Educational Books

Simon's saga is an okay tool to study for the SAT. I know, I used it myself. Some words are helpful but others are painfully simplistic.

SPOILER ALERT:
The story gets really weird later on in the book. Nothing I've found mentions the weird 'twist' the story has.

Basically, the world is infested by aliens and Simon has to murder 'the controller.' It's really, really odd. For a book about the SAT, it doesn't really make sense to have such a weird plot. It's not a novel, it's a freaking study guide! Besides, it advertises itself as a story about college life and mentions nothing about cracking open heads on sidewalks.
END SPOILERS.

Frankly, the tone of the author got annoying to me, fast. Simon's banter and Axel's stereotypical nerdiness just turned me off.

I guess the book is okay if you're fine with dealing with a terrible story. It's not bad at first, but later it gets really odd.

fun to read easy to read
easy to remember
very good

This book offers an engaging way for students as well as proficient, but non-native speakers of English to grasp the subtle meaning of new words by putting them into context. It is a big plus for the non-native speaker or 8-12 year old if they can read along with an adult or native-speaker so they do not always have to refer to the dictionary. A very good teaching resource for parents and teachers alike.

My son is a high school senior and needed to raise his SAT verbal score by 20 points to get into the college of his choice. After buying countless expensive SAT study guides I came across Simon's Saga and thought it was a unique, interesting way of writing a study guide. I purchased it, and it was the first SAT book that my son actually read and used. After using this book my son raised his verbal SAT's by 60 points and has been accepted to his first choice college. Thank you, Phillip Geer, for finally writing a worthwhile, affordable study guide!

Obviously written by a talented educator who knows how to maximize students' potential, this book truly deserves five stars - it's original, educational, and very effective as an SAT vocabulary-building tool. The approach is unusual, to say the least. On one level it's a fun story, but on another level it's a hilarious spoof on some interesting topics such as boy-girl relationships, the arts, creative writing, and education. Simon, the narrator, draws students in with his easy and open tone and students enjoy the witty repartee between the characters. Before they know it, they're thinking about political and other issues from new perspectives. A book that does this and boosts word power? Yes, indeed.

Simon's Saga engenders lively class discussions on important topics that today's intelligent students are thinking about -America's role in the world, the effects of globalization, the role of the media, stereotyping of people, changing values, and cultural identity. This is the type of thinking students need to do to get a good score on the critical reading section of the new SAT.

The book is packed with first-rate exercises that educate as they reinforce the SAT words. Cleverly, the author has made the exercises part of the story. My students look forward to answering the questions for Simply Simon and Axel Speaks that come at the end of each funny episode. I strongly recommend this book for all high school students preparing for the SAT and for classroom use by high school English teachers. Thank you, Philip Geer, for this creative learning tool!

My daughter loves this book! Don't have time to write more, but it's great.

Once upon a time many years ago I watched my daughter Emma play with her cousin Brian, whom Emma lovingly referred to as Meatball, and I wondered how long it would take before he began to cry. At eight years old Meatball looked like a smaller version of Rhett Butler, he talked with a squeaky voice that was struggling to mature, and his blondish hair oddly matched the color of his skin. Every game between the two kids eventually turned sour--a bump of the head, a twisted arm or even harsh words would send the boy reeling into the kitchen looking for comfort. While I admired his theatrics, I did not acknowledge them. Emma, on the other hand, like to pretend he was her plaything, a doll she collected. Take, for example, the afternoon she dressed him up like a pirate and sent him out into the yard with a steak knife searching for the neighborhood tabby cat. Florence, the woman that lived across the street and spent most of her days with her nose between the blinds of her front window, knocked on my door and demanded that I do something. I invited her in for coffee but she ranted and raved, cluck-clucking about manners and responsibilities and child-rearing, none of which I particularly cared to hear about. Meatball ran inside and tugged at Florence's blue polyester pants. "Don't worry," he said. "I buried the knife in the backyard." Florence grabbed his wrist and told him that he needed to dig it back up. He sighed heavily, stared at the ground and then began to cry. I pulled the cigarettes from the pocket of my robe, lit it, and waved him inside.

Charlotte, Meatball's mother, picked him up every day at 5 o'clock. She sat on the couch with Meatball on her lap and listened as he recounted his day. She disregarded any of Emma's attempts to defend herself when Meatball claimed she had harmed him. But who would believe an eight-year-old boy that said his cousin had instructed him to hunt for prey and bring back souvenirs?

A real hit with our six year old. The illustrations are wonderful and the educational aspect is not totally obvious. A very entertaining book that's he took to share with his class at school.

Cute way of having students know how they use math in their everyday lives. Great explanation of the mathmatical idea behind the book.

I read this book to my sister's kids (ages 4-8) and they all really enjoyed it. They had a lot of fun with the story (and didn't even know they were learning). This book is great for kids.

wonderful resource and word lists are great; good to adapt to all ages;great activities and games;

This book provides a resource for teachers of phonics or struggling readers. The presentation is user friendly so busy teachers will want to use it. This has excellent information on phonemic instruction. It has great resources like lists of prefixes, words, roots etc. This book is a tremendous time saver.

This book is an excellent resource for teachers who teach reading to all readers, but especially those who are struggling to understand "the code."
Word lists are very helpful, as are the activities and teaching strategies presented. Only wish there was an index!

As a first year fourth grade teacher I have found this to be an EXCELLENT teaching resource. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to use phonics to improve reading and spelling - it has helped me both on a personal and a professional level. The information is in-depth and yet presented in a very user friendly format which has been logical and easy for me to build upon and REALLY USE!

Teaching Phonics And Word Study In The Intermediate Grades by WILLY BLEVINS

Author Willy Blevins has created a very sophisticated introduction to Phonics, but this books is also a WORD STUDY TEXT, emphasizing:

p. 51 Most Frequently Used Words in English Language.
p. The Dolch Word list (250 words)
as well as words classified according to suffix, prefix and word types, and Greek and Latin word Roots.

The Phonics instruction is in the first 50 pages and it is very complete. The entire book is designed with large pages and there are a number of exercises in the book that can be cut out or photocopied.

The book is directed at the elementary school student between the Third Grade and Eighth Grade. I got my copy to use in tutoring a single adult male from Mongolia.

I looked at nearly 20 books on this subject in the store, and bought several. This is the best of all the books I found. It is a complete course within itself.

I love these series of touch and feel books for babies/toddlers. I have purchased many of them for lots of kids under the age of 18 months and they all love them. Great travel book too!

My son got this when he was about 12 months old and it was instantly his favorite. There's a great extra 'game' you can play with these books. On each page is a little white mouse. I ask "Where's the mouse?" and he points to it. We have also bought a couple of others in this series and they are equally as fun.

wonderful books!!!!!!!!!!!! get them all!!! our daughter has loved them since she turned one, and still loves them after turning 2! very fun to read, colours are vibrant, textures are appropriate, such nice books!! first discovered this series on www.mybabycantalk.com 's dvd's "First signs" and "Sharing signs" (by the way the BEST dvd's for babies and toddlers to learn sign language (asl) and english words. they are a must alongwith the books listed here.

This is a great board book and touchy feely book for age 8 to 9 months and up. I would even buy it for as young as 3 months old. It's sturdy, durable, colorful, beautifully illustrated. This book has won the Parent's Guide Award. They learn about the different textures and love looking at the pictures. A plus to this book is that there is a mouse hidden in the pages that they can look for. It gives them great satisfaction when they see it. It's a great reading readiness book and talk about book. We love it.

My daughter has loved this book (and several others in the series) since she was about 6 months old. She's getting less interested now at 13-months, but it's still a favorite.

The story is timeless, and this particular book has great illustrations to go with the old nursery rhyme. My granddaughter is three and a half, and insists on hearing the story and looking at the book every night now. I'm pretty sure she almost has it memorized! I'm very pleased with this purchase.

I bought six of my favorite childhood books for my great-grandson..."Little Black Sambo", "The Three Billy Goats Gruff", "Henny Penny", "Chicken Little", "The Three Little Kittens", and "Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit". My great-grandie is 2-1/2 and I can't wait to read these wonderful stories to him.

Three Little Kittens was my favorite book as a child and now that i have a son of my own I am able to pass on a favorite to him. He loves the vivid images that this book offers, there are so many different pictures in their that at 16 months old he likes to point and hear me say the name of an object.

My three year old daughter loves this book. It has cute illustrations and an easy to follow story line, just like I remember. This is great book for both boys and girls.

The book was in perfect shape and arrived very quickly. A pleasure to do business with.

This was, together with the book "Two years of holidays" by Jules
Verne my favourite childhood book (translated into slovak)
back in early seventies in Czechoslovakia.
I guess it will appeal to every boy who likes to read adventure books,
especially about the american indians

When I was 10 years old this was my very favorite book. I am so happy that it is still available because I want to buy one for my grandchildren.

I first read this book as a teenager, and have re-read it many times since then, discovering new levels of enjoyment as forty years have passed by. The story is set in the early or mid-1800's. Yan is the sickly city boy who goes to visit his cousin Sam in the country to recover his health. They gradually get better acquainted, making allowances for each other's differing experiences, perspectives and education. An enjoyable story and plot line unfolds, including conflict resolution, evaluating personalities, recognizing age and generation differences, and building trust. The book is absolutely filled to overflowing with fascinating woodlore information, skills and techniques, and countless drawings and sketches to explain or illustrate what the boys are discovering, doing, making or building. I have nothing but praise for this American Classic!

My mother brought well-loved books from her childhood--Ernest Thompson Seton, Dan Beard, L Frank Baum, from her family's home. So I grew up on among other things, this book.

I was curious how it had survived the years since I'd last read it at the age of 11.

Very well, thank you. The people are alive--much more than I'd remembered for the most part--and I'm enjoying the observation and learning from experience that the boys do.

This book has an autobiographical feel, set in Ontario in the last quarter of the 19th century. It deals with the interaction between an adolescent loner "from town" and the people and environment of the back country through woodcraft, and with his growth in that context. Though it contains much of Seton's wonderful woodcraft and illustrations, it is most valuable for the story and the lessons about human nature and rural poverty (my own youth).

My mother first read it to me from a tattered hand-me-down copy in the early 1950's when I was too young to read it for myself. It shaped my attitudes toward the natural world and helped me understand my own adolescence. To me, it is probably the single most important book I ever read.

This book gives a basic description of a right brained visual learning style and some very easy to implement strategies for helping right brained learners.

Then I read this book and applied a few of the very simple exercises into his everyday routine. Last year he received his MFA in photography and experimental animated film from the California Institute of the Arts. He now has a job at USC and is excited that one of the benefits it offers is free classes. He wants to pursue a degree in Civil Engineering! Most importantly he is happy and proud of himself, with good reason.

This book saved his life!

This book is a fantastic resource for activities on right-brained learning. Vitale's format is very easy to follow. The lessons are practical and easy to use. I have used this book in my classroom and have found that the lessons engage students and help them to understand difficult concepts.

I read this book twelve years ago. As a homeschool mom it helped me understand the ways I needed to work with my child. Now, as he approaches graduation...he is a musician and speaks two languages fluently. I will never forget the day this book fell into my hands!

about brain mysteries and learning. Her book helps to make a dent in that pathway of mystery. She gives practical advice as well as personal stories to support her point of view. This is a must have for any teacher.

This is an absolutely outstanding resource for helping students improve their listening skills. I wish there were a CD with it instead of the cassette tapes. Tapes can be a hassle to rewind and they aren't as durable as CD's. Overall though, it's a great resource and my students love it!

I've used this GREAT book before my last trip to the USA. It's amazing the difference it made to my english. I had several business meetings with Americans and I understood everything, I mean everything they said. That didn't happen to me before using "Waddaya say?". I also learned to use reduced forms to improve my speed. But the most important thing is the almost magical change in my understanding. A suggestion is to follow carefully the instructions, then listen each conversation an repeat it many times. The book is also great source of expressions and uses, not just reduced forms. A must have ! Thank you Nina !!!!!

My students told me that they can finally understand spoken English. This is the best listening book for that. One student said, "It's like magic. I couldn't understand people speaking English last year, and now I can."

It is a good book for those who never learned how to say "what do you want to do?" in a natural way. This book shows you 20 and only 20 most common short forms. The content is well organized. But it is pricey for a book that has only 68 papges. For the most part, you may do a search and find them somewhere in the internet. But then again it is a good deal for those who do not care about the price.

I've used the First Edition of Whaddaya Say for almost twenty years. Nothing I've used to teach students to understand spoken English has ever been better. I was very pleasantly surprised to use the Second Edition, which was published in 2001, and find that all of the lessons that made listening comprehension easier for my students were included along with an additional ten lessons. The fun conversations are even better, and the tapes are really great. I didn't know tests could be useful as well as funny, but there's a wonderful test at the end of the book that was a lot of fun. I want my students to know how English is really pronounced (*wanna for "want to", *hafta for "have to", *gonna for "going to + verb", etc.). When they don't know the real pronunciations, they have a really hard time understanding spoken English.

I'm amazed by one thing in particular -- although the Second Edition of Whaddaya Say has 30% more pages and there are three cassettes now instead of two, the price hasn't gone up. I don't know why the price hasn't increased, but it seems like a great bargain to get a beautifully updated bestselling listening book for the same price as the prior version!

I don't see how anyone can really learn listening comprehension without this book.

I had finches scince i was six years old and i always loved them. I have taken care of them in my own way but i decided i wanted to know more details about them, so i checked out this book and it taught me alot of stuff about them. It teaches you how to take care of them and how to help them have a happy nest, also to keep them healthy and happy.

This book is a complete owner's manual for people who own zebra finches . It is an excellent book and arrived on the date projected .

Excellent book arrived within a week of purchasing it and arrived in excellent condition.

This is an excellent book but it is too short. I would have liked to have seen more information.

His chapter on habitat and distribution is great, it follows with behavior and flocks and colonies. He has interesting and useful pictures of the birds in the wild, but they are all on one page. You kind of say, ''oh,'' when it should have been ''wow.''

It had tremendous potential but it seems like someone took a scissor and hacked off too much original content.

The illustrations are great, and they are all of Zebra finches. He includes drawings and pictures of aviaries, and other housing options, suggestions galore.

Then, in the section on ''health care,'' someone cut and pasted a picture of a canary having its nails clipped.

It places a caption, ¨trim your bird's nails carefully to avoid injury.¨ It just seems to scream ''aw to hell with it, we gotta press.'' Bad, shabby attitude.

... Hopefully trim your Zebra's nails more carefully, than the guys who edited the book would have!

The canary shown is also twice the size of a Zebra finch. The author suggests holding the little claw up to a light, to not cut into a blood vessel; far from what the picture demonstrates.

Despite the shortcomings, which appear to be out of the author, Hans Jurgen Martin's control, ¨Zebra Finches¨ is an informative, fun read. His love for these little birds is so clear, and just as contagious.

This is a must have book for a new owner. I found it to be very helpful and an easy read. After reading a few other books I still had many unanswered questions. This book answered almost all of them! In the future I will buy all books about Zebra Finches written buy Hans-Jurgen Martin.

Well done!! My kids could not put this down. Now they have a million questions about the Civil War and about Lincoln. It is a nice change from "Mom, where can I get a radioactive spider bite" kind of questions.
This is a good concept. I hope the publishers expand on it. I would like to suggest that they start from the beginning of North American European settlements in the 16th century and continue chronologically down to present day.

I also read the review from the School Library Journal. That guy should be fired!! He is either a complete idiot or has never seen a real child. I do not understand what his beef with this book is. It is educational and fun for kids. This book is not for him. It is for kids. We need to encourage more quality books like this.

Side note: My kids asked a lot of questions about topics that were related to the book. A little research may be required to answer those questions.

This graphic novel caught my eye when doing a search for
teaching supplements for my grade schoolers. It's such an
amazing yet simple concept-- using graphic novels to teach!
The graphic novel provides a great insight into President Lincoln's accomplishments during his presidency and the Civil War. Not only does the book bring out the varied reasons for the Civil War such as State rights and slavery-- it also presents Lincoln in a unique perspective as a father and human being.

I love using it as a reading supplement for my students -- the illustrations are amazingly detailed and captivating and helps get children interested in reading and learning more!

This graphic novel caught my eye when doing a search for
teaching supplements for my grade schoolers. It's such an
amazing yet simple concept-- using graphic novels to teach!

The graphic novel provides a great insight into President Lincoln's accomplishments during his presidency and the Civil War. Not only does the book bring out the varied reasons for the Civil War such as State rights and slavery-- it also presents Lincoln in a unique perspective as a father and human being.

I love using it as a reading supplement for my students -- the illustrations are amazingly detailed and captivating and helps get children interested in reading and learning more!

Also available in a hardcover edition (097425021X, [...]), Abraham Lincoln: The Civil War President is about President Abraham Lincoln, his dog Fido, and the American Civil War as told in a "graphic novel" format by author Ginger Turner and animation illustrator Saral Tiwari. From Lincoln's path to the presidency, to the Battle of Gettysburg, to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the tragic assassination of President Lincoln, the attention to historical detail is as impressive as the collaborative storytelling abilities of Turner and Tiwari who combine text and illustration to present actual historic events that will engage readers ages 8 through adult from beginning to end because the graphic novel format is especially suited to bringing history alive in the minds and imaginations of the readers. It should be noted for school and community librarians, that Abraham Lincoln: The Civil War President is carefully mapped to the U.S. Department of Education's National Standards for teaching American History.

Rarely does a book combine great art, education, and history like this one. Immediately I see my students pick up on the brillant color illustrations, which really depict the complex emotions of the characters without seeming overly comic-like. Yet I am also impressed by how well-researched the story is. In the future, I will give this to my 4th graders instead of the textbook section on Lincoln.