A worthy program for solving children’s complex behavioral problems.
An occupational therapist offers a series of strategies for improving students’ functional behaviors.
“It’s impossible to effectively provide therapy, teach, or parent a student who is kicking you,” writes Pagano in his slim, interactive nonfiction debut. In the pages of his book, he looks at the challenges facing teachers, therapists, and parents who are dealing with children who throw tantrums, hit, bite, or simply refuse to pay attention. The author provides practical methods grouped under the structure of FAB: Functionally Alert Behavior strategies, designed to center children and ground them in their surroundings and in immediate, achievable tasks. “Predictable rules and procedures set a safe, reliable structure that enhances self-control,” Pagano notes. Drawing on his decades of experience working with kids, the author lays out a series of approaches based on things like sensory modulation or “pressure touch” strategies. These strategies emphasize building strong kinesthetic skills to boost visual perception and common abilities. The book includes interactive forms for use by both kids and their therapists as well as ample illustrations, from children’s drawings to uncredited photographs of the author interacting with students. The key innovation here is the implementation of what Pagano refers to as “physical self-regulation strategies,” which provide “active sensory-motor” tactics that can be fitted into the students’ daily routines in order to improve their day-to-day functional behaviors. Throughout the book, the specific procedural advice being offered is clearly stated, deftly detailed, and uniformly optimistic in tone. Parents, teachers, and caregivers will find a great deal of food for thought in these pages when it comes to positive reinforcement, mindfulness, and physical massaging as a way to focus children and help them gain the self-control that will avoid or restrain the acting-out behaviors that can make teaching them so challenging. The volume’s combination of practical and interactive material will make it exceptionally useful to any adults facing the problems that unruly kids can present.
A worthy program for solving children’s complex behavioral problems.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73282-190-3
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Pagano FAB Strategies, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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