The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone

The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats

4 stars

nonfiction

(Received for review)

Let me start by saying I read a digital ARC (which isn't my preference but it was what was available).

The digital ARC had MAJOR formatting issues (for example anywhere you had "ff" or "fi" or "fl" in a word those letters simply weren't present.... sometimes there was a space where they should go and other times not) that HOPEFULLY will not be present in any finished copy.

Also, I'm desperately hoping that the meandering of the text and the sudden jumps in topic are at least partly due to the formatting issues.

I'm guessing it is.  Probably some of it would be in nice boxes or something that would indicate it is an aside.

Because wow meandering. You don't necessarily mind... because it's mostly interesting... but it's a bit of a jolt to be brought back to Fairchild and remember "oh yeah! THAT'S what this book's supposed to be about".

I do wish some of the modern moralizing had been slashed by a good editor.  It really did get old.

That and the level of meandering are what lost it a star.

Overall- SO INTERESTING.  If you enjoy history or plant biology or food you should really take a look.

10 Things For Teen Girls by Kate Conner

5 stars
nonfiction/christian

So I was browsing at the library.... trying to waste enough time that all my kids would be in bed when I got home.

(Oh, like you've never wasted time for that reason.)

Anyway.

I spotted this one on the shelf and since Boo is at THAT AGE I picked it up and flipped through.

I wasn't sure about it at first.... but decided I liked enough of what I saw to read through it myself and then if I liked it I could pass it off to Boo and if I didn't it could just quietly head back to the library.

Well.

If I could give this more stars, I would. I LOVED this book. So much that anyone who's been around me for the past couple of days has heard all about it.  (Including the doctor.  Hey, she took a pic of the cover with her phone.)

So I gave this to Boo and told her to read it.... and told my husband that we need to buy it... and that our girls are going to read it at 12, 14, 16, etc.

Here's what parents should know-- this is a Christian/Bible-based book. It's not the same flavor of Christianity that I subscribe to, so the vocabulary (and translation of the Bible) is not what my kids are used to. It's all good, we'll talk about it.  (That's part of why I want to own it.  I want to add Book of Mormon references.)

There is some discussion of sex. Also prostitution, sex trafficking, cutting, and eating disorders.

I would recommend this to girls 12 and up, though depending on the girl it might be appropriate as early as 10.

I plan to acquire a copy and mark it up and make all my girls read it over and over.

Overall, I'd suggest parents read it, if only to be able to better talk to their teen about it.

(Note, the author also has a book called Enough that seems to be more or less the same stuff but geared to adults and what we should be telling teens.  I haven't looked at that one yet.  GoodReads currently thinks the two are the same book.)

(Also, the author's husband has 10 Things for Teen Guys but I haven't gotten hold of that one yet.  It seems to be harder to get.)

(The word "enough" really stops looking like a word if it's used a lot on a single page.)

Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster

5 stars
nonfiction
received for review (this is only older than 1 of my children)

This was FASCINATING.

I found the text accessible and incredibly interesting and as soon as I finished I handed it to my gamer husband, because really.

My other issue with it was one of clumsy organization.... but I couldn't actually fault it for that since I couldn't think of an easier/better way to do it either.

I ended up reading all of the comic-y pages and then all of the text... which is good and bad, but it worked for me.

DO NOT skip the notes-- I ended up with a bookmark for the text and for the notes because they were just as interesting as the text itself.

This is NOT a book on how to design a game.  It's all theory.

If that sounds like your thing-- get this.  Because it was just really cool.

Did You Know?: Over One Hundred Facts about Haiti and Her Children by Marjorie Charlot

3 stars
nonfiction
received for review

I snagged this one for review because my brother is Haitian.

Seemed like a cool idea-- 100+ facts about Haiti.

And it was interesting.

Unfortunately it also suffered from being poorly edited, poorly organized, and lacking in balance (some sections had what felt like too much information while others had nowhere near enough).

Mostly I would say this is a collection of mini biographies.

And I do mean MINI.  Like a paragraph.

Ultimately, if you have an interest in or connection to Haiti, maybe give it a try, but it would probably be a far better read if you picked it up and enjoyed a fact or two here and there, rather than reading it straight through in one sitting the way I did.

Tomorrow I'm Dead by Bun Yom

3 stars
R- 2? (I can't remember anything specifically sexual, though there may have been references to rape and abuse.)
received for review

A compelling memoir.

Not necessarily a well-written one, but absolutely compelling.

If it were fiction it would have been a little too hard to suspend disbelief at times, but life is crazier than fiction.

Not a period of history I'm familiar with, so it was interesting to see inside the killing fields.

The Dragon Behind the Glass by Emily Voigt

A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish

3 stars

nonfiction

Reader's Choice

Meh.

Interesting, but while she kept trying to tell me that she'd become obsessed and it was out of hand.

And yet...

I didn't feel it.

No passion came through.

I found the historical aspects far more interesting than the actual memoir/journalistic aspects.

Organize Your Genealogy by Drew Smith

Strategies and Solutions for Every Researcher

nonfiction

Hmm...

I really don't know how to rate this one... because as much as the subtitle says "for every researcher".... I didn't actually find it to be that helpful.

I jotted down a few notes of things I could change or try, but all of that came from the same chapter, with most of the other 8 or 9 feeling like information that did nothing for me.

I could see how it was good information that could be useful for someone, it just wasn't helping me at all.

The subtitle possibly could have been "A Love Note to Evernote". lol

(It's a good thing I don't drink.... because I'd have been tempted to turn it into a drinking game.... and if I'd done a shot every time he suggested Evernote I'd have alcohol poisoning for sure.)

Honestly, I spent most of the book wishing it was a series of web-based classes or something, because that would have been far more helpful than grayscale screenshots to explain various software functions.

Also, several parts were so generic it felt like wasted space in a book meant to be about organizing genealogy.  I don't think it's overreaching in 2016 (publication year) to assume that your audience already knows basic email functions and such.  We could have done without the lengthy (it felt lengthy anyway) explanation of how to use Gmail.  (This was made more tedious by the fact that I don't use Gmail, and as much as he kept saying things should translate to other email programs there are enough differences that I'd be too annoyed to try to translate.)

Overall, if you're looking for help with organizing, keep in mind that a good chunk of this is generic common sense and try to flip through it before buying to make sure you care enough about the specific softwares described.  Otherwise, check it out from the library maybe.

Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores by Bob Eckstein

True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers 

3 stars
language
r-2

Meh.

I just.... didn't love it. I really wanted to. I expected to. But.... meh.


For one, the cover opens one way, but then the pages turn perpendicular to it (if that makes any sense..... you hold the book with the cover binding at the top, but the pages are bound on the right, unconnected to the front cover....) so it's awkward to hold.

The physical logistics of the book were frustrating-- in addition to the tricky cover, the actual binding (of the pages) felt really flimsy, so I was constantly worrying about damaging the library's clearly very new book.

Also, maybe it's my crappy eyes, but some of the quotes/stories on the paintings were hard to read because of color choices and such.

The anecdotes were amusing, but some really needed more context and there was at least one that made no sense at all.  Like really just none.

I wanted more about some bookstores and less about others....

Overall, I don't know.  It just didn't work for me.  Maybe as a book to jut flip idly through but to read cover to cover... meh.

(Though I did enjoy the forward by Garrison Keillor.)

The Jane Austen Writers' Club by Rebecca Smith

Inspiration and Advice from the World's Best-loved Novelist

4 stars
nonfiction

This was like taking a creative writing course-- which makes sense given that Smith was the Writer in Residence at the Jane Austen's House Museum and teaches creative writing.

While the book is all set up using Jane Austen's life and writing and writing process, the exercises are entirely flexible and applicable to any genre.

I'm not really doing a lot of writing at the moment (because, um... life.  kids.  house.  you know) but it certainly gave me things to think about.

I recommend this for any writer, but especially for those who enjoy Jane Austen. :)

The American Plate by Libby H O'Connell

3.5 stars
nonfiction

Sigh.

I wanted to love this.

And there were certainly parts I enjoyed.

But overall.... it's not Alton Brown.  And that felt unfortunate.

Okay, so it's not her fault she's not Alton Brown.

Really, there were issues of formatting and editing (Wonder Broad is the typo that stands out the most in my memory), and honestly, issues of attitude.

Because I'm sorry, saying things like "Needless to say, it took only a few generations of European settlers to damage the salmon population in the Columbia watershed" is smug and snotty and not a good objective historical perspective.  You may be able to give historic facts to back up that there was damage, but that can be presented without the attitude.

The Civil War section was very interesting.  The Jell-O section made me gag (because, ew... I can't stand jello).  The Elvis Jell-O recipe footnote was one of the funniest moments in the entire book (and it's a tragedy that it was buried in a footnote).

Overall, it's not a bad book, I'm just cranky.  And it just wasn't all that I wanted it to be.

If you have an interest in the history of food, try it.  And make sure you check the footnotes.  You'd hate to miss the Elvis one. :)

Christmas Gift Guide Astronomy Edition

Astronomy is kind of a big thing in my house.

So when Quarto Books offered us these titles for review, we really couldn't say no.

Destination: Space by Christoph Englert
Five cadets explore deep space in this awesome book.  Picture book format, great illustrations, and fabulous information.  I think this one's going to be a favorite around here for a long time.

Astronomy Lab for Kids by Michelle Nichols
How cool is this?!  Kids learn all about space with 52 lessons/activities.  We haven't done any of them yet, but I'm looking forward to it for sure.  Plus I'm absolutely going through these to see what will help Mister pass off some Cub Scout stuff!  (And really, who wouldn't want to learn about the speed of light with a candy bar?)  Also, at least one of my kids needs to do the science fair this year....

If you've got budding scientists on your list, I would definitely take a look at these!

Christmas Gift Guide Heroes Edition

Heroes for My Son
Heroes for My Daughter
by Brad Meltzer

I haven't had a chance to sit down and read either of these cover to cover yet, but I LOVE the concept.  Meltzer takes various figures from history and gives brief bios.  I love that it's not a book of female heroes for the girls and male heroes for the boys but both books are compilations of all different people. men and women.

I love having these on my shelf.  Next time one of my kids needs to do a biography type project I know where I'm having them start!

I doubt kids will sit and read these all at once, but I think they're wonderful additions to any child's library.

Beehive Nominees 2017

So, this is my holiday kickoff post.

I'm celebrating Black Friday by A) not shopping because OH. MY. GOSH. NO.

 and B) locking myself in my bedroom to catch up on blog posts.

I'm lining up a whole bunch of "here's what books to get people for Christmas" posts (because Christmas is only a month away.... how the heck did that happen?!?!?) ....

... and I'm starting with The Children's Literature Association of Utah's Beehive nominees.

If you aren't familiar with CLAU or the Beehives you can check out their website (claubeehive.org).

The Beehives four categories and always have amazing books.  I haven't read everything on the list (I'll let you know which ones I have) but the fact that they're on the list is always a good sign to me. :)

I'm going to do one category per post... because otherwise TL:DR.

So today: Informational Books

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club by Phillip Hoose (This looks like a great choice for the history-lover.)

Emmanuel's Dream: The True Store of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson (This came up on a list of books Mister brought home from school.  He and I both enjoyed it.  Very interesting story.)

Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America by Carole Boston Weatherford  (This looks really interesting.)

Hippos Are Huge! by Jonathan London (I haven't actually read this one yet, just glanced through it, but it looks so fun!)

The House that Jane Built: A Story About Jane Addams by Tanya Lee Stone (Jane Addams was an activist that worked to better the lives of the poor.  This is on my to-read-soon list.)

If: A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers by David J Smith (This looks so fun.)

I'm Trying to Love Spiders by Bethany Barton (This one was a hit in my house.  It's hilarious.)

Mesmerized: How Ben Franklin Solved a Mystery that Baffled all of France by Mara Rockliff (Really good.  Very interesting story.)

Winnie: The True Story of the Bear who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh by Sally M Walker (LOVED this one.  If you ignore everything else on this list, check this one out.)

Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold by Joyce Sidman (Now that it's actually turned cold we need to get this book of nature poems.)

Be Different by John Elder Robison

Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian
with practical advice for Aspergians, misfits, and their parents

4 stars
nonfiction, memoir

Fascinating.

I picked this up browsing my library, partly because I have suspicions about where one of my children may fall on the spectrum, partly just because it sounded interesting.

And it certainly was interesting.

And after reading it I'm wondering about more of the people in my household, lol.

Highly recommended.  This blend of humor, candor, and experience is a very readable look at life with Asperger's.

Endangered Edens by Marty Essen

4 stars
received for review

Conversational writing and gorgeous photos. My only real complaint (other than more than one instance of "republicans are the enemy" type generalizations, which felt preachy and annoying... And the "Mormon wife" thing which was also kind of annoying) would be the lack of captioning. Only some photos are captioned and while some I could figure out by the context, so to speak, others I could only admire the beauty without knowing what it was. 

Overall recommended. Now I'm off to see if I can get hold of his other book.

Busy People

(books received for review)

Busy People: Police Officer
Busy People: Astronaut

This seems like a great series.  The cute but fairly simple text packs in a lot of information.  I liked the illustrations.  They say recommended for ages 2-5, but MeiMei just turned 6 and they still seemed like a good fit.

I really liked that the Police Officer one involves a child going to the officers for help.  I thought that was a great way to show kids that they are there to help you and not scary.

I don't think they're the funnest books for reading at home, though, unless it's an occupation the child is really IN to.  I think they're actually excellent for a kindergarten or first grade teacher doing a unit on careers.


What Do Grown-ups Do All Day?
by Virginie Margand

This one is a much more broad career book.  It goes through various locations and talks about what the different grown-ups there are doing.  The premise is kind of a class field trip idea.

This showed up at our house right when MeiMei had just finished a week of career-related stuff at school, so the timing was perfect.  She loved it.

I love the format and layout.  The illustrations and text are great.  I like the bigger size and bold colors.



All in all, as a teacher or home school parent these would be amazing resources.  For just regular at-home reading, I think What Do Grown-ups...? is a better option, but if you have a child who is obsessed with a specific job then the Busy People series would be a great place to look.

Book Round-Up: World Record Edition

(All received for review)

Guinness World Records Daring Dogs and Big Wheels
(I Can Read! Level 2)

Great illustrations and fun details.  Big hit in my house.

Guinness World Records Biggest and Smallest, Super Humans, and Wacky and Wild

These three are middle grade books packed with fun facts.  Huge huge hit.  Mister especially loves them.

Guinness World Records Incredible Animals and Amazing Body Records

These two are considered chapter books, though I'm not entirely sure how different they are from the middle grade ones.  More text maybe?  Prose as opposed to a list of facts.  Something.

Anyway, again a huge hit, especially with Mister.

All of these titles are likely good bets for more reluctant readers, especially boys.

Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times by Anne Heller

4 stars
biography/nonfiction
copy received for review

From GoodReads:

Hannah Arendt, one of the most gifted and provocative voices of her era, was a polarizing cultural theorist—extolled by her peers as a visionary and denounced by others as a fraud. Born in Prussia to assimilated Jewish parents, she escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and became best known for her critique of the world’s response to the evils of World War II.

A woman of many contradictions, Arendt learned to write in English only at the age of thirty-six, and yet her first book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, single-handedly altered the way generations of Americans and Europeans viewed fascism and genocide. Her most famous—and most divisive—work,Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, brought fierce controversy that continues to this day, exacerbated by the posthumous discovery that she had been the lover of the great romantic philosopher and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger.

In this fast-paced, comprehensive biography, Anne Heller tracks the source of Arendt’s apparent contradictions and her greatest achievements, from a tumultuous childhood to her arrival as what she called a “conscious pariah”—one of those few people in every time and place who don’t “lose confidence in ourselves if society does not approve us” and will not “pay any price” to win acceptance.

I didn't actually know much (if anything) about Hannah Arendt before reading this.  I found the book fascinating and packed with information with seeming dense.

It was clear and easy-to-read without feeling simplified.

My only complaint would be there was some repetition... as though the author were concerned that people might only read some sections or not read them in order... or not remember anything from the previous sections.  This was possibly more apparent/annoying to me since I read the whole thing in a day.

All in all a good biography.

The Wild West of Louis L'Amour by Tim Champlin

An Illustrated Companion to the Frontier Fiction of an American Icon

3.5 stars
copy received for review

Confession: I've never read a Louis L'Amour book.  Actually... I'm not sure I've ever read a Western period.

I know, I know.  Travesty.

But, my grandpa LOVES Louis L'Amour and this looked really interesting, so I went for it.

And it was really interesting.  In fact, I wanted to give it 5 stars.  It's a gorgeous book, packed with amazing photos and tons of information.

So why didn't it get 5 stars?

Two things: awkward/screwy layout issues and ridiculously bad photo captions.

Layout: The division into chapters and what was in those chapters was just really odd in some cases.  Some parts were interesting and yet felt totally out of place.... like no one wanted to cut them but no one knew what to do with them either, so they were just stuck in somewhere.  (This was actually the less annoying... it probably only lost 1/2 a star here.)

Captions: Oh my gosh, the captions.  I don't know what people were thinking there.  Most of the captions are lifted right out of the text, first of all, which is really annoying because then you end up reading it twice.  Maybe it's just me and my OCD need to read all of the captions as well as the text, but oh this bugged me.  (Actually, it's not just me, because my very non-OCD husband also thought it was extremely annoying.)

The other problem with the captions-- half the time they didn't even tell you ANYTHING ABOUT THE PICTURE.  For example, one picture, I assume it was actually of Louis L'Amour, just said something about him.  Didn't refer to the picture at all.  Didn't say "seen here at age...." or anything.  Just a random fact about him.  Another picture had a few sentences about the Pony Express, which is really interesting except that it had nothing to do with the text OR THE PICTURE.  The caption ends by explaining that the picture is of a place nowhere near where the Pony Express would have ridden.  It's like they said "well, gee, this bit about the Pony Express doesn't actually belong anywhere, but it's too interesting to take out, so we'll just stick it with a random photo."

Sigh.

I know, I know, I'm probably being too nitpicky, but it drove me NUTS. 

NUTS, I tell you.

Anyway, it is honestly a really cool book, especially if you aren't bothered by weird captioning.  :) I'm going to give it to my grandpa. :)

And I'm going to read a Louis L'Amour.  I checked out Comstock Lode from the library. :)

Spotlight- Finding Matthew by Donna Kirk

 A Child with Brain Damage, a Young Man with Mental Illness, a Son and Brother with Extraordinary Spirit

I received an email about this one a while back and while it's not really my style (and I'm just too swamped to accept anything for review that isn't so much my style) I wanted to spotlight it anyway.


This quote hit me pretty hard "During the first few weeks after Matthew Kirk was born -- brain-damaged as a result of oxygen deprivation during delivery -- the doctors advised his parents, Donna and Ed Kirk, to put him in an institution, have another baby as soon as possible, and get on with their life. But what the doctors didn't understand was that Matthew was their life."


As a mother, I cannot even tell you the emotions that that quote stirred up.  Rage is right up there.

So, to help out with raising awareness for parents going through this kind of thing and for the Kirk family specifically, I wanted to share this book with you and also share some links for more information.

First, Donna's blog where you can find posts like her advice for parents of children with disabilities and her post on love and limitations.  You can also read her "true fiction" piece about Driver's Education.

Also recommended is themighty.com which has a lot of stories of living with disabilities and is working to change perceptions of families living with disabilities.