BOB Books

I've always wanted to own a set of BOB Books. They're reputed to be among the best for children learning to read, so I sat down with my own little guinea pig today (my 5-year old daughter) and read her as many as she'd permit.

I'd finish and book and she'd say, "That was short!" And she resisted my attempts to get her to sound out the words, but hey, we can't all be Reading Superstars, I guess. But here are some cool features of these books:

* A few letters are added in each sequentially ordered book, with only five sight words introduced in the whole set (12 books per set);
* As the books progress, all letters of the alphabet (except Q) are introduced with consistent sounds throughout.

I love these books! And my daughter did, too, though she wanted to go outside and play (read: bug her brothers) rather than read. I know that we'll be reading them frequently over the next year as my daughter (who missed the kindergarten cut-off by a day!) learns to read.

You can purchase these books on Amazon. There are several sets: Set 1 Beginning Readers, Set 2 Advancing Beginners, Set 3 Word Families, Set 4 Compound Words and Set 5 Long Vowels.

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I was compensated for this review with an Amazon gift card, but the opinion expressed is entirely my own.

Book Review: The Splendor of Silence

This book, The Splendor of Silence, is the third novel by Indu Sundaresan. (You can find an interview with her by clicking here.) Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about it:

Sundaresan (A Feast of Roses) returns to her native India for a sprawling story of forbidden love set against the backdrop of WWII and the struggle for Indian independence. U.S. Army Capt. Sam Hawthorne comes to the small kingdom of Rudrakot in the Sukh desert of western India, ostensibly to recover from an injury suffered during a rescue mission behind Japanese lines in Burma. Sam has secrets, however. He's a spy, a member of the fledgling OSS, and he's looking for his brother Mike, who disappeared while serving in a local regiment, the Rudrakot Rifles, where "even his name was false." Complicating matters, Sam has a brief but torrid affair with Mila, the daughter of the kingdom's Indian political agent, who is betrothed to the local prince. As Sam plots to free his brother from a nearby detention center, Mila's brother Ashok becomes involved in a nationalist plot to bomb the car of the local British representative in Rudrakot. The myriad subplots and some overwriting detract, but Sundaresan renders Rudrakot vividly and the sympathetic (if doomed) characters generate enough friction to keep the pot boiling. (Sept.)

And so I started this book with high hopes and interest. I'm not an avid fan of historical fiction in particular, but I do love good writing.

About three chapters in, I realized I was really laboring to read this book. I struggled to stay awake. I looked ahead to see how much longer the chapter lasted. I wanted to love this book, but Sundaresan's fiction was sometimes convoluted, forcing the reader to stop and say to herself, "What? What does that mean? What is she talking about?"

I hate to say this, wondering if Sundaresan (who is practically my neighbor, living in Seattle) will read this and feel the sting of a negative review . . . and it's not that I hated the novel, just that it might have benefited from additional editing. I love the idea of this novel--exploring the history of your parents' relationship--but I haven't yet finished it because reading it was such a chore. (I'm about halfway through and I read the last chapter.)

Now, I have to point out that most recently, I read Elie Weisel's Night and before that, Mark Helprin's amazing A Soldier of the Great War. In light of these excellent books, most any novel would pale in comparison.