An illuminating work that presents a strong case for teaching health in schools.
An educator provides a warning in this manifesto: Teach health now or suffer the consequences.
In this debut book, Van Dusen delivers a stark message to those who can—and, he insists, must—help incorporate heath studies into K-12 public schools. The author has the insider track on the subject as the founder of CATCH Global Foundation, which trains school personnel to effectively teach health. He drives home a simple and irrefutable point: Healthy children get a head start in life, learn more, and have a greater chance of success as adults. That’s not a new concept, but Van Dusen examines it from fresh angles, emphasizing “whole child” programs that focus on health, safety, engagement, support, and challenges. He’s not talking about offering a health class as an elective but making it mandatory. He takes an expansive view of the components: exercise, diet, and behavior avoidance (such as resisting tobacco). He zeroes in on the youth vaping epidemic and urges that schools consider it a high priority to address. The author supplies guidance to educators on how to make health studies a mandatory subject. The book includes well-documented case studies from six schools or districts: New York City, Connecticut, Oklahoma, and three in Texas. Key points are illustrated with simple graphs, charts, and other visuals. The work is streamlined and straightforward, answering two basic journalistic questions: What and when. The other traditional “W” inquiries (Who and where) are implicit. “Who” is the volume’s target audience, which Van Dusen identifies as “all K-12 educators,” among them principals, teachers, parents of school-age children, curriculum directors, superintendents, local school boards, community advocates, and state and federal education policymakers and departments. “Where” is the public school. The book is emphatic but never preachy. Van Dusen has a jocular way of expressing himself, eschewing formalities and connecting with readers through real-life examples. He explains public health as “the fluoridated water that streams from the tap” and “the eighth and final email demanding your son’s immunization record before he can enroll in school.” The work is definitely consciousness-raising. Readers will not be able to close this volume without pondering the consequences of schools’ failing to make health studies as important as geography, mathematics, and history.
An illuminating work that presents a strong case for teaching health in schools.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0761-3
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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