Book Review: A Splendid Friend, Indeed

Review by Cameron Crane

A Splendid Friend, Indeed

Written & Illustrated by Susan Bloom

Reading level: Ages 3 and up

Hardcover: 32 pages

Publisher: Boyds Mills Pr (March 1, 2005)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1590782860

ISBN-13: 978-1590782866

Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.8 x 0.4 inches

Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounce

Maybe it is just me, but I love it when our First Friday Book Review falls on the first day of the month, because it means that we get to introduce the monthly theme with a story that somehow embraces the subject. It also gives us an opportunity to offer a tool that can be used to begin a conversation with a child, which is, after all, one of the most exciting things about children’s books. This June is Friendship Month at Little Pickle Press and today we review A Splendid Friend, Indeed, by Suzanne Bloom.

The Story: Meet Bear: “Bear wants to read and write and think”. He is introspective and prefers to be left alone. Meet Goose: “Goose wants to talk and talk and talk.” He is inquisitive, curious, and LOUD. Anyone who has ever been in the room with a talker when they are trying to read knows that it can be, well, more than a little distracting. So it goes that Bear finds himself irritated with Goose when he simply insists on talking about everything that Bear is doing. The question becomes: can Bear and Goose be friends in spite of their differences?

The Artwork: Suzanne Bloom’s A Splendid Friend, Indeed is composed of a combination of short simple sentences, and heart-warming illustrations that couple them perfectly. Bloom’s depiction of Bear and Goose are wonderful and expressive, and each illustration captures the mood of the story in a way that is both heartwarming and familiar.

The Layout: The layout of the story is simple and traditional, with only one or two lines per page, written in large text which makes this story a wonderful selection for reading aloud. Bright, charming illustrations tell much of the story, making each page one to be lingered on and enjoyed. It is especially appealing to younger children.

The Message: Bear and Goose are very different, and sometimes it can make for a rather difficult situation, but throughout the story we begin to discover that although Bear appears irritated, deep down he enjoys the company of the friendly Goose. Together the pair proves that despite differences, there is an opportunity to be “splendid friends, indeed.” This story embraces the idea that friendships don’t have to be perfect, and that sometimes, they require patience. It is perfect for any child that is experiencing sibling rivalry. This message helped A Splendid Friend, Indeed make the UKLA's shortlist of books up for awards this year.

My Only Issue: It would be great if the story were available in e-book format. I believe that the layout of the story would translate beautifully to the digital platform.

Conclusion: This is a great story to read as a family, especially if your little ones tend to experience a bit of sibling rivalry. Buy A Splendid Friend, Indeed from Amazon, your favorite bookstore, or your local library, to share with the Bears and Geese in your life. Use the story as the beginning of a discussion about what it truly means to be a friend.

Common Sense Media's Learning with Technology Ratings

By Cameron Crane

The children’s app market can be a challenge to navigate. Most of us rely heavily on key influencers, such as app reviewers and award programs, to spotlight the best apps available for our children. There are currently few reviewers as influential as Common Sense Media, an organization we find extremely helpful in the hunt to discover fun and meaningful book apps and e-books for children.

Common Sense Media is a non-profit company that studies the effects that various forms of media and technology have on children. Their advanced rating system allows parents and educators to quickly assess a product, based on a variety of factors ranging from age-appropriateness to the value of the content. Their goal is simple: to deliver trustworthy information in a way that makes it easy for parents and educators to determine what works best for their household or classroom.

Just last month, Common Sense Media introduced the beta version of their Learning with Technology ratings. This four-scale assesses apps, video games, and the like based on learning potential and gives them a score of BEST, GOOD, FAIR or NOT FOR LEARNING. Their rating system also provides a quick summary of what can be learned, with subjects ranging from language & reading, to math, science, and social studies. As a company that works hard to make sure that our apps provide meaningful and educational content for children, this is something we are very excited about.

For more information about Common Sense Media’s rating system, click here.

Have you used Common Sense Media as a guide for apps to download for your classroom or household? What do you think about their new educational rating system? Do you know of any similar sites? Please share!

A Teacher's Perspective: Being Global Book App

By Ben Spencer

Good Morning, Little Pickle Press! I am a second grade teacher in Piedmont, California. I recently came across Being Global, an interactive book app by Little Pickle Press. This fantastic app is based on What Does It Mean To Be Global?, the important children’s book by Rana DiOrio, written to address concepts like diversity, respect, and acceptance.

Being Global is a wonderful tool and a great resource for all primary grade teachers. It is an incredible application because not only is it easy to navigate, but more importantly, it has creative and engaging lesson plans that I can use with my students. This application can be used with students during one-on-one or whole class instruction. Its also great for small groups or guided reading lessons.

I plan on using this application more in my classroom, as my district and school have recently emphasized more innovated and creative ways to try and teach reading workshop. Lessons are fun and exciting, and students seem to enjoy the interactive format that this application provides. Objectives are clearly stated and it guides you through the lesson step by step.

Being Global connects directly to many different resources, which can be used in the classroom. With increasing globalization in our world today, this application helps children to see their world from a global perspective. If used correctly in the classroom, this application can help students to become more engaged readers and more tolerate of individual cultures. Both teachers and students can benefit greatly from using this application.

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About Ben Spencer

Ben Spencer graduated from University of Connecticut with his BA in Human Development and Family Studies, and a minor in Sociology. He went on to receive his Multiple Subject Teaching Credential and Masters of Arts in Teaching from St. Mary’s College of California. Ben is currently a 2nd grade teacher in Piedmont, California, and has also taught in a 3rd and 6th grade classroom. 

In Flanders Fields

By Cameron Crane

In the spirit of Memorial Day, we share with you this moving poem written by John McCrae in 1915. Ian Booth, President of Blue4Books, the highly-reputable group of book reps we just engaged to cover Middle America for us, sent us this poem to reflect upon the meaning of Memorial Day.

In Flanders Fields

John McCrae, 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

We thank the brave men and women who serve and protect our country. We are deeply grateful to them and to their families for the sacrifices they make to keep us safe. 

Let's Help Worldreader Send One Million eBooks

millionbooks.worldreader.org

More of Worldreader

 By Khadijah Lacina

Yesterday we visited with Worldreader, which gives children in the developing world access to digital books. Today we continue the interview with a pertinent question. One of the issues every charity endures is receipts of goods that aren't... well, very useable by the charity. This is true with books, too. Here is how Worldreader vets their titles.

Khadijah: Working in Yemen to increase literacy amongst the women, I noticed that many donated materials were, in reality, culturally inappropriate. For example, a book on dating, or one that strove to inculcate Christian beliefs in the reader, would not be appropriate in that strongly Muslim society. How do the people at Worldreader decide what books are loaded onto the e-book readers? How concerned are you about giving due respect to the culture and beliefs of the people who will eventually read the books?

Elizabeth: That is a great question – and relates in part to the previous answer about how the old solution was flawed. Folks in one part of the world cannot choose books for folks in another part. It would be like trying to solve the scarcity of inner city books in New York by shipping in books from Yemen.

My daughter went to Senegal, and while visiting a school there, saw the Michelin Red Guide to Paris (Hotels and Restaurants) 2002 on the book shelf next to a smattering of other used books. If we are going to give Senegalese children hotel and restaurant guides, can we at least make them current! 

Worldreader partners with local publishers to digitize and make available local children’s books. I would estimate that 80% of the books we deliver are locally sourced – written by African authors, about African kids, and published by African publishers.

It is super-important for young readers to recognize images, themes, names, places, etc., when learning to read. The brain simply does not make the same connections when faced with unfamiliar settings and images. A book about children building snowmen whilst at sleep-away camp in Maine might be great for young readers in the US – but quite ineffective for kids in Mozambique.

We do accept any and all books (within reason) that international publishers let us use – but we do very carefully choose which books to actually deliver to the children’s e-readers.

Khadijah: Lastly, what are some ways that we can get involved with the Worldreader program and work to make change along with you?

Elizabeth: There are lots of ways to get involved. On our website, www.worldreader.org you can donate, or you can fund-raise (run a marathon, for example). If you are an author or publisher, you can partner with us and provide our students and teachers access to one or more of your books or short stories. You can volunteer your time or expertise to help us – we have many volunteers on our teams in Barcelona and San Francisco.  Or you can simply spread the word – like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and tell your friends about us!

Khadijah: Thank you for visiting, Elizabeth, and discussing Worldreader with us. Next we'll share information about Worldreader's Million E-books Movement which was just launched. We hope our readers leave comments or questions!

WorldReader Magic

By Khadijah Lacina

Books do have the power to change lives; it’s as simple as that. Time and again this was shown to me during the ten years my family lived in Yemen. One of the biggest trials we faced was the lack of reading material; whenever someone sent us books from the United States, they immediately became much loved and treasured. But for all the joy that my children got from them, the looks on the faces of the little Yemeni children who lived around us when they saw the pictures and heard the stories between the pages was simply magical.

Worldreader is an organization that is striving to bring that magical experience to children in the poorest of countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. I had the opportunity to conduct the following interview with Worldreader’s Director of Digital Publishing, Elizabeth Wood, a warm, enthusiastic woman whose excitement about Worldreader is palpable in her words.

Khadijah: First of all, could you give us some background on Worldreader? How did it begin, and how did you personally become involved in the company?

Elizabeth: The idea for Worldreader came when David Risher (ex-Amazon VP) was traveling the world with his family and he was appalled at the dearth of books in the developing world while at the same time amazed that he and his children could download a book onto their Kindles wherever they were! He thought, "hang on a second… there’s a new way we can tackle this problem."

When I first met David Risher, it was on the playground at the school. He was holding a Kindle – and I said, "Hey, my dad just gave me one of those for Christmas." He replied "I want to put one of these in the hands of every child in the developing world." I was hooked and wanted to be a part of it.

Khadijah: The concept of getting books to children in the Third World is a great one, but the logistics could be daunting. Worldreader came up with a unique way to do this. How exactly does your program get the books to the children?

Elizabeth: The old solution was to ship containers of used and new books to remote areas – but the problems with that are:

• It’s expensive
• The books don’t actually arrive to the very remote places
• When the books do arrive, they are not the right books (have you ever looked into one of those donate-your-old-books boxes – try to imagine a group of eight-year-old African children getting those books!)

The new way is to leverage a major trend – mobile phone ubiquity and network coverage. Combine that with e-reader/e-book technology and we know wherever we can get a cell call, we can also send books anywhere in the world (almost!).

Khadijah: I understand that Worldreader is initiating a program that would utilize mobile phones in some way. Would you explain that to us?

Elizabeth: This is a particular area of interest for me – I’m convinced that the potential here is huge. Worldreader, in partnership with an amazing Australian company called biNU, does indeed have the first ever book app for feature phones – and those are the phones that billions of the world’s poorest people have. We have just started, but we already had over 300,000 people reading last month – mainly in India and across Africa. We offer hundreds of free books and stories – fiction and non-fiction, classics, and current.

Recently we put about 15 health informationals up – on a variety of subjects from HIV/AIDS to Malaria to Female Genital Mutilation – and we’ve already had over 10,000 people read them. The potential is huge – our next step is getting textbooks on the app – both high school and college level.

Khadijah: How do schools become a part of the Worldreader program? Do you keep track of the progress of the children in the schools after they have joined?

Elizabeth: We now have a turn-key solution that any school can use to replicate our programs, called Worldreader Kits. We are approached every day by schools and libraries all over the world wanting to implement these programs. We will help others launch about ten projects this year, including one in Rwanda next month being launched by Ready For Reading. We monitor all our schools so that we can learn from the successes and the failures. This solution isn’t perfect – the hardware is still designed for individual use in the developed world for instance, so breakages are higher than we’d like and prices are still too high – but prices are rapidly declining and devices are becoming more rugged. So far we’ve had very positive feedback from our partner schools – two of three of them have ordered additional devices and hundreds of more books – because they reported that within weeks, the kids had read all the books and wanted more. That’s success to me!
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Join us again tomorrow for more about Worldreader and how you can help supply books to avid young readers around the world.