Ms. Stewart's Elementary Book Review Blog - April 6, 2020

Hello Aidan families!  

I want to hear what books you are enjoying reading too, so please email me and share your reviews!  We can talk about books via email messages or schedule a Google hangout to chat about them!

A Little Book Observation

In Montessori education we value observation, and while we usually observe live beings such as people, animals, and plants, I decided to take some time this week and “observe” my book as I read it! I want to share a few of my observations. Did you know that children’s books’ front covers have something called “cover art” that is the work of illustrators who work hard on their design and details? 

How often do we look closely at a book’s front cover? In the book I’m reading, Other Words for Home, I look closely at the cover and notice there’s an airplane pictured on the girl’s hijab, which I would have missed if I hadn’t looked closely. That’s neat, I think, because there’s an airplane in the book’s story. I also notice that the title word “home” is in pretty cursive, whereas the other title words are in print, and I wonder if the illustrator did this deliberately to symbolize the beauty that home is for the girl in the story. 

A second observation I made is how a printed book, as opposed to an e-book, allows me to know physically where I am in a book, and I like this! You may notice and like this too, when you are reading! When I have the page open to where I am reading, I can see how thick the part is of the pages I’ve read, and how thick is the part of the pages I have still to read. While e-books have their own big advantages, this aspect of printed books is a good one, in my opinion! If you notice things about your books and want to share them, please do!

Book Reviews

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga (ages 11 and above). Jude moves with her mother to Cincinnati because of unrest in her home in Syria, but her other family members stay behind. She worries about her brother Issa, who has joined the resistance movement back home, and she worries about feeling disloyal to her old home as she starts to like her new one. She doesn’t like that Americans don’t seem to know that Syria is a beautiful place, not just a war-torn one - that “it wasn’t always like how it is now, and it won’t always be like that either.” One of my favorite parts of the book is the scenes with Jude and her three fellow students in their ESL (English as a Second Language) class, because they all feel so comfortable with each other and can talk honestly and laugh together, as they are all going through a similar experience.

The Doorman’s Repose by Chris Raschka (ages 9-12). The main character in this book is an apartment building in New York! It is 777 Garden Avenue and is about 100 years old. Of course there are lots of human characters too - the doorman, the manager, the owner, an “opera singer inspector!,” and residents of various ages and personalities. One of the coolest chapters is about a room in one of the larger apartments that becomes “forgotten” when it is accidentally sealed off and hidden from view during a remodeling. As Montessori students, you will be interested in how the forgotten room is rediscovered many years later - it is through observation and careful structural measurements!  

If you have read Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events series (I highly recommend them if you haven’t) you may know that Daniel Handler is the real name of the author and he uses “Lemony Snicket” as a clever persona. I mention this here because “Lemony Snicket” writes a comment about The Doorman’s Repose that you may enjoy: “As we all know, it is very difficult to break into an apartment building and investigate the activities of its inhabitants. Luckily, Chris Raschka has managed to do this for us, so we may enjoy these marvelously intriguing stories without going to prison.”

Travels with My Family by Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel (ages 8-12). Charlie, he explains unhappily, has the kind of parents who like to take trips to less traveled, more out-of-the-way places, that aren’t exactly what he would call a relaxing vacation.  Still, they certainly are adventurous!! In Florida they visit the Okefenokee Swamp, and in their boat Charlie reads about the place and learns that “Okefenokee” means “trembling” because of the moving islands, and Charlie says the meaning applies to both the islands and him, as he trembles thinking about the live alligators in the water around their boat! On another trip they visit a cave where the park ranger will not allow you in unless you carry a flashlight because inside it is “one hundred percent pitch dark.” Yikes! After reading this book you should check out the sequel, On the Road Again!  More Travels with My Family.

Happy reading!

Here’s some access-to-books info:

The books I review in this blog are accessible online through at least one of our area public libraries’  Overdrive and Libby app.  

You need a library card to use Overdrive and Libby - if you don’t have one yet you can do it online: 

DC Public Library 

Montgomery County Public Library 

Prince George’s Public Library

Arlington Public Library

Alexandria Public Library