A useful, readable approach to emotional intelligence in middle school.
Middle school friends see challenges from different perspectives in this resource book for teens and their caretakers.
This set of stories about several middle schoolers is conceived as “a tool for extensive discussion and thought…to support sound emotional learning at home and in the school.” Debut authors Gil-Kashiwabara, Laing, and Whitehouse are all psychologists and parents. This first book in a planned series focuses on the topics of bullying, social media, and honesty, with each chapter showing one kid’s perspective on the same events in a Rashomon-like style. Lafayette, Oregon’s North Morgan Middle School is home to seventh-graders Ben Campbell, Elías Muñoz, Ruby Monroe, and Penelope Whitaker. All are discovering that things are different in middle school: classes are more challenging, girls and boys hang out in cliques, and there’s even going to be a school dance. Ben gets hardworking Elías in trouble when he tries to copy his paper during a test; both boys are interested in Ruby, who discovers that Penelope, a popular, rich girl, has a mean side; and Penelope feels emotionally neglected by her father. Through honesty and reaching out to others, can Ben and Elías work on repairing their friendship, and can Ruby stand up to Penelope? Also, can Penelope admit that she’s been a bully? The book includes a companion guide with discussion questions, such as “How might Ben feel if he cheats?” The stories are written in an entertaining style that sympathetically addresses the thoughts and concerns of tweens; as a result, the tales are likely to succeed in sparking discussion. The characters ask themselves good questions and take time to think about answers, as when Ben realizes that he could have studied and that it wasn’t fair to cheat from his friend’s work. At times, the insights seem overly pat—the friends are remarkably quick to apologize and do better, for example. Also, the satisfying idea that most bullies “usually feel bad about themselves” has been contradicted by research elsewhere.
A useful, readable approach to emotional intelligence in middle school.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 99
Publisher: 3 Docs Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
