
As you can see, Bella and Pongo have very different feelings about the concept of "personal space"!
As you can see, Bella and Pongo have very different feelings about the concept of "personal space"!
Eliopulous, Andrew. Will on the Inside
June 6, 2023 by Quill Tree Books
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Will loves playing soccer, and enjoys the kids on his Oakwood, Georgia school team, like his friend Henry. Lately, however, he's been flat-on-his-face exhausted after game, and his stomach is always upset. His parents take him for a colonoscopy, and the doctor strongly suspects Crohn's Disease. He puts Will on corticosteroids and advises changes in his diet, but also says it's a good idea for Will to stop playing soccer altogether. He's not happy about the idea, but his stomach upsets involve protracted bathroom visits that are hard to manage when he is on the field. He is also attending a Weekend Warriors confirmation type class at his Baptist church, which is run by Mr. Dyson. Several of his classmates go there, and start asking questions. Classmate Griffin has asked Will's friend Henry to the school dance, and while Henry was thinking of asking Julie, he agrees to go at first. While Griffin is usually accepted, there was one soccer player and student, Francis, who wore rainbow socks and had come out as gay, but ended up transferring to a private school after being bullied. Will thinks that Griffin is really fun, and wants to be friends with him. The two bond over the Mirror Realms video game, and start hanging out together. Is it a crush? Will's not sure, but when people in the Weekend Warriors class start asking Mr. Dyson questions about their churches stance on gay people, Will starts to wonder if he is suffering from Crohn's because God is unhappy with Will's feelings. Is even hanging around with someone ewho is a "wrong thinker" going against his religion? He doesn't have a lot of time to dwell on these thought, since getting his disease under control. The steroids are making him break out, causing his face to be red, and giving him mood swings. Middle school is hard enough. How will Will deal with these additional changes?
Strengths: Will is an engaging character who is dealing with a lot. So many of my students are heavily invested in sports, so to see that taken away from a character creates immediate empathy. I love that his teammates still want him to ride on the bus, wear his jersey, etc., but my heart broke for Will when his disease wouldn't even let him do that. The confirmation class was well depicted, and Mr. Dyson carefully walks the line between adhering to the letter of the law in religion and adhering to the spirit of its tenets of kindess and compassion. Will's thoughts about religion are also in line with how middle school students think. Will's feelings towards Griffin are complicated and a bit amorphous; at the end, he ruminates as to how he identifies very briefly. Is he pan? Bi? Gay? While students in middle school certinaly are thinking about this, it is a process that they haven't necessarily completed, so I loved this light touch. The family, even the older sister, is warm and supportive. I enjoyed this one on many levels.
Weaknesses: I would have liked more details about how Griffin's diet was restricted. There is just enough information about the effects of Crohn's on Will's stomach; we get the idea without it being gross, but I am not familiar with the disease, so a bit more about the diet and ways to cope would have been instructive and interesting.
What I really think: Definitely purchasing, but if this goes to paperback, there should be a soccer ball somewhere on the cover. The cover is gorgeous, but putting sports front and center always leads to more circulation!
How To Survive the Triassic
If you thought things were about to get easier after the death and destruction that ended the Permian period—well, you thought wrong. If you’re not being roasted alive in Pangaea’s vast deserts, you’re in danger of being swallowed up by its frequent monster floods. Despite these extreme conditions, the first dinosaurs managed to rise up in this era. Can you survive along with them?Can You Eat That?
Finding food during the Triassic is tough. The Permian extinction has wiped out tons of species, so the monster-size insects of the Permian are gone, and many other edible things haven’t evolved yet. The interior of Pangaea is mostly desert, dry and barren of food. So for your best chance of finding a meal, head to the coast. The oceans are devastated by the Permian extinction, their creatures destroyed by a major drop in life-giving oxygen. But that devastation means there is a lot of space for survivors to take over. And take over they do. Bivalves (clams and their relatives) make it through the Permian extinction, and with less competition for food and other resources, their populations explode. They go on to rule the Triassic oceans. Along with gastropods (the family that includes modern day snails), these animals have the right stuff to survive the end-Permian conditions: The flat shape of these small, shallow-water dwellers helps them extract oxygen from the limited supply available. Shellfish have been a food source for about as long as humans have been around to eat them. Bivalves are high in protein, making them a great source of energy. There’s evidence that some 160,000 years ago, Homo sapiens lived in caves on the coast of southern Africa. The remains of prehistoric cooking fires littered with bivalve shells show what they liked to eat. There’s a good chance that you could do the same 200 million years earlier. To dig up your shellfish dinner, scout the coastline, looking for tiny holes in the mud. Those are bivalve breathing holes. When you find them, dig down. Modern clams like to hang out about eight inches (20 cm) below the surface, but it might take a little experimenting to figure out prehistoric mollusks’ habits. Once you’ve collected some, steam them over a fire and then devour!How to Survive in the Age of Dinosaurs:
A Handy Guide to Dodging Deadly Predators, Riding Out Mega-Monsoons and Escaping Other Perils of the Prehistoric
(ages 8-12, Paperback, National Geographic Kids Books)
Boom, boom, BOOM … Look out! That’s a T. rex coming your way!? You’ve been transported back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. What do you do?! Test your chops and discover if you have what it takes to survive at a time when Earth looked, well, a tad different in this ultimate survival guide to the prehistoric age. Find out how to make it through exploding volcanoes and mega monsoons—while dodging giant Permian bugs! See how to fend off an angry pterosaur and learn what to do if you’re caught in a stampede of enormous titanosaurs. Discover what you could eat (spoiler alert: You better like the taste of insects!), and find out which hungry creatures just might try to eat you! Packed with tips, tricks, and helpful maps, this is the ultimate handbook for dinosaur fans who want to know what life on Earth was really like when dinos ruled. Could you survive in the age of dinosaurs?About the Author
Stephanie Warren Drimmer is an award winning science writer based in Los Angeles, California. She writes books and magazine features for kids about everything from the strangest places in space, to the chemistry of cookies, to the mysteries of the human brain. She has a degree in science journalism from New York University...but she thinks she likes writing for kids because she's secretly still one herself.About the Expert Contributor
Dr. Steve Brusatte vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist and professor at the University of Edinburgh who specializes in the anatomy, genealogy, and evolution of dinosaurs and other fossil organisms. He has written over 110 scientific papers, published six books (including the adult pop science book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, the textbook Dinosaur Paleobiology, and the coffee table book Dinosaurs), and has described over 15 new species of fossil animals. He has done fieldwork in Brazil, Britain, China, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and the United States. His research is profiled often in the popular press and he is a “resident paleontologist” and scientific consultant for the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs team.
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