DWD's Reviews

A history teacher's perspective Published in 2003 by Scholastic. Winner of the 2003 Newberry Medal You may wonder what a high school world history teacher is doing reading a book by Avi. Well, here's the deal - I am searching for high quality historical fiction in a variety of reading levels for a future project for my class. Avi's Crispin: The Cross of Lead fits the bill perfectly for my students with lower level reading skills. Set in Medieval England, Avi creates an interesting story and accurately depicts the toil of a peasant's life, pointing out some of the more interesting aspects of that time in history, including the plague, the power of the church, the massive amount of illiteracy, the filth, and more. What I like about it is that Avi writes a simple book without talking down to his readers. This book fits my classroom's need wonderfully. For all of you teachers out there I strongly recommend it. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It ca...

A lesson in how political schools can be and how things can spin out of control. Originally published in 1991. Normally, I do not read Young Adult (YA) literature, but as a teacher I do delve into it from time to time just to see what's out there. In this case, I picked out this book for purely personal reasons. Nothing But the Truth is all about a misunderstanding and mindless application of a zero tolerance rule in school. The premise is we have a popular, respected and excellent English teacher (Miss Narwin) and a bright student (Phillip Malloy) who does not really apply himself too much. Malloy has been re-assigned to Narwin's homeroom. His previous homeroom had been rather loosely run, but Miss Narwin expects the rules to be followed and the school's written rule is absolute silence during the playing of the National Anthem. Malloy hums loudly during the Anthem (which causes and is directed to stop - something he was allowed to do in his other homeroom. He doe...