The Bookmark

Bibliography Holm Jennifer. (2010) Turtle inParadise .  New York, New York: Random House Children’s Books. ISBN: 978-0-375-93688-3 Summary In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida. Analysis Typically, when I think of Key West, Florida sandy beaches and sunshine are all that come to mind. In this book, the reader gets to see a different side of Florida from before mainstream culture tried to take over. We get to follow Turtle as she is sent away by her mother, Sadiebelle, to live with her Aunt Minerva. From the beginning, Turtle’s old life is glorified and everything in Florida is made to seem dingy and a poor comparison to her previous home. Even her Aunt Minerva is compared to her mother in a very unflattering light. Everything Turtle does is twisted just a little so that the reader isn’t sure what is fact and what is just

Bibliography Cushman, Karen. (1995). The Midwife’s Apprentice . New York, New York: Harper Trophy. ISBN: 0-06-440630-X Summary This novel is about a young girl who starts out life without even a name. She is found in a dung heap by a grouchy, but effective, midwife who dubs her “Beetle” and takes her on as an apprentice. Analysis This novel is very comfortably written. By that I mean it was very easy and natural for me to read, with not too much high-level vocabulary or colloquialisms. The protagonist, eventually known as Alyce, is a pleasant and dutiful character who tugs at your heartstrings when she is mistreated by the various people she encounters. As you read, you get to grow with her from a half-starved scared child to a confident and self-aware young woman and it is so gratifying! She’s almost impossible not to identify with throughout this classic example of Bildungsroman. Although the storyline catches you and pulls you through Alyce’s fictional existenc

Bibliography Freedman, Russel. (2004). “ The Voice that Challenged aNation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights .” New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN: 0-618-15976-2 Summary This book tells the story of Marian Anderson, a famous vocalist, who had to deal with overcoming racism and criticism while “pursuing her art in the context of the social and political climate of the” 30s and 40s. Analysis                 One of the most striking features of this book is the photographs of Marian Anderson and the people in her life. They lend a familiarity to the reading that makes the reader feel more involved in the story. They also show irrefutable evidence of the segregation that plagued the nation at the time. There are signs for “colored” balconies, waiting rooms, train cars and cab stations. As somebody who has only heard of signs like that, I find it bewildering that people would be so callous. Regardless of the racism, however, Anderson c

“What to Do About Alice” Bibliography Kerley, Barbara. (2008) “ What to Do About Alice .” New York, NY: Scholastic Press. ISBN: 978-0-439-92231-9 Summary This book tells the story of Alice Lee Roosevelt and her many antics and how the drove her poor father half crazy! Analysis                 This book was much more informational than I originally thought it would be and also much more entertaining. We all learn about Theodore Roosevelt in school but very few of us get the opportunity to learn about his wild daughter Alice! Her antics and adventures no doubt caused her father quite a lot of grief and it was nice to see that somebody as influential as the president feels that he “can be president of the United States, or [he] can control Alice” but he doesn’t feel that he could possibly do both at the same time! Every parent thinks this at one point or another.                 The illustrations were cute and fairly simple but Alice’s wardrobe struck a chord with me. She

“The Beetle Book” Bibliography Jenkins, Steve. (2012). The Beetle Book . New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN: 978-0-547-68084-2 Summary This book is an illustrated and informative index of some of the many types of beetles known to man. Analysis This is a nonfictional resource book for children who are interested in insects, specifically beetles! There are over 100 detailed, colored and accurately sized images of various beetles in this book. It also has an index in the back to help children navigate the many bugs on the pages. This index give the page number on which you can find the details along with the bug’s Latin name, size and location. Although it may look a little childish, this book would be quite useful in a classroom of any age group, from K-12. It would be a great reference tool for a unit on insects for elementary level or a high school unit in Biology.                 Aside from the vivid images, the actual text is pretty straight forward.

Bibliography Bryant, Jen. (2014). “ The Right Word: Roget and HisThesaurus. ” Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B.                 Eerdmans Publishing Co. ISBN: 978-0-8028-5385-1 Summary This book chronicles the life of Peter Roget and his love for language that brought us one of the most valuable literary tools in existence. Analysis I have to start by saying that I would happily frame any page from this book and hang it in my house, classroom or car. The illustrations are beautifully crafted from various combinations of paper, watercolors, pens and pencil. They are a very creative visual representation of the subject of the book, Peter Mark Roget. These images also have snippets of handwritten thesaurus entries regarding the vocabulary used in the book. The images give the book an intellectually youthful feel that is very enjoyable even without the story line. Despite the many additional words in the book, the story line itself is clearly defined in a typeface that stands apa

Bibliography Myers, Walter Dean. (2004). Here in Harlem : Poems in Many Voices. New York, NY: Holiday House. ISBN: 0-8234-1853-7 Summary This book holds a wide collection of poems written “in many voices” from Harlem before and during the Civil Rights Movement. It represents the many viewpoints of the people who lived in Harlem at the time and shows a side of the Movement that many people are not privy to. Review The first thing that struck me about this book was the texture of the pages. They are thick and heavyweight as the stories shared them with edges as rough as the hands that held the scribbling pen. In an interview , the author Walter Dean Myers claimed, "I'm not interested in building ideal families in my books. I'm more attracted to reading about poorer people, and I'm more attracted to writing about them as well." And so he does, in this beautiful compilation of stories shared by fictional people from every part of the spectrum: teach

Bibliography Engle, Margarita. (2008). The Surrender Tree . New York, NY: Henry Holt & Co. ISBN: 978-0-8050-8674-4 Summary This is a compilation of short poems playing the part of diary entries of a few important people that convey the fear, pain, and hatred that pervaded the Cuban independence movement. Review                 This book is just a collection of vignette poems about the experiences of nearly 10 people who all had totally different perspectives of the years and years of war the plagued Cuba during its fight for independence in the late 19 th century. To say it “just” a group of poems, however, does not do it justice. Each of the very well-crafted vignette poems gives a little more insight into the characters and their involvement both in the war, and with each other.                 We see the main character, Rosa, grow up from an enslaved “little witch” into an accidental revolutionary whose reputation as a healer becomes legendary. She is protected b

Bibliography Florian, Douglas. (1998). I nsectlopedia. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company. ISBN: 0-15-201306-7 Summary This is a colorful collection of poems centered around various types of insects, some glorified and some not so much. Review                 I have to start by saying that book has the strangest illustrations I have ever seen in a children’s book. That is, in no way, a negative thing though! They are done in watercolor, which is normal, and have a scrapped-together feel to some of them much like a collage.                 The poems themselves are quite short and seem to be very enjoyable for children to read. They feature extended metaphors, such as the “fatterpillar” checking into a hotel and checking out as Madam Butterfly, and fun associations with rhyming words. Generally, the author seems to like personifying the insects in various ways and linking aspects of human life to the insects’ lives.  They do serve the purpose of teaching children h

Bibliography Singer, Marilyn. (1989). Turtle in July . New York, NY: Macmillian Publishing Company. ISBN: 0-02-782881-6 Summary This is a collection of poems that follow various animals through the months of the year. Each of the poems focuses on one animal associated with the weather of that particular month. Review I will be honest here. I did not immediately read the poems in this book. My daughter and I flipped through to enjoy the lovely and surprisingly vivid illustrations. They were very entertaining all on their own! The first thing I noticed upon actually reading this book was that the Bullhead poems (Winter, Spring, Summer & Autumn) all follow the same concrete pattern.  The pattern of the poems causes you to pause and emphasize just the right words so that the result is a fish reciting the poem in your head. All of the poems in this collection use a similar strategy to force the reader to become the subject of the poem just for a little while.