Review: Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals

Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals by William Ratigan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was an absolute favorite for our 2nd and 3rd graders in Marianne McWhirter's class in Dimondale, Michigan. We used to sing the song Christmas Tree Ship in class all the time, and because each of the episodes presented in the book is so short, it was very readable even by our young children. A lot of the time, that's the secret with difficult text. If it's short enough, kids will figure it out. It's a great book for challenging the idea of levels based on text alone (vocabulary, grammar), and not considering motivation and engagement in the formula.



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Review: Fakes And Forgeries

Fakes And Forgeries by John Townsend

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I laughed out loud when Lu brought me this "True Crime" for kids series book. There are ten in the series. I think it's interesting that true crime is a clear genre in literature generally (and in tv and film), but that it is just a 'topic' in children's literature.

I rated it a 3 mostly because it was so fun to see this topic represented. But one of the key elements of fake and forgery stories is how the people get caught, or why they did it. There was none of the tension and interest that is generated by these key elements of the story. It was more or less an overview of kinds of fakes and brief introductions to some of the more interesting people. It should maybe be a 2 because of these problems, but the series kind of stands alone so it deserves a little more credit!



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