Book of the week: NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

Po Bronson's NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children was recommended in my favorite magazine, The Week.  The Week rarely lets me down, so I expected great things from this book, and I was not disappointed.  This book is a compilation of the latest scientific research about children and how modern parenting ideas are failing our youngsters.

Each chapter deals with a different aspect of parenting: praise (given way too often), sleep (getting less than ten hours per night takes the equivalent of two school years off of performance) and race (kindergarteners will notice race and come to their own conclusions, whether you mention it or not), to name a few.  This is a fascinating read for anyone who deals with children and challenges many of the rules that we have been taught to believe.  This title would make a wonderful choice for a school-wide book discussion.

Chapter book of the Week: the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I had another title all picked out and ready to go for my chapter book of the week, but that title is just going to have to wait until next week.  I read Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time when it first came out in 2004--it caused quite a stir as a crossover adult/young adult book.  Then I promptly forgot about it.  My husband and I were standing in line to check out during our weekly trip to the public library when I glanced over at the book recommendation display, and there it was.  I told him to grab it for himself, because it is such a novel idea, and he had never read it.  I thought that I would re-read the first chapter, just to refresh my memory, so we could talk about it when he was done, but I couldn't put it down.  Needless to say, he is just going to have to wait until I am done re-reading the whole thing.

I wanted to post reviews of only books that I own at either Yates or Elmer, in case someone read my blog and wanted to read the title that I had reviewed.  I don't own this book at either library, however; it is an adult book.  But I think it would be a worthwhile read for any teacher because the book is told from an autistic child's point of view.  Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone finds his neighbor's poodle murdered on her front yard and decides to solve the case.  His school social worker had encouraged him to write a book, so he writes about his investigation. Seeing our world through his eyes is totally fresh and endearing, and it made me appreciate  how difficult and confusing it must be for our autistic students to navigate through their school days.