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Nothing’s more fun in an English literature class than to dress up as a book character! And Halloween is the best time for babies, children, pre-teens, young adults and adults to have fun with costumes

Other than movies, books are an excellent source of inspiration for your Halloween costume. Besides, at least you won’t be another Batman, Superman, Cat Woman, waitress, pirate, Zorro or any other popular character (even though they can be pretty cool).

Let’s see, whether you want to dress up in futuristic or old-fashioned costumes, literature has many interesting characters to choose from.

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Tags: costumes, English literature, Halloween

“But my son or daughter doesn’t want to read!”

As an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teacher, I hear this common complaint all the time when I ask if their children read at home.

I also hear interesting stories about how parents try to get their children to read by:

buying books and magically wait for their kids to read them

promising them rewards if they read them

threatening them with “unpleasant consequences” IF they don’t read them

lecturing them about the “benefits” of reading the books

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Tags: reading

If you have a son and are trying to gain a better understanding of what the average young man thinks or worries about, you HAVE to read this book.

If you work with young people, whether as a teacher, a coach, a tutor or simply trying to understand young people, you HAVE to read this book.

If you care about young people with disabilities, whether they are physical, learning, mental or sexual, you HAVE to read this collection of short stories.

If you are a young adult, you shoud read “Down to a Sunless Sea“, if only to see that SOMEONE ELSE out there feels exactly as you feel…even though that person may be a physically handicapped boy or not.

Although the book cover is as depressing as its title, I simply could not put it down after I started reading it. Why? Another author, Rolf Gompertz, sums up the essence of Mr. Freese’s collection of stories:

“Mathias Freese is an inspired, talented writer, a sharp-eyed, honest observer; and a caring, compassionate human being. These qualities inform his dark, offbeat stories about life, making these tales a poignant, precious pleasure to read.”

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Tags: boys, young adult

Are you a housewife with a boring husband? Dream of a better life elsewhere? Think that your life should be so, so much better than you deserve?

If yes, you are not alone - even way back in 1856 in France, another woman felt exactly like how you do.

That woman is Emma Rouault, a beautiful young farmer’s daughter who married a country doctor, Charles Bovary and became known as Madame Bovary. Although everyone (including herself) thinks that their marriage is made in heaven…soon Emma realizes that her husband is nothing but a simple man.

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Tags: English literature

Boy, was I horrified (again!) when Lucas and I went through this set of picture cum colouring books!

Before our move to China and because I can’t read/write Chinese, I’ve never visited the Chinese book section. My first encounter with Chinese picture books was a “stunning” one as a gun and a rifle are used to introduce the concepts of “long” and “short”.

Now that he’s starting preschool soon, I bought a bunch of bilingual preschool books to familiarize him with the Chinese medium of instruction.

Check out this seemingly innocent cover with an excavator:

This 62 page book introduces the Chinese name for invidiual items, with the Chinese character, hanyu pinyin and English word all next to each other. What’s also fun about it is that kids can colour in each item, with suggested colours next to them.

What horrifies me though are these pictures:

BULLET AND MAUSER

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Tags: musings

I hardly read self-help books because I’m a self-motivated person (seriously!). Stephen Covey’s “7 Highly Effective Habits for Highly Effective People” was my last motivational book, simply because it was a “required reading” for a Management course I took.

Unlike other motivational books, “Awake at the Wheel” begins with the fable of Og, the caveman who invented the wheel. Og is portrayed as an average Joe or Jamal or Jee Yee with a job, a wife, a house (or a cave) and a son. One day, he stumbled upon his Big Idea and he:

“…found it hard to sleep at night. Hard to sleep and hard to hunt and hard to do just about anything but think about his Big Idea.

He thought, of course, about telling someone - his best friend, Ugh, perhaps, or Aargh, his beloved wife - but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it, not quite sure they would actually understand.”

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Tags: motivational

I know many Mums who buy the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby VCDs by the dozen - after all, which Mum wouldn’t want a baby to grow up like Einstein?

As a Mum myself, I’ve bought a bunch of VCDs for Lucas to watch when he was a year old plus. I’m glad that I didn’t start him on these when he was a baby because this article from TIME magazine, “Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All” report that having babies watch VCDs will do them more harm than good, especially in the area of language learning.

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, the University of Washington study reported that:

“…with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form.”

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Tags: Baby Einstein, reading

 
BRIGHT BABY BOOKS - TRUCKS, ANIMALS, FIRST WORDS & COLORS
(ISBN: 0-312-49447-5)

I bought this box set of Bright Baby books from Borders for RM63.90, which is value for money because each hardcover book costs about RM15.98 each. There are other books in the series but I chose this set for the varied vocabulary Lucas would encounter through them.

These brighly coloured board books are just the right size for toddlers to handle and turn the pages. Also, the high quality photographs accompanying each word is large, simple and vivid enough to turn on your baby or toddler.

The publishers have also been thoughtful to set each photo against a high contrast, single shaded background - this makes for clear communication to the young toddler who’s still needs a direct relationship between pictures and words e.g. a pair of shoes for “shoes”.

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Tags: babies, basic concepts, picture books, preschooler, toddler