanted to do, no two ways about it.

BUT WOW…. have you ever looked at some of the work she did?    I found a website dedicated to the work of Mary Cassatt and all I can say is WOW.. she did excellent work.    I cannot say I love EVERYTHING that she did, but I like a lot of it.    For instance, check out this child in a straw hat.

http://www.marycassatt.org/Child-In-A-Straw-Hat.html

She drew a lot of people pictures, friends, family, people she saw at theatre and so forth.   Just an interesting lady and this book gives us a good glimpse into her early life.   The illustrator does a great job at bringing the story to life with his full colour art work.

Our next book was one on Beatrix Potter and Her Paint box, written by David McPhail. It’s a short small book, running around 40 pages.  

What a nice little book.  Seriously.  My lad enjoyed this book with me.   We even learned why the Peter Rabbit books were small “little books for little hands” was something that Beatrix insisted upon.   When we learned about the snake getting away from she could paint a picture of it, my lad was quite concerned that the snake got away to a safe place to live.

Like Mary Cassatt, Beatrix Potter did best painting things her own way.

Did you know that the Peter Rabbit books became a story because of a sick boy?   It was a “let me cheer you up when you are sick book” and at the urging of the boy’s mom, it was turned into a book which morphed into a whole series about the friends of Peter Rabbit.

I liked the images in the book as well, well crafted and made me think of Peter Rabbit and his friends.

Oh.. I have to tell you this part.   When we read about Beatrix’s pet mouse running through the paint my lad tried to get one of his house mice to run through some dye and leave mouse footy-prints on paper.  He had so much fun trying to convince the mouse to do so.. but MilkyWay would have NOTHING to do with it.    It was fun watching him try though.  🙂

 Raincoast books was the provider of these books for me.  Wanting only my honest review of them.  They were a delightful addition to our week.

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