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One of the funniest things about this fucking book of garbage essays is that literally they debunk or undermine each other by accident.

The juxtaposition of Richard Dawkins, Alan Sokal, and Niall Ferguson—where they talk about the same things from both the same perspective but also in another position—is laughable. The number of times I read something in Ferguson's essay, which follows both Dawkins and Sokal, that debunked the people before him entirely by accident was the only amusement to be had.

Dawkins and Sokal focus on their fear of what they call "gender ideology" (while screaming about how people won't do science right and won't deal with facts they don't like, but they can't see their reflection in the mirror to realise how often they're talking about people like themselves while they think they're talking about Woke Students and Woke Professors).

Sokal has a citation where he randomly tells the audience to go look at the citations on Wikipedia for something, and that is just... the level of quality he can perform, I guess. Hilarious when he keeps rewriting his own history about peer review.

Meanwhile, Ferguson makes the elementary error of every conservative historian: Failing to understand anything about Soviet Communism, failing to understand the nazis, and failing to understand the reality of the world he exists within today. Unsurprising, though.

It's a story that lists all of the behaviour of a rather rich girl living in The Plaza, which includes a whole range of absolutely obnoxious behaviour that would otherwise disrupt many people (especially the workers of the hotel). No clear reason for why she lives at The Plaza, as her mother is not present in the story and is barely mentioned. Her only guardian figure is her nanny (who is only called Nanny).

One of the strangest things is that it highlights parental neglect from wealthy families, showing the acceptability of it as long as there are other caretakers around. It does not have anyone address any of the behaviour as being negative beyond other people being randomly (but not consistently) annoyed by it; in fact, I think there was only one or two times where it was shown via illustrations.

Other than a few quotation marks, there is absolutely no punctuation. This makes the book difficult, even as an adult; there were numerous areas where I had to read something out loud to figure out where to break up the lines and make it make sense.

This is yet another book that was brought to me by a student from their school, and it really makes me wonder a few things: Why are the books that kids receive so hopelessly dated? This one is from 1955, and it is rare that students (especially students learning English as an additional language) bring me anything published within the past decade. This isn't to say that we have to throw everything away, but it is curious to me how rarely children in schools get to engage with newer texts or texts that are more relevant to their existence within the world.

I'm also really not a fan of books written by adults about annoying kids. They either write off negative and harmful behaviours as jokes (refusing to engage with how they might negatively impact someone), or they overplay the negative behaviours as being purely the fault of the child who has been left to figure things out for themselves with largely uninterested adults (and if that child is upper class, the behaviours are often left to fester without any engagement regarding how that behaviour is harmful).

Edit 1: Upon learning that this book was originally marketed to adults and then was re-released as a children's book a bit more than a decade after its first publication, it actually makes this book worse to me. (And then there's the whole presumption that Eloise was modeled after Thompson's goddaughter, who was Liza Minelli. Just... what.)

Edit 2: The summary that was used for marketing this book also included the following statement: "She may not be pretty yet, but she’s definitely already a real person." What the hell was wrong with everyone?

One of the things that I've noticed about these books, as I've been working my way through the series with students, is that their structure of the moral lesson is less preachy than other children's books tend to be. They present relatable relationships (between siblings and/or friends), and the lesson is largely imparted through their actions. It enables the books to be both something kids can learn from or engage with while also being mostly entertaining; I think this is where a lot of children's fiction for the youngest and newest readers often falls flat.

This one is cute because, though it focuses on something silly but relatable (getting the hiccups and not being able to get rid of them), it also shows that people want to help and that you can sometimes help someone by helping to take their mind off things.

One of the things I'd personally like to see in children's books is this understanding that we don't have to do things that inherently have to be useful or 'progress' society forward, and that's kind of what's happening here with the inventions.

It's also tied to a school project, so two of the kids are pushed to be creative on a deadline; this is something I'm not fond of. Though, counter to that, the end result of their invention (whether its useful or not) is discovered by accident; I think that underscoring that would make things more interesting because, while a lot of things were figured out through intentional design, I like recognising that accidents can also help us to figure out new information and is a place for learning.

It's trite, though, in that it rehashes a lot of the common understandings of inventing rather than considering that maybe we could invent something that isn't inherently useful and is made for the sake of amusement or entertainment.

Not that this would stop any of the people in this book because they hold double-standards, but I love how Krauss's introduction complains about how all the Indigenous people, transgender people, non-white people, etc are "pushing an agenda" despite having no evidence for it, but Krauss seems to conveniently forget what citations are and how they're used. For every assertion he makes, he provides no research or hard evidence; this is only fun to note for the double-standard of it all, since we know that these regressive predatory creeps don't like it when people question their reality and their truth.

In finishing Richard Dawkins' essay (first in the book), we learned that he actually doesn't know what science is. He also doesn't understand that anorexia and being transgender aren't comparable in the least; he loves "usually" and "nearly always" and "in those species that..." while conveniently neglecting how their existence negates many of his points (though he does try to address it and still fails to understand that he negated his own point).

The rationalists stay losing for a whole host of reasons.

Oh, and Krauss and Dawkins both give Trump props for the executive order against DEI/gender. And then cry about the anti-science of the left, completely ignoring... RFK Jr? And pretty much anyone else in the admin. Just... whew.

Edit: I forgot to mention that there are, so far, so many weird typos that this publisher just did not catch. Unsurprising for a highly conservative Christian publisher, since they routinely just publish books on sight and without a good editing. Like, one of the people in Dawkins' essay? Died before he was even alive ("1934-1914"), and they somehow missed that beautiful fact; there are a bunch of random punctuation points, including closed square brackets when they were never opened in the first place. It's really quite atrocious and definitely is because the amount of care in publishing this was minimal, since the whole point is to yell at The Woke and not write a proper book. (Also, a lot of these essays seem like they were collected out of somewhere else, so I'm betting this is going to be yet another "I probably read or could've read any number of these online ages ago" book.)

One of the things I like about reading books of essays is that you can just put it down for an indeterminate amount of time and come back later when you want to continue. One of the things I dislike about books of essays, as I did for this one, is that some of them inevitably feel like some kind of filler.

Most of the essays are very good; many of them prompted me to look into the subjects being discussed, and I walked away with a long list of films I'd like to explore. Some of them feel a bit presumptuous about the amount of knowledge a person should have, like they had originally been created specifically for a text or a project where people were already familiar. That's not a bad thing, but it is frustrating when you feel like someone is speaking over your head for no good reason; it just highlights a necessity for some context in a few areas.

This is going to be a terrible book that includes way more predators and nazis than should be included (which is any number greater than 0).

Also, just glimpsing the table of contents? There are only 38 different people, so I'm glad he learned to count.

Alright. This book is the inspiration for the episode of the TV show that I had the most issues with because what kind of anarchists are these, lmao. The representation of the show was awful, so let's see how the book handles it.

I truly adore Bridget Walsh's work. The characters are fantastic and so easy to imagine; they're all quite lovable in their own ways, and they feel like who they're supposed to be. No one feels out of place (except when necessary by either their personality or the narrative), and they just feel alive. I have to mention this mostly because, while other characters in other works feel fine and still interest me, these ones actually feel like they could be real people (and that is not a feeling that I get very often from fiction).

I also just like the settings she has chosen and how, while Albert and Minnie are the primary detectives, they don't just work cases entirely on their own. Their friends offer to help them in a range of ways; they help train them to mimic people or help create clothing for them that would make them match places. They dig up information in a range of places, with some characters paying a bunch of runner boys to go look into something while others use their connections. I like it because the detecting doesn't feel so solitary; it feels like everyone is involved and, even if they're busy with their actual jobs, they do what they can when they can. As much as I adore other detective novels, I really like that Walsh creates a community and actually utilises their skills and builds their connections to work towards solutions to the mystery.

And I also just like how much you can see the choreography of the case. You can tell the mysteries are planned (albeit with some obvious liberties) because, if you skim back through what you've read, you can actually spot the clues you missed (if you missed them). It's very clear that these books are meant to have a narrative of likable and interesting characters (in as much as you feel compelled to engage with them, regardless of whether you truly like them or not) while also having a mystery you can solve right along with them.

While it's interesting, the writing is all over the place in more than one way. This is literal, where it's sometimes hard to find which direction you're supposed to read; I had a student bring this to me to figure out which direction they were supposed to go, which was made more difficult for them by having different fonts and non-standard locations for parts of the narrative. (This isn't inherently bad, but it is something to consider, especially if you're working with a kid who has a reading-based disability.)

The story is also all over the place, even though it clearly follows the inspiration of Little Red Riding Hood. This is because it's combining that story with being able to tell a story about writing stories, which makes it a bit confusing for some people to follow (and also prompts questions about whether or not something was necessary, which is quite fun as a discussion but can also be annoying to certain readers).

This story is sort of disappointing in comparison to Henkes's other work (like Waiting), especially as it really is of the genre that I feel we should title "School Glaze." It's one of those books that, intentionally or not, really pushes the pro-school propaganda and fails to recognise what the most common response would be to something of this nature.

While I'm sure there are teachers like Mr Slinger (and I'd like to pretend that it's most of them), I don't know many of them. Even the most outwardly kind-seeming teachers that I've worked would not handle this well, and many of them would've held a vendetta against a child who did these actions and without any discussion of or engagement with the ways in which children develop and learn to fit in with the people around them. I wish more kids, since they're coerced into schools and are a highly controlled demographic of people, were around adults who would help them work through these kinds of feelings and behaviours (and also be less visibly/publicly upset when children who are upset with them handle their feelings in bad/harmful ways), but they are more likely than not to find adults who will not handle those behaviours well at all.

I like the messaging of being able to apologise, how you can apologise, and working toward forgiveness, but that messaging is also necessary for adults towards children in order to make it function, too. And we just don't live in a world where it is widely recognised that children are working their way through it, learning as they go (as we all did), and need people who are patient and are willing to guide them.

(Granted, I also think part of the issue is that... if the teacher had done more to help Lilly understand how her behaviours were negative rather than "No, you need to wait," it would've resulted in more appropriate behaviour and understanding. An adult not really explaining to a young child why they need to wait and be patient is not going to see that child responding well. So I don't like the messaging of "just do as your told" that is woven within this story, even if the teacher is kind, patient, and forgiving.)

Rarely do I see a kids' book engage with how kids might deal with a severe injury or illness, even one that is temporary. I think this is pretty good for little kids and could provide a background to a conversation about how to help out, whether what someone does is good/bad/neutral, and how that can be contextual.

Like, Lola knows Charlie and his worries; she understands her brother, so her just doing something to make him feel better and still trying to include him in her games or plays is just normal for them. Having read most of the series with different kids, they've often pointed out to me how it's sweet that Lola would do this; some occasionally say that she should offer instead of just doing it (I agree, as I'd want someone to ask before doing most things for me, like feeding me or helping me drink), but others recognise that their relationship with someone around them is similar enough that they'd also do that for each other.

It's actually been a good book for working through boundaries and contexts with kids, and that's not a very common thing to find (sadly).

This book, at the beginning, highlights all the ways in which it has engaged with research around literacy, but it seems to have forgotten a core element of getting kids to read: making something interesting and engaging.

Yet again, this is another book that is so incredibly boring but is designed to be so simplistic because of how, I think, adults view children. It's not really focused on telling an engaging story; it's focused on trying to bring vocabulary, and it's doing it in a way that disengages the audience entirely. These books are generally some of the worst, and I have yet to work with any kids who like them; the most common feeling is "waste of time."

It's also clear because the first page is a note to parents and caregivers about what kind of book this is; it's labelled as a 'red level' book (as shown by the red circle on the top right of the cover), which means that it'll "present familiar topics using common words and repeating sentence patterns." Ironically, these kinds of readers have a tendency to support poor reading skills and be used in teaching strategies that do not support readers at all.