A simple, thoughtful children’s overview of important aspects of South Korean culture.
A crash course in South Korean culture that provides kids with an overview of the country’s food, holidays, vocabulary and daily life.
This third book in Roman’s (Captain No Beard: Strangers on the High Seas, 2013, etc.) series follows the same premise as her previous books on France and Mexico. The book begins by pointing out South Korea’s geographical location and landforms, then touches on popular names, types of currency and how South Korean children address their parents. Roman also mentions holidays, activities such as taekwondo, and school routines. It’s a very breezy book, with just a fact or two per page, which will be easy for many kids to absorb. The engaging tone keeps the educational aspects from feeling dry or boring. The book series has a simple but effective premise: It teaches kids the basics of another culture in a way that connects it to their own personal lives (“When you call your mommy, you would say Omma. When you address your father, his name would be Appa.”). The book pairs text with colorful images that help kids make these associations; for example, a page about Korean cuisine reads, “They would cook the meat right at the table on a very hot plate….Rice is usually always on the table. You would eat your meal with metal chopsticks,” and features illustrations of kids and parents at a table using each object. A pronunciation key at the end of the book, meanwhile, will help acquaint kids with the Korean language. Overall, Roman has written another winner, and elementary school classrooms could easily incorporate this book into lessons about South Korea.
A simple, thoughtful children’s overview of important aspects of South Korean culture.Pub Date: June 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481062343
Page Count: 28
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.
A former NFL player casts his gimlet eye on American race relations.
In his first book, Acho, an analyst for Fox Sports who grew up in Dallas as the son of Nigerian immigrants, addresses White readers who have sent him questions about Black history and culture. “My childhood,” he writes, “was one big study abroad in white culture—followed by studying abroad in black culture during college and then during my years in the NFL, which I spent on teams with 80-90 percent black players, each of whom had his own experience of being a person of color in America. Now, I’m fluent in both cultures: black and white.” While the author avoids condescending to readers who already acknowledge their White privilege or understand why it’s unacceptable to use the N-word, he’s also attuned to the sensitive nature of the topic. As such, he has created “a place where questions you may have been afraid to ask get answered.” Acho has a deft touch and a historian’s knack for marshaling facts. He packs a lot into his concise narrative, from an incisive historical breakdown of American racial unrest and violence to the ways of cultural appropriation: Your friend respecting and appreciating Black arts and culture? OK. Kim Kardashian showing off her braids and attributing her sense of style to Bo Derek? Not so much. Within larger chapters, the text, which originated with the author’s online video series with the same title, is neatly organized under helpful headings: “Let’s rewind,” “Let’s get uncomfortable,” “Talk it, walk it.” Acho can be funny, but that’s not his goal—nor is he pedaling gotcha zingers or pleas for headlines. The author delivers exactly what he promises in the title, tackling difficult topics with the depth of an engaged cultural thinker and the style of an experienced wordsmith. Throughout, Acho is a friendly guide, seeking to sow understanding even if it means risking just a little discord.
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-80046-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
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