Exhausted anarchist and school abolitionist who can be found at nerdteacher.com where I muse about school and education-related things, and all my links are here. My non-book posts are mostly at @whatanerd@treehouse.systems, occasionally I hide on @whatanerd@eldritch.cafe, or you can email me at n@nerdteacher.com. [they/them]
I was a secondary literature and humanities teacher who has swapped to being a tutor, so it's best to expect a ridiculously huge range of books.
And yes, I do spend a lot of time making sure book entries are as complete as I can make them. Please send help.
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16% complete! nerd teacher [books] has read 10 of 60 books.
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily …
I am actively wishing that a meteor would drop onto this motherfucking "We're all feminist, but women are responsible for preventing their own rapes" bastard.
Emily and Navin's mother is still in a coma from the arachnopod's poison, and there's only one place to find …
Emily and Navin's mother is kidnapped and dragged into a strange and magical world where, …
This book is really cute! And it's super enjoyable on its own. I'd definitely say give it a go, but do go into it knowing that the audience is primarily aimed at younger teenagers.
Anyway, I've been reading this book with my student, and they are someone whose English fluency is very much in the middle. They have a lot of typical school-based knowledge, but they haven't really had to use English that much outside of class (and even the class is very much lacking in actually using English other than the assignments). Those complaints are slightly irrelevant, but it does contextualise what I'm going to say here since my review is mostly with regards to that element.
This book is really good for kids who are newer to reading in English, and it is one that I'd recommend to people who want to encourage kids to start reading in …
This book is really cute! And it's super enjoyable on its own. I'd definitely say give it a go, but do go into it knowing that the audience is primarily aimed at younger teenagers.
Anyway, I've been reading this book with my student, and they are someone whose English fluency is very much in the middle. They have a lot of typical school-based knowledge, but they haven't really had to use English that much outside of class (and even the class is very much lacking in actually using English other than the assignments). Those complaints are slightly irrelevant, but it does contextualise what I'm going to say here since my review is mostly with regards to that element.
This book is really good for kids who are newer to reading in English, and it is one that I'd recommend to people who want to encourage kids to start reading in English (especially if the goal is for fluency). The images really back up the text to make it easier for people to guess the meanings of words. For those that aren't, the rest of the text often does a good job here, too. It's also a very easy book to read in a group setting (one-on-one with a more fluent person or as a group of learners), as there are a lot of elements to engage with.
I put this here because there is a dearth of information about age appropriate books for teens who are newer to learning English, especially as everything constantly recommends giving them books that are geared for a much younger audience (which often bores them to tears).
In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort …
A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance.
On an unnamed island off …
I'm uncertain how it is that I feel about this book. I don't even know that I can call it enjoyable, though it is incredibly dream-like. There is so much care between the characters, but it also is hard to really enjoy.
It's impossible to really discuss it without spoiling all of it, and I don't particularly feel like writing more. But I can say that the book left me feeling somewhat empty, which I think is honestly the point considering the story itself (an island where things 'disappear', where people who remember are arrested by the Memory Police).
Jade Nguyen has always lied to fit in. She's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough …
I really love what this book is trying to do, and I really enjoyed so much of the story up to the very end of it because... it was just meh?
Not sure what the editing process was for this book or what conversations took place during it, but it feels very much like Alma was going to play a much stronger role than she did. There was so much choreography in the beginning about Alma being the colonialist monster, trying to revitalise and support colonialism within Vietnam, and trying to exploit Vietnamese people, and trying to rewrite that colonial history to support European histories...
... and then that ball was just kind of dropped for the focus on the house being parasitic. Sometimes the 'Alma' ball was picked back up, but I don't think it was used very well. And I have to wonder if parts of that were …
I really love what this book is trying to do, and I really enjoyed so much of the story up to the very end of it because... it was just meh?
Not sure what the editing process was for this book or what conversations took place during it, but it feels very much like Alma was going to play a much stronger role than she did. There was so much choreography in the beginning about Alma being the colonialist monster, trying to revitalise and support colonialism within Vietnam, and trying to exploit Vietnamese people, and trying to rewrite that colonial history to support European histories...
... and then that ball was just kind of dropped for the focus on the house being parasitic. Sometimes the 'Alma' ball was picked back up, but I don't think it was used very well. And I have to wonder if parts of that were to make white and/or European audiences more comfortable. Or if it was an unintentional pulling back from what was being said, even if there were a lot of strong lines left in.
Emily and Navin's mother is kidnapped and dragged into a strange and magical world where, …
My student's pretty quick at reading this. For her English level (she's more in the "intermediate" level with regards to school-based fluency tests but still struggles with using the language as she would normally use it), this is really good.
There've been a lot of new words for her (words like ravine, creek, cavern), but the images also really help her to get an understanding of what they mean.
It's also age-appropriate for a 12-year old, especially one who likes magic-based fantasy. This has been one of the biggest difficulties that I've had in finding books for students, honestly. Most suggestions for 'new readers in English' are for really young kids, and a lot of younger teenagers just don't want to read stories intended for kids between the ages of 6-8 (and, if we're honest, a lot of books 'made for' young children are also things young children tend to …
My student's pretty quick at reading this. For her English level (she's more in the "intermediate" level with regards to school-based fluency tests but still struggles with using the language as she would normally use it), this is really good.
There've been a lot of new words for her (words like ravine, creek, cavern), but the images also really help her to get an understanding of what they mean.
It's also age-appropriate for a 12-year old, especially one who likes magic-based fantasy. This has been one of the biggest difficulties that I've had in finding books for students, honestly. Most suggestions for 'new readers in English' are for really young kids, and a lot of younger teenagers just don't want to read stories intended for kids between the ages of 6-8 (and, if we're honest, a lot of books 'made for' young children are also things young children tend to side-eye quite a lot).
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily …
I don't actually remember what percent we're at, but I do remember that the book finishes at 68%. So we have to be halfway through this mess.
Things I need to remember:
Emily and Navin's mother is kidnapped and dragged into a strange and magical world where, …
Reading this with my student in our English lessons.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a 1987 novel by Fannie Flagg. …
This book is really well-written, and the structure employed in it really has the feel of both talking to a grandparent (whether or not they're actually your own) and/or the local town gossip. I love this about this book because it makes it just so easy to read through.
I also love that one of the core elements of the story (one that, if people know about Fried Green Tomatoes, is the most well-known) is just kind of... tossed out there a couple times and in ways that make a person go "Wait, did she just say what I think she said?"
But I do find it incredibly difficult to recommend. Part of it is because I know people can find its use of racist and ableist slurs frustrating and bothersome (which I also can completely understand). While it's understandable that sometimes the perspectives match with the characterisation, there are …
This book is really well-written, and the structure employed in it really has the feel of both talking to a grandparent (whether or not they're actually your own) and/or the local town gossip. I love this about this book because it makes it just so easy to read through.
I also love that one of the core elements of the story (one that, if people know about Fried Green Tomatoes, is the most well-known) is just kind of... tossed out there a couple times and in ways that make a person go "Wait, did she just say what I think she said?"
But I do find it incredibly difficult to recommend. Part of it is because I know people can find its use of racist and ableist slurs frustrating and bothersome (which I also can completely understand). While it's understandable that sometimes the perspectives match with the characterisation, there are some moments where it feels a bit off.
Also, there's a lot of Mary Kay propaganda in parts of it, which is very weird considering it's an MLM. And I say that it's propaganda because Evelyn manages to get the Pink Cadillac and other high-level rewards... which is very unlikely. Ninny telling her she'd be good at it is cute in a very naive kind of way, but Evelyn actually succeeding in an MLM is fucking wild. (And Mary Kay reps have used the connection between Fannie Flagg and Mary Kay Ash to post the story about how the former was friends with the latter and gave a speech to an Emerald Seminar in 1992.)
Something else that I'm also genuinely annoyed by is that Evelyn's goal is to... lose weight? And rather than focus on her struggle to appreciate herself despite her body and society's attempt to force her to hate it (something that I think is taught via Ninny), she takes the lessons of her friend and heads to... a fat farm in California? Which is pretty frustrating, even if not a major plot point.
This book addresses the tensions of existing theories and practices of inclusive education from an …
By implementing global disability rights work through a CDS [Critical Disability Studies] lens we are able to frame such issues as social justice initiatives and encourage teachers and disability rights activists to think about inclusive education and fighting for disability rights as a series of decolonizing actions and as a form of activism.
— The Future of Inclusive Education by Valentina Migliarini, Brent C. Elder (Page 13)
... This is a weird way of actually engaging in self-reinforcement of a field of study. CDS is entirely unnecessary to frame issues of disability as "issues of social justice" because they... already were. And also, why do you think that CDS is going to "encourage disability rights activists to think about inclusive education?" Do you think they're not thinking about this already, without CDS?
This really annoys me because they're basically trying to reframe activist work as being within academia, which it cannot and never should be. You cannot decolonise something by institutionalising it within a colonial institution.
Jade Nguyen has always lied to fit in. She's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough …
"The savage ruined it," says Florence, repeating the translated phrase from the family portrait.
"One of those," I say. Of course we would find a racist's cache here. Hardly anything else is ever preserved in history. Even this single photograph of my great-grandmother as a child hiding in the curtains was branded.
— She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran (Page 137)
Jade Nguyen has always lied to fit in. She's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough …
What is it like to open your eyes and see your world completely gone wrong? The invaders emerging from the mist like pale ghosts, taking and building, and taking. Latching on and draining you dry. Then calling you a savage. It doesn't take a genius to parse that word form the handwriting on the photograph. Bà Cố and Cam are incidental relics. The racism is not subtle once you start to look.
— She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran (Page 133)
Jade Nguyen has always lied to fit in. She's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough …
The woman from the window sits at the center of this photograph, surrounded by her family. Her eyes are sharp and deep-set, the angle of her nose narrow. Her family blends into the background drapes. They'd taken it in our dining room, the hint of wooded wallpaper scratching at the edges.
Her dress is a beautiful lace and buttoned at the front with a wide sash. Her hat is even nicer, with a variety of flowers. A girl stands to her right, and the husband towers on the left, hand on their son. The kids are obviously twins, both wearing their mother's dark line for mouths and deep eyes.
My gut tells me she's the Lady of Many Tongues. Marion Dumont and her husband, Roger. The ones Alma told us about. Loopy handwriting stains the back—1925, le sauvage l'a ruineé. A visceral dislike rips through me.
— She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran (Page 132)
Jade Nguyen has always lied to fit in. She's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough …
In rising excitement and volume, Alma says, "Roger Dumont was key in establishing order in this region, but his wife, Marion, was a very accomplished linguist in her time. Latin, German, et cetera, all the great languages, and then of course she had to come here with her husband. She became quite good at Vietnamese too. It's a bit unusual for spouses to come along, but she was an absolute asset to her husband. She was known as the Lady of Many Tongues."
Here's my treasure trove of highly specific and obscure information. Ba's fist closes tightly around his chopsticks, ready to snap. Right, Roger and Marion employed our family. We were here first, and yet where are we in history books?
Alma can't be stopped now, judging by the animated look in her eyes. "Marion held many parties and meetings in this house," she says. "Entertaining officers on leave, translating documents where needed, of course. Geniuses hardly have their equals, so she never had any reason or want to actually associate outside of this house. Unfortunate though. She could've been a great teacher to the locals."
Because I need to know for myself how no one cared for the way my family tended the hydrangeas that live until this day, I ask, "Did someone else live here?"
"No, not really," she says slowly. "Roger and Marion had children, and personal attendants—a house as big as this needs care—but they were very much distinguished pioneers and masters of their hearth."
The woman has her PhD in colonization, but that doesn't mean I'm happy she knows more than me—however fractured that knowledge.
— She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran (Page 120 - 121)
