PICTURE BOOK - The House of Wisdom by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland

Illustrated by Mary Grandpre

1999, DK Publishing, NY

currently OP

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.07 - 68 ratings

My rating: 4:  

Endpapers:  peachy/orange

Illustrations:  orangy pastels, no white on the very large pages

1^st line/s: "Over many lands came caravans of camels, six thousand strong, swaying and rocking as the padded single file across the sands and plains on their way to Baghdad."

My comments:  I always get excited when I find a well-written picture book for older kids.  This is certainly one of them.  Based on history, this is the story of 9th century Baghdad and its books, libraries, scholars, and inquisitive minds. I love that it points out that at this time areas to the west (Europe) were basically uneducated and, perhaps, crude.  And when talking about scholars, like Aristotle, coming a thousand years before, the father tells his son, "We are like the leaves of the same tree, separated by many autumns."  What a great quote!

Goodreads:  This is the true story of Ishaq, a young boy in ninth-century Baghdad. And it is the story of the House of Wisdom. More than a house, more than a library, more even than a palace, the House of Wisdom was at the very center of the new ideas that flourished in Baghdad. It was here that thousands of scholars gathered to read, to exchange ideas, and to translate the dusty manuscripts that were brought by camel and ship from all over the world. Ishaq cannot understand why ancient words, words from faraway places, can cause such excitement. Then he embarks on a difficult journey seeking lost manuscripts. But it is what he discovers when he returns that ignites his imagination and changes him forever.Lyrical prose and glorious illustrations capture the splendor of Baghdad when it was the center of one of the world's great civilizations. They tell the story of Ishaq's transformation from a bewildered young boy searching for understanding to a brilliant scholar, the greatest translator of Aristotle, whose work preserved Greek thought for civilizations to come.

MOVIE - Marshall

PG-13 (1:58)

Wide release 10-13-17

Viewed Tuesday evening, 10-17-17 at the Regal Theater in Harrisburg
IMBd:  6.8

T Critic: 87     Audience:  87
Critic's Consensus:  Marshall takes an illuminating, well-acted look at its real-life subject's early career that also delivers as an entertainingly old-fashioned courtroom drama.

Cag:  5/Loved it

Directed by Reginald Hudlin

Open Road Films

Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Sterling K. Brown, Kate Hudson, James Cromwell

My comments:  What an excellent movie!  I particularly loved all the humor and the growing relationship between Samuel Friedman and Thurgood Marshall.  Perhaps these parts were added with "creative license," in that writing a biopic about something that happened 76 years ago (1941) can't be full of the truth, and this is a movie, after all, not a documentary. The actors, and acting, were superb (although Kate Hudson's portrayal seemed a little off to me). Powerful storytelling about a piece of our history - a LARGE piece - that is shaming and shameful.  There was an older (white) couple sitting behind me in the theater that were cheering and clapping every time something positive happened, or every time someone put an arrogant white person in their place.  They applauded at the end.  That's how I felt, applause is necessary.  Highly recommended.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Starring Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Dan Stevens, Sterling K. Brown, and James Cromwell. Director Reginald Hudlin's Marshall, is based on an early trial in the career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. It follows the young lawyer (Chadwick Boseman) to conservative Connecticut to defend a black chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) charged with sexual assault and attempted murder of his white socialite employer (Kate Hudson). Muzzled by a segregationist court, Marshall partners with a courageous young Jewish lawyer, Samuel Friedman (Josh Gad). Together they mount the defense in an environment of racism and Anti-Semitism. The high profile case and the partnership with Friedman served as a template for Marshall's creation of the NAACP legal defense fund.

Heroes and She-roes - J Patrick Lewis

Poetry
Poems of Amazing and Everyday Heroes
Illustrated by Jim Cooke
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2005
40 pages
for: elementary school kids (and all the rest of us, too)
Rating: 5
Endpapers: Avocado

Poems of heroes in general. Poems about specific heroes. Heroes that I didn't know about. Heroes I never really thought about. There are so many heroes in our lives to consider. This is book to help kids - and us all - remember that!

Each of the 21 poems has information about the person or event that is the subject of the poem, which makes the book even more interesting. The illustrations are portraits: witty, colorful. I can picture an overhead for each page or double page to greet the kids in the morning as they enter the classroom, for reflection, journaling, even handwriting, and of course, for plain old enjoyment!

Heroes and She-roes

Give thanks to the he- and she-roes
Who will turn upon a dime
When occasion calls for action ---
And be there in half the time.

Roll red carpets out for she-roes
And to heroes raise a toast
For extraordinary courage ---
Yet you’ll never hear them boast.

Lend your hand to he- and she-roes,
To the valiant and the brave,
To those simple people know by
Two simple words: The gave.

The Elementary School Teacher

A teacher is a person
Unafraid
To get the third degree
From Second Grade!

Teachers are pathfinders, guides, truth-seekers, champions, role models, and guardians. Some of the greatest heroes and she-roes can be found in classrooms.


(I had to include this. It makes me feel really good...and reminds me of the many teachers and mentors that have helped create the teacher that I am today.)

The Organizer

Cesar Chavez
Migrant Labor Organizer, 1927-1993

Cesar was a peaceable fighter
With his back against the wall.
He was the David to Goliaths,
One worker against them all.

Up from the Mexican culture,
He rallied migrants to unite
And challenged consumers to boycott
Five years for the grape pickers’ plight.

Cesar won and lost many battles
But never resorted to arms,
And the carried the torch for La Causa
Across California farms.

Poor migrants, whose harvest was hunger,
Depended on him to be strong,
To ignite the fight and fight for right
And everywhere right the wrong.


Here are the other subjects included:

The Seeker (Helen Keller)
The Explorers (Meriwether Lewis & William Clark)
The Unknown Rebel (Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, June 5, 1989)
The Wonder Dog (Togo, Alaska, 1925)
The Little Angel of Colombia (Alabeiro Vargas, Columbia South America) REALLY INTERESTING!
The Peacemaker (Mohandas Gandhi)
The Nun (Sister Jeannette Normandin)
The Great One (Roberto Clemente) Includes some unknown-to-me information
The Bareback Rider (Lady Godiva) No kidding - talk about fascinating...
The Preachers (MLK, Jr. & Mahalia Jackson)
The Riveter ("Rosie the Riveter)
The Journalist (Ida Wells-Barnett)
The Soldier (Joan of Arc)
The Steadfast (Rosa Parks)
The Immigrants
The Child Laborer (Iqbal Masih) Whoa! This'll make me dig deeper...


Wonderful. Should be in every 3-6th grade classroom!

Sparrow Girl - Sara Pennypacker

Illustrated by Yoko Tanaka
2009
Rating: 4
Disney/Hyperion Books
Endpapers: Lots of swallows

Wow. Now here's a part of China's history that I did not know. This book is based on a true historical account. (We find this out in an author's note at the end of the book, but I'll begin with it here. )

In 1958, Mao Tse-Tung, the leader of China, forced the people of China to spend three days and evenings making lots of loud noise - to kill all the sparrows, either from stress, exhaustion, or heart attacks - so they wouldn't eat the grain crops. But this completely backfired. Yes, the sparrows were completely gone, but now the locust population took over. A famine bagan, and 30-40 MILLION Chinese died in the next three years. Unreal!

In this story, a young girls saves seven sparrows, thus saving her village from a locusts and grasshoppers and weevils and worms that would destroy all their crops.

Illustrations - a little dark (purposely, I'm sure), but really nice.

(Sara Pennypacker is the author of Clementine.)