A big collection of inspiring words that will appeal to the legions of fans awaiting more wonder in their lives.
Thomas Browne, fifth-grade teacher from Palacio’s best-selling Wonder (2012), returns in a companion volume offering a collection of inspiring precepts.
Precepts are “words to live by, to elevate the soul, that celebrate the goodness in people,” and Mr. Browne uses them to teach such classical virtues as wisdom, justice, courage and temperance. He believes his students are still kids, “so why should we let you roam wild in the uncharted territory of middle school without just a little bit of guidance?” At the beginning of each month, Mr. Browne writes a new precept on the board, students copy it in their notebooks, discuss it in class, and write paragraphs and essays inspired by the precepts. This volume includes a year’s worth of Mr. Browne’s precepts chosen from 10 years of teaching, as well as some submitted by young people in a contest held by the author. Each precept is credited, and most take up one page; occasional variations in background and typeface keep the visual presentation moderately interesting. Though the cumulative effect of so many inspiring words can be deadening, like being trapped in a Hallmark card shop, the intention is good, and Mr. Browne’s essays at the end of each month add a much-needed adult perspective on the need to guide young people in the ways of kindness and empathy.
A big collection of inspiring words that will appeal to the legions of fans awaiting more wonder in their lives. (acknowledgments, list of contributors) (Anthology. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-553-49904-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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