36 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An innocent book that has fallen victim to controversy., July 10, 2006
This review is from: Cuba = Cuba (Vamos a) (Spanish Edition) (Library Binding)
This is a book that would likely receive little notice except for the controversy it has caused in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where the book has been removed from public school libraries, pending a court challenge from the ACLU. In all honesty this is the only reason I bothered to look at the book.
As is obvious from the editorial reviews this book and others in the series are designed to provide basic information about various countries at the 2nd to 4th grade level. So what do you get? Pictures of schoolchildren, pictures of places in Cuba, along with minimal text.
The books are pretty much what they claim to be - simple readers whose purpose is to teach children that there are kids all over the world, and that while they may be different in detail they are basically the same.
The knock against this particular book is that it does not discuss the flaws in present day Cuba - that the country is ruled by a brutal dictator, that there are often shortages of food and other essential items, and that political repression remains the norm in the country. All true enough - equally true that these are all irrelevant for this particular book series. Discussion of these topics is no more appropriate than discussion of the millions of children who live in poverty or under physically dangerous conditions in the United States - equally true facts that would not belong in a book in this series.
In brief, then, this book does pretty much what it is intended to do, and at a child appropriate level. It is a shame that a few extremists in the Miami community have turned this into a cause celebre.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
18 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good book, July 26, 2006
This review is from: Cuba = Cuba (Vamos a) (Spanish Edition) (Library Binding)
It's about children living in Cuba, not about politics.
Childhood can be lived happily even in the worst circumstances. Just think about the children playing with friends, right now, in U.S. occupied Iraq, for that matter.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GET A GRIP GUYS! IT'S A LITTLE KID'S BOOK ALREADY! GET A LIFE! SUPPLEMENT IT!, June 15, 2007
This review is from: Cuba = Cuba (Vamos a) (Spanish Edition) (Library Binding)
This book is for little kids, and thus at the reading level of its detractors.
Do not fault it for failing to address your adult concerns. This is juvenile literature!
Elsewhere has been noted the irony of a board of education banning a book for failing to mention the alleged banning of books in Cuba. But this is a children's book, and cannot claim to be comprehensive.
The first thought of any good author is audience. The author and editors of this series seriously considered the juvenile audience of this book, consistent with the tone and content and level of the rest of this excellent and instructive series which opens the whole world to our youngest literate students. Why pass on to our next generation the nightmares of the history from which we must all struggle together to shake off in order to awaken to a new dawn of peace and humanity. Let us focus on our unity rather than past resentments and political prejudice.
Or should I burn my copy of A Visit to Ireland for not recounting the full horrors of Cromwellian genocide through the centuries and the mid-eighteen hundreds mass exterminations as our food and beef were sent before our famished eyes to London, into the twentieth century. I would do better to seek this additional information in learned and scholarly historical works such as
Hell or Connaught: The Cromwellian Colonization of Ireland, 1652-1660,
The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849, or
Bobby Sands: Irish Rebel : A Self-Portrait in Poetry and Polemics Issued on the 10th Anniversary of His Death, for starters.
Imagine the editors had written as well A Visit to Palestine . . .
Those who find this merely a beginner's introduction to their history do well to supplement this work with more sophisticated writings as appropriate to age and developmental levels. For instance, this door-opening work can easily find extension in such works as
Reaching for the Sun : Kids in Cuba,
Cuban Kids,
Cuba Para Principiantes/Cuba for Beginners, etc.
Please do not blame the mango for failing as an apple. This is a beginning book for children and thus better serves our children free of the heavily laden political hostilites which leave our children no peace and opportunity to advance in peace, little hope for peace and happiness together. Otherwise, or in any case, it is an excellent place to begin a conversation with our children. May it at least enhance our reading together with our children, our turning off the television and beginning to model critical reading with our children, an exploration of the power and the limitations of the printing press, a post-modernist assessment of the value and meaning of reading, etc.
Let this book be at least a spring board. But do not ban it; do not burn it, oh school board entrusted with the education of our children. The Latin roots of the word Education mean to Lead Forth, not to enforce ignorance and retard learning. Our children upon their long path need and deserve to learn, not to be blinded, lobotomized and failing to think deeply about what they read. If not this, what do you offer them of Cuban history?
Scarface (Widescreen Anniversary Edition)? Or for a comparative note: Sicko?
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
