Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts

Friday, February 1, 2008

Multimedia and the Dybbuk

The Entertainer and the Dybbuk, this year's Sydney Taylor gold medalist in the Older Readers' Category, is getting a lot of techno-attention. Have you noticed the widget at the bottom of our right-hand menu bar? HarperCollins offers a "browse inside" widget for this title!

I also found a very funky audio review of this title at Revish, the book review site. Along with the text of a very nice review by RJ McGill (blogger at 3Rs Reading Den), there's a flash player that reads the review aloud. The thing is, I think it's a robot doing the reading. The words have that unconnected, pre-recorded sound to them, and "dybbuk" is incorrectly pronounced as "DIE-bock." (For the correct pronunciation, click here and then click "Hear it.") Even funkier, the robot has an accent that sounds sort of Scottish to me. And when I clicked on the player, which is provided by ReadSpeaker, it took me to a foreign-language page of the service that, in my ignorance, I'm guessing is a Scandinavian language.

I took a look at ReadSpeaker, and found that it is an online service for speech-enabling website content. What an interesting idea!
The Mission of ReadSpeaker is to make the "miracle of the Internet" accessible for dyslexics, people with learning disabilities, low literacy level, people with English as a second language, elderly with impaired vision and others that like to listen as well as read.
I thought that was pretty cool. Almost as cool as possession by a spirit of the dead!

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Kudos for Chicken Soup by Heart



The 2003 Sydney Taylor Book Award winner for Younger Readers was Chicken Soup by Heart by Esther Hershenhorn, and it has stood the test of time. It was just featured as a favorite book on the blog of Scholastic.com in their Parents section. The blogger, Els Kushner (aka "Librarian Mom"), describes cuddling with her sick daughter and reading to her, then goes on to list books having to do with feeling sick.



...a couple of my favorite picture books about illness:

Chicken Soup by Heart, by Esther Hershenhorn, ill. by Roseanne Litzinger. Rudie Dinkins’s sitter, Mrs. Gittel, always knows just how to take care of him when he has a “Rudie Dinkins chest cold.” But now Mrs. Gittel has the flu herself. With his mom’s help. Rudie fixes up a batch of special chicken soup, mixed in with stories and memories.

This is one of those rare and special books that you have to read aloud to truly appreciate. When I skimmed through this book silently, I liked the illustrations but the text didn’t jump out at me. But when I read it to a class, the words sang, and I understood why it won the Sydney Taylor Book Award in 2003. A warm and sweet treat.


For the full post, listing various other titles about illness, click here.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Jen Robinson Reviews Julia's Kitchen

The acclaimed Jen Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page (and recent interviewee on Just One More Book) has posted a glowing review of Julia's Kitchen by Brenda Ferber, which was the 2007 Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Older Readers Category. Jen, in fact, mentions the award and discusses the Jewish content of the story:


Julia's Kitchen
won the 2007 Sydney Taylor Book Award, which recognizes the best in Jewish children's literature. Cara's Jewishness is an essential part of the story. The community from their local Synagogue supports Cara and her father in their tragedy. They follow the Jewish customs of mourning. Cara analyzes her feelings about God, in light of the events. She misses the food-related rituals that her mother celebrated, and eventually learns from her grandmother how to make challah. The details about Cara's family's Jewish customs are organic to the story, never over-explained or feeling "educational". The funeral details, in particular, give Cara, and the reader, something to focus on besides sadness. Here's an example:

"We weren't allowed to get any food for ourselves or help with the dishes or anything. Friends and relatives did it all. We didn't have to greet anyone or say thank you either. I liked those customs." (Page 24)

For the full review, click here. And thanks to Jen for this lovely review!