Hanukkah Book Review: The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler

Tonight is the first night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.  While we aren't Jewish, we've just finished a three-month study of that religion, and it felt like we should acknowledge the holiday in some way (besides the fact that we're having potato latkes for dinner tonight).

One thing that really impressed me about the Jewish religion is the amount of focus they put on their holy book, the Torah.  That is, they really honor and celebrate the book itself, not just the wisdom it contains. So I thought, in honor of Hanukkah, I would spend the next eight nights on my blog reviewing books that I think brought light to the world in the past year.  They will probably be books we've been reading for my son's Mock Newbery Book Club, but we'll see what I come up with.

For tonight, the first night of Hanukkah, I am reviewing The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler.  This book is quite a lovely book.  It is a retelling of a fairy tale, and so it contains all sort of classic fairy tale elements--noble princes and beautiful princesses, witches good and evil, spells and enchantments, and even an invisibility cloak.  However, it is based on one of the lesser-known stories--the Grimm Brother's tale of The 12 Dancing Princesses.  This is a relatively later story (it is not thought to have been told earlier than the 17th century) and pretty much confined to Eastern Europe.  In the original version, the plot focuses on figuring out the "how"--how the 12 beautiful princesses wear out their shoes every night, even though they are locked in their bedrooms.  Zahler's version fleshes out the "why"--why do they spend every night dancing in a fantastical place beneath the lake by the castle.

The proceedings in this book are told by the "thirteenth princess," the outcast sister of the 12 dancers.  It falls to her to unravel the mystery of what is happening with her sisters, who are suffering much more dire consequences for their nightly sojourns.  She is helped in her efforts by a stout-hearted stable boy, a kindly witch, and a handsome soldier.  But the story is mainly hers, as she seeks to discover herself along with saving her sisters.

This is a great story for adaptation because it hasn't been done to death, and even the Grimm Brother's description of the enchanted lands are quite beautiful.  But in Zahler's words, the place becomes luminous, even though there are hints of a dark force behind the gorgeous veneer.  It deal with great themes for the early adolescent--the search for oneself, how one does and does not fit in with one's familiars or peers, how things that you've known since childhood may look different with viewed with maturing eyes, and, of course, the quest for true love and our personal "happily ever after."  And it contains a lesson that I repeat often to my son and my students:  that even good things--for example, love or parents' attempts to protect their children from harm--can go bad if taken to an extreme.

I enjoyed reading this book myself, but I think it is a great story for middle schoolers as well.

Book Review: Reckless by Cornelia Funke

My son is in a Mock Newbery Club, where a group of middle schoolers read and discuss as many of this year's Newbery-eligible books as possible, then select the book(s) they think should win before the actual winners are announced.  Since the Newbery Awards are decided in January, it is crunch time for the Mock Newbery Club.  I've been sending my son to bed with a new book every night, trying to catch up with all the great possibilities for this prestigious award (we're SO lucky he is such a quick and perceptive reader).

I haven't read nearly as many of the contenders as he has, but I try to read what I can, particularly those that are favorites of:  (1) my son; (2) my son's club; or (3) the general buzz I get off of the Internet.  And while I'm trying to stay out of his selections of favorites, I'll probably be writing a number of reviews aimed towards parents of middle schoolers in this blog for the next month, since this is a priority for us right now.

So today's review is of the book Reckless by Cornelia Funke.  I'm quite a fan of Cornelia Funke.  I can't believe that her books, which are written in German, sound so poetic in English, with such compelling characters and concepts...that she illustrates herself.  Sigh.  I would settle for being poetic, compelling, or illustrative.  While I think she is most famous for her Dragon Rider series, I believe my favorite of her books (at least, up to now) is The Thief Lord.  I really liked the concept behind the Inkheart series, but I couldn't get beyond the first book; in that one, the bad guy was SO bad, and it seemed to me to take too long to get to his inevitable removable, that I had no stomach for the rest.

But this year, Funke released Reckless, the first in what appears to be another series.  And this book may be my favorite of them all.  But, like the review I wrote of The Golden Compass, I'm not sure this book is appropriate for middle schoolers--or at least those in the early middle school grades, like my son.  Now, he could "read" it OK; he finished it, but didn't enjoy it, calling it "dark" and "depressing."  But I think some of the mature topics went over his head.  I know I appreciated it a lot more than he did.

Reckless combines many of the same themes as her previous books: orphaned brothers, an alternative world that exists parallel to "normal" life, literary allusions, etc.  But in this book, Funke has tapped into the dark side--like the original GRIMM Brothers' version--of fairy tales.  The alternative reality (which is called "Mirrorworld" in this book) is dark, but classically romantic, filled with love (gained, lost, and frustrated) and witches and war lords and unicorns and shapeshifters and dwarfs and familiar characters altered in interesting ways.  But probably my favorite aspect is that, like (in my mind, at least) The Thief Lord, it is hard to tell who is good and who is bad (as opposed to Dragon Rider or Inkheart, which present much more black and white characters).  It is an intriguing and complex world...at least for more mature readers.  But, again, I think the subtleties are missed by the average 6th or 7th grader.

For example, there is war involved, and prejudice, and revenge.  Also, there is a whole subplot about characters....well, let's call it "having marital relations" without having the benefit of being married.

Personally, I thought it was a really beautiful and interesting book.  But had I read it before him, I would have encouraged my son to wait a few years before reading it so that he could really appreciate it.

If you want some more information, you can check out the website for the book, or else this video trailer (an interesting new option for books---but that's a subject for another blog post).

Collaboration and Community in Education

There are two items I've worked on with my friend and colleague, Maria D of Natural Math, that I would love for people to check out and comment on.  One is the conclusion of the "Family Educator Commons" article that we wrote for the Shareable website.  This part, entitled "Online Communities, Agile Methods and the Commons" addresses the common myth that homeschool students are sitting at home, tackling their subjects alone or with just the company of their immediate family.  We share one example of "a day in the life of" a homeschool student that shows how family educators, working within a community setting, share their different abilities and resources, usually in a non-monetary or informal bartering system, and work together to ensure that all their children receive a complete, stimulating, and individualized education.  We also discuss online education, the ability to change educational directions on the fly when something is not working, and what is possible when you channel the parents' commitment to their children's educational success into a connected and cohesive community.  

On another front, I've been helping Maria with a grant proposal for her idea of constructing an international database of math education communities that want to support students and families in developing their math capabilities.  You can see her proposal to the Knight Foundation News Challenge, and even vote for or comment on it, at least through tomorrow.  Or if you miss that deadline (I don't know how long they will keep up the proposals), you can comment through her blog at http://www.naturalmath.com/blog/math-2-0-at-knight-news-challenge-please-comment-and-vote/.  What would you like to see from an effort like this?

Educational Resource: NoodleTools Bibliography Software

As our students move into the highly-shareable world of digital information, it is really important to teach them from an early age the ethical practice of identifying the source of text, pictures, or other content they may borrow and incorporate into their own materials.  This includes the more information types of credit statements on websites, blog posts, etc., as well as the traditional modes of including a bibliography of sources used in developing a paper, report, or other writing.

And as long as they are starting to maintain resources from an early age, why not have them present them in one of the major styles they will be required to use by the time they are in college, or even in high school--styles like the MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian style?  Fortunately, there is software available that makes it easy for even elementary students to generate bibliographies with the proper formatting to meet these criteria.

There are many bibliography packages out there, many of which are free and/or open source.  However, my favorite one so far is called Noodle Tools.  While the complete package is not free, it is available for a single family use for a very reasonable subscription of $8/year.  I haven't done an exhaustive comparison, but I found Noodle Tools to be the most intuitive and easy-to-use of any of the packages, and it is worth $8 to me for the cleaner, more user-friendly (especially for a child) interface.  Plus, there is a stripped down version that is free, and would probably be acceptable for most middle school and even some high school uses if all you want to do is to create a bibliography.

With Noodle Tools, you start a project, decide which format you want to use for the bibliography, and start inputing data for the requisite fields (author's name, publisher, date of publication, etc.).  That database then formats the information in the proper format for the selected style (MLA, APA, etc.)  However, in the paid version, you can also create note cards attached to that citation, and use those to take notes or even cut and paste text, graphics, photographs, etc. from that source that you want to include in your paper.  You can export that information and/or bibliography either to a Word document or to a Google Doc document.

The website also has resources about citation rules as well as the ethical use of outside sources.  It was developed as a teaching tool, and I think it is a great support to help our children learn the proper way of keeping track of and giving credit to the material they draw on from others when they are creating their own works.

HBO Documentary on Learning Differences Airs on Monday, November 29

There is an HBO documentary on what they call "learning differences" (as opposed to learning disabilities) that is supposed to be showing at 8:30 PM on Monday, November 29.  It deals with how diagnosing such differences and getting students in a situation that supports their unique learning style changes their experience of themselves from failures to, at least, a work in progress, then a survivor, and perhaps finally a champion.  I haven't seen it (and I won't on Monday, since I don't have HBO--but hopefully someone in my homeschool group will record it and maybe share it with us later), but I LOVE the title:
"I Can't Do This, But I Can Do That."  What a great mantra for us ALL to use in life, especially when we are encountering challenges!

Get details, including a trailer for the documentary, at the HBO website.

Thanksgiving Fun

We're still in Thanksgiving mode here.  But here are a couple of free online games appropriate for middle schoolers that have a Thanksgiving theme:

Turkey Flibriks is one of those filing tiles games where you have to blast away tiles to keep them from hitting the bottom.  But it also combines a Concentration-type memory match component.  They show you a line of tiles (which all have Thanksgiving pictures, like turkeys, pumpkins, and Pilgrim hats), then flip them over and they start falling.  If you can remember where the pictures are, get the best match and tiles disappear.  Easy for the first row or so, but harder as time goes on.  This is the perfect Thanksgiving game--seasonal, not too hard so either kids or adults get frustrated, not too fast paced, but not so slow or easy that it gets boring.

Turkey Swap is one of those puzzles with nine pieces with ten slots, and you have to move them around to get them in the right place.  But in this case, you are trying to get nine turkeys to switch places with nine pigs in as few moves as possible.  This is not as frustrating as those ones where you are trying to create a picture, but getting it done in few moves is not that easy, either.

Enjoy!

Giving Thanks

I've been doing this blog for almost three months now, and one of the most fascinating things to me has been how I can be writing here in my little part of North Carolina, but be read by people all over the world.  In the past three months, my blog has been accessed by hundreds of readers from every continent across the globe except Antarctica.  For example, while my hits this past week have WAY predominantly come from the US, I've also had 8 contacts from Canada, 6 from Denmark, 5 from Singapore, and 2 each from the UK, Russia, and Kenya.

So for my non-US readers, let me explain that today is the holiday of Thanksgiving, the day when we gather with friends and families, cook a big turkey meal in honor of the first settlers who arrived here to find such a new and tasty wild bird on which to feast (although, with all the different diets people pursue here, there is more and more deviation from the "typical" Thanksgiving meal), and give thanks for our many blessings.  And since I have so much to be thankful for, I thought I would share at least the ones that relate to the subject of this blog with you all, my virtual community.

Things I am thankful for this year include:

• that my circumstances allow me to homeschool my son, which I believe is the best educational experience for him and the most fun I can imagine for me;
• that North Carolina has such a hands-off policy regarding homeschooling, allowing us the freedom to design curriculum and programs that meet our specific needs;
• that this community is so supportive of homeschooling and has so many classes and activities geared to this population;
• that my homeschooling support group has so many diverse, interesting, intelligent, free-thinking, innovative, committed, and really caring parents who contribute so much to my son and to me as we pursue our homeschooling journey
• that my spiritual community not only supports me in my own continued development, but has entrusted me with the opportunity to create a new "rite of passage" world religion Sunday School curriculum for our middle school youth;
• and that despite it all--the political debates, the lack of resources, the troubling policy issues, the implied insult by politicians that outsiders can do a better job running things than professional educators, the relatively low salaries, the continued interference by bureaucrats and policy makers--that there are so many dedicated, professional, and wonderful school teachers who spend their days (and too often, nights) serving the majority of children in Wake County (and, really, throughout the world) who attend school.  I had dinner Tuesday night with two of them, and even during a rare "Girls Night Out" on a long holiday weekend, they kept going back to talking about individual kids and things they could do to make their school experience better.  With all the things school teachers have to deal with, I think their job is much tougher than mine, and my hat is off to them.

In short, it is my greatest joy and privilege that I get to be a mother to one and a teacher to several dozen other extraordinary young people, and I feel very blessed that this is how I get to spend this portion of my life.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!