Kendall Haven

Eh. It might be quite useful as - as he suggests in the foreword - a classroom tool to spark interest and discussions. It's not terrible as a bathroom book - read one or two bits and move on. But reading through it was impossible (which is why it took me so long to finish). 100 separate little bits about discoveries - from radioactivity to General Relativity to seafloor spreading. The ones I knew something about, I found that his writeup was accurate if shallow (it had to be shallow, these show more are at most two pages of text each). The ones I knew nothing about were interesting while I was reading them, but I couldn't retain any information - I've forgotten all of them already (I had to really scrape to come up with three subjects for the sentence above, and they're all three things I knew something about previously). The bits were sorted by date, though that was surprisingly not obvious while I was reading - there were related bits that happened to come together, and others that didn't at all. It wasn't until after I finished reading and saw the sorted lists at the end - by field of science, and by name of discoverer - that I realized how the main text was sorted. The best possible sort isn't possible in a book - linked chains of related discoveries would have made all of them more interesting and valuable (and memorable, probably). Not bad, but not really worth my time reading. show less

Really interesting, useful ideas for the aspiring storyteller to explain what the craft is about. That said, I found myself losing focus and skimming fairly often due to the dense writing style.

We have been hearing recently about the trend away from narrative fiction as the choice of a new generation. NCLB may have something to do with this if there is such a trend, and personally, I have been recommending the inclusion of more and mor nonfiction or informational books in the fare we promote to children and teens, but Have comes at us with the most articulate defense of story as an essential element in education. A long-time storyteller himself, Kenall has published many many show more collections that stimulate conversation and interest on the part of the listener. He looks both at the tradition and examines the research behind story to make his major point that we cannot ignore this genre and we do so at the peril of effective teaching and powerful teaching strategies. Today through Web 2.0 technologies, every young person has unlimited ways to write, perform, and share story and they are doing it through blogs, through video, and podcasts as never before in history. So, in the face of drill and kill reading programs, Haven reminds us that story can and is as powerful as ever. It’s a good read. A powerful reminder. Thanks kendall. show less

Interesting title using the term "workout" for how to develop Common Core writing skills. This book is a collection of techniques to use while teaching young writers about writing. If you need a formula to teach writing skills and have students effectively work on forming good, cohesive sentence structure, this book has some great ideas on how to do this. There is a formula for what is called "effective" writing that is compacted into five steps. While these are primary focused, they offer show more foundational concepts for writing effectively. However, the post discussions of many of the examples given would could be strengthened. Perhaps this is the part most concerning about this book - the sharing and collaborative nature that writing can bring could be strongly emphasized. If you need help with teaching writing from a structured point of view, this book has good ideas. Otherwise, work more on the engagement of students regarding the content of their writing and follow it with some structure techniques that help them convey their enthusiasm/passion for the topic. show less