A Good Horse Review

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(More customer reviews)It's the 1960s, and Abby Lovitt is starting the eighth grade. She lives with her very strict but loving parents on their 26-acre horse ranch in California. The family business consists of buying horses at low prices, getting them healthy and handsome, training them, and selling them for a profit. Abby knows she shouldn't get attached to the horses, but she can't help herself, especially when they come across an extra special one like Black George.
Black George is beautiful and a gifted jumper. He sails over jumps with ease and enthusiasm, and loves doing it. Abby's father decides to enter his daughter and Black George in a high-class horse show. With more exposure to the upper class society, they might catch the eye of a wealthy horse buyer and get top dollar for selling Black George. Abby loves riding him and will be sad to see him sold, but she understands. She also knows that training him to his full potential will make him even better. But what she doesn't comprehend is why her heart seizes up in fear when her teacher raises the jump height to over four feet when she knows Black George can do it.
Abby's most favorite horse at the ranch is little Jack, the orphaned colt. His mom, Brown Jewel (or Pearl, as Abby secretly called her), died from colic not long after giving birth to Jack. Since then, Abby has taken over the care and training of Jack, and they have grown very close. But then a letter arrives from a private investigator who is working for a rich Texas rancher. A while back, someone had stolen a few of the rancher's prize horses, and the investigator suspects that the Lovitts had purchased one of the stolen mares. If Brown Jewel is proven to be the stolen mare, the owners are going to want to take her colt back to Texas. How will Abby find the strength and courage to say goodbye to Jack?
Horse fanatics will love this sequel to THE GEORGES AND THE JEWELS, which weaves horse training and care into an exciting and heart-touching story. Abby is a determined and hard-working girl with a big heart. She also has huge obstacles to face, including a crippling fear. Fear is something that most riders encounter at some point, and Jane Smiley addresses the issue with compassion and sympathy. She adds many exciting parts, like the horse show and rounding up some trespassing cows, as well as a bit of mystery with the stolen mare case. Smiley has united her immense love of horses with her vast writing talents to create an endearing story that will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.
--- Reviewed by Chris Shanley-Dillman, author of FINDING MY LIGHT


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Diversity Training for Classroom Teaching: A Manual for Students and Educators Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was written by my professor, which is an advantage to understanding the language and intent of the text. It has been informative and useful in my professional and academic world.

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Students' cognitive, social, and emotional functioning and development is to a large extent culturally, socially, and contextually based. It is critical that educators become familiar with recognizing the numerous ecological influences of cultural diversity on American educational systems. Educational systems have in many ways operated without a strong awareness of a multicultural context and there is much to change at individual, institutional, and systemic levels. Due to rapidly changing demographics in America's schools, successful educators will be those who can work effectively and proactively with diverse students. Diversity Training for Classroom Teaching:A Manual for Students and Educatorsis a resource guide geared to help educators create classroom communities that respond to diversity. Current United States national policy mandates that all pre-service teachers take a course in cultural diversity. The ideology behind this mandate is the belief that as America's classrooms become more demographically diverse, educators must learn how to respond to the different needs and cultural styles of children who represent such diversity. While textbooks that highlight these issues do exist, missing from current diversity education literature is a how-to toolkit designed to provide educators with activities, reflective scenarios, resources, and reference lists. The learning activities presented in this volume seek to fill this current gap in the literature. They define terminology, provide activities to raise self-awareness, include newspaper articles that illustrate the relevance of concepts, and allow for an overall dialogue about diverse issues.Diversity Training for Classroom Teaching encourages readers to generate their own construction of effective multicultural education and learn how to adapt it across various student populations and educational problems. At the same time, learning activities encourage readers to respect and seek to understand the experiences and worldviews of different people and how these diverse realities influence what is meant by multicultural education.

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