Junior Books

This is required text for my teaching degree this year. It's an excellent book, which covers all curriculum areas in mathematics. It explains how children learn and understand, covers the stages of children's learning, provides practical activities to do, assists in finding relationships/connections to past learning and includes lesson planning and assessment. It is very comprehensive yet written in a way which makes it easy for anyone to read and understand. I highly recommend it for parents and teachers alike.

Great book. My entire staff is reading this book and beginning to implement some of the lessons from the book. The first chapter alone should be read by every person teaching Mathematics. It really helps teachers think about why we teach the way we do, how kids develop an understanding of Math and why we have to do things differently.

I like this book, I own both K-2 & 3-5. There's alot of overlap so I recommend which ever age group you would use it with more.

A professor recommended Van de Walle's books to me so I bought this one. This book explains how to teach math so that students build on existing knowledge, rather than learn sets of algorithms without understanding their meaning. It offers a range of specific lessons for all math topics for grades 5 - 8, it explains how to teach the same topics to diverse learners, how to teach to the standards. It comes with amazing templates that are downloadable. It shows you how to take advantage of your existing math textbook, supplementing it to make it more student-focused.

Very worthwhile purchase for anyone who teaches math to intermediate students. The suggested activities are not found in any other math books I have seen and should help create math learners who are not "formula" driven.

I really like this book as a source for conceptual Math activities. I recommend purchasing only 1 either K-2, 3-5, depending on which you think you would use more. They overlap alot.

I am so glad I bought this book. I have been teaching for over 10 years, but I always felt something was missing from my math lessons. This book fills in the gaps.

It explains how kids learn math and the connections that need to be made from one concept to the next. It also has assessments to help determine each student's level of understanding and how they are solving problems.

I can't wait to start trying these activities in the fall. A must-have book for all K-3 teachers!

This book provides a great foundation for math skills grades K-3. I consult this resource for nearly every math lesson I teach. This book supplements what other textbooks take for granted or leave out. I highly recommend this book!

This book is an excellent resource for those teaching mathematics to students in the primary grades. The authors provide rationale for concepts taught, games to be played, and templates of materials needed. There is also a website to get additional resources from. My students have enjoyed the games and I have enjoyed using it.

Easy to read and understand. Complete math center ideas and teaching strategies. Great easy ideas for differentiation.

Need this book for a class and I got it on time! Thank you!

I received within a week. I was very happy with the service. Thank you

I already had an earlier addition of this book that I borrowed from a friend because I needed it for one of my graduate classes. Since books are soooo expensive we share whenever we can, but I really found this book to be useful so I bought my own copy. I highly recommend it for K-5 teachers...even upper grade teachers could benefit from it. It's full of ideas for writing in every genre. An excellent resource.

Certainly a good buy. This book is practical and inspirational. How education has advanced since the days I was in elementary school!

This book is an excellent resource for teachers. It is full of great ideas and of lessons for writing. It is also very helpful to those teachers who are reluctant to have their students write daily. The feature that I like best is that the author includes great trade book lists to assist the teacher in modeling good writing.

I love that all of the recipes are triple tested! My favorite recipes are the sugar cookies and the poppyseed chicken. This cookbook is a must!

This is an excellent cookbook that I've used as a gift for business associates and customers. The book is "coffee table" quality that contains not only great regional recipes, but stories and pictures that even a disinterested husband will pick up and read. We have also given this cookbook to friends and family which reminds them of us.

What a great cookbook! The recipes are easy and delicious and range from a quick meal for the kiddos to a gourmet meal for guests. The photos are beautiful and capture the section themes perfectly. And, it is actually fun to read...with great information on the history and traditions of Annapolis. I have tried a new recipe each week since I bought it, and I have never been disappointed.

Junior League cookbooks are invariably good, and this is no exception. Chock-full of wonderful recipes, and none too complicated. I get overwhelmed when I look at a recipe with a long ingredient list and time consuming instructions, so this one is just my speed.

This Junior League cookbook is wonderful! I love that recipes are from real people like myself and not someone with years of culinary training. The book looks great on a coffee table or on the kitchen counter.

My daughter loves this book, and we are on our 3rd copy because she has worn it out taking it on trips, in the car, etc. Her favorite part is the international dolls section, where she enjoys looking at national costumes from around the world. The layout and photos are very well-done, and it brings me back to my childhood as well!

This beautiful book is a must-have for any girl who loves Barbies. It is a children's book and is a visual delight...not a dry guide for adult collectors. The pictures are crisp and labeled, as the other DK books are; "corduroy hat" and "red patent leather pumps," etc. A huge hit with my 9-year old niece.

I love this book. This is the neatest book in the world. It has almost every Barbie I have in there. My favorite Barbie was the Olympic P.J. I use it to help me surf on Ebay. If you like Barbies, get this book now!

This book is really nice, the pictures are gorgeous, and it has some index on Barbie dolls by year, also Barbie's friends. Not so much on collectible dolls, but there are some dolls with gorgeous pics, some are different from the publish pics and a few are the same. Nice information for dolls and furniture. Great book! The cover is stunning!!!!

My kids like it. It's got excellent layout, clear crisp pics, but isn't comprehensive. Great to look through, and point to - look, I had that one when I was a kid..... (YOU were a KID?) I don't use it with my collection, but I am glad I bought it - it makes a pleasent just for fun.

Book is great for child lovers. Service at amazon is great as well..fast and easy.

If you enjoy being around children and hearing how they talk and think, you will enjoy this book. As a classroom teacher I found it to be a refreshing contrast to our current climate in education of high stakes testing and our push to turn children into mini-achievers at a very early age. I have bought several copies of this book to share with colleagues, friends and family.

This is a funny, thoughtful collection of young children's conversations compiled over the course of a year. The teacher's observations and reflections helped me rethink the conversations I hear in my own classroom.

If you are willing to learn from children, I recommend this fascinating book. Paley's taped conversations and stories from her Kindergarten classes reveal the engaged young minds at work; their creativity and inventiveness is genuine and persistent; experience is never so important as imagination.

The narratives that the children invent reveal how their minds work, how they search for meaning, and how the best explanations need not be the most rational.

I recommend this book for anyone who has children or who works with children. Also, I recommend it for anyone who is intrigued about why we search for meaning, why we tell stories, why we invent and create. "Out of the mouths of babes...."

This book is a tool for exploring the minds of young children. Rather than analyze the behavior of her kindergarten students, Paley gives us examples of their actual conversations and actions. She tries to gently guide her students to come to their own conclusions about the world and reality, rather than present her own ideas as the truth. That is why this book paints such a realistic and vivid picture of how a child's mind works. Through her stories, Paley shows us how and why children have a different concept of reality than adults. To a child, something is realistic if he can picture it in his head. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that a mouse could be stronger than a man, or that Wally (Paley's most imaginative and unruly student) could grow up to be a mother lion. This book is a great resource for anyone who works with children, writes children's books, or has young children. It will give you a whole new perspective on children's thoughts and behavior.

Herndon brings us along through the mystification of his first year as a public school teacher. In the end, he is fired for, well, for teaching. This series of stories -- told matter of factly and leaving much up to the interpretation of the reader -- still rings true, as he captures the inherent paradoxes teachers and students face every day.

White Jim Herndon saw his "impossible" junior high ghetto Blacks as human beings. By the end of the year, they'd learned both to read and write better and much more - even to love a "Honky."

Junior High's a crazy place. James Herndon made me see that craziness clearly, since he tells it like it is. The conflict he dramatizes- between the kids' interests and possibilities for learning on the one hand and the administrators' desire for order-- is real today, too. Today's administrators call it "data-based decisionmaking" and "scientifically-measured results" but it still just means order-- a number next to every kid's name (now, they call it "progress towards standards" instead of IQ, and make a colorful bar graph out of it) that tells you who's better than who.
The world will be a better place if you do what Herndon did, but you'll get fired just as fast now as then.
This book makes clear that you don't need anyone to believe literally in racism in order to perpetuate a racist society.
All you need is to make conformity to white culture the sole entryway to all achievement, respect, income, and education, and then punish all those who fail to conform by putting them in the basement.
All you need is to establish the teacher's role as a manager of papers and people rather than as an educator.
All you need is to believe that we are test-takers first and human beings last.
All you need to is to put 1,500 youngsters in one brick building and expect all of them to toe the line.

Herndon wrote in a moment when America thought that its institutions could be healed, that its oppressions could be undone. Now, everyone thinks that the institutions would be fine, except that Somebody (terrorists, Republicans, homosexuals, rich people, poor people) has sat in a closed room somewhere and figured out how to sabotage them. HErndon reminds us that we have done it to ourselves.

The author writes of his first year teaching, which happens to be in a 98% black urban junior high school. I found this book captivating and could not put it down. It is a quick and easy read although its' contents will keep you thinking for a long time.

The author begins with his first day of school and takes us through the end of the school year at which time he is fired for being incompetent in the eyes of the administrators and other teachers. Chapters are written almost as short essays on a single topic, moving through the school year. Herndon introduces us to his 7th and 8th grade students with humor and sincerity. Many of these children, to my horror and amazement, can't even read their own names let alone anything else. Herndon discusses what school policies are and how other teachers "control" the class by restricting their movement and even in one case, not allowing the children to utter one word to the teacher during class. Absurdities in school policy and administration come through to me very clearly as I read these stories. The style of writing is one of storytelling rather than a book discussing why school reform is needed, but you will clearly come to your own realizations of what the problems are by simply reading these stories.

Half way through the school year, Herndon decides to do whatever it takes to get these children to learn. In some cases he comes up with innovative teaching methods and in other cases he allows the students to find their own way of doing things, and guess, what? Learning happens! Success! Well, the success is in the eyes of the students and in the eyes of this schoolteacher (not in the eyes of the administration). There is mutual respect between students and teacher but the other teachers and administrators think Herndon is an incompetent and that his students are out of control, so they fire him.

I figured out the year was 1959, but this could just as well take place today. Herndon's epilogue, written six years after this year of teaching, is brilliant. This is a short book and an easy read. As you read it your mind will be reeling with emotions and ideas about public/government schooling and who are they really serving?

James Herndon was a great American writer. He had freewheeling wit and intelligence, an urban beat, poignant, ironic humor, well-sketched and righteous anger and most importantly, a sense of seeking, a desire for the truth in his life. The reader becomes complicitous in the same search and thus "The Way It's Spozed to Be" is one of those rare and magnificent books in any subject area that transcends a reading experience and takes on the impact of real time.

Yes, the book is about a troubled inner city school, yes the author is a first-year teacher who bucks the system, yes he was naive and idealistic, and yes there were and are many books and movies that share these premises, but what sets this book apart is the author's simple humanity and honesty. He knows he will not solve everything. In the epilogue, when he is long elsewhere, he muses sadly that conditions at his first teaching job probably haven't changed.

Also, Mr. Herndon knows that even if he succeeds in getting the kids to sit still long enough to do their expected work, to act the way students are "spozed to act" and conducts classes the way they are "spozed to be conducted," what the students are learning is not a love of learning itself, but rather a perverted desire to be the "way you're spozed to be."

A telling incident: Mr. Herndon sees an art project done by a class of students, mostly if not all African American. Yet the people in the poster are Caucasion. Mr. Herndon asks the art teacher why that is and is told that most of the pictures the students see are people with Caucasions. Even their imagery is the "way it's spozed to be."

This is mild compared to the racism that exists within the student body, based on various shades of skin complexion and the students' features. Add in the merciless teasing doled out to anyone who couldn't read, in some classes, all but a few students, and you have a hotbed of dysfunctional and hyper-critical relationships where learning is nearly impossible.

The author doesn't pretend to understand or solve large-scale economic issues, although he comments objectively that many kids don't have enough money to eat proper lunches but most are willing to buy "tennis," the slang for sneakers. He also doesn't pretend to understand social or familial circumstances, in fact, families are rarely discussed and we see the students in the stark flourescent light seen by Mr. Herndon. He doesn't offer sweeping solutions.

Instead, he walks this dismal territory as a brilliantly perceptive and caring guide, bringing us close to the academically deprived conditions that we know exist, and more than puts a human face on it. He illuminates the psychology of children, concisely and with searing truth. This writer broke down many times, both in the first reading and in many successive ones. He feels the frustration of the children and shares their delights.

At one point the students start a tradition called "slambooks," notebooks in which they essentially write down the often insulting comments about other students and teachers that are anyay expressed verbally. Other teachers confiscate the slambooks, but Mr. Herndon seizes on it as the first sign of hope that the students might begin to understand why we should attempt to articulate concepts on paper.

Another aspect of this book that separates it from many in its genre is that, although Mr. Herndon agrees to accept the students' traditions, he doesn't pretend to take part in them himself in order to become accepted. He still sees the slambooks as insulting and shallow attempts at written expression, but attempts nonetheless.

The essential message of the book is that Mr. Herndon refused to allow status quo, which at the time was sadly this: teachers pass out worksheets, students did not complete them, students pass them in, teachers fail or pass students. Instead, he dared students to find something that no teacher had ever offered them: a reason to actually want to learn.

This was not the "way it's spozed to be," and Mr. Herndon is punished for that.

This book is never heavy, never dull. Some of the short chapters, only a page at times, could serve as small portraits of the "underclass" of America, and on a deeper level, the awful ache everyone has at times that things could be a whole lot better if we only knew what was needed and how to get it.

-Robert Murray Diefendorf, Author of "Release the Butterfly"

My boys (3 & 4) love this book. It has a nice tie-in to having ALL family members do chores

This book cracks me up! I love it! Very creative, and unlike any book I have read. You can somewhat relate it to getting a dog. My kids think it is so funny.

I love this book. I picked it to read for storytime at my bookstore, and it went over well. I loved reading it. It had a lot of voice, and for dino obsessed kids, its great because it names a bunch of the different species names and the boy narrates the book, so it is relatable. :) Very fun for boys and girls!

We now own three copies of this book. We bought this for our son for his fourth birthday. On the same day, he received it from his great Aunt, based on the recommendation of an independent book seller in North Carolina. He then received another copy from his Grandfather in New York. It is a delightful book, which must be why booksellers keep recommending it to relatives. The illustrations are fun and the text keeps my little guy engaged. The story is a wonderful fantasy for him and we both love how the Mom creatively solves the "problem" of having dinos at home. We have now given one of our extra copies as a gift and will donate the other to my son's pre-school. My 7 year old daughter loves reading this book to her little brother, so I'd recommend it for both boys and girls in various age groups. Whoever you're buying for, buy this book! It's a great one to add to your collection.

Very cute concept: instead of the usual little giveaways at stores (cookie, lollipop, etc) on this day, everyone is giving away dinosaurs! The kids are really excited about this, the moms not so much (until the end...). The pictures are great - the dinosaurs look realistic, but friendly. Both my kids (boy, 4 and girl, 6) love this book... and so do I!

My two year old son absolutely loves these books. I must admit that I was hesitant about then at first, being a Garth Williams purist and all, but they are well adapted and illustrated. I think that he mostly enjoys the illustrations at his age. Children of any age will enjoy them.

Winter Days in the Big Woods, an adaptation from the Little House on the Prarie classic series, will delight children and peak their interest in Pioneering life. The illustrations capture the attention and imagination of young children, whetting their appetite for more.

In this adaptation, kids get a glimpse into daily life of a close-knit family during Amrerica's pioneering days. Kids will learn about churning butter, baking bread and doing the general daily tasks to run a household and prepare for winter.

For anyone who has loved the original Laura Ingalls Wilder books, or even the television series years ago, this is a perfect introduction to the very young. My children have enjoyed these books for years and have now moved on to the books Wilder herself wrote. Put together, they've created fond, wholesome childhood memories for my children.

This was my daughter's favorite book from the time she was about 3-8 years old. I bought it as a introduction to the original Little House books and continued to collect the entire set of these "First Books". Bright, cheery with excellent artwork showing strong family relationships.

"Winter Days" is one of my favorite books in the "My First Little House Books" series, and one of my favorite books about autumn. The Ingalls family prepares for winter with time for the harvest and food storage. Mary and Laura participate in daily chores and entertain themselves with their rag dolls, paper dolls,and by using a thimble to draw on the frosted window. Beautiful illustrations bring Laura's log cabin world to life, and are an excellent starting point for discussing how life is different then it used to be, and how some things never change.

This book seemed a bit pricey for a paperback until I saw the sample pages on their web site. If you're interested, I recommend you check it out.(...)

It shows sample pages from this book and the activity sheets that they sell to go with it. Really great illustrations and fun borders. My kids dove right into it, and it made them feel extra smart because even the little one could read it quickly... which he did over and over again.

The activity sheets are a real bargin. There are tons of games, and things to keep kids busy in the summer. This isn't like those give-away booklets at restaurants. These activity pages are really well done (better than anything my 1st grader has brought home from school)! And there are somthing like 45 pages of things for kids to do. I copied the sheets so both of my sons can do the projects.

Both the book and activity pages are well worth the money. I'm really glad I got these for my kids.

Great pen and ink-style drawings that remind me of the books I loved when I was younger - Mulligan's Steam Shovel, Make Way for Ducklings, etc. Writing is for very young children - story is actually a song, but also great for reading out loud. The repetitive verses have been helpful for my five year old who is learning to read - he's been recognizing some of the words as we read.

Only complaint? This book would be great for little hands in a hardcover version, however, as my youngest son already gave the front cover a good rip.

This book is truly a treasure - a gem among the new tradition of children's books that look at all different types of families. I ordered this book based upon the reviews of other parents who bought it for their families, and I was even more thrilled with it then expected!

The book is for very young children, I'd say ages 6 and under, and gives kids a simple explanation and basic understanding of why we have work to do, but that we all have time for fun as well. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous!!!

I found it SO easy to teach my 2.5 and 4 year old the days of the week with this book. There is a little song that goes with it, and the kids love it.

I am a single mother, and I love that this book shows all different kinds of family units, not just 2 parents and 2.5 kids. It shows mothers working, and playing with the kids, as well as fathers and grandparents. In this day and age, it is a delight to see a book address the modern, as well as traditional family. Work-A-Day Week also shows people of different races.

It is beautifully illustrated, and has really cool borders. My kids and I went through naming all the cool pictures related to the different jobs. Great for vocabulary building.

I also recommend the Work-A-Day Week activity sheets. There are about 50 pages of games, paper dolls, projects, mobiles. We just got started on it, but the kids want to do it every day. They even printed these pages in black and white on single sheets, so they are easy to copy and use over and over. They kids can color and cut the copies out, so ... oh, I guess I should write this review for that book.

Buy them both! You won't regret it, if you have kids under the age of 8.

I just wrote a longer review under the matching activity book for Work-A-Day Week, but just wanted to write and say how wonderful this book has been for my children and I. I was a stay-at-home mom for eight years, and returned to work this fall. My three childre, ages 3,5, and 8 were having a tough time with the change... but this book helped to explain to them that all parents, grandparents, and even kids have work that they must do... but that there's also time for fun.

My kids love this book - the 5 year old is already reading parts of it, due in part to the poetic and repetitive nature of the story. The illustrated borders on each page are stunning - my kids like to all look for things hidden in the borders together. My 3 year-old wants to read it every night before bed - and this book is so refreshing that I actually don't mind!

I highly recomment purchasing this book, and the matching activity pages. I purchased an activity set for each of my children!