JR’s List Item #27 – (May report) Read at least one book a month until my 60th birthday.

May reading selection:

Wow!  Wow!  Wow!  Nooooooooooo!  Oh, no!  This can't be the end of the Camel Club books.  I have just finished reading Stone Cold by David Baldacci.  It's another fantastic book.  Read it! 

P.S. - After finishing Stone Cold, I immediately went to Audible.com.  I had to find out for sure that there was another Camel Club book.  Thank goodness, there was  It's Divine Justice, which will be included in my May audio selections.

JR’s List Item #28 – (April report) Listen to at least three audio books a month until my 60th birthday.

April audio selections

• The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown:  This has been my favorite of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon books.  My father was a Mason which may be why I really enjoyed the book.  Maybe it is the setting of Washington, D.C. that made the story more enjoyable.  Not matter the reason it was a very good listen.
• The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva:  Being a fan of Daniel Silva's series featuring the character, Gabriel Alon, I searched Audible.com (been a member for years) for any in the series I had missed.  I discovered this one, his first in the series.  It is a shorter book than his others, but it did a good job is setting up the characters and the back story for the rest of the books.  The narrator for these books has not always been the same person.  This particular narrator was not my favorite.
• Nora, Nora by Anne Rivers Siddon:  I have long been a Siddon fan.  Nora, Nora is a coming of age story et sin the Lytton, Georgia during the Civil Rights movement.  It is the story of a girl who finds the truth about her family and then finds her true self.  This was charming book.

JR’s List Item #27 – (April report) Read at least one book a month until my 60th birthday.

After seeing a commercial featuring the Harlem Children's Zone, I happened to see a copy of Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough in the classroom of a teacher with whom I was working.   The book turned out to be  about Geoffrey Canada and his work with the HCZ.  I took it as a sign.  During the teacher's conference period, I asked him about the book.  He seemed excited about the information in the book; sufficiently so, that I bought a copy making it my book choice for April.  The book chronicles the five-year journey of Geoffrey Canada and his efforts to create a "cradle to high school graduation" program for the children of Harlem. 

What excited me about the book was that the major research that Tough cited was the same major research that Robert Marzano cited in Building Background Knowledge.  The basic findings were that vocabulary development, parent-child interactions, positive parental support, reading, and life experiences were all shown to make the difference in the levels of school readiness and performance of children of middle-class families versus children of low income families.  This and other related research named in the book seemed to be the foundation of the principles of the Harlem Children's Zone with the ultimate goal being to change the culture of Harlem itself.

Whatever It Takes is an informative, engaging read.  The positive results of Canada's programs provided in the book are encouraging.  There very well may be lessons that the HCZ has learned from which all schools and school districts could benefit.  It's worth the read.