The Slanguage of Love is a new visual guide in the best-selling Slanguage series, featuring more than two dozen phrases centered around the theme of love, with each phrase translated into ten different languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean.
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My Review:
I won this book for free through the Goodreads Firstreads program.
First, this book is small and adorable. It's eye catching, and can work well as either a stocking stuffer or standalone gift for any member of your family or good friend.
The directions for the book on the first page were easy to follow and my husband and I sat down and went through it, taking turns telling each other phrases in our favorite languages.
The pages themselves are formatted beautifully and the little pictures aren't at all overwhelming, as the author even suggests to add your own pictures throughout the book.
Overall: would I spend money on this? Yes. It makes an awesome gift for just about any occasion.
Imagination and motivation are key to young children’s happiness and health. Thinking about dreams and goals can help children cope with challenges when they arise and view life through a hopeful lens. With this encouraging book, nurture children’s imaginations and help them enjoy taking responsibility for their choices and goals. Back matter includes advice for motivating kids and teaching about goal setting at home, at school, and in childcare.
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My Review:
I received an e-arc, and I'm not sure if the pictures translated correctly. There was a lot of black in the illustrations that gave it a somewhat ominous feel.
Aside from the black spots, the illustrations were enjoyable and the story had a great message. I'm so happy to be reading books lately that feature diverse characters, so our kids can continue to learn different lessons than the racism of the recent past.
The "adult portion " of the book is a valuable resource for parents and teachers, to implement new vocabulary words and encourage positive development.
Most of the activities asked to focus on one dream. This seems like a tall order for a 4-8 year old, but would be interesting to see if done yearly with one child to see how their dreams evolve.
In Unlocking Minds in Lockup Jan Walker candidly describes her reactions to prison realities, belief in education as a door-opener for offenders and their responses to the programs she developed and taught. She gives readers an honest look at the rhythms of working inside, seeing inmates as students, and helping them prepare for reentry to society. Through the years she confronted negative attitudes and behaviors with honesty and options for even those who committed the most serious crimes to change their lives through critical thinking, open discussion in class and reaching out to their families and communities. Unlocking Minds in Lockup answers the nationwide call for criminal justice reform with an inside view of prison education making a difference. Mass incarceration led to over 2 million adults inside prison. Current cost to taxpayers is estimated at over $70 Billion dollars per year. The reader is invited to step inside adult men's and women's prison classrooms to see and hear incarcerated students work to change their attitudes, behaviors and choices. There are 2.7 million children in the US with a parent in prison and millions more with a parent under court supervision. The best way to stop the incarceration cycle in families is through educating adults inside prison now and preparing them to return to their families and communities as productive citizens.
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My Review:
Walker combines personal anecdotes with statistical facts to shed light on and suggest solutions for a problem in American prison. While I've never been in prison, I have been to an extended stay at a hospital. I was surprised at the similarities in educational supplies: the books are ancient, and any other supplies tend to mysteriously misplace themselves. I feel bad for taking the light off of prisons, but it's the only relatable experience I have. As far as the general and voting public are concerned, I recommend this to anyone who appreciates the candor of Orange is the new Black, and doesn't mind less drama and sex scenes. After speaking with the students, Walker took it upon herself to find information useful to them-things like how to arrange guardianship to help their children while they were away--a process no one had been told before. I certainly don't envy Walker's position. As teacher, she was the one closest to the students, who spent the most time with them, and was most likely to empathize. Really, she had no choice but become an advocate. This is a valuable resource, even if it isn't implemented in prisons, it would remain valuable as an addition to a prison library.
This is an excellent middle grade book for young scientists. Nick and Tesla have the same precociousness as Claus and Violet from the Unfortunate Events series, and I especially like the safety warnings not only in the beginning of the book, but in each experiment instruction and the story as well. The story itself was fun and ended on a great cliffhanger. My sister and I definitely would have loved this at the middle grade level, and I fully intend on getting a copy and giving it to my daughter when she's older.
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This second book I read of the series was just as good as the last. Growing up, my sisters and I were fortunate enough to each have our own bookshelf. Mine had many series of books, each taking up maybe half a shelf. I would love to see this series take up space on my daughter's shelf.
Before finding this series, I had begun to worry that educational mysteries for middle grade readers had gone extinct. This series has revived old feelings of learning from books like the time warp trio and the magic tree house, with the added elation that a girl is one of the main characters.
I have to admit, robotics go a little over my head. But that only added to the book as I was able to learn something new, too.
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The third book in this series starts off with a slight nod to the first two, giving only the most important information and moving on to the story at hand. I like this because we all know how kids are--if they like spies more than robots, they'll read the series out of order. Making each book work well as a standalone is smart.
While the experiments were fun as always, the e-arc I received didn't quite translate the formatting. This isn't an issue though, as I plan to get physical copies.
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In this book, we focus on one big invention rather than a bunch of little ones. Since it all takes place in a day (Nick and Tesla need to find out who is sabotaging an exhibit before the opening ceremony) I got to thinking that this would make a pretty good television series too, for visual learners who work better with video than pictures.
Nick and Tesla are lovable characters, and I liked what a big part their friends Silas and DeMarco played.
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Science Bob takes a short break from robotics to appeal to young directors and producers in his latest book in the Nick and Tesla series. Things like homemade steady cams and extended arm grabbers are things that are not just valuable to middle grade producers, but would have also been a great help to me in my high school theater days.
In this book we're still wondering where Nick and Tesla's parents are, and if they're okay. What I love about this series is that the experiments make it educational, but the story keeps you waiting for the next book to come out. I received an e-arc of this book from the publishers, so any formatting issues I know will be fixed in the finished version. Definitely a series I would buy for my daughter as well as my friend's kids
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My Review:
As a millennial, my radar for the older generation overreacting and rejecting anything new or different from the stone age tends to go off a lot. When I first received this book for review, it dinged as soon as I read that the author was from Trinidad, in the age of teachers using corporal punishment on children and still somehow had respect. But then I kept reading. It wasn't the rulers and paddles that made teaching reat, she explained, it was the passion and respect from others for teaching the next generation the things they need to know. Lewis pointed out something I rarely hear in reform speeches, too: sometimes teachers are the problem. We've all had at least one lazy or unmotivated or disenchanted teacher in our lives. You know the one that tells you to read tthe book, take a test, and then violate the Student Privacy act by having the student behind you grade it. We've also had the motivated teacher who puts their energy into teaching and reaching students. We loved that teacher! We wanted to be that teacher! And tthis is what Lewis is calling for. More teachers like this, and how to become that teacher using SCOPE. My rating: 4.5/5
