With popular culture grabbing my daughter's attention so powerfully, it was nice to have some high brow material that could compete with the Disney genre. My favorite part was when my girl asked, "Why doesn't God just stretch his finger a little more like this [stretched her finger] to touch Adam?" The whole book is a single bed time reading for a parent to a child. It reads a bit like a cliff hanger with the reader along for the ride through Michaelangelo's challenges and accomplishments.

This book is for a very particular reader and I am DEFINITELY that reader. I am living in Japan and raising my daughter to be bilingual in Japanese and English. This book provided me with so many answers to questions I didn't even know to ask. It gives detailed research results on American/Japanese families living in Japan regarding their children's language acquisition. See the book for details, but did you know that most children growing up in this situation do not become active bilinguals? I was shocked! It takes an active role on the parents to teach the minority language, which in Japan would be English. If you plan on raising your kids in Japan this is VALUABLE information! I give it an unreserved five stars and wish I had found it two years ago when it first came out.

First impression--this guy loves life and can't wait to squeeze the juice out of every thought in each of the many books that he consumes. This book lacks focus and seems to cover a wide range of subjects all loosely under the umbrella of "reading education." I thought it was ironic that his editor told him to add more on the history of educational reform�@mostly in the 20th century, because I would have thought the editor's job would have been to focus--not add more. It's like Kline is a renaissance man who can speak on any subject and relate a reading issue to any other subject in human culture. That said, I got a lot of good ideas from this book. I loved his chapter on the hunt for who authored Shakespeare's works. I even dreamed about who Shakespeare was the night after I read it. But my favorite part was his "phoneme" (different from phonics) system of learning to read. Wow! That gave me clarity on what is truly important in teaching early reading. I wish this book had come with his entire reading program!

I don't understand why it's so difficult to get a copy of this book because I thought it was terrific and relevant for any non-Japanese interested in the Japanese elementary school experience. It was full of pithy, real-life accounts of the ups and downs of an Australian boy and his mother in the fifth and sixth grade in a public school in Tokyo. I couldn't give it five stars because it seemed like a lot of the details were recalled long after they had occurred and so I occasionally wanted more details. A daily diary would have been more reliable. However, the mother had a lot of different schools to compare this one to because they had traveled to several countries together and also been in a private international school in Japan. I felt her insights had true global perspective for comparing and contrasting the Japanese public school.

I didn't get what I wanted out of this book because I am not the intended audience--My daughter is only four years old and is ahead of the curve in every subject I test her on. Dr. Levine writes for an audience whose children are mostly in high school even though he will review their histories all the way back to pre-school in many of his case histories. That being said, I found this book rich with real-life case studies of children with learning difficulties. He has examples from the boys and girls that he has personally worked with to illustrate several points that he makes. I find those specific case studies to be the best part of his book. They support some of his theories and assertions. His arguments become weaker when he refers to other people's research--like when he said that research has shown that high school children can learn a second language better than pre-school children and therefore he recommends that children with verbal deficiencies should postpone studying a second language until the 11th grade. This skirts over the differences between pre-school language learning vs. high school language learning and ignores that there is a different kind of language learning going on at age 4 and at age 16. At age four you can't memorize as much information or learn as quickly as can a 16 year old, but the four year old can easily learn native syntax and pronunciation which the 16 year old may never learn. Anyway, this book offers a lot to parents and teachers of high school children who have learning difficulties but perhaps is less relevant for those outside of that audience.

My four-year-old daughter loves the Powerpuff Girls but so far it has just been for entertainment purposes. I assumed this would just teach hand-eye coordination but I was wrong. This has plenty of action and hand-eye coordination fun, and then it also teaches north, south, east, west with map navigation and several other academic chunks as well. She is not yet finished playing it after about three hours so far and she is learning new material. It really teaches her--leaving me time to read a book without too many interruptions.

I review this trying to ignore that it is partisan. I found the personal stories about raising a daughter did not get overly emotional but were still endearing. Most of the book wrote intelligently and cursorily over a variety of issues such as child care, early education programs, and the modern family condition. This book did not try to teach me anything new, but rather synthesize many things I already knew. That made it light reading. I'm not sure who the audience would be if I ignore the partisan aspects. Perhaps by ignoring the politics I have just removed the purpose of this book?

I believe this is only work by both Chris Farley and David Spade that is worth owning. If Chris Farley had lived longer, perhaps they would have been able to do more, but David Spade requires the chemistry he lost with Farley--he's not able to do it alone. Also, "Black Sheep" is a bit of a dud. Anyway, what a crack up! If you like immature humor you will love this film! They were running on eight cylinders when they motored through this production.

I currently live in Japan and know many JETs. I'm not too sure who the audience for this book is. If you want to know the current and future state of the JET program, you are not the audience. If you were in the JET program in 1988 or 1989 this would probably be good nostalgic material for you to reminisce over and laugh about. I don't question its accuracy and much of it is interesting to read (kind of like gossip because it focuses on mostly negative and sensational aspects of JET participants' experiences in Japan), but for most people I think it is just a reference book for when you need to know what happened back in the late 80s. If you are a prospective JET, I recommend that you talk to former JETs who were recently in Japan.

There are so many reasons to give this book five stars and no reasons that I can think of to give it fewer than four stars. Let me list my reasons for giving it five stars in order of importance with number one being most important:
1. Her ideas are original. Harris�f argument contradicts much of the current dogma.
2. Her perspective is both deep and wide. Actually I am not qualified to assess how deep is her knowledge of the various fields of psychology, but after reading this book that provided so many examples to prove her points, I was convinced of much that she argued. I think everyone will recognize the unusual breadth of her perspective as she incorporates so many different fields into this �gfull picture�h view.
3. Harris�f writing is well crafted. She has no wasted space where the reader is waiting for her to make her point as are books that are light in content.
4. She is funny and witty without being caustic. Harris provides numerous humorous scenarios to illustrate her points.
5. She provides practical, detailed advice to parents that is much needed in our society.
I disagree with a few of her points like the degree of long-term influence some parents have on their children, but I don�ft think a prerequisite of a great book is to be 100% correct. This is a brilliant read.