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The Library Shelf, September 2010
by Linda Lauper, WATG Board
The title of the book for this month, The Upside of Irrationality, by Dan Ariely, appealed to me right from the start. But as the old saying goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” certainly applies to the title of this book.
I will confess I did not read this book from cover to cover. I tried. On three separate occasions I picked up the book and began reading. Finally the last time, I read part of the beginning, part of the middle and skipped to the end. Ariely is supposed to be telling us the “benefits of defying logic at work and at home”. Maybe I just did not have the patience or interest in reading about all the research he did on which to base his conclusions. It was difficult to decipher what his conclusions were about being illogical or irrational at home or work.
As for me personally, I do not work from the logic hemisphere of my brain. I had to teach myself to think more logically as many of the children I worked with in school were logical thinkers. When I trained myself to use more logic, I felt I lost much of my creativity. Therefore, the conclusion I came to from the title of the book, is one can use irrationality to help stimulate their own creativity. These are all my own thoughts, but if you want to tackle the book yourself, I have an autographed copy I will sell to you at a most reasonable price.
Keep reading!
Thank You for All Things
by Sandra Kring
Thank You for All Things by Sandra Kring is a work of fiction that underscores the brutality of abuse in the family. The story is told through the eyes of Lucy, a precocious young gifted girl of 12. Her twin brother Milo, also gifted, spends all of his time studying, and lacks the personal life skills that plague many gifted children. When I read the synopsis, I was instantly drawn to the book.
Lucy wants one thing in her life and that is to have a father. She knows nothing of her “natural” father, but has formed attachments to several father figures during her young life. Two of them had dated Lucy’s mother, who is also gifted.
The book recounts the journey of the twins, their mother, Tess, and “Oma”, their grandmother. It leads them from the tenements of Chicago to the Northwoods of Wisconsin where Tess grew up. Oma agreed many years before that she would care for her former abusive husband if he ever became incapacitated. After he suffers a stroke, Oma vows to keep her promise.
The book relives Tess’s childhood as she struggles to face her past and Lucy struggles to understand her disjointed family. What struck me about the book is what I’ve witnessed during the many years I’ve worked with gifted students. I’ve found many former students have difficulty in sustaining permanent relationships. Gifted children live with intensity in their lives. Gifted children carry a high ethical sense of loyalty which makes them vulnerable in any relationship they form. Combine that with abuse in the family, and the problems can last well into adult life, as we learn from Tess.
The writing is solid and the story line drawn out. Kring does a good job with her character development and through her writing and Lucy’s eyes we learn that secrets do not stay secrets.
Sandra Kring is a native of Wisconsin and now resides in the Rhinelander area where she continues to write.
Understanding Those Who Create -- March 2010
By Jane Piirto, Ph.D.
While perusing my library shelf, my eyes spotted this book and I wondered why I had not spent time reading it. I still can’t answer that question.
Jane Piirto, in her book, Understanding Those Who Create, asserts that people who create will invariably lock horns with concrete sequential learners. That is because creative people are more random in nature. I have first hand experience with this type of situation.
For example, when I sat down to read this book, I found myself skipping around the book and locking into places that proved of interest to me. What I learned is that people who are very creative rarely follow the norm. They need solitude and lots of room to experiment with ideas. Sometimes the creativity emerges at inappropriate times, and this can be especially true in children. Yet these creative dreamers are the inventors of the future. They are the poets, writers, and artists who will influence our future generations, as they have in generations past.
The book Understanding Those Who Create by Piirto examines profiles of some highly creative people. Piirto writes about the many forms of creativity, summing up each chapter in five or six bullet points. I recognized many traits in the students I have had in the past and wondered how many times they were told to stop daydreaming, or that an idea would never work. And yet, our out of the box thinkers, our creative people, are now highly sought after in corporate America (Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind).
My advice is to pick up the book and thumb through it until something catches your eye and begin reading at that point. I’m still thumbing through the book.
January 2010
Volume 3
After looking at my library shelf and wondering which book I should read, I found The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, a book which had been recommended to me by some students. The book had been on my library shelf for some time. I really had no definitive idea of what the book was about, and since my retirement I’ve been reading adult fiction novels.
I found The Hunger Games a little slow in the beginning, and yet there was something very compelling about the reading. This was somewhat of an oxymoron, I realize, but the more I read, the more I was drawn into the book. Katniss Everdeen is our heroine and Peeta Malik the hero. Both live in what was North America, which has suffered under a revolution. There is the Capitol, where people live a life of luxury, and there are 12 districts, where life is about survival.
Each year two children between the ages of 10 and 18 are chosen to participate in the ultimate reality television program. The outcome of The Hunger Games is survival.
I recommend this book for mature readers who are looking for something a little different. It is not just a book about good vs. evil, but about the reality of survival. This would be an excellent book for a group of high level thinkers and readers who enjoy books which provide rich discussion. I also recommend the book to adults as something to “ponder”.
Finally, there is a sequel entitled Catching Fire, which I will definitely be reading. Anyone wanting to contact me about the books or for discussion purposes may email me at the WATG.org website.
November 2009
Volume 2
I received my Whole New Mind as a retirement gift. What a relief to read on and find that the rest of the title was "Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future," by Daniel H. Pink. Relief is the key word for me because I am a right brained person or as Pink refers to hemispheres of the brain r-directed and l-directed.
Just knowing there is a place for the r-directed brain has given me comfort since I’ve spent a great deal of time in the past few years with l-directed people. Pink breaks his book into different ages with the 20th century as the Information Age. Now that we have entered the 21st century, he refers to it as the Conceptual Age.
Concentrate on schools for a minute. Schools give tests. Tests are required by state and national standards. Tests are designed to see how much knowledge a person has acquired. But where does that leave the r-directed person? What has happened to our ability as educators to let students explore, think out of the box, and create on their own? Where is room for the students who are empathizers and think in the big picture frame? Many schools are still operating in the 20th century stuffing knowledge into our children’s heads. Why? The tests.
Read Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind, and learn how just having knowledge will not cut it in the 21st century. We need our r-directed thinkers for innovation and creativity in jobs that are not yet established.
You can order A Whole New Mind through GoodShop and for each purchase a portion will benefit WATG.
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