A sweet animal tale with intriguing origins and thoughtful backmatter.
Classmates come up with a creative solution to help a fellow tortoise in this debut picture book.
On his first day at a new school, a tortoise named Helix informs his class that he is unable to use his back legs. On the playground, Helix’s classmates invite him to participate in activities like tag and hopscotch. But due to his immobile legs, Helix can’t join them. Finally, a student named Herman offers Helix a skateboard to ride, enabling him to move around. Helix is thrilled that he can participate in physical activities. At dinner, he tells his parents about his new friends who “helped me play all the games I thought I would never be able to play.” In Betz’s story, the sentiment underscoring kindness is well done and not overly complicated. The repetition featured here (as when Helix frequently replies to his friends: “I am not good…yet…but I will try”) is appropriate for young readers. Icuza’s (The Purple Pickle, 2019, etc.) colorful, graphiclike illustrations offer cheerful tortoise portrayals and fun details. In the well-documented backmatter, the author explains how the characters are modeled after actual tortoise breeds (a classmate named Star is an Indian Star Tortoise), providing his own photographs and shots by others and scientific facts. Betz also reveals that the book is inspired by a true story and includes Instagram photos and specifics about the real Helix, a disabled tortoise fitted with wheels.
A sweet animal tale with intriguing origins and thoughtful backmatter.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-9119-2
Page Count: 42
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Essential guidance on proactively navigating the challenges of gender-diverse student bodies.
A comprehensive look at gender-diverse youth in the classroom.
As the transgender student population continues to become more widely visible, navigation tools have become critical for educators and parents alike, notes Key, a veteran gender diversity educator. While written with parents of trans+ children in mind, the book is primarily directed at teachers, administrators, and school staff who directly impact students’ lives on a daily basis. Key shows readers what is involved when a child considers a gender transition process, and he confronts the challenges of gender inclusion, which may be a new topic for some readers. Particularly striking are the stories from parents of trans+ students who are managing the stages of their own apprehension alongside those of their child. Key incorporates learning points on gender vernacular and fighting community stigmatization. Personal anecdotes and timely discussions from school educators complement instructive illustrations and Q&A sections that answer sensitive questions regarding sports participation, bathroom choices, and changing areas. In an encouraging, consistently positive manner, Key addresses the overt political and/or cultural resistance that proliferates within heated debates and public forum discussions, and he asserts that accurate information is the best way to educate and collaborate. He stresses the importance of delivering practical, real-world discussion tools and assistance to parents and educators of trans+ children, who often find themselves without resources, advice, answers, or support to fortify what can often be an overwhelmingly complex experience. Key’s checklists of suggestions successfully bridge the gap between trans+ kids, adults, and school educators with strategically supportive approaches and behaviors. Authoritative yet written in pleasant, straightforward language, this book is an invaluable resource for understanding what it clearly means (and doesn’t mean) to be transgender while ensuring that every student has access to an optimal learning environment free from discrimination.
Essential guidance on proactively navigating the challenges of gender-diverse student bodies.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780190886547
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
An instructive history with a disturbing coda: If you want to learn about evolution, go to college.
Fox News commentator Jarrett’s account of the iconic 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial turns out to be a satisfying traditional history that celebrates the good guys.
Although widely derided, the flurry of post–World War I state laws forbidding public schools from teaching evolution enjoyed a great deal of popular support. Concerned about the effect on academic freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union ran a news release seeking a volunteer to test the newly enacted Tennessee law. The trial took place in the small town of Dayton only because local boosters believed it “would put [the town] on the map.” They persuaded high school teacher John Scopes to offer himself as defendant. News of the case made headlines, and a mass of journalists descended on the city along with celebrities, including William Jennings Bryan and legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow. With a churchgoing jury and biased judge who began the proceedings by declaiming the first chapter of Genesis, the outcome was never in doubt, but Jarrett remains firmly for the defense, praising Darrow’s and colleagues’ arguments in favor of First Amendment freedoms and opposing religious bigotry and government interference in education. To Darrow’s frustration, the judge ruled that the trial was solely to determine whether Scopes broke the law, so he refused to allow the defense to call scientists and theologians to inform the jury that evolution was not equivalent to atheism. After several frustrating days, Darrow grew discouraged, and many reporters left before he hit the jackpot cross-examining Bryan, who had volunteered to prove the literal truth of everything in the Bible and did a terrible job. Despite an upbeat conclusion, Jarrett admits that there is less in Darrow’s triumph than meets the eye. Disbelief in evolution remains common, so school boards (and publishers anxious to sell them science textbooks) treat the subject with kid gloves.
An instructive history with a disturbing coda: If you want to learn about evolution, go to college.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781982198572
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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