Category Archives: books

Book Review: Keep Scrolling ‘Till You Feel Something

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This book is a joke. I mean, you can’t even read the cover of Keep Scrolling ‘Til You Feel Something: Twenty-One Years of Humor from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency once you take the paper sleeve off. You have to hold the binding up to the light, and twist it a bit, just to realize, the entire thing … just a big fat joke. Sixteen books better than this one? Is that what it says? Only sixteen? ‘Cause I got a larger list going somewhere over here.

Skip over the 600+ pages of nonsense to read more about the contributing writers. Informative? Well, sort of, if you can get past all the insider jokey references to humor writers, about living in either New York or Hollywood, and a smorgasbord of deadpan verbiage. (say that last bit out loud in the voice of the Muppet Show’s Swedish Chef … now, THAT’s funny stuff) Even the final pages of Additional Contributors are a big joke. Email as someone to thank? I think not.

Then go on, go on and dig your way through the pages of this brick of a book. Don’t hurt yourself as you hold this behemoth of paper. It’s heft might hurt your wrists. Drop it on your foot and you’re for sure on a trip to the emergency room, signing away your life to the health care industry. I blame the editors.

Before you open the book up, though, it’s fair to ask: McSweeney? Who’s the heck is he? Or her? What’s that? You won’t find a good answer inside. Instead you get so-called Back Stories and Behind the Scenes malarky (I’m stealing that one back from Biden) that will provide little to no insight into McSweeney it/him/herself.

And just look at the writers here. Jake Tapper? Really? Are we to believe the lefty CNN guy is funny? Come on. Jake Tapper, who are you, really, anyway? Plus lots of names you never heard of. John Hodgman? Ellie Kemper? Mingled in with some people you may think you might have heard of once, but, you know, probably not. Given the joke that this book really is, the names are likely jokes, too. You could spend a few hours trying to crack the humor code, but why bother? You’re not going to laugh anyway.

It’s not that kind of joke book. The one that makes you laugh.

Last of all, why buy the book when all of this material is apparently online? For free. If you can find it. If you care to look. Yet the book costs a pretty penny, let me tell you, and the joke is on me, and you, if you spent your last penny on the purchase. At least, you won’t have to indulge again for another 21 years. If books are even around. Stories may be gone, too, for all we know.

Yep, Keep Scrolling ‘Til You Feel Something is a joke. And so is this review. I am full of malarky and loving it.

Peace (it’s in the book, next to the decorative gourds),
Kevin

Book Review: The Hyperdoc Handbook

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This teaching book is now a few years old (2016) but The Hyperdoc Handbook (Digital Lesson Design Using Google Apps) by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton and Sarah Landis was helpful for me in thinking further on how to integrate the concept of HyperDocs (a way to design a lesson or unit for independent inquiry and reflection for students with links and resources and places for sharing) into my remote and hybrid learning approach. I wrote about my initial foray into Hyperdocs the other week.

And plenty of National Writing Project colleagues and I have been engaged in Twitter discussions about the viability of HyperDocs, as well as the limitations. It is important to note, as the authors do repeatedly, that HyperDocs are not just some amped up worksheet to be given remotely to students. (See Deanna Mascale’s latest post on Hyperdocs for her university instruction) I also know there are criticism of this kind of approach, as being too prescriptive or narrowing in scope for learners.

The three authors of The Hyperdoc Handbook are experienced teachers and instructional coaches and technology advocates, and I appreciated the approach of screenshots and examples and the way they talk through the pedagogical rationale for Hyperdocs as a way to engage all learners in a guided yet independent inquiry process. They explore pedagogy and tap into the ways that well-designed Hyperdocs can extend the idea of Zones of Proximal Development, through layered choices and skills and expectations.

You don’t need buy this book to learn about Hyperdocs (I am one of those own-a-book people and I like to support teachers) and their website has plenty of examples and templates and more that you can examine and borrow, and hack, as the authors tell you in the book.  A blog post at the site even provides some useful thinking on remote teaching with Hyperdocs.

This week, in fact, I am going to use a HyperDoc with teachers as part of a professional development session on Project-Based Learning, in which teachers explore a theme for a short/tiny public service announcement (an idea borrowed from AJ Jacobs).

I’m deep into the design stage of curriculum for the start of our school year (which begins remote and then becomes hybrid, with independent learning days for students in the weekly schedule). I see some possibilities here for my students, although it is important to acknowledge that Hyperdocs as nothing new, really, but more of a way to organize resources for student inquiry and exploration. Webquests, websites, blog posts, etc, all are in the same family. The book is helpful in its range of examples, visuals and testimonials from other educators.

As mentioned, a Hyperdoc (which does NOT have to be a Google Doc or product) is definitely more than a glorified worksheet. It’s more like an anchor or docking point, leading students to other activities and resources. That’s important to remember.

Peace, (linked),
Kevin

Book Review: Long Story Short (100 Classic Books in 3 Panels)

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Three Panel Review of Three Panel Comics

It seemed appropriate for me to make a comic with three panels as review art for a book of comics of three panels (for the most part) of classic novels. Artist Lisa Brown uses whimsy and brevity for her small collection that summarizes classics like Moby Dick, The Handmaid’s Tale, Lord of the Flies, and more.

As both an avid reader and a lover of comics, as well as an appreciator of popping the balloon of pretension, I thoroughly enjoyed Brown’s small book and humor, and insights, too, that come from trying to find the most important thread from which to spin a comic piece of art. Long Story Short is a fun diversion and witty companion the serious novels of the so-called “literary canon.”

Note: there are references to sex and death in here (it’s a theme of many novels, as you might know) so if you are teacher wondering about the possibility of using this book in the classroom, you might want to pick and choose pages from Brown’s book, or at least, give it an entire read (you should anyway) and determine appropriateness for your students.

Peace (in three frames),
Kevin

 

Graphic Book Review: The Machine Never Blinks

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From the prison thought experiment of the Panopticon (where every cell is visible to the guard) to today’s video street surveillance that uses face recognition algorithms, people have long and rightly worried about how to protect their privacy. In this graphic non-fiction book — The Machine Never Blinks: A Graphic History of Spying and Surveillance by Ivan Greenberg and Everett Patterson — the steady erosion of our privacy in public spheres is made evident and alarming.

Greenberg and Patterson have a progressive agenda here — it’s that the government should never be trusted with our data and that citizens must act against invasion of privacy and remain vigilant against such intrusions — and the stories of generations of spying on citizens is nothing new. Gathered in this one book, the collective stories become a powerful indictment of how technology has increased the pace of our loss of privacy and data — some of which we have willingly given up (social media, etc.) and some of which we have allowed our government to do in the guise of safety.

I’m not convinced the graphic format is the right format for this topic, however. In this book, the pages are crammed with text, reducing the reader’s ability to absorb the visual information. Which is why one would use a graphic novel format in the first place. I wish they had done more to leverage the use of the visuals on the page. In too many frames, it’s just people talking with speech bubbles or overflowing text boxes. I understand there is a lot of information to get out, but  better use of symbolic visualization and experimental art would have helped make the point, in my opinion.

And the point of the book is important and for those of us concerned about privacy and data, The Machine Never Blinks is another look at the topic. This book would appropriate for high school students but might be too dense with concepts and vocabulary for younger readers.

Peace (pushing back),
Kevin

 

Book Review: Kids Who Are Changing the World

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We bought copies of this book for teacher-participants in a spring professional development that connected history (Shays Rebellion, which took place as a resistance here in our area and led to the Constitutional Congress) to modern civic engagement projects with students. Kids Who Are Changing the World is a beautifully done book, with impactful stories of what the title says — young people who saw a problem and then worked to address it.

Inside, you can find dozens of examples of activism on issues of the environment, health, politics and more, with kid-friendly language and stories and images. There’s also plenty of advice for young readers on how to proceed with their own ideas for change in the world.

I enjoyed this book so much that I ordered a class set for my classroom, and intend to use it as a launching pad for some local civic engagement projects with my sixth graders later this year. I’m hoping they will be inspired by the many stories — many of which focus on neighborhoods and local communities.

I appreciated the many links to online resources, some of which are sites set up by the kids in the book and others, related documents and information that might help inform my students on a wide variety of issues.

Peace (changing the world),
Kevin

Graphic Novel Review: Dragon Hoops

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I’ve read plenty of Gene Luen Yang over the years, with great interest and as a fan, and Dragon Hoops is another fantastic example of graphic novel to tell a story as Yang dives into his own place of work (before he left to become a full-time graphic novelist) as a teacher.

And his focus is on the high school basketball team, although really, his interest and keen eye is on the stories of the students who are players on the team (and the coaches) that uses elements of graphic storytelling to great effect, including fourth wall breakage as he struggles with how to include a darker history of allegations against a former coach whose resonance is everywhere in the team’s story.

The story follows the talented basketball team over a few seasons as they approach the biggest game of the year in California. Yang, no sports buff, is learning not just how the game of basketball is played but also what it means to be part of a team. He focuses on a few players, but showcases the cultural tensions with clarity, too, as well as life lessons being learned.

We also see Yang as a teacher, struggling to balance teaching, family obligations as a father/husband, and his expanding role as a graphic novelist (this book was being written just as he was being offered the role of a lifetime: taking over the Superman comic franchise for DC Comics). He shows his struggles to find the threads of the stories, and how his passion for narrative drives him, and bewilders him, and inspires him to create the book we are reading.

This graphic novel is geared for middle and high school students, and the allegation of misconduct against the former team coach and teacher is something to keep in mind for readers who are also Yang fans. The issue is not central to the story, but it is mentioned, and told with nuance.

Peace (in panels),
Kevin

Book Review: Eyes & Spies (How You’re Tracked and Why You Should Know)

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Where’s the line between sparking fear and providing necessary information when it comes to talking to young people about their digital lives? I struggle with this shifting and slippery line every single year I work with my sixth graders on our Digital Life Unit (wetalk about the topics of privacy throughout the year). The line itself keep shifting on us.

Eyes & Spies: How You’re Tracked and Why You Should Know takes the approach of being pretty blunt in its delivery of eye-opening ways that governments, companies and others are exploiting our online and digital lives for surveillance and for profit, and for nefarious activities. Whereas I try to keep more positive in my discussions, this book for middle and high school students does not hold back the punches, not at all, and I suppose that is as it should be, for older users of technology.

This visual book covers a lot of ground, too, but in language and format that is accessible — there are lots of short bursts of information within the larger chapters, and lots of illustrations and color. Charts also offer suggestions for privacy for different topics.

I particularly enjoyed the running pieces that coupled the pros with the cons of topics in the form of short, reasoned arguments — such as why GPS tracking of kids might be used for protection and why it might be an invasion of privacy.

Another feature I appreciated were small stories under the banner of the Creepy Lines of technology, with ethical and moral dilemmas with no clear-cut answer to the issues facing society, such as police using fake identities on social media to find a criminal. Each of these also ends with a question for the reader to ponder.

Overall, I found the book useful for my own talking points but I feel that the text is best for high school students, and maybe in different sections, too. I would also argue that it is useful for parents of teenagers, like myself, to remind us to have these conversations with kids about how they are using technology, how much privacy they are giving up, how to protect themselves, and how to step back to see the larger picture of how our devices and the growing field of technology are invading our lives, for both good and for bad.

Peace (post it),
Kevin

Revisiting: On Tyranny (Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)

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I read and recommended this small but important book near the start of this lunacy/presidency and I have pulled it out to re-read (yet again) and recommend (yet again) at what I hope is the nearing end times of this lunacy/presidency.

I’ve sent this book as gifts to friends and family. I still highly recommend it. What’s happening in Portland and other cities with federal agents is another resonation of Snyder’s points here — that government tyranny happens slowly and then quickly, and it must be combatted at every turn.

Remember to vote.

Peace (fight for it),
Kevin

Book Review: Writing Redefined

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I’ve long been exploring how we might expand notions of what writing is, and what composition is, for years, and so have many others, particularly those of us affiliated with the National Writing Project. More than ten years ago, a book I co-edited Teaching the New Writing centered on this topic.

Shawna Coppola and I have often interacted on Twitter, sometimes with our friend Troy Hicks as a connector thread, and so I was excited and interested to learn more about her new book Writing Redefined (Broadening Our Ideas on What It Means to Compose).

(Note of disclosure: Shawna sent me a copy of her book to review. I made and shared comics as I was reading her book).

In her book, as in her teaching practice, Shawna explores a lot of terrain, but in a thoughtful way that balances rigor and exploration, bringing her own experiences as a teacher and literacy coach into the mix, and the wealth of resource she shares via QR Code within the book is staggering, and sure to keep an interested teacher inspired. As I think about her book, I wonder even more than ever how we might use the moments of the Pandemic/stay home to bring more of these kinds of authentic writing ideas into our online spaces for students, to engage them in meaningful compositional strategies and projects.

Response Comic 2 (Writing Redefined)

Shawna effectively makes the case that by limiting “writing” to words on a page, as opposed to being part of a multi-modal multi-medium stew of visual, audio and more, we are limiting our students as writers, too. We’re asked to think about alphabetic forms of writing (essays, etc.) might form barriers to students who struggle with traditional writing, who might have language barriers, who might have cultural barriers (particularly those students from cultures with a focus on oral traditions), who have other strengths to bring into the writing classroom.

Comic Response 4 (Writing Redefined)

Each chapter digs deeper into topics, but I appreciated the last chapter, where she anticipates the many questions and concerns teachers might have about ‘redefining’ writing with a larger net. Shawna patiently counters six different concerns with thoughtful, helpful advice and considerations.

Comic Response 8 (Writing Redefined)

While she may not have broken new ground in her book, Shawna effectively frames the discussion on what it means to write in this modern, digital, visual and audio age, in a way that can reach classroom teachers knowing that the dichotomy for young people of “school writing” versus “non-school writing” is always evident, but not insurmountable. Shawna builds some bridges.

Response Comic 1 (Writing Redefined)

Peace (draw it sing it act it write it),
Kevin

Book Review: The Best American Non-Required Reading (2019)

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I have this hope that somewhere, there is a high school or university class that uses the annual The Best American Non-Required Reading collections for its central text. And knowing that it is a group of high school students, connected through the 826 National organization, who choose, debate and curate all of the materials in the collection makes that dream even sweeter.

I hope it is so, but even if it is not, you need to get your hands on this collection each and every year. The 2019 edition of The Best American Non-Required Reading is another keeper, with a wide range of pieces that tackle important issues through fiction, commentary, comics, poetry and assorted other kinds of texts (such as the letter submitted by Holten Arms classmates of Christine Blasey Ford as public evidence in the Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings).

The book’s collection has been guided by guest editor Edan Lepucki, but mostly, it has been the weekly gathering of high school students who have worked to find the pieces, debate the merits and determine which go into the collection. Their lens on the world is key to the diversity of the pieces. This all began with Dave Eggers at the helm (and his work in founding the 826 organization) but now different people help make the collection happen each year.

One of the more interesting choices is a pair of strange “Sound Translation” text interpretations of the Gettysburg Address by Keith Donnell Jr., which read like a prose poem in some alternative universe of Lincoln’s famous words, flowing with misheard phrases and rhymes and yet, finding a new but related center of the Address’s ideas in the concepts of “Who’ll weed our graves?” and “Force door of heaven” and so on.

Another powerful piece is a graphic interpretation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s On True War Stories (graphics by Matt Huynh) that puts picture to the story of immigration. And Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s powerful piece about black bears in New Hampshire (Barbearians at the Gate) transforms itself into a deep dive about people and nature, and about right wing survivalists transforming a small community.

And on and on.

Read this collection. Read last year’s collection. And the year before that. And hope the publishers keep supporting the young people’s voice in gathering and curating pieces that might otherwise get lost in the mix (I only recognize a few of the original journals where these were first published), but which rise here, among others, in a new light.

Peace (in the pages),
Kevin