"Intentional Interruption: Breaking Down Learning Barriers to Transform Professional Practice" by Steven Katz and Lisa Ain Dack

This isn't one of those books trying to sell a particular educational idea as much as it is about saying most initiatives don't work.  And they don't.  The slim treatise (93 pages) maintains a few absolutes.  1) Professional Development must create permanent change in order to be considered successful.  2) Human beings are hard-wired not to think deeply and to change how they operate.  3) A significant challenge to PD is that many do not take enough time to understand the problem before jumping into action, which results in a lot of action but not results.


The authors aren't wrong.  They make their point in clear, clean points which are interesting if not incredibly engaging.  The book reads like a TED Talk.  Lots of quick, pithy points with a strong example here and there.  Thankfully, because of the nature of the topic there aren't a lot of graphs, charts, etc.  The one drawback is a lot of repetition.  They tell you what they are going to tell you in the Preface, then they tell you again what they are going to tell you in Chapter 1, then repeat the whole thing at the beginning and end of each chapter.  (It made for fast reading when you realize you can kind of skip the opening and closing section of each paragraph).  Worth the time to read it but could also get the gist from a well-crafted Powerpoint. 

"How Kate Warne Saved President Lincoln" by Elizabeth Van Steenwyk, pictures by Valentina Belloni

This picture book was lent to me by a librarian after I told her of a story idea I had about a woman detective in the 19th Century.  A fairly innocuous little tome it covers the virtually unknown first woman to be a detective with the Pinkerton agency, a precursor to today's U.S. Secret Service.  It does a nice job with subtle jabs at the male-dominated society of the time, letting the readers know that women had skill sets men didn't have in this arena and how they didn't get credit when they did succeed.  Apparently Ms. Warne was instrumental in stopping an assassination attempt on then President-Elect Lincoln but history (as it often does) allowed her contributions to fade away.  Like many nonfiction picture books the various plotlines are boiled down a good deal which can create difficulties in having a clean narrative and the inclusion of occasional vocabulary which is not likely to be in the readers' reach.  The assumption is that a librarian (or parent) reading this to a child would put the story in context.  The artwork is somewhat flat, making it difficult to distinguish one character from another, but has bright colors and mimics collage.  An end note provides more details (although some, like her age, are in dispute) and leaves me intrigued to find out more about this woman.  While not a remarkable work it is another important story of the forgotten contributions to our history of the silent majority.

"Scythe" by Neal Shusterman

Like all Shusterman novels this is engaging, unique and accessible.  I flew through the 435 pages in less than a week, a new record for me.  Neal Shusterman begins this series by envisioning a near future where death has been eliminated for humankind.  To keep the population to bearable numbers society tolerates and has codified "Scythes" who randomly select people for permanent death.  The novel has everything from action to romance but most importantly it has really good philosophical underpinnings challenging the reader which are in no way high-falutin' or moralistic.  Mr. Shusterman does a terrific job at simply putting forth the ideas and letting you decide.  What happens to humanity when we no longer fear death?  There is "ultimate power ultimately corrupts" of course but many of the ideas are far more subtle than that.  I really loved this story, as I do with all of Shusterman's writing, which I find fresh and different.  It is nice to see him consistently producing strong books.  So many futuristic books focus on the tech, which can push non-Scifi readers away.  Shusterman gets it right by keeping the focus on the people, and how their world changes who they are (or doesn't).  Bravo.  Worthy of the Printz Honor and other praises heaped upon it.

"The Porcupine of Truth" by Bill Konigsberg

The third of my Books for the Beast books, I haven't hit a clunker yet.  This engaging, heart-wringing book was pure delight.  It was like an Ice Cream Sundae with all the good stuff and some of the bad.  Carson, a loner teen boy, is hauled out to Montana by his psychologist Mom for the summer to be with his dying, alcoholic, estranged Dad.  It is a trip full of emotional minefields.  But that's just the beginning.  Carson meets Aisha, one of those soul-mates who feel like your best friend the first time you talk, and two journeys begin -- one internal and one external.  They weave together beautifully.  The prose is not flowery but it is strong and draws you in.  To say that the characters are multi-dimensional is an understatement.  It is a spiritual tale and the people Carson and Aisha interact with are steps in his journey to understand God.  Powerful and with a turn or two, this one had me sniffling at the end.  It can be faulted for a rosier outcome than one might get -- only because my own family, which had some parallels, didn't end so well -- but the "realness" of the people and the messages just rang so true that they bore their way into my heart.  Bravo, Mr. Konigsberg, for writing a simple story with tremendously complex undertones.  It is the kind of book you can read over and over again.

"Lucy and Linh" by Alice Pung

What saves this coming-of-age novel from being one big whine is an incredible level of literary merit.  It's not flowery or "high lit" but there is a tremendous richness to the prose, a kind of going deeper with every paragraph.  Part of this is the vocabulary which is not only full of colloquial Australian speak but has enough $1 words to fill a piggy bank.  It is a story told in first person, with letters interspersed.  The main character, Lucy, is trying to make sense of her surroundings and the letters become a tool for her introspection in terms of figuring out a world she does not feel she fits into.  A poor Vietnamese/Australian girl, she gets accepted to a prestigious private school and finds herself awash in a setting where none of the rules make sense.  A good student with a creative mind, she finds herself in constant observation, attempting to understand a society completely different from the one she lives in.  Ms. Pung gets snaps for dealing with bullying in a somewhat new way.  Lucy is pulled along and has to work to extricate herself from being one of the followers who allows things to happen.  It isn't easy as some of the adults around her aren't into making waves.  Lucy's voice is strong without being strident and she comes off real, with all of the blemishes typical in a teen girl.  What comes through is a young woman balanced between many sword-points, determined to succeed.  Lucy does feel somewhat older than the (presumably) 9th grader in the book but since the entire thing is told in past tense the reader can assume this is a way of looking back at what she learned.  One twist near the end will have many readers stunned but fit well with the overall theme and tone.  A solid read for my second "Books for the Beast" book.  I look forward to the next eight ...