An exceptional parenting book with clear-cut applications.
Scanlon (Gratitude Journal for Kids, 2019, etc.), a pediatric speech-language pathologist, presents a guide to help parents understand, analyze, and enhance their children’s language development.
Learning one’s native tongue is an integral part of childhood—and one that often worries parents. Scanlon has created a rich handbook and workbook to give parents “competence and confidence” in language instruction. She begins by educating readers about early childhood language in order to show parents what to expect from their children and thus select appropriate “target words” for them. The author also provides four work sheets, designed to quickly analyze a toddler’s current level of language learning and determine directions for future growth. The next section is vital, as it lays out eight techniques to elicit first words (such as “Pause in Anticipation” and “Imitate, imitate, imitate”) as well as tips on creating a language-rich environment. Parents may already be employing some of these techniques on their own, but Scanlon effectively demonstrates each one to give readers clear notions of her language-enriching tools. The ideas for creating a language-rich environment, such as “hanging interesting pictures, postcards, maps, or photographs on walls…and chatting about them,” seem particularly beneficial. Finally, Scanlon provides a 30-day workbook that includes weekly planning sections and reviews and simple, repeated questions for each day, such as “What three things did I do today to encourage my toddler’s first words?” and “What will I do tomorrow to stimulate or further develop my toddler’s first words?” Throughout, the author draws heavily on peer-reviewed research, yet she always makes the material easy to comprehend. The tone is consistently positive and encouraging even when the author discusses touchy topics, such as limiting screen time. Lastly, the work’s intuitive organization and creative formatting make it a comfortable reading experience.
An exceptional parenting book with clear-cut applications.Pub Date: May 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-978371-90-3
Page Count: 146
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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