Time to work on my post on the rest of my reading!
High School Nonfiction
Throw Like a Girl, Cheer Like a Boy: The Evolution of Gender, Identity, and Race in Sports, Robyn Ryle. I really enjoyed this look at how sports works in society, and it's helped me clarify my muddled ideas on transgender athletes. It also made me feel better about my vague feelings that sports could stand to be combined by gender.
I didn't look deeply into the notes and references because I read it as a PDF so skipping back and forth was a pain, but it seems well researched.
I liked the various chapters and the willingness to look at the data behind many assumptions, even when it doesn't support the author's preferences for equality. The discussion on why we require distinct competitions and the hidden assumptions about people baked into that was illuminating, and also how perceptions of the requirements of a sport vary when they are associated with different genders and how that leads (rather than follows from) the way that sport is defined.
You Too?: 25 Voices Share Their #metoo Stories, Janet Gurtler (editor). It's grim reading -- twenty five women report on the sexual assaults in their lives. Obviously it's not hard to find women eligible to contribute (it'd probably be hard to find women to contribute to a book about how they've never had a problem), but Gurtler got essays representing a wide variety of experiences and reactions. There's some repetition, because everyone had to have processed things enough to write about it so some possible reactions have to be excluded by their very nature.
Many times the women voice some form of "I wasn't sure my experience should count" because it didn't feel like the real thing. They fought their attacker off, or they were only verbally frightened (as children!), or they thought they should have been in more control. But luckily each decide to still speak up, because it's important for the message to go out that none of these things are OK. Rape is not OK. Putting hands down a girl's shirt or pants on the playground is not OK. Telling a girl that she's not worth raping while leering at her companion is not OK. No one deserves to be treated like that, and girls and women as well as all the people in their lives need to hear that.
Education, Race and the Law, Duchess Harris and Cynthia Kennedy Henzel. An examination of American school policy at these intersections, starting from a brief overview of the start of public schools and the restrictions on Black literacy and then moving into the modern era. The Plessy supreme court ruling is discussed, and then the NAACP's long history of showing how separate was never equal is reviewed. Their strategy of working from the top led to the integration of graduate schools before the famous Brown vs Board of Education.
Modern issues of racially biased discipline, school districts drawn to protect rich neighborhoods, and the fear of Affirmative action's possible limiting of white privilege are covered in later chapters. The chapters have discussion questions at the end, and I like the small boxes that pull out specific terms or issues for special examination. This is a good overview, but it works so hard to be even handed that I think it ducks some issues.
The bibliography is tiny, but the sources for each chapter are detailed. I like the glossary and the index.
The publisher provided me with an ebook for review.
Surviving the Angel of Death: The True Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz, Eva Mozes Kor. This is really two books that sit together rather uneasily. The first is the Holocaust story of Eva Mozes Kor, who survived bizarre and evil experiments on her and her twin sister by Mengele in Auschwitz. It's a (sadly) standard tale of a happy Jewish family that is slowly engulfed by anti-Semitism and hatred until they are pushed into cattle cars and taken to death camps.
Recognized as twins by their matching outfits, the sisters were the only ones of their family to survive since they are taken to Mengele's experimental wing instead of straight to the gas chamber. This story completes with Eva's determination to keep herself and her sister alive, and then their liberation and after lives, from struggling in communist Romania to emigration to Israel where they can come to terms with their survival. Later Eva married an American and moved to Indiana.
In the 1980s Eva became involved with activism around the Holocaust, making sure it was remembered and that the perpetrators didn't go unnoticed. And she also discovered the power of forgiveness; she forgave not only her parents, who couldn't protect her, but the village that betrayed them, and even the Nazis. In this second story her coauthor grapples with what this means and the controversy it created. Many people were unwilling to hear about forgiveness on the same page as any mention of the Nazis, and resentment and anger were frequent reactions. I'd actually be interested in a longer look at how the community handled this controversy and what it meant to Eva and her family, but it doesn't really work as the epilogue to the story of her experiences.
The publisher provided me an ecopy for review.
The Zodiac Killer, Carla Mooney. A solid review of the case of the zodiac killer, written in simple language that would be easily accessible to junior high kids with an interest in true crime. I'm not much into crime myself but I had no trouble reading it. It doesn't have much of a point of view; the author takes no stance on who the zodiac was or even whether some of the crimes were his. I was left wondering about the detective, especially one of the side boxes mentioned he was a suspect in a probably fake letter sent to the papers signed by Zodiac, but nope, no resolution.
The sources show it's mainly taken from books and websites about the killer.
The publisher provided me with a copy for review.
Marriage, Race, and the Law, Duchess Harris and Rebecca Morris. A clear look at how America has worked white supremacy into its laws around marriage, from rules about miscegenation to defining white practices as the moral choice and using laws to punish differences. For example, during slavery marriages among enslaved people weren't legally recognized. After the Civil War, Jim Crow states would criminalize Black people either by retroactively declaring all marriages valid, and then prosecuting people for bigamy if they had remarried after their spouses were sold away, or quietly deciding that they'd only be official if people re-registered them, and then prosecuting people for promiscuity if they failed to pay the re-registration fee.
I was also interested in the various changes to immigration law, and how differently men and women's spouses were treated. There's even sections on how fraud is investigated (I think my main knowledge of immigration marriage law came from a Facts of Life episode a few decades ago...). I enjoyed this short book that covered a lot of ground. It's clearly a school book, with discussion questions at the end and information bars on the sides.
The bibliography is short, but there source list for each chapter is longer.
The publisher provided an ecopy for review.
Middle Grade Nonfiction
Stem in the Final Four, Meg Marquardt. A book about how science drives the Final Four Basketball tournament, from statistics to camera angles to physics to innovations in deodorant technology. I really enjoyed the psychology of superstitions as well as the discussion of how to layer the boards for the court to minimize weak spots. My family enjoys their March Madness brackets so the section on the math involved there was also appreciated.
It's all written in simple and clear language appropriate for elementary schools (or sports clueless me) and will help me next time I have to watch a game.
There are a lot of good photographs, and I like that the book covers both men's and women's teams. End matter includes a glossary, index, and other books from the publisher that are related.
The publisher shared an ecopy with me for a review.
Plasticus Maritimus, Ana Pego. The story of plastic, as told by an ocean-loving marine scientist. Where it shows up, the damage it does, how to get rid of it, how to keep it out in the first place. A good message, told well, that neither glorifies individual action nor diminishes it.
But the charming part are the colorful and personal illustrations as well as the photographs showing what the author or others found on the beach. These are both charming and also richly illustrative of the important points being made.
I like the bibliography and additional sources, and I like the flavor of the translation.
The publisher provided me with an ecopy for review.
The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity, Amy Alznauer. Lovely pictures and words that convey the love of mathematics are the hallmarks of this picture books. It's fairly wordy, so for older kids or ones willing to sit still. I liked it a lot.
I did want more math though; the book is hazy about the differences in the infinities Ramanujan is dreaming of. And I wanted more details on how his work was used. One of my kids adored math and was fascinated by it (the other one really liked math) and it would have been frustrating to read this to him and not tell him what the dreams were about.
Planet SOS, Marie G. Rohde. A book about the various environmental problems the world is confronting, and each one is likened to a mythical monster. There's a trading-card aspect, where the powers of the crisis are listed and also a description of the myth that is being referenced.
It's a interesting way to introduce kids to environmental dangers, with lots of bright illustrations and facts snuck in along the way. I didn't find the cards a very good way to learn the details of the problem, but perhaps people used to playing Pokemon and Magic would find it easier.
I received a copy of the book from the publisher for review.
A Hopeful Heart, Deborah Noyes. This was fun because my assumption has always been that Little Women was almost autobiographical, so reading about Louisa's actual childhood both challenged and sometimes affirmed this. The four girls do seem rather modeled on Louisa's family, but she traded off some of their experiences and extrapolated from others. So Laurie was inserted after being assembled from some childhood (lifelong) friends and some other guys she met along the way, and the time frame was shoved around, and the parents' edges smoothed out so that they could be the paragons who appear on the page.
Louisa herself was the one who went off to serve in the Civil War, and who came home with her health destroyed. She was also the one who went off on a European vacation as a companion. And, of course, the crazy bits where her dad kept founding communes and running himself into debt is gone; instead there is only a nebulous ruin where the family lost all their money; in real life that happened pretty much when her parents got married as the dad was fairly useless in a money way.
I do like how it completely vindicates all of us who agree that Jo doesn't have to marry Laurie.
There's careful sourcing of the letters and other documents, a good bibliography, and nice details about the old pictures used to start off each chapter. It's a fun book, but I think it's more for Alcott fans than a way to lure in new fans.
Stem in the Stanley Cup, Kristy Stark. This entry in the series on how science is part of the elite sports world didn't work as well for me. The writing was a little clumsier, as the author worked hard to keep sentences simple for the audience. Also, since the focus is the Stanley Cup, all the hockey players are men. Which is fine, but after seeing all the great pictures in the Final Four basketball book, which is pleasantly mixed between women and men, it made the much duller single vision that much duller.
It's a good way to show kids how science and engineering and all that STEM goodness is part of everything, even sports. There's an index and glossary and pointers to other books (mostly from this publisher).
The publishers provided me with an ebook for review.
Love Your Body, Jessica Sanders. A simple message but one that girls (and indeed everyone) needs to hear -- your body is worthy of your love. Enjoy it for what it is and can do. The illustrations are warm and glowing and depict a variety of body types, fat and slim, lumpy and smooth, dark and light. There are amputees shown and also a variety of fashion choices, from brief to hijab.
This message is especially important because it is explicitly combating the negative voices thrown especially at little girls. The message is for everyone but the book depicts girls. It also talks about self-care and what to do if you find yourself unable to love your body.
Star Spangled: The Story of a Flag, a Battle, and the American Anthem, Tim Grove. Another chance for me to learn stuff. I actually had no idea of the point of the battle in which Key was inspired to write his poem; I had mostly forgotten that it was near Baltimore. Grove does a good job of pulling everything together, and also highlighting the woman who made the famous flag and then got forgotten by History. I guess Pickersgill doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as Ross.
There are good asides in the book and this works as a good way to accustom kids to read history books.
STEM in the Super Bowl, Mike Downs. A look at Super Bowls through the eyes of the science and math that go into them, from the algebra and geometry in the plays to the technology behind the sticky gloves and fancy cleats, to the architecture of the stadiums and the features of the cameras. Lots of fun.
The publisher provided me with a ecopy for review.
STEM in the World Cup, Meg Marquardt. I liked that it included both the women's world cup and the men's, especially since in America it's the women who are the stars and bring home the bacon. Well, the cup.
I was a little confused by some of the choices of technology to feature; is facial recognition software really used widely at world cup matches? If so, that is really creepy.
I also was a little disappointed at the photographs; I wanted a lot more action shots. The ones they had were good thought.
The publisher provided me an ecopy for review.
The Puffin Plan, Derrick Z. Jackson. Lovely book that is a memoir of Jackson's work on convincing seabirds to return to habitats that humans drove them from, starting with Puffins on Egg Rock. It involves kidnapping chicks and raising them where you want them, because that's where they tend to return, but also making it look safe to return, often by using decoys and playing sounds of happy birds.
It might also involve MAKING it safe for the birds to return, by chasing off or killing the predators that human garbage have lured into the area (looking at you, sea gulls) while humans also accidentally removed the birds that would have kept them in check. And, on a grander scale, that involves not destroying the planet -- if the fish are chased away by global warming or pollution or overfishing or dams, then birds that eat fish will have a hard time of it.
The narrative style keeps this from getting heavy -- we follow Kress from his youth running around catching snakes to his enthusiastic grad student idea to reestablish puffins off the Maine coast, and how he convinces other wildlife management people to let him try despite him not knowing what he was doing. It takes a few years and a lot of thinking like a puffin, but his excitement when they get the first returns leaps off the page.
The layout is nice as well -- lots of photographs, many in color. I wanted a bit more detail on the efforts to recreate puffin nests, and I was a bit grumpy with young Jackson's overconfidence, but I got caught up in the rescue plan, and then was delighted to see it expanded to other birds and environments as a policy rather than just one island. The later chapters work hard to get kids to look at the wider picture -- how the world and the people matter as they interact.
I was sad there was no index, because I tried to use it a few times.
No comments:
Post a Comment