Clubs and Schools Books

The shack and back is the story of a gang of kids known as the "Spurwink gang" 4 girls and 3 boys make up this "gang". The story all starts out when one of the boys calls all the girls "sissies" and makes some sexist remarks. The gang divides for the day, boys wanting to go clam digging and teh girls wanting to make mini pizzas, the boys are challenged to a race by a group of older meaner bullies, but know that none of them can compete with the older kids, except, for one of the girls... they reconcile thier diffrences and the girls rejoin the spurwink gang and win the race, and enjoy eating clams all day long.

This book was pretty average, an ok read, perhaps someone more into the series would appreciate it more, but without reading any of the series, you dont get the carachter development and you are just thrown into a scene and dont really learn much anything about the carachters. None the less the book makes for some good easy reading material, an the illustrations are pretty good.

This book's title intrigued me greatly. I am interested in jazz, and the nature of improvisation in both music and comedy, so I felt that this book could have some valuable insights into the nature of creativity. After all, what could be more creative than the literal performing without a safety net that is the essential nature of jazz? The author's name was slightly familiar to me, as he is a musicologist in Brazil, and I had seen his work in the online BMG All Music Guide as an expert in Brazilian and South American music.

The book starts with a long and extremely complex overview of some psychological and sociological theories primarily attributed to a Brazilian theorist, Dr. Cornelius Castoradis. As nearly as I can determine, Castoradis claims that societies have an existence that is independent of their members. Essentially, society and its norms exist in a realm that does not depend on the physical or biological attributes of its members. Neder states:

"Not being a product of nature, reason, history, God, etc., society is instituted; and it is instituted by itself, it is self-instituted- self-created, in Castoriadis's terms. The anonymous collective thus creates the new, the radical novelty, that doesn't let itself to be predicted or explained from inexorable laws- each society, in its singularity, can't be explained by natural phenomena, functional needs, historic reasons, or symbolic organizations."

This goes on and on for a large number of pages in this vein. I do not consider myself fully qualified to critique the philosophical implications of Castoriadis's thesis, especially as it is presented second-hand here.

The major portion of the book deals with the informal initiation of young musicians into the world of jazz, and while more pertinent to the alleged subject matter of the book, it is still turgid and unreadable. Neder posits four stages of education within the jazz community: initiation, the initial exposure of the young player (or the not-yet-player) to the world of jazz; imitation, the mastery of necessary techniques and knowledge necessary for creating new music and new forms through the improvisational act; assimilation, the finding of the individual voice once the requisite abilities have been attained; and the final phase of innovation- the flowering of the player as a fully fledged musician, capable of creation on the fly, and exhibiting a unique personal style.

One point Neder is vehement about, and illustrates with a large number of quotes from famous musicians, is the concept of personal identification with the jazz form and the type of instrument the initiate has chosen. Most of the players quoted in the book indicate that they knew that trumpet, guitar, saxophone, whatever, was the instrument for them; no other would do, and they were voluntarily going to immerse themselves totally in their chosen ax.

In short, to play jazz, you must be prepared to live jazz, hear jazz, think jazz, and be (in Neder's view) completely devoted to your new credo. Somehow this reminds me of a kind of overwhelming religious conversion, in which the initiates are in cells, but instead of self-flagellation and prayer, they play minor key/strange interval scales all day.

The only real connection I can find in this work with education is the implicit need for passion; passion on the part of the educator that is then handed down to the student. In this book it is jazz and musicianship that is the sine qua non for society; in our experience as educators the necessary tools are a little more varied.

Very unfortunately, Mr. Neder's book is an unreadable and incomprehensible mess. I think the readability problems relate to an unfortunate attempt at translation from Portuguese, possibly by computer, but this book is regretfully turgid and generally unhelpful in presenting Neder's thesis. An example:

The traditional school teaching restricts the understanding of education to the cognitive dimension, failing to notice a universe occulted in the affective exchanges between the child and the significant adult which, not withstanding, has the strongest relevance in the educational context.

All in all, I cannot recommend this book as a statement on creativity for consumption by anyone but the philological masochist. There are occasional nuggets to be found here, but digging for them is, to put it mildly, painful in the extreme.

In Danny's and T.R.'s townhomes The Rosemary Acers there are a lot of rules icluding the no pets rule and when thier friend Paul ttries to hide a cat who walked 15 miles from his previous owner to get to him and then the troulbes begin while T.R. and Danny wacthes the babes house and visits there father while still trying to keep the secret. One specific part I didn't like was how much they talked about women naked and through underwear drawers.Did I really need to know that?When I started reading this book I didn't think it would be this kind of stuff in it.I also didn't like how much they drooled over Mickey all the time. I would reccomend this book to people who want to know what a garter belt is because you will find out.Also if you are a boy there is a lot of stuuf in here about women in here. there all things in here from animals to suprising enndings.I didn't really like this book to well but other peolple might find it funny.

i really wasn't satisfied about the book how come in Jessi's Wish Danielle was good and now Danielle is bad?