Side by Side

When we decided to move to the States, but continue to teach English via Skype to Japanese students, I was in need of a good textbook that had various levels, that didn’t require a whiteboard to explain grammar, that could be easily purchased in Japan or the US, and that would work well with private students.

Somehow, I came across Side by Side, the third edition.  And I love it.  Since choosing it, many other teachers have told me how much they like it as well!  Why didn’t I know about this series earlier????!!!?  Oh well, it is serving me very well, and I’m glad to have it!

A Mother For Choco by Keiko Kasza

Imagine my surprise when I read this book that is quite oriented towards adoptive and blended families and realized the author was Japanese – where neither adoptive nor blended families are the norm!  To be fair, she has lived in the US for years, but…I still take my hat off to her for writing such a sensitive and helpful book.

This is the story of a little yellow bird named Choco. He is in desperate want for a mother. He looks and looks for a mother who has some of the same physical characteristics as himself. But he is sorely disappointed when they all prove not to be his mother. The mother who finds him is a mother in the true sense of the word.

I was very touched by A Mother for Choco.  Obviously, my little Japanese Jun Bug and I look nothing at all alike, physically. So, I was so happy that I could reinforce our mother/child link through this book. Jun, on the other hand saw nothing at all unusual about the “real” mother becoming Choco’s mother, and doesn’t seem to yet see our physical differences. It made me laugh!

Open the Barn Door by Christopher Santoro

I am a sucker for books whose illustrations I love.  This is a chunky flap book.  Not a lot of dialogue.  Just a bunch of barnyard animals telling you what they “say.”  And the most delightful pictures!  Ahhh, this is the kind of art that I love!  (And a “flap book”, for anyone who doesn’t know, has little flaps kids get to open up to reveal a SECRET something.  All the rage with toddlers!)  I love this book!

Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boynton

Well, you know, I think it would be hard to get too much of Sandra Boynton.  That being said I don’t like ALL of her books, just most of them!

I’d like to tell you I have a deep reason for liking this one.  But, I don’t!  It is just plain CUTE!  I have found in the past 3 1/4 years that I love books that rhyme.  And this one rhymes wonderfully.  And it is silly.  And, if it NEEDS a redeeming factor, it does teach that pigs DON’T say ” La La La,” and that dogs DO say “bow wow wow.” 

This is just a delightful book that ends with the enticing question “It’s quiet now, what do YOU say?”

Pete’s Puddles by Pierre Prat and Hannah Roche

A friend recently posted about toddler books that depict children from different parts of the world.  I am caucasian and my husband and daughter are asian.  Various other family members are various other …ian’s, so books that my daughter can identify with are really important to me. 

I have no idea in the whole world where I got this book.  Surely I didn’t pay real money for it.  However, as Jun has practically memorized it AND there are children from four various racial backgrounds in the series (only two in this particular book), I think I should introduce it so other parents can give it a shot if they like.

Seriously, I’m not sure why Jun likes it so much.  No rhyme.  No real plot.  No real ending.  No real beginning.  But, apparently it was written by folks who are a lot better at reading a child’s heart than I am.  I guess I won’t be recycling this book for some time either!

Duck & Goose How Are You Feeling? by Tad Hills

I loved the Duck & Goose book about opposites so could hardly wait until this one came out.  I finally got my copy – opened it up – and thought…hmmmm  not what I expected.

The same great duck and goose images were there, but the one word descriptions of feelings didn’t seem to be adequate.  My daughter, however, loved the book.  Then I remembered why these books are so great.  Because someone HAS to read them to the kiddies.  And, hopefully that someone has a clue what the words mean – take “frustrated” for instance – and can talk about the picture, give examples, AND coach the kiddo in what to do when he/she is FRUSTRATED.

This book has given Jun words to many important feelings, and, as I said, I’ve given her some tools to deal with some of them.

For example – frustrated.  Our family takes a big breath and says, “Help me, Jesus!”  big breath, “Help me, Jesus!”  It is amazing how many more things Jun has persevered through using this breathing and praying, now that we have learned the word “frustrated.”

We have a song about being mad.  The book says “angry”, but both work for us.  We say, “count to 5!  1-2-3-4-5!”

The picture of one duck who took ALL the flowers and the others who were so sad and the selfish duck was all alone, and…well, it just naturally leads into a discussion about sharing.

So, this book gets a great grade from me – and Jun (3 1/4 yo)!

Fat Cat on a Mat by Phil R. Cox

If you guessed straight off that THIS book was a phonics book – well, you’d be right.  I have raided my bookshelves at work for books for Jun to read, and there are, therefore, too many phonics books to count.  As Jun is not yet reading these books herself, I “get” to read them again and again.  Phonics books, for anyone who doesn’t know, are often very uninteresting.  The plots and conversations are quite limited to words that, for example in this book, have the short sound for the letter “a” in them.

So, in general, this book is your standard phonics book.  BUT it has a twist – or I wouldn’t bother to finally post about it here!  There is a nice moral in this simple story about a cat who, while escaping from a bee, knocks a birds nest off the branch of a tree.  She takes personal responsibility for her accidental action, and keeps the resident eggs warm, refusing to play with all the little animals that invite her, until they hatch!

I was so glad to find a phonics book that I could use to discuss “trying to make things right” after accidents with Jun.  I guess I’ll keep this phonics book around even after she’s done reading it herself!

The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb

From the look of this blog, you’d think I hadn’t read a book in months.  Other than Toddler books, you would be mostly right!  However, when I was home in the US this summer, my Mom recommended this book, “The Last Time I Was Me.”  The title looked rather depressing.  Kind of like the story of someone having a nervous breakdown…and, what do you know?  It WAS!

However, it was much much more.  First, the majority of the story takes place in northern Oregon.  I am pretty critical of authors who write about Oregon because I “check to make sure they got it right.”  And Cathy Lamb does get it right.  So, the setting itself was nostalgic in many ways.

And the story was riveting.  I forsook parenting and sleep to FINISH the book before coming back to Japan (it was a library book, and Jun had Grammy and Grandpa to play with her!) 

I am attracted to novels that deal with emotional or psychological struggles in a healthy and mature way.  I learn so much more from the novel format than I ever do or will from a textbook.  That’s how my brain and heart work.

This is a great story of healing, new life, hope, true friendship and love.  Give it a read!

30-31 out of 100 How About You???

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 books from this list. Copy the list into your own note. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read. Delete ‘x’ from any you have not read. Post the number you have read in the note title.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen X
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien   Tried and couldn’t finish.
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X .
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee X
6. The Bible X
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott X
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien Tried and couldn’t finish.
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell X
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald Tried and couldn’t finish.
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll  Tried and couldn’t finish.
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame X
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy X
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis X 
34.  Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis X
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden X
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne X
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell X
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery X
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding X
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel X
52. Dune – Frank Herbert 
53.  Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen X
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 
58.  Brave New World – Aldous Huxley X
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck X
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt 
64.  The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold 
65.  Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 
66.  On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67.  Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68.  Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 
69.  Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville 
71.  Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens X 
72.  Dracula – Bram Stoker 
73.  The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett Tried and couldn’t finish.
74.  Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 
75.  Ulysses – James Joyce 
76.  The Inferno – Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78.  Germinal – Emile Zola
79.  Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80.  Possession – AS Byatt 
81.  A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens X 
82.  Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell 
83.  The Color Purple – Alice Walker  Tried and couldn’t finish.
84.  The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85.  Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 
86.  A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87.  Charlotte’s Web – EB White X
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch AlbomX
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-ExuperyX
93.  The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams X
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute X
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas X
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare X
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X
100.  Les Miserables – Victor Hugo X

February 2009 Book Give Away!

Hi, everyone!  I’ve got another list of books to give away.  If you check out the December list, there are still some left that I will take to donate to the library next week, so you still have some time to grab them!

Just three requests:

1. You like books!  HAHAHA!
2. You live in Japan
3. You don’t mind paying the shipping cost.  Usually 800-900 yen for a box of 5-6 books.  Probably less for fewer!

 

1. The Black Mountain by Rex Stout (PB) Nero Wolf series.  Old copy.
2. The Cat Who Saw Stars by Lilian Jackson Braun (PB)  ISBN 0-515-12739-6
3. Dead Heatby Dick Francis (PB) (I paid $14 USD at the airport for this!!!!!!!!  CRAZY!)
4. Crooked House by Agatha Christie (old PB)
5. Lake Newsby Barbara Delinsky (PB) ISBN 0-671-03619-X
6. Miss Bianca and the Bridesmaidby Margery Sharp (HB)  Old library copy
7. The Case for Christby Lee Strobel (PB) ISBN 0-310-20930-7
8. A Season for Simplicityby Donny Finley (Gift book in ENglish) ISBN 0-7369-0108-6
9. Forgive and Forgetby Lewis B. Smedes (PB)
10. The Comfort of Rest and Reassuranceby Roy Lessin (HB) ISBN 1-59310-653-X

Leave a comment if you would like any of these books.   You can send me your snail mail address at kimsbookshelf@yahoo.com, for confidentiality!  Let your Expat/English reading friends know too, yeah?