Mary Bowser, Spy

Confession time: when I was a kid, I really, really loved the movie Spy Kids. 

Aaaaand this is where I lose my readers’ faith in that I can recognize anything of quality. Spy Kids was not … the greatest… film, but it was entertaining, and I think I played “spy” for the next year. What kid doesn’t, at some point!?

So I saw this series, Spy on History, which is a series of biographies on real-life spies, and I immediately wanted to read it. When I saw that this book came with an interactive feature: four elements that help you find clues throughout the book and solve one final mystery, I was super intrigued.

First of all, how a library might deal with the “extra” pieces. And second of all, would this really enhance the book?! Or was it just a gimmick?

I checked out this book from the Indianapolis Public Library, and this is how they dealt with the problem of the extra pieces:

So, circulation knows to check for these pieces inside… (I’m assuming)

They all fit in the little envelope packet at the beginning of the book! The back answer section also was sealed when the book was new (the seal was broken for library use.)

So…. how did this work with the text? Along with describing the ciphers and other codes and ways of passing messages to the Union, the illustrations and margins of the book have their own clues and hidden messages.You don’t have to solve the clues to get the story. It’s just fun… and the instructions on how the codes work are hidden in the text, so these methods are exactly the ones that the Civil War spies, like Mary, really used.

Mary Bowser is a fairly little-known female spy who reported information right off Jefferson Davis’ desk as an undercover agent posing as a maid. She was a free woman, though enslaved as a child. However, her Quaker friend Elizabeth Van Lew that ran the spy ring is fairly more better known than she is. While the story is engaging, written at a fast pace, and there’s lots of intrigue, it reads more like historical fiction than narrative nonfiction. Narrative nonfiction has few quoted conversations and doesn’t really embellish much. This didn’t seem embellished, but as I read, I questioned whether or not there was a source that documented this. I was feeling frustrated until the end of the book… when in the back matter….

it stated that there were very few records that documented Mary’s time in the Confederate White House and other than the basic facts about her life, not many details were known. After the war, she taught for a while, remarried, and then history seems to swallow her up.

Because, you know, Spy School 101: don’t keep a diary that says “And today I read the decoded messages on Jefferson Davis’ desk.”

So, I decided to check the sources: this book cites Temptress, Traitor, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott. This book is extremely-well researched and relies heavily on primary sources, so I figured it was a good place to start. Lo and behold, you get the outline sketches of the story. It should be stated that the subject of Abbott’s research is Elizabeth Van Lew, but it is soon apparent that most mentions of Mary Bowser come only from from the artifacts left by Van Lew about Mary’s dealings.  What I did find out: all of the people portrayed in this book were real people, and they behaved in realistic ways to what is known about them. The manure cart escape was real. The red shirt in the window code is real. And all of the spy codes used were real, too.

So, while this book is really largely based in truth, maybe it’s more of a “creative nonfiction,” but this isn’t the fault of the author– more a fault of the time, because a really important voice was lost and discredited, and not much record remains. Which is really just sad, because Mary Bowser was a really cool person.

Because I was on my own clue-solving mission, I didn’t get to solve many of the puzzles, but they were fun and challenging, and probably waaaaaaay more fun than just a plain book on ciphers. I don’t know that I would use this book in my classroom as a read-aloud, but it would be really fun activity for reluctant readers or even a small book group to read and try to figure out the code together.

 

Auk-Ward

Okay, okay, okay, I just couldn’t resist the title on this one.

This time, I’m reviewing The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk by Jan Thornhill.

This entrancing illustrated nonfiction text would make a great read for kids 3rd-6th grade. It’s a Lexile 1150, so older readers 5th grade and up would find this an independent read.

This book has what I consider the “nonfiction trifecta:” readability, interesting visuals, and good information. While this book could be written entirely from the perspective of the Great Auk being a sob story for environmentalists (actually, the earliest environmental protections for a species happened because of the Great Auk), but the author delves into the history and the biology of the bird as well: why it survived only in a few places– until just the right amount of events, both natural and human-oriented, led to its extinction. It could only roost in very few places, had a slow reproductive rate, and on land was a sitting duck for predators (excuse the pun!).

Not to say that humans get off the hook in this work. Not by a long shot– the story does tell , and does not shy away from– the details of birds plucked and carcasses left to rot, of birds killed in the thousands for their oil, meat, and feathers.

This is where the illustrations come in– this book has beautiful illustrations, but perhaps none more haunting than the “ghost Auks,” replaced by other species, on the final page:

With such a sad story, the book does end on a hopeful note: the bones and bodies of the Great Auk, left behind, decomposed and left dirt on islands that were once bare rock, allowing puffins, which burrow their nests, new places to roost. And the many, many laws and conservation efforts that were started by those concerned about the Great Auk’s demise. “People like you.”

Perhaps, with that, it would be a great connection to get involved in conservation efforts for endangered species today! www.zooniverse.com is a collection of citizen science projects. The featured project recently was the “seabird watch” in which scientists are trying to figure out why populations of some seabirds are in decline, based on data gathered from everyday people! Not near an ocean? Good news– it’s all done by webcam!

Other curriculum connections– This would make a great addition to a mentor text collection for nonfiction for any teacher in lower grades though– there is so much potential for Writing Workshop lessons with Thornhill’s clear, descriptive language:

“Egg collecting at the time was a popular hobby. Before bird protection laws came into play, thousands of oologists around the world climbed trees, scaled cliffs, and squished through swamps to rob birds’ nests of their eggs”  (p. 31).

What a way to add action to the statement “Egg collecting was a popular hobby!” Not to mention, having to use context for the word “oologist” which even I didn’t know, but admit it is the perfect word for someone who studies eggs– oooey!!

This is a beautiful, haunting, urgent tale for any library or nonfiction lesson for upper elementary students. Check out the starred review from Kirkus here.

 

Some Book! Orbis Pictus Winner 2017

Fittingly, this year’s Orbis Pictus award for excellence in nonfiction, awarded by the National Council of Teachers of English, goes to Some Writer! by Melissa Sweet.

This biography, a 1030 Lexile, intended for 8-10 year old readers, is one of the most engaging, well-put-together, and interesting biographies for young people I have ever read.

Part of my interest is that E.B. White’s stories are still so close to my heart, and have been ever since I was very small, but for a man who lived much of his life in a quiet fashion on a farm (the odd cross-country road trip in a Model T Ford with no money and no plan notwithstanding), the author’s use of primary sources and scrapbook style layout make this book just fascinating, even when there’s no adventuresomeness to the life itself being described. Add to that her gorgeous illustrations and you have a recipe for a highly visual book that creates an immersive informational experience.

Whether it’s little tidbits of “the story behind the story,” quotes from his later writings or magazine articles, the pages and pages of backmatter document research, letters read, family photos, and more, that make this collection truly special. It’s endorsed by the family of E.B. White, who lent their expertise and family collections to the book.

One of the things that stuck with me the most about this book is that it absolutely requires synthesis of the different quotations, images, original manuscripts, and ephemera (that would be a fun word to teach third graders!) to get the full effect. It’s a great exercise in using different parts of the page to pull together a message, and this would make a great mini-lesson on making connections between the different areas of the page (especially if the classroom read-aloud happens to be one of his classics).

As one of the virtuosos of the craft of writing and style itself (The Elements of Style), this book would also make an excellent series of mini-lessons or example on how writers actually write (something we talked about frequently in my Writer’s Workshop style lessons). It was so interesting to me that the well-known first line “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” from Charlotte’s Web was something that White revised, over and over, and actually struggled with a fair bit.

 

 

All in all, this book, while you may not want to read aloud the entire thing in class, would be an excellent companion to an E.B. White read-aloud, a fantastic kickoff for a writing lesson from one of the greatest children’s writers of the twentieth century, or simply, a great nonfiction book waiting to be discovered in a classroom library. Well-researched, visually gorgeous, and immersive, other nonfiction books and publishers should be working toward the standard this book sets.

 

Halloween Special: Food for Little Zombies

The first question I asked my friends and family when I brought this book home is….

…. what do you think this is on the cover?

Most people said chili with taffy pieces in it.  It’s just really sour cream with food coloring, which I kind of thought was unnecessary, but what else would make it “Zombie Brain” chili?

I couldn’t come up with anything. This cookbook is creative, and extremely gross! While my friends (in their late 20s, and most of us do not have kids) did not think this cookbook was appetizing, the average 12 year old might have a very different opinion.

Plus, it’s Halloween! So here are a few highlights from this very messy cookbook! 

Witch Hair Pasta. At first I was wondering what kind of specialty spaghetti this was, but it turns out it’s just more food coloring trickery!

Not all recipes rely on food coloring for the gross out factor, though. This one was deemed “most gross” by my friends:

Its an intestine calzone!…. yummy!!!

Other recipes, like the Puking Peppers, use familiar recipes with a twist (faces carved into the peppers to make the inside of the stuffed peppers fall out, thus… puking peppers!)

As far as children’s cookbooks go, this one doesn’t top my list. I’ve been cooking since the age of 7, which was when my mom tried to get me to eat more food by teaching me to cook it. (I was a strange child who really didn’t want to eat, usually.) My mom cooks a lot from scratch, so in addition to helping me in the kitchen with her own recipes, she bought me cookbooks that were themed like my beloved American Girl dolls and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And that’s where this book shines, even if it makes your stomach turn. Sometimes, you do have to give the author props for meeting children where their interests are. These recipes are also pretty sneakily healthy– they’re balanced with veggies, protein, and starches, and if children want to spend time in the kitchen with their parents, it’s an awesome alternative to (often unhealthy) restaurant or fast-food options.

This book is definitely a “cook along with” a parent book, since it involves various skills that while aren’t hard, are probably best done with supervision. There’s a glossary at the back, too!

If it were me, I might have had to eat some of these with my eyes closed, though!

Dinosaur Books That Keep Evolving

At the library I work at, a “hot topic” of discussion last week was whether or not we should reorganize the dinosaur books into their own section!

Why?

Because we get asked so much where they are, of course! Dinosaurs delight and fascinate us all, but kids going through the “dinosaur phase” can’t get enough. I was wonderfully challenged by one little boy, probably 5 years old, one day, who wanted a “hard” dinosaur book where he could learn some new dinosaurs, so nothing easy for him! (My recommendation that day? Prehistoric Actual Size) 

So, today, I have a 2-for-1 special! Dinosaur books that are truly geared for young paleontologists of various ages. (And old ones… I will say.  I would love to read these books in a classroom and be an “expert learner” because I had to do so much research afterwards just to find out some curiosities! …. so much has changed in the field of paleontology since 1996. Like T. Rex having FEATHERS! Or not.) These two books truly teach an understanding of science that, well, keeps evolving.

I was so charmed by The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, Lexile 550. 

While I wasn’t sure these fantastical pictures were really “nonfiction,” The story is simple and true: a mid-1800s artist interprets the findings of the new field of paleontology to create a picture of what these enormous animals must have looked like. The story details the process of his work:

The “realistic” sculptures were displayed at the Crystal Palace built by Queen Victoria in London. ONE OF THE COOLEST THINGS? THEY ARE STILL AROUND! YOU CAN STILL GO SEE THEM!

This video shows a view of the dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins as you can see them today.

Brian Selznick, as always, is bar none with these illustrations. He details on the back leaf how he used primary sources (a scrapbook and these original existing sculptures) to create his illustrations, as well as this primary source illustration from the Illustrated London News (via Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs).  Selznick definitely kept the spirit of that news illustration in his two-page spread on the event!

This book would be great for young scientists as a biography study (hmm, I seem to have chosen a few of those) as well as thinking critically about the process of science and how it changes as we find out new information. For example, the iguanodons we imagine today look quite a bit different from those of Waterhouse Hawkins: he imagined a spike as a horn on the iguanodon’s nose, while today we realize that it was more of a thumb! There are so many links I could link to, because I see this as only the start of a great exploration about primary sources for the youngest set!

Dinosaurs? Check. Nonfiction work par excellence– great storytelling combined with primary sources for facts? Check. Wonderful illustrations, as fantastical as the scenes shown? Check.

Another great resource for independent readers is Dinosaur Empire!  

This crash course in paleontology is so new, (out just August 1, 2017) I couldn’t find the Lexile score, but I imagine it is fairly high for a graphic novel because the vocabulary is so wonderfully intense (just wait though). The author, who studied evolutionary biology before becoming a graphic novel artist, definitely knows her stuff. You could basically substitute this book for a high-school-level evolutionary biology class. It has the content of a textbook, without being a textbook. And the research included is so new, so inclusive to the ever-changing understanding, that it includes some really ground-shaking ideas.

I love that this book doesn’t shy away from complicated understandings like “convergent evolution,” “common ancestor,” not to exclude all of the official scientific names on the dinosaur (and mammalian, and reptilian, and caecilian) family tree.

Oh and they explain phylogenetic trees, too.

But this content is so visually packed, so easily understandable, (time is measured on a calendar in which the entire existence of humans is one-fourth of one day).  The best part of this book is the real science. The understanding that our understanding of this changes based on new discoveries all the time. See above, with Waterhouse Hawkins!

(PS a great specimen of Dracorex hogwartsia lives here in Indianapolis at the Children’s Museum! )

Enter: T. Rex. Which our lovely little character has been waiting to meet for the entire book. And yep, he has feathers.

This inspired me to do a little more research because we all think of the T. Rex from Jurassic Park when we think of that species, right?

Check out some of the latest models of the latest discoveries in paleontology here. We’ve come a long way from Waterhouse Hawkins!

Unfortunately for the author of this book, it seems that new evidence suggests that while an ancestor of the T. Rex had feathers, new discoveries of scaly T. Rex skin mean that this illustration is no longer up-to-date with the newest research. National Geographic, June 6 2017. The book was past the final stages of publication when this information was found. However, it proves its own point:

The book does have characters, loosely in the world of the dinosaurs because of a time traveling recycling bin, because of “Science Magic,” which fell a little flat for me at times:

I did not think this was funny.

But I actually did love the little speech bubbles of the animals talking to each other:

When the Lexile score of this book comes out, please, teachers, don’t restrict your readers from this book based on that alone! High level understanding, written for younger kids, is always okay when kids are motivated to read the book. (and especially with nonfiction. Those high ability readers should be reading at their real reading level in nonfiction, and at their social/emotional level in fiction!)  If they don’t get it, that’s okay. They will get there one day! The little boy who wanted the “hard” dinosaur book will be eating books like this one up in about five years, maybe sooner!

For igniting curiosity in both kids and adults, for thinking about how our understanding of science changes all the time (and perhaps inspiring more research), these two books can’t be beat.

 

 

 

 

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer by Carole Boston Weatherford

Most children know the names of the most prominent Civil Rights heroes: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson. If I asked my former students who Fannie Lou Hamer was, they probably wouldn’t have known. Fannie Lou Hamer–advocate, voice of the civil rights movement, sharecropper’s daughter, who signed up to register to vote and was persecuted as a result, who was involved with SNCC, who ran for Congress under the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and community advocate in her own right.

This book brings some much-needed attention to an important civil rights figure who is not often talked about in the mainstream curriculum.

The book is told in prose poetry, which helps bring a sense of gravity to the honest historical narrative. The book does not sugarcoat any historical details of the realities of being sharecroppers. This is from the poem “My Mother Taught Me.”

 

to

“Motherhood”

Some teachers may find the discussion of laws that affected reproductive rights and medical injustices challenging. Another section talks about her being beaten and thrown in jail after ordering at a “whites-only” lunch counter. She talks about how these injuries would plague her for the rest of her life. It adds much to why the fight for equal rights was so personal to Hamer. It de-sanitizes a civil rights narrative and adds a sense of gravity to Hamer and the cause.

The book also has some language that may not be warranted in a read aloud, but that bring a sharpness to the realities of the injustices she suffered. While you may not want to say these words out loud in class, they are the reality of the event, and they are included as an important experience for readers. As the foreward of the book says, “The truest thing that we have in this country at this time is little children…if they think you’ve made a mistake, kids speak out.” – Fannie Lou Hamer. If students are ignorant of some of these realities, who will speak out?

The book makes the politics she was involved in easy to understand, and the quotes from her directly draw the narrative closer to the subject.

The book is incredibly well-researched and notes the individual sources that quotes were found, gives additional reading on Hamer’s life, and time line of her life.  Hamer’s direct words from other sources are always italicized (but not in quotation marks) throughout the book, lending an interesting “notice” or point of conversation with students about direct quotes.

The illustrations used in the book are soft blues, greens, and yellows, with an aspect of collage to bring texture to the figures and backgrounds.

The reading level of this book is 820L, or a 4th-5th grade level, if students are reading independently. This book is on the Intermediate level Young Hoosier Book Award List for 2017. This book is a great introduction to some of the “harder” truths about civil rights for that age group and introduces a strong role model of the time to students. The book is beautifully written and illustrated, and highly recommended as an instructional piece, conversation starter, or part of a biography study.

 

Mesmerized by Maria Rockliff

One of the very first things you should know about me is that not only am I a teacher, but that my father is a physics and calculus teacher.

His parents were math and science teachers, too. So suffice it to say, I have a really special place in my heart for science books and books that make science more accessible to kids. After all, what other kids got to go use their DNA kits to look at the DNA of an onion on the occasional weekend at their dad’s school?

Enter a book that is both history and science. Be still, my heart! Mesmerized by Maria Rockliff tells the story of Ben Franklin in France, during the Revolutionary War, and his encounter with the famous Dr. Mesmer, the granddaddy of hypnotism. Except he didn’t use it as a party trick to make people cluck like chickens and such. Oh, no. He was using it to practice actual medicine. The doctors were losing their patients. (see what I did there? Eh?) Enter Ben Franklin, who uses a simple test– blindfolding the patients– to see if the mysterious medicine worked as well if they didn’t know what to expect. Of course, it turns out, any effect was proven to be all in the patients’ imagination, and Dr. Mesmer was discredited. His work is known today as hypnotism. And the blindfold test is still well used by the FDA.

This image makes me dizzy– inside front cover! Mesmerizing, no?

The book is written at a 690 Lexile score, or about a third- to fourth- grade level. I would argue that it would be a good read-aloud to second graders as well, and I think my former second and third graders would have really loved this book.

Why? It’s told in an extremely engaging way. A lot of this has to do with the very vivid and expressive illustrations, treatment of the communication between the characters, and the both visual and in-text compare/contrast. It’s very direct, with simple language that students will understand. Except maybe the French, but that’s what inferences are for– and it spices up the book and helps keep it grounded in time and place. There are so many jumping off points for classroom use– shall I count the ways?

• Scientific method
• Other scientific concepts mentioned (briefly)–electricity, states of matter, hot/cold air masses
• United States historical figures & the Revolutionary War
• French historical figures
• Compare and contrast
• Inferences
• Labeled diagrams (see key & kite experiment)
• Vocabulary of several sorts- for example, Dr. Mesmer’s name is where we get the word “mesmerized” (additional ideas, see below)

There are a lot of great things about this book that could be used as a fundamental introduction to scientific concepts. The scientific method is specifically always highlighted in call-out boxes, below:

As a science educator, I do have one bone to pick with this book. On the writing side, the authors did a pretty good job of simplifying some of her language to improve the book’s readability. Her sentences are direct, uncomplicated, and communicate ideas effectively. But on the science side, I was taught, and have strong opinions, that we should not refer to a hypothesis as a guess, as Rockliff does refer to a hypothesis as a “smart guess” throughout the book.

Check out this article from Scientific American on misused science words. They suggest “hypothesis” as “proposed explanation.” (This is the Oxford Dictionary definition). Is it more syllables? Absolutely. Can second graders– and the older fourth graders this book is meant for– handle that? I think we’re doing them a disservice if we don’t. As the article states, people’s misunderstandings about science often stem from a poor science education, and that starts with adding definitions to other words we may use differently in the rest of our lives–like “theory” and “hypothesis”– that are specific to science.  How we introduce those terms to students in the science classroom, even for the youngest students, is important.

However, instead of discrediting this book for that reason, I think this book would be a fantastic resource to start that conversation– the idea of the scientific method in general gives a great space to introduce the concept that science vocabulary have their own meaning. A skillful teacher could build a really great lesson about how the same words can have different meanings at different times even with the youngest students and most basic vocabulary.

This is a Young Hoosier Book Award nomination, as well as an ALA notable book of 2016 for its age category.  Hoosier teachers can find book guides, interviews with the author, and more at teachingbooks.net, available for free through Indiana INSPIRE. Catch the link to Mesmerized here.

So if you’re looking for an award-winning, engaging book filled with solid history and science, look no further. I think kids will be entranced… or dare I say… mesmerized?