I have stacks of books waiting to be reviewed and even bigger stacks at home waiting to be read. Onwards!
The Gift of Dyslexia by Ronald D. Davis with Eldon M. Braun. This is the dyslexia theory that my son’s school espouses, and at least per Amazon.com, seems to be among the top three dyslexia books currently out. Davis’s theories are based on his own experiences as a dyslexic, and the results from helping dyslexics in the clinics he founded. That’s a lot of experience, but as there are no scientifically based studies behind it, it’s more like a very large body of subjective evidence than truly scientific. Anyway, Davis’s theory is that dyslexics are visual learners. They think in pictures, and are used to being able to rotate, explode and reassemble objects in their minds without knowing they’re doing it. This is great for art and engineering, but really unhelpful for reading, where the letters need to stay two-dimensional and in the right order. The more words in a text that don’t make pictures, the more the brain tries to use its unhelpful skills to solve the problem, and the worse it gets. Davis has a test to see if this is the case with the person in question, and then a couple of methods (based primarily on age) for teaching them to be conscious about controlling their mind’s eye and its focus. Once they can do this, the program calls for hands-on work with making letters out of clay and working intensively with the toughest words to read – those that don’t easily translate to pictures. This, Davis says, will effectively cure dyslexia, while still preserving the gifts that caused it in the first place. I’m not sure how much of this really applies to my son, though some of it clearly does. I don’t know whether the school is using their treatment method or just subscribes to the theory that dyslexia stems from a gift rather than a disability. This book does some things very well, though. It has good descriptions of typical symptoms, good and bad, that go along with dyslexia. It is relatively short, printed in larger type with a minimum of hyphenated words to make it easier for dyslexics to read.
I find I have some problems with calling dyslexia a gift that maybe have more to do with the limitations of a title than with Davis’s actual theories. I think Davis finds the abilities that cause the dyslexia the gift, but I don’t think that having a hard time reading is a gift, flat-out. Readers of this blog might guess that I’m somewhat passionate about reading, and I don’t like anything that makes reading harder for people. I would not have read this book for that reason if my son’s team hadn’t recommended it. Now that I have, I’m recommending it for purchase to my library. It might not have all the answers to dyslexia – but no one seems to, despite their claims, and it is the easiest book about dyslexia for an adult dyslexic to read that I’ve found. The need for this was recently brought home as I ran into someone who said (paraphrasing) “I don’t have dyslexia. I just don’t read so much because it’s hard to make the words into pictures.” How many more people with dyslexia could be helped if the myth of dyslexia as seeing twisted letters weren’t still so rampant?
Brain Gym by Paul E. Dennison and Gail E. Dennison This book was recommended to us by a friend, who had great success with both of her children using the exercises in it. I had to have it sent via ILL, and was rather surprised when I got it. It’s a small paperback only 48 pages long with amateurish drawings. The theory behind it is both simple and not much talked about: problems with reading, math, concentration, etc., can be helped by physical exercises, particularly ones that require crossing the body’s midline. For what we were looking at, drawing sideways figure eights in the air, first with just one hand and then with both held together. I think the theory is that problems like these can be caused by lack of communication between the two hemispheres of the brain, and doing physical integration can prime the pump, as it were, making the academic exercises easier. If you or someone you’re helping has difficulty, you can just flip to the appropriate page, where the exercise is drawn out with text descriptions of how to do it and what it should accomplish. I’m not sure we’ve remembered to do this quite as often as we ought, but it has seemed helpful when we do. In order to up the interest quotient, my brilliant husband had the idea of having our son do the exercises holding a foam sword, rather than just tracing the pattern in the air with his hands. It worked. For those more interested in the theory (which, come to think of it, would probably be me), there’s also a teacher’s guide, which has more detailed notes on everything.
Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta Life is somewhat difficult for Francesca Spinelli, whose mother has enrolled her at St. Sebastian’s, a school that prior to that year was all boys. Neither teachers nor students seem inclined to change their customs to allow for girls, and the only other girls for Francesca to hang out with are girls who were losers at her old school: crazy, radical Tara Finke, slut Siobhan, and accordian-playing loner Justine. Then things get even worse. Francesca’s mother Mia, always a major force to be reckoned with at home and at work, stops getting out of bed. Francesca and her beloved little brother Luca are sent to separate relative’s houses, while their father keeps trying to pretend that everything will just get better on its own. At school, Tara decides that the girls will make a list of demands, and that Francesca is the best person to bring those demands to their class representative, Will Tromball. Tromball seems to be a jerk who isn’t interested in changing anything – yet their eyes lock every time they see each other. Francesca keeps getting put into detention for things like trying to talk to Luca at school. In detention she meets guitar-obsessed slob Thomas McKee and weirdo Jimmy Hailler, whom she doesn’t really like but who keeps following her home and is able to accomplish the miracle of getting her mother to talk. There are lots and lots of plot strands here, with family, friends old and new, romance, and school, all swirling around Francesca and the identity she’s building for herself in the absence of the people who have in the past always told her who she is: her mother and her clique from her old school. The characters are clearly drawn and easy to root for, despite the (pardon) depressing topic of a seriously depressed mother. As in The Piper’s Son, families are shown as deeply loving despite their problems, friends worth living for despite their quirks. Though Francesca can draw strength from all of them, in the end, the only person who can save Francesca is herself. 
Unterzakhn by Leela Corman. 
Gone to Amerikay by Derek McCullough. Art by Colleen Doran. This graphic novel interweaves the story of three periods of Irish people coming to America. In 1870, Ciara O’Dwyer comes with her young daughter Maire, expecting her husband Fintan to follow soon. She moves in with family in the slums of New York and starts working as a laundress to support herself. Months pass, and even though a letter arrives saying that Fintan is on his way, he never turns up. Only Tim O’Shea, an altar boy with her husband when they were small, comes. Tim tells Ciara that Fintan changed his mind, joined the military, and might turn up in a few years. Meanwhile, he gets involved with the Irish gangs in New York and starts drawing Ciara into his Life of Crime. Meanwhile, in 1960, Johnny McCormack, a young would-be actor, emigrates to New York and finds work performing traditional and original Irish music instead. He falls in love with another Irish boy, a less recent immigrant, who introduces him to the right people but also breaks his heart. Finally, in 2010, businessman Lewis Healy, made rich by the Celtic Tiger, comes with his assistant who is giving him a tour of the origins of “Ciara’s Song.” This was the least interesting story for me – nothing really happens to Lewis himself – but it holds key information to both of the other stories. There is a wee bit of ghost story mixed into this – really just one creepy spread – but lots and lots of Irish song lyrics and an old story or two. I never really got a feel for the modern character, but both Ciara and Johnny have for me a deep inner integrity – that lifted them out of their sordid circumstances and gave the story, despite its many distressing elements, an overall upbeat feeling. I never lost confidence that both Ciara and Johnny would live out their American dreams, despite the many setbacks. Colleen Doran, famous for her work on Sandman, does not disappoint with the beautiful work that captures the people and places of all the different times. There is some violence and implied sex that might make this unsuitable for young children, but overall, this is an uplifting tale of the Irish immigrants in America. 
How to Eat a Cupcake by Meg Donohue.
Rabbit Ears: American Tall Tales Volume 3: “Mose the Fireman” and “Stormalong.”
Mose the Fireman and Stormalong are two American folk heroes with whom I was previously unacquainted, despite having read compulsively in the 398s in childhood. Mose’s tale seems to be set in the Roaring 20s, to judge by the music, while Stormalong’s tale takes place a few decades earlier, as sail was making way for steam. Both are entertaining tales of the unbelievable exploits of a fireman and a sailor. Each of these four tales was just about the perfect length to take us one way of the commute to and from school. The seven-year-old was excited by the stories, and the two-year-old loved the music, which meant that for once, everyone was happy. The length means finding a new audio book every day for us, but could be perfect if you have shorter commutes or just want a story to listen to at home. In any case, the stories are fun and the production values high. 
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley. Cullen Witter, aged 17, lives in the small town of Lily, Arkansas. His best friends are his younger brother Gabriel and Lucas, a very popular boy who manages to spend large amounts of time with Cullen without altering either of their popularity scores (Cullen’s: dismal. Lucas’s: very high.) One of Cullen’s pastimes is writing down titles for books he might someday write, and the narrative switches charmingly between Cullen’s first-person casual narrative of passing events and his more formal and somehow funnier third-person reflections on what has just happened. Many things are happening. Cullen’s slightly older cousin has just died of a drug overdose. A man who seems to Cullen and his small gang clearly to be a charlatan has come to Lily claiming to have seen a living Lord God Bird, a very large woodpecker believed to be extinct. Many tourists follow, hoping to see it. Lucas sets Cullen up on a date with Alma Ember, a recent graduate of the high school, who left Lily, married, divorced, and returned. Even though Cullen has an enormous crush on the prettiest girl in school (of course already dating the biggest and meanest boy in the school) and feels odd dating an older woman, he agrees, in order to go on the double date that Lucas so clearly has his heart set on. And then Gabriel disappears into the blue, leaving everyone adrift. Weeks go by with no news, and the family and their friends struggle to carry on and to know whether or not they should give up hope. Alternating with this main story is the story of Benton Sage, a young man eager to please his uncompromising father, who tries and fails at mission work in Africa and then goes to college. He becomes obsessed with the apocryphal Book of Enoch, and involves his roommate in this obsession. The characters in the Lily, Arkansas part of the story seemed just slightly quirkier regular humans – Ada Taylor’s curse of having her boyfriends die off, for example. By contrast, something about the characters and the storytelling style of the Benton Sage plot line seemed a little stiff and unreal, so that for most of the book I thought that we were reading Cullen’s novel-in-progress. Then the stories intersected and I had to revise everything that I had thought about it. There are some very serious topics addressed here, like the balance of sanity and insanity in the face of extreme grief. “Where Things Come Back” seems to refer both to hoped-for returns like the Lord God bird, and the return of people like Alma who hoped to get out of Lily and end up coming right back home. Somehow, perhaps due to copious amounts of under-aged if not graphically described sex, and definitely Cullen’s sense of humor, the book manages to feel, if not light, a whole lot lighter than I’d expect a book with one missing and a couple of dead teens to be. These are topics that I normally try to avoid, but I found myself enjoying this book, rooting for the characters and hoping that Gabriel would come back. 
The Great Piratical Rumbustification. The Librarian and the Robbers. by Margaret Mahy. Pictures by Quentin Blake. Margaret Mahy is world-famous children’s author from New Zealand whom I have somehow never heard of before. I’m not quite sure how this book came across my radar, but there it was, a children’s book featuring both pirates and a librarian. How could I resist? Though these are packaged as a children’s chapter book, the book consists of two longish short stories, or maybe short novellas. In “The Great Piratical Rumbustification”, a family with three young boys moves into a house in the suburbs. It’s meant to give the children more room to play, but the cost is so high that their father is always depressed and the boys are not really sure where they can safely let loose. Things change when their mother hires a last-minute babysitter from a service for them, who turns out to be a mostly retired pirate. He sets off a signal in the backyard announcing a Rumbstification, and soon the house is overflowing with partying pirates, an event which changes everyone’s life for the good. In “The Librarian and the Robbers”, a proper but beautiful librarian is kidnapped by a gang of robbers. She wins them over by curing their measles with information in a home nursing guide from the library and by reading them thrilling tales while they are recovering. This contains some tropes that really ought not to be preserved – what is basically Stockholm syndrome combined with the Good Woman Can Cure Evil Man myth. I found myself charmed anyway. Quentin Blake’s characteristic flyaway ink drawings complete the lighthearted feel of the book. I haven’t had a chance to try it on the boy yet, but this feels like a perfect read-aloud book when a picture book is too short and a regular chapter book too long. 
The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta. Read by Michael Finney.
alibrarymama 