Customer Reviews

Reading Strands: Understanding Fiction

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

 

 

As a Secondary English teacher, I feel this book would be a wonderful teaching tool for homeschoolers or public school teachers. Explanations are clear and examples are ample. Although this is excellent for younger grades, it is also an great review or introduction to literature for older students as well. Literary terms, such as setting, mood, clarity, character development, ..., are well-explained and any student would be well-equipped to discuss and analyze literature with these tools. In fact, I think that high school students who wish to take the CLEP in Analyzing and Interpreting Literature would benefit from using this book before the test, especially studying the literary devices explained in the book.

I ordered this book through our charter school because I had read several glowing reviews of it on homeschool sites and Amazon. I thought it would provide a little more guidance on what type of analysis would be appropriate at different grade levels. I had planned to let my child select books he wanted to read and then use this book as a guide for discussing and writing about what he had read.

Unfortunately, This book reminds me of why I disliked college English classes. It manages to suck the life out of even "The Jumping Frog of Calveras County". It outlines the Socratic method, gives some contrived "scripts" of what this method would sound like, and defines basic terms for literary analysis. The author's view that there are no right/wrong answers to anything pervades the entire book. A discussion between a "teacher" and "student" about Red Riding Hood brings up points like "It is a bad story because it makes women look stupid"...Did a real child come up with that?

I would have liked some discussion of how to guide teacher/student discussions. It wasn't clear if we are supposed to be skilled enough to somehow steer our politically correct little pupils to discuss conflict, theme, character, etc or just hope it comes up in amongst all the discussion of how fairy tales violate the ideals of feminism.

I did like the lists of books for different grade levels in the back of the book. Still, this book really isn't much more than an overgrown English 101 hand-out.

that is very fast service. it was telling me about 2 or 3 weeks time. actually, it just be in my hand less a week. good