The Life of Me (Enter at Your Own Risk)
Hank Zipzer Book 14
Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver
Penguin Canada
ISBN 9780448443768
Out of the 16 books available in the Zipzer series, this is now my favourite for a few reasons. First, Hank really begins to accept his learning disability; he also chooses to seek extra help for it. Now true, there is a female interest that draws him to that option but when a young person chooses reading gym over Tae Kwon Do, you know something serious is up. Hank has his first crush and Zoe is in the reading gym also. Hank also tries to keep this change in after-school activities a secret from his dad. But best of all Hank learns how to describe his life with his learning challenges and how it feels to live and struggle with them day in and day out. In learning to admit he has a problem and really working on it, Hank learns how to communicate his struggles and feelings that have been pent up for years.
What is remarkable about this book, and the series as a whole, is the ability by the authors to capture the essence of struggling with a learning disability. I was diagnosed in grade 2 because of a very persistent teacher, but many people are now being diagnosed in college, university and even in the workforce. I know many people who were not diagnosed in school and feel the way Hank does, but they did not know why. These books, even though written for children, are excellent for anyone struggling with learning disabilities, no matter their age. For they will help them see it is not just them and in Hank will see a mirror of some of their own experiences. These books are wonderfully written and are also fun to read. I highly recommend them.
Books by Henry Winkler and Lin OliverHank Zipzer Books:
1. Niagara Falls, or Does It?
2. I Got a "D" in Salami
3. Day of the Iguana
4. Zippety Zinger
5. The Night I Flunked My Field Trip
6. Holy Enchilada!
7. Help! Somebody Get me out of Fourth Grade!
8. Summer School? What Genius thought That Up?
9. My Secret Life as a Ping-Pong Wizard
10. My Dog's a Scaredy-Cat: A Halloween Tail
11. The Curtain Went Up, My Pants Went Down
12. Barfing in the Backseat: How I Survived My Family Road Trip
13. Who Ordered This Baby? Definitely Not Me!
14. Life of Me
15. A Tail of Two Tails
16. Dump Trucks and Dogsleds: I'm On My Way, Mom!
17. A Brand-New Me!
Ghost Buddy Books:
1. Zero to Hero
2. Mind If I Read Your Mind?
3. How to Scare the Pants off Your Pets
Back to your regularly scheduled programming. Well at least sort of. I have migrated to Blogger custom domain, from FTP Publishing. I have created a new hidden blog, hacked the template, imported my old posts and gone through over 300 posts and put the pictures back in. Once I have finished the last 370 posts I will take down the temp back up. New posts should be appearing next week and then back to posting every 1 to 3 days.
Peace and Strength!
Yours, learning to be
Steven R. McEvoy
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"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."
- Leo Rosten
I have made a back up of this blog at srmcevoy.ca. That is the first in a few steps. Second I have created a hidden blogger blog with new templates and attempted to recreate the look and feel of this blog. I am about 99% satisfied with it (about 12 hours of design work). Next I will need to apply that template to this blog and redirect it to blogger hosting and test. If that goes well, there should be minimal disruption to this blog. What will take the longest is going through almost 700 posts and putting the book covers and other pictures back in. Thanks for your patience during the transition. New content is developed and should be reappearing soon.
Yesterday(January 28th 2010) I recieved and email from Google\Blogger stating they are ending the FTP service. The migration must take place by March 22nd. Not a lot of time in my opinion but I am just a simple blogger. I am currently looking at the different options:
1. Leave this blog where it is and start over again. (Not desirable I have been using this blog since 2005, first hosted at blogger, then migrated to UW, then custom domain becuase of trafic levels.)
2. Migrate to Blogger hosting and hope for the best.
3. Migrate to Wordpress and stay hosted but lose all my link backs, page url's and search rankings.
4. As of yet undertrmined.
I spent a lot of time over the last 5 years changing the look and feel of this blog. Getting it just the way I wanted. Hacked the layout to get three columns custom images and more. I will with a few exceptions stop posting new content here until I figure this out. I am playing in both blogger and wordpress to see if I can get a design and feel I like. But for now all is on hold!
Steven
Noah's Castle
John Rowe Townsend
October Mist Publishing
ISBN 9780978545710
I was offered an advanced reading copy of this book. The book poses many interesting questions, and even though written originally 35 years ago, it is very fitting for today's economical and social setting. The book poses the questions of: 'What if money became worthless?' England is descending into economic disaster. The rate of inflation is changing hourly. Prices are skyrocketing, there are riots and people are literally starving to death. But for Norman Mortimer and his family things are not so terrible. For Norman is a man with foresight. When he predicted what was 
about to happen to the nation, he started planning. He buys a house well hidden from the street and other houses. Then he starts to gather stores to see the family through the current troubles.
Unfortunately, soon the government makes hoarding illegal. The family begins to be under stress, and as they see friends suffering and without, they struggle with what their father has done and is doing. First, Nessie the oldest daughter leaves, then the mother and youngest child. Soon it is just a father and his two sons. As rumours of the Mortimer's stocks spread, they are first blackmailed by a mobster, and a social action group tries to persuade Norman to distribute the stock to the needy.
This is an amazing book, well-written and so fitting to what is happening in today's world. The story moves at a quick pace, and progresses well. I could not put the book down. The story was so well-written I am planning on tracking down more of John Rowe Townsend's books to read in the future.
Lego City Adventures
Level 1 Reader
Sonia Sander
Scholastic
ISBN 9780545115438
Join the adventure and follow the Lego fire crew as they are called to a scene of a building on fire and respond, putting out the fire and even rescuing a cat. The Lego fire crew looks like the Lego men, and they even have a Dalmatian. The adventure includes fire trucks, danger and even a helicopter. A great little reader for young children.
The Leveled readers are great books for young children. There are hundreds of titles in these formats, even across different publishers. What makes this particular series, The Lego City Adventures, so good is that little boys will be attracted to them because of the format and styles of both the stories and artwork. They are bright colorful stories with fun illustrations. I can see young boys trying to make with Lego the scenes to act out from the books. As a Level 1 reader geared for Kindergarten to Grade 1, this book is intended to help with sight word recognition, sounding out simple words and sentences.
Other Lego City Adventure Books:
Fire Truck To The Rescue
Help Is On the Way!
Calling All Cars
All Aboard!
Ready For Take Off
Build This City
City Adventures Sticker Book
Work This Farm
Fight This Fire!
Lego City Heroes!
Trucks Around The City
3, 2, 1 Liftoff
All Hands On Deck
Lego Star Wars Books:
Save The Galaxy!
Anakin: Space Pilot 3D
Darth Maul's Mission
Fun With Opposites!
Wipe Clean Activities
Peter Haddock Publishing
ISBN 0710516819
My daughter received this book for Christmas, and it is wonderful. The dry erase marker, and activities on every page are fun, interesting and challenging. With flaps, and different activities on each page this book will provide hours of fun.
The Life of Me (Enter at Your Own Risk)
