Category Archives: books

This was one of those “let’s give it a try” read-aloud books that my son and I found (in my classroom library, of all places) and soon, we were deep into the mystery unfolding. Dangerous Waters by Gregory Mone is set on the Titanic, so you know what is going to happen eventually.  The ship is going down. But in the days leading up to the disaster, Mone introduces his young protagonist — Patrick Waters — who is a steward on the boat. Waters (I know, the name) meets up with a rich benefactor, whose treasured artifact is an original book by Sir Francis Bacon. The rich mans sees a potential intellectual in Waters and becomes his tutor during the first leg of the journey, discussing Bacon and Treasure Island with the young worker.

Meanwhile, there are two nefarious passengers on the Titanic who want the rare Bacon book for their own (the references to “I want the Bacon” and “Here is my Bacon” had my son laughing) because they believe the book may hold the mystery to unlocking the power of alchemy. They plot, maneuver, scheme and more in order to get the book, even as Patrick uncovers the plot, and becomes part of it. I loved that a treasured book was the center of the mystery, of course.

Another storyline involves Patrick’s older brother, who works in the bowels of the ship, pumping coal into the furnace that keeps the boat moving. It’s a tender touch to the story, and it allows the writer to bring some depth to Patrick’s character and history, as we learn more about his late father — a bibliophile who never fit in with the hard-scrabble Irish working class community where he lived — and the demands of his mother to find a good job with honor.

Disaster awaits, of course, and I won’t give it away, except to say that Mone keeps up a brisk pace with the plot and ends the book on a solid note of Bacon. Or is that a side of Bacon?

Peace (in the adventure),
Kevin

I found it interesting that in the last few pages of Present Shock, writer and thinker Douglas Rushkoff notes that the format of his book — a published tome, a few hundred pages long — is an example of the very ideas that he is writing about in the book — which is that technology and the digital revolution has made the “in the moment” moment the key idea of just about everything that we now do. He wonders out loud what his book would look like if he had to post it, bit by bit, on a blog or some other online writing space, and how it would reshape the ideas.

I had to laugh, not just because it was a nice way to end the book but also because I had been thinking the same thing in the middle of Present Shock when I started to lose interest and began to feel as if Rushkoff was losing his focus as a writer. I found myself speed-reading sections, skipping over over parts that did not interest me, and wondering (in jest) where the hyperlinks were or the search engine in this book.  I almost gave up on the book any number of times and began to look at reading it as a chore more than a pleasure (I hate that). All that, only to find that Rushkoff at the end of the book is wondering the same thing, as writer. Will his audience stay with him?

Yes, I did get to the end, but I didn’t find myself as inspired with the text as I have been with some of Rushkoff’s other books. I still think Program or Be Programmed has some of the most intelligent ideas I have read about how to situate ourselves in the digital world, giving ourselves agency when it comes to using our technology. Here, in Present Shock, I felt as if Rushkoff was all over the place as a writer, and I sort of wished he could have whittled down the book and finely tuned his focus on the concept of “time” and the “now” that we seem to always live in. He paints a large canvas of many ideas. Yet, I didn’t feel like he successfully connected them all together in a meaningful way that allowed me to make better sense of my world. Knowing him as writer from the past, this was disappointing to me.

Or maybe that is just me, the reader, wanting to take big ideas in with one huge gulp, validating all that Rushkoff is writing about.

🙂

Peace (in the present),
Kevin

I reviewed Ralph Fletcher’s Pyrotechnics on the Page for Middleweb. Fletcher is engaging as a writer, of course, but these techniques for sparking creativity and playfulness in young writers is worth your time.

Peace (in the review),
Kevin

Now I get the fuss. I don’t know why I never got around to reading Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool when it came out. The book has been in our house, as my son read it and said he liked it. But after devouring and savoring Navigating Early, and knowing that I would have long gaps during state testing this week, I dug out my son’s Moon Over Manifest and brought it to school. It did not take long to get sucked up into the entwined narrative stories in the novel, something that Vanderpool did with such mastery in Navigating Early, too.

Here, the lively narrator — young Abilene Tucker — is sent by her father back to a town — Manifest, Kansas — as he goes off to work on a railroad. (There’s more to it than that, but I’ll let you read the book to find out more). Abilene works to find the connections that her father has to this small town, even as a local gypsy diviner tells the story of the town’s history and Abilene and two new friends try to uncover a past mystery of a German spy. Think of the story as a quilt, so that the narratives of the present and the past dance around each other, slowing weaving a tapestry of truths about the folks in the town of Manifest, and about Abilene’s life. That’s what Vanderpool does here and it’s a wonder to read and think about just how she pulls it off.

She does.

Moon Over Manifest also brings to life the idea of the idea of voice, as Abilene truly lives and breathes on these pages. It was one of those rare weeks where the large chunk of quiet time for state testing came in handy. In two days, I started and finished this book, and now Abilene and the town of Manifest remain firmly lodged in my head. That’s a good thing.

Peace (in the book),
Kevin

Our house is gearing up for baseball, with all three boys playing in three different leagues (the oldest just made his high school team last week and the other two had Little League evaluations on Saturday). So, at the library, we’ve been bringing home all sorts of baseball-themed books. Brothers at Bat: The Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team by Audrey Vernick is a perfect companion to all the stats books and baseball cards, and resonated in our house of three athletic boys. The book centers on the Acerra family from New Jersey, and the boatload of kids they had (12 brothers and four sisters).

They not only literally had enough kids to field a team. They did. In the 1930s, there were more opportunities to create your own semi-pro baseball teams and hit the circuit, and the Acerra boys did that. This true story of the band of brothers playing baseball — with interruptions for military service and other factors of life — is nicely done, and Vernick did her own research by interviewing one of the surviving brothers. She really captures the spirit of family and the spirit of sports. And the illustrations by Steven Salerno were spot on, too.

Brothers at Bat is a book I would highly recommend for the start of Spring Training.

Peace (on the plate),
Kevin

PS — Vernick shared some silent footage of the brothers on her YouTube account. Interesting.

Given our boys’ interest in baseball, I am not sure why it has taken me so long to discover Dan Gutman’s Baseball Card Adventure series of books (which begins with Honus & Me). You’d think this series would have been a natural read-aloud fit for me over the years. My middle son has read a few, but it with my youngest son (8) that we have really dove into the series with great gusto and interest. In less than three weeks, we have devoured Honus & Me, Jackie & Me, Babe & Me,  Shoeless Joe & Me, and Mickey & Me. Next up: Abner & Me.

The stories revolve around a boy, Joe Shoshack, who discovers that he can use baseball cards to travel back in time, and begins a series of adventures to meet famous players and/or attempt to change history. The structure of the books is fairly consistent throughout the series, which is great for discussing writing a novel with my youngest, and Gutman does a nice job of bringing those old ballplayers to life for us. I really have appreciated the Reader’s Note that Gutman leaves at the end of the books, where he talks about his research and about the lines he has drawn between fiction and non-fiction.

I am also enjoying how YouTube is part of our reading experience. When we were reading about Honus Wagner’s famous baseball card, we gathered up some information about the auction that brought in so much money for the rare piece of baseball memorabilia history. When we read about Jackie Robinson and racism, we watched  a short documentary about the legendary ball player who changed history. When we were thinking about Babe Ruth’s “called shot,” we pulled up television footage to actually watch Babe in action at the plate as he hit that homerun (the results were inconclusive, we agreed.) And I now have Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary in our Netflix streamining account, ready to go.

I might soon tire of Gutman’s Baseball Card Adventure series, but my son is fully intrigued. And he is considering entering a local writing contest, where the prompt has them imagine going back in time 50 years. He has this idea now to use the Gutman books for the model for his story, finding a famous ballplayer from 1963 and writing about using one of his baseball cards to travel back to meet him. I love that.

Peace (on the ball),
Kevin
PS — here is a cool video of Gutman being interviewed by a kid.