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
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.
The acclaimed director displays his talents as a film critic.
Tarantino’s collection of essays about the important movies of his formative years is packed with everything needed for a powerful review: facts about the work, context about the creative decisions, and whether or not it was successful. The Oscar-winning director of classic films like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs offers plenty of attitude with his thoughts on movies ranging from Animal House to Bullitt to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Big Chill. Whether you agree with his assessments or not, he provides the original reporting and insights only a veteran director would notice, and his engaging style makes it impossible to leave an essay without learning something. The concepts he smashes together in two sentences about Taxi Driver would take a semester of film theory class to unpack. Taxi Driver isn’t a “paraphrased remake” of The Searchers like Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? is a paraphrased remake of Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby or De Palma’s Dressed To Kill is a paraphrased remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho. But it’s about as close as you can get to a paraphrased remake without actually being one. Robert De Niro’s taxi driving protagonist Travis Bickle is John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards. Like any good critic, Tarantino reveals bits of himself as he discusses the films that are important to him, recalling where he was when he first saw them and what the crowd was like. Perhaps not surprisingly, the author was raised by movie-loving parents who took him along to watch whatever they were watching, even if it included violent or sexual imagery. At the age of 8, he had seen the very adult MASH three times. Suddenly the dark humor of Kill Bill makes much more sense. With this collection, Tarantino offers well-researched love letters to his favorite movies of one of Hollywood’s most ambitious eras.
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311258-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
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