Barbara A. SomervillRezensionen

Well designed and written. This book is an easy read, but still makes a very comprehensive view of the life of a busy, driven woman who was eager to make the world a better place. Good pictures and back matter.

Describes the history, geography, ecology, people, economy, cities, and sights of the state of Texas.

This nonfiction book about Brown V Board of Education is a must-have for school libraries. The photos and sidebars and extremely helpful in telling the story of the court case with feeling. The background helps to explain the importance of the court case. I think it's important for students to learn about this history while they are the same age as the integrated students. There is a timeline and a list of discussion questions at the end. The list of books for further reading is all generic nonfiction books about Brown v BOE. I would rather see some examples of biographies listed to give students a more personal look at the situation--Separate is Never Equal, Promise of Change, With the Might of Angels, Through My Eyes, Ruby Bridges Goes to School and This is Your Time are good examples.

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Love this book

I love reading about the geography and culture of places. If you like reading about geography and culture of other countries than this might be a good for you

This book explores different types of rock (igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic) through text, pictures, and experiments. The book also highlights how to conduct an experiment along the ay, as each section of the book provides an experiment for students to try. The book also allows for students to think about and question how natural disasters, such as earthquakes would change the order of rock layers. Scientific vocabulary are highlighted throughout the book. The explanations of those words in the text is mediocre, but there is a glossary in the back that can be used for more precise definitions.
This book would be a good one to use when teaching students about different types of rocks, and the experiments given can be used as well.

I actually very much enjoyed this book. I had never heard of it and absolutely loved this warm story of Elizabeth Blackwell who decided to become a doctor in the 19th century, which during this time medicine was not a field open to women. I love how determined she was to not let this stop her from getting her medical degree. With this determination it led her to become America's first woman doctor. This opened doors for women in medicine and encouraged those who were not as courageous as her to step up and follow. I love how she was not afraid to do what she was passionate about and it is such a great message to display to students. Even if a path is rocky and doesn't look easy, never give up your dream of what you want to do.

This book comprehensively covers the life of an influential woman at the heart of a pivotal struggle. Unfortunately, it didn't breathe as much life into the subject as I hoped, instead reading more like a textbook or extended encyclopedia entry. The other players in Ms. Catt's life -- both her allies in the suffrage movement and those who opposed her -- aren't fleshed out much beyond their direct interaction with her, and on the whole the book is written in a dry, tidy "just the facts" mode. Not exactly gripping, the way I've found some other biographies or historical works; it is, however, perfectly serviceable as reference for anyone seeking an overview of one woman's part in the suffrage movement.

This is a flyby overview of the main cultures in Mesopotamia between ca 4,000 - 500 BC. It starts off with a bare-bones summary of the military-political history of the area, before devoting a couple of chapters to daily life among the Sumerians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians respectively. The book is definitely aimed at younger readers: words such as scholar, irrigation, dynasty and high priestess are explained between brackets, as are abbreviations such as ca.

Both of these are reasons why I picked up this book: I wanted an illustrated, quick-and-dirty overview aimed at non-specialists before I delved into some meatier books. I guess Empires of Ancient Mesopotamia did its job adequately, though not memorably so. I sped through this short booklet (+150pp) in two hours. The illustrations add significantly to the minimalist body text, and the whole is reasonably well-structured and informative.

I do have a number of quibbles, though. The constant references to bible stories ("this matches the bible story of Noah; X, which you can read about in the bible, ...") were a little puzzling: nowhere did the book say it was aimed specifically at christian children, yet Somervill assumes throughout that her readers are routinely familiar with the bible. Not only the stories of the flood and the tower of Babel, but also the Babylonian captivity and the book of proverbs are assumed to be known to the audience. The Gilgamesh epic is also said to "match the bible", even though it is older.

Sometimes the explanations came across as half-hearted or even uninformed. At one point the the explanation of "an Indo-European people" reads "people originated in Australia, Iran, or the Eurasian steppes". Is Somervill trying to balance three potential PIE homelands? Did she mix up Austria and Australia? To the best of my knowledge, Austria is not one of the current contenders for a PIE homeland. Whatever she meant, it was deeply puzzling, and it made me wonder if she made similar mistakes elsewhere that I, a casual non-specialist reader, would not spot. The final chapter, on Iraq/Mesopotamia today, contains a hand-wavy justification for the Iraq war; that, too, made me frown.

Would I recommend this booklet? I'm not sure. Not without a couple of caveats. On the one hand, Somervill did what she set out to do more or less competently: to provide a shallow summary of three and a half thousand years of alternating civilizations. I understand that any such effort is going to run into problems. But the christian point of view and the Indo-European thing put me off, and they were not the shortcomings I was expecting from a text such as this one.

So. On the whole, if you're looking for an intentionally superficial overview of Mesopotamian civilizations, you could do worse than this one; if you're looking for something more substantial, skip it.½

Mary McLeod Bethune, a child of former slaves, became a teacher because she loved learning and wanted all African American children to have an education. She eventually started her own school, which became Bethune-Cookman College, and she served as its president. She was the first African American woman to start a college for black students and she was the first African American woman to be president of a college. She was also an activist for civil rights. She was the first African American woman to be involved in the White House, assisting four different presidents. She became the first African American and the first woman to have a memorial in Washington DC. This book tells her story and has a glossary, further reading list, web sites, and a timeline.

A little collection development exercise today! I'm working on weeding the juvenile nonfiction - so far I've weeded somewhere between 500 and 1,000 items. That's a LOT for a collection as small as ours (five full-length shelves). Why so much? Well, I've been told at least one of the previous directors at our library did not allow weeding. At all. Also, I believe several of the previous children's librarians were part-time and simply did not have time to weed. But, happily, I have an excellent director and I am full-time, so the time has come. I've dumped computer books from the 80s, books in horrible condition, nonfiction from the 50s, and a surprisingly large number of adult nonfiction books. Possibly they were somehow missed when the juvenile and adult nonfiction was separated years ago. Now well into the 500s, I'm looking to see what needs to be replaced - and it looks like we need more mosquito books! We have one outdated and icky book from the 70s and one newer book that's checked out. I looked at my nonfiction catalogs (I'm mainly using Bearport and Scholastic right now) and Bearport had a mosquito book in it's No Backbone! series. Then I checked the library catalog and requested a couple of the newer mosquito books from other libraries.

Bloodthirsty Mosquitoes by Meish Goldish is from the Bearport No Backbone! series. It's obviously intended for a younger audience, probably 5 - 8, with large type, simple text, and plenty of pictures of the mosquito's life cycle. There's a short glossary, index, and further resources in the back. This book is mainly about the mosquito, with only a few brief mentions of how it affects the world and attacks people.

The other mosquito book I found is from the Bloodsuckers series by PowerKids Press; Mosquitoes: Hungry for Blood by Barbara Somervill. This is directed at an older audience, I'd say 8 - 12, and focuses on the mosquito in context. There's a page each on the mosquito's body, breeding habits, and habitats, then the rest of the book discusses how it chooses who to eat from, the creatures that prey on the mosquito, and how it carries diseases and is controlled. There's a good glossary, index, and a link to a regularly updated list of links on the PowerKids website.

Verdict: So, conclusion? I think we need both these books, but I can't buy both! I'll wait for the other mosquito book we have to come back, and see what it's reading level is and how it compares to these and which one we need more - a specific book on the mosquito's life, or a more general book for older kids. I'll also be checking PowerKids Press out to see what other materials they have.

Bloodthirsty mosquitoes
ISBN: 978-1597165853; Published January 2008 by Bearport; Borrowed from the library; Purchased for the library

Mosquitoes: Hungry for blood
ISBN: 978-1404238022; Published August 2007 by PowerKids Press; Borrowed from the library; Purchased for the library