This manual delivers valuable alternative strategies to improve reading skills, emphasizing enjoyment.
A teacher-developed guide offers insights and exercises for those who struggle to read and seek to improve.
“Willingness to read is key,” according to McJacobs. Those who struggle with reading, who stumble on words, who are tripped up by phonetics, and who have been drilled with lessons about precision rather than comprehension often lack this willingness. These individuals likely want to read, but the impediments destroy the enthusiasm needed for them to try. The four components of the author’s “Read Through It Strategy” seek to rekindle that lost spark of excitement. They encourage readers to ignore “positive errors,” like mispronunciation, when general ideas are still comprehended; to be aware of “eyestops,” or the muscular movements of the eye when reading; to focus on “idea units,” or the images words and phrases conjure rather than their individual components; and, finally, to utilize “cycle reading” to increase speed and skill. The last acknowledges reading as a skill and teaches the eye muscles to move fluently through simple exercises, meant to be done daily and presented with short, straightforward directions. The text offers tips about what kind of reading to select for practicing (usually middle-grade books) as well as ways to track progress. These are provided mostly as suggestions, as the book emphasizes personal control over practice to increase pleasure. McJacobs developed his strategy while working with students in alternative schools, noting that for many, avoiding reading came not from a lack of interest but rather from a natural frustration with the physical process. After looking critically at his own struggles to read and utilizing anecdotal evidence from his pupils, he created the “Read Through It Strategy.” Though no guarantees of success are supplied, these tips, tricks, and exercises focus on accessibility. The volume emphasizes regular, short practice over intensive study and distills its whole process into only nine pages, followed by thorough but simple outlines. Most of the guide’s ideas and foundation are presented in easy-to-digest terms and procedures. But some of the more complex aspects of fluency, particularly the work’s often repetitive but vague explanations of “idea units,” could be more streamlined for those not approaching the text from a teacher’s point of view.
This manual delivers valuable alternative strategies to improve reading skills, emphasizing enjoyment.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-7750-5
Page Count: 75
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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