March 2002     Vol.3 Issue 3

This month's book reviews

An exciting sports book for
the girl who likes basketball

There seem to be plenty of books for middle grade girls who like to play soccer. A good basketball paperback like "Long Shot" is harder to find. Author, Timothy Tocher, in this 2001 publication by Meadowbrook Press, has produced a book that combines a number of elements - basketball as a girls' sport, moving, single-parent families, father-daughter relationship, generation gap (with grandmother and grand daughter), new school adjustment, and pre-teen friendships. That's a lot to squeeze into one sports story paperback. Tocher does it very well.

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A great book for kids who want
to read a short book that is not "babyish"

Brian Selznick is an author and illustrator that produces books that seem to catch kids' imaginations. "The Boy of a Thousand Faces" is a Harper Trophy book, published in 2000, that really intrigues kids that like monster movies and stories about the abominable snowman or the Lock Ness monster. The paperback is heavily illustrated and only runs about forty pages long.

Kids can appreciate the humor in the book and yet not feel that the author is putting down those who really like to view horror movies or read scary stories.

Parents just might feel taken back to their own imaginative childhood as they share this book with their kids. For those middle grade kids who feel threatened by long books, this one can get them into reading an entire book without their investing a lot of time.

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How to imbed a "save the endangered species" message in a fast-reading adventure novel

"The Last Lobo" by Roland Smith is a paperback adventure novel that's probably going to appeal more to boy readers than to girls. The main character is a teen-age boy who has been charged by his father to take responsibility to "see to" his elderly and ailing grandfather. It just happens that his father studies exotic animal species all over the world. Without a mother in the picture, Jacob, our hero, has been bouncing around the globe helping out in his father's work.

To make it even more interesting, Jacob's grandfather is a Hopi Indian who left the reservation to fight in World War II. Since his mother had been a Navaho, he had been a Code Talker who took part in the Pacific War. The "Code Talkers" has used their Navaho language as a code the Japanese were unable to break. After the war, the grandfather became an ironworker in New York City and spent his adult life away from his Indian forebears.

Anyway, there are certainly enough grounds for adventure in this little paperback novel to keep any pre-teen or teenaged boy engrossed in its entire 178 pages.

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Finding fun in typical family day-to-day events

"Zooman Sam" is a hilarious little paperback about what goes on in a family as seen through the eyes of a five-year-old. It's nice to read a book that has no message - it's just supposed to be fun. It is one of a series of books about the fictitious Krupnik family. The big surprise is that the author is Lois Lowry, an award-winning writer of children and youth books that are noted for their seriousness and the societal messages they deliver - with the best-known probably being "The Giver."

"Zooman Sam" is one to share with your kid or kids as you laugh at events that come close to mirroring what very possibly has occurred in your own family.

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Looking for a Dictionary with "Attitude?"
(Reprinted from our May, 2000 issue)

Beyond haranguing a kid to "use the dictionary," not nearly enough is done at home or at school to help a child grow and develop in using one effectively. Unfortunately, many adults have failed to learn to use a dictionary effectively and have not become happy and regular users in their lives. The Merriam-Webster and Garfield Dictionary provides a promising approach to addressing the problem. The publication is sophisticated enough to be useful to an adult user, while it, because of its size, ease of use, and the inclusion of the humor of Garfield comic strips, is appealing to middle grade kids, as well. For a middle grader who lacks reading proficiency partly because of his or her inability to recognize words, a dictionary is an essential tool.

An adult, who reviews the symbols in the pronunciation key with a middle grade child, is reviewing "phonics' skills that may not have been mastered in earlier grades. Referring back to the key when new or unrecognized words are met provides an excellent way to teach "phonics" principles and see them applied immediately. There are more expensive dictionaries and ones with color pictures in them. You won't find one that combines reasonable affordability, quality, ease of use, and a dash of humor, the way this one does.

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