A wide-ranging and winningly compassionate revamping of how to think about children’s reading.
Rubman, a cognitive developmental psychologist, conducts a comprehensive examination of childhood literacy in this nonfiction work.
The author begins with a series of sobering statistics: Over 42 million Americans are defined as functionally illiterate (meaning they can’t follow written directions), 70% of high school graduates end up requiring some kind of remedial reading help, and 1 in 5 college students enrolls in a remedial reading class in their freshman year. As she points out, statistics like these are nothing new; Americans have heard for years that the systems tasked with building children’s literacy skills are failing. Rubman asserts that the goal of this book is to offer solutions to change this. “Together,” she writes, “we can analyze why, as a society, we seem to be failing to educate our nation’s children and why so many parents obsess so unsuccessfully over this process.” A central concept that runs throughout the book is introduced early: Children acquire their knowledge in their own way. “Remember, their brains are different from our brains,” Rubman writes. “They don’t think, speak, or learn like we do.” As the author explains, this is crucial to remember because, despite many parents’ hopes that their children will take to reading very early (before kindergarten), a child’s brain isn’t finished undergoing the process of myelination, in which neural pathways develop their message-bearing abilities. Allowing that process of natural development to work at its own pace is at the core of Rubman's revisionist approach to helping kids get the most out of their reading.
The author’s experience, insight, and, above all, compassion shine through on every page of her book, even when she’s carefully demolishing what she views as the incorrect thinking of earlier theorists on the subject of children’s literacy; for example, she extensively debunks the so-called “Mozart Effect” that was in vogue some years ago. She includes well-made graphics to illustrate concepts such as neural development, and she adds bullet-pointed sections and actual test passages designed to flesh out the intricacies of reading comprehension. Along the way, she clarifies a wide array of reading-related matters in ways that parents and educators will find very helpful: “It is not the size of the word that determines its level of difficulty, per se,” she writes of one such issue, “rather its phonetic friendliness and frequency of use…determine…the ‘ease’ with which it’s read.” Her myth-busting energy never flags, which is extremely helpful, as many adults remain beholden to popular fallacies. Regarding the idea that children learn better when they read to adults than they do when adults read to them, Rubman convincingly contends that the reverse is true. “When you read to children, you allow them the luxury of focusing their attentional energy on the meaning of the story,” she writes. “This is an ideal time to work on comprehension skills.” The author’s calm wisdom is very encouraging, and her main message—that there are no shortcuts and that development takes time—will be much appreciated by parents feeling peer pressure to produce little Einsteins.
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2022
ISBN: 9798987086117
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Educational & Parenting Matters
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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