Grandfather's Journey is a book about a young boy who retells his grandfather's journey coming from Japan to America. The text illustrates all of the obstacles and hardships his grandfather had to overcome while inhabiting a new country. This text can be used in a 3-5th grade classroom during a lesson regarding immigration and migration. This book could lead to an activity where the students get to research their family's origin and where their great great grandparents immigrated from.     

 

Fiction

3-5th Grade

Fountas and Pinnell: Level P

This story is about two fairy foxes told using tangrams. It is an endearing game between a grandfather and his granddaughter which reveals a story of magic, clever animals, and true friendship. I will read this story three times before providing them with tangrams. While reading it the 4th time, I will stop after each animal so the students can creating the animals. The lesson will consist of me ask questions about the shapes and which shapes make a new shapes. 

 

Reading Level: Lexile AD660L

 

Grades: 1-4th

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Bla... I don't even know where to begin on this one. It's is not as simple as finding out that her grandfather was a part of the Nazi party, which would still not be ideal. He was among the most well known and those whose deeds were well publicized.

The book follows Teege's journey as she seeks what this discovery means for her and her life. It may not on the outside seem like finding out something about your grandfather can cause you to question who you are at your core, but I imagine it does. There is a certain amount of 'nature vs nurture' that we all question and finding out that your biological grandfather, regardless of whether or not you've met him, is capable of the things he did could make anyone question what was inside of them.

Along Teege's journey, the book also uses the third person occasionally to show the typical progression through this knowledge as it concerns Germans in general. The children of Nazi's had to love their parents and they had a strange relationship to that era that many of them were born in. The grandchildren of Nazi's are far more likely to distance themselves from those grandparents with the knowledge of what they did or were complacent in allowing. But not all of these grandchildren are raised with the knowledge of who their specific grandparent was within the party, even when they knew there was involvement.

Teege had no idea that her family had ever been associated with the Nazi party. Her mother didn't appear to have problems mixing races, as her father was Nigerian. Her grandmother, who was a witness to many of her grandfather's deeds before he was executed at the end of the war, loved her unconditionally. Then she came across a book with her biological mother's face on it that was titled I Have to Love My Father, Don't I? This was when she began to realize there was a bit more to her history than she or her adopted family had been told when they adopted her.

The thing about this story that stands out in a way that is different from her peers is that Teege's travels had put her in contact with plenty of people who had once been persecuted by her grandfather and his associates. She had been immersed in the other side of the conflict he was in the middle of and had to find a way to reconcile her personal history with her family history. She had to find a way to bring those two worlds together and the result is an interesting kind of healing. It seems like a first step, if nothing else. I'm sure she's not the only person of her generation to want to find a healing, or even to find one, but her story is exceptional because of the way it happens.

The Grandfather Tree: A Tale of Age and Usefulness by Kenneth M Martin
This story is about a man who's worked his whole life and is retired from his job. He gets bored at home and he finds he is useless.
He decides to also get rid of the tree because it's as useless as himself. He realizes on his way to the market many things.
Love the things he's able to share and he finds he does have useful information to those who will listen.
Love gardening and trees and that children keep the tree cutter from cutting the tree-but for how long.
Reminds me so much of my father, a nurseryman among many other jobs he held, thanks for the memories. Other works by the authors who brought this book to publication are highlighted at the end.
Received this review copy by the author and this is my honest review.

In 2016, I had the pleasure of reviewing two of Steven Burgauer’s novels, the World War II set Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou and the story of a Neanderthal family in Night of the Eleventh Sun. Both books were very different in both style and substance. And neither is really comparable to the achievement of The Grandfather Paradox.

For one matter, both of Burgauer’s previous stories were fairly well locked into specific places and times. Not so The Grandfather Paradox. While the book’s subtitle signals a time travel adventure, it takes some time, as it were, for this element of the story to be introduced. In fact, the book is really two books sandwiched together.

The book opens with Andu Nehrengel captaining a spaceship exploring a remote part of the galaxy. Then his crew mutinies and forces him off the ship in a small runabout which crash-lands on an alien planet. There, Andu has to survive attacks by large carnivorous alien bird-beasts before he meets three beautiful female human clones who are also marooned on the planet. Andu learns the clones are the lone survivors of a Mormon ship that had been set out to find a new home for the church. On the clones’ ship, Andu learns much more which leads him and one of the beautiful clones to leap through both space and time to, in part, find the gene that will correct a deadly virus Andu is carrying.

Along the way, readers who like hard science in their science fiction are rewarded with in-depth theoretical discussions that make cloning, time travel, and space exploration understandable and plausible. For some, perhaps the physics lessons might seem to bog down the story. For me, I felt I was being educated while going along with the fantastic and very unpredictable events. After all, the whole thing starts light years from earth before taking us to a steamboat on the Mississippi River where a young Mark Twain becomes a central character. Then Burgauer takes us to the 1862 battle of Shiloh where Andu searches for the ancestor with the untainted genetics he needs.

Part two of the book is very much centered on Henry Morgan’s—the name Andu uses in 1861—friendship with Twain as Burgauer pretty much retells the 19th century author’s early biography, lifting whole passages from Twain’s writings, especially Life on the Mississippi. While the book remains very descriptive and detailed, everything is far different from what came before. But Burgauer weaves everything together in a complex tapestry of actual history along with speculative science fiction.

The book’s title comes from a concept argued as far back as 1931 about any historical inconsistencies that might occur if someone went back in time and killed their own grandparent, ostensibly resulting in the demise of the time traveler. The entire idea of time travel has been debated logically as to what implications might arise from any changes to known chronology, and a good overview of the literature and debates on the “grandparent paradox” can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox

Of course, Burgauer’s take isn’t to kill anyone in the past but rather to get uncorrupted DNA from an ancestor to save one of his descendants. The result is a very engaging, often philosophical epic crammed to the gills with twists and turns that span both centuries and light years. Highly recommended.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 25, 2016 at:
goo.gl/yFgL92

In 2016, I had the pleasure of reviewing two of Steven Burgauer’s novels, the World War II set Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou and the story of a Neanderthal family in Night of the Eleventh Sun. Both books were very different in both style and substance. And neither is really comparable to the achievement of The Grandfather Paradox.

For one matter, both of Burgauer’s previous stories were fairly well locked into specific places and times. Not so The Grandfather Paradox. While the book’s subtitle signals a time travel adventure, it takes some time, as it were, for this element of the story to be introduced. In fact, the book is really two books sandwiched together.

The book opens with Andu Nehrengel captaining a spaceship exploring a remote part of the galaxy. Then his crew mutinies and forces him off the ship in a small runabout which crash-lands on an alien planet. There, Andu has to survive attacks by large carnivorous alien bird-beasts before he meets three beautiful female human clones who are also marooned on the planet. Andu learns the clones are the lone survivors of a Mormon ship that had been set out to find a new home for the church. On the clones’ ship, Andu learns much more which leads him and one of the beautiful clones to leap through both space and time to, in part, find the gene that will correct a deadly virus Andu is carrying.

Along the way, readers who like hard science in their science fiction are rewarded with in-depth theoretical discussions that make cloning, time travel, and space exploration understandable and plausible. For some, perhaps the physics lessons might seem to bog down the story. For me, I felt I was being educated while going along with the fantastic and very unpredictable events. After all, the whole thing starts light years from earth before taking us to a steamboat on the Mississippi River where a young Mark Twain becomes a central character. Then Burgauer takes us to the 1862 battle of Shiloh where Andu searches for the ancestor with the untainted genetics he needs.

Part two of the book is very much centered on Henry Morgan’s—the name Andu uses in 1861—friendship with Twain as Burgauer pretty much retells the 19th century author’s early biography, lifting whole passages from Twain’s writings, especially Life on the Mississippi. While the book remains very descriptive and detailed, everything is far different from what came before. But Burgauer weaves everything together in a complex tapestry of actual history along with speculative science fiction.

The book’s title comes from a concept argued as far back as 1931 about any historical inconsistencies that might occur if someone went back in time and killed their own grandparent, ostensibly resulting in the demise of the time traveler. The entire idea of time travel has been debated logically as to what implications might arise from any changes to known chronology, and a good overview of the literature and debates on the “grandparent paradox” can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox

Of course, Burgauer’s take isn’t to kill anyone in the past but rather to get uncorrupted DNA from an ancestor to save one of his descendants. The result is a very engaging, often philosophical epic crammed to the gills with twists and turns that span both centuries and light years. Highly recommended.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 25, 2016 at:
goo.gl/yFgL92