Customer Reviews

Be Quiet, Marina!

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed reading this book to the 1st graders at my daughter's school. The children at this age are searching for friendship but are still hesitant to embrace it when they find it. The book gave me many opportunities to talk about how Moira and Marina had problems to work out in their friendship but when they worked on it, spoke honestly to one another about how they felt, they were able to have fun and enjoy being together. The disabilities of Marina and Moira also gave the children even more to discuss about differences - not just disabilities but it let to discussions on race, color, weight, family composition, religion and other perceived obstacles to friendship.
In all, the many photos of the girls made the book interesting for the children and the flow of the story made it a great tool for discussion and learning.

Illustrated with the black and white photography of Laura Dwight, Kirsten DeBear's Be Quiet, Marina! is an engaging picture book for very young children with a different look, as it tells the story of the noisy four-year-old girl Marina and the much quieter four-year-old girl Moira. Marina has cerebral palsy, and Moira has Down syndrome. At first Marina and Moira could not play because Moira was frightened of Marina's noise. But eventually Marina and Moira become best friends, in a story to be treasured. The text consists of simple sentences printed in big, bold black letters, making Be Quiet, Marina! the perfect book on a sensitive social subject for young people just beginning to learn how to read.

Just read this to a group of four year olds. "They got to be friends!" shouted Anil. "They was so different - they got mad - but they got to play" was Melissa's comment. Kids LOVE this book. And it's one of the rare ones that portrays kids with special needs as kids first - disability second. Terrific!

I am a ECSE teacher and plan on reading this book next fall to my students. This will be a great book to open up discussion about so many things such as friendships, how to work out differences with your classmates, how everyone is different (including children that are differently abled) and that it's ok if you don't get along with your classmates ALL the time, you just have to be able to work things out and treat people the way you want to be treated.

This book would be great to share with ANY Elementary classroom. It has great photographs, big, bold print and easy to read text.

This is a great book to share with students. I shared it with my 2nd grade class as an intro to talk about a student in our class who has downs. My students loved the book and saw how alike the girls in the book were to them. Read this book to your class!