We enjoyed our first In Person meeting on July 1, along with two people joining us on Zoom....too bad they had to miss the great refreshments, capped by a magnificent Pavlova dessert made by Ann's very talented granddaughter. We discussed our picture book, Outside In by Deborah Underwood first. We unanimously agreed that this book was just NOT for young children, its presumed audience. The idea that 'Outside' was constantly reminding us that it was there continually helping us just didn't seem like a concept that young children would easily grasp...even with possible loving explanation by the adult reading the story. And even the little girl in the illustrations seemed to ignore everything that 'Outside' was trying to show and tell her; she was too busy reading, writing, playing with her dog -- just living her life. We did like the sensitively nuanced watercolor illustrations by Cindy Derby, but viewing the book from a distance, as a child would in a classroom read-aloud situation made it obvious that their beauty was less engaging from afar. We thought these illustrations could be valuable in an art class however...in a lesson on watercolors....otherwise -- not so much.
We had mostly positive reactions about our longer nonfiction book, All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team by Christina Soontornvat. We all agreed that the author had done an excellent job in her research on this story that the world watched unravel in June 2018. This included talking in person with many of the heroic rescuers and volunteers and others involved in the saga -- an endeavor which was helped a great deal by her own father who was a fluent Thai speaker -- even though she was not. We mostly liked her straightforward writing tone, where she discussed the many very technical issues that were relevant to the rescue, and explained them clearly for young readers...probably middle- and high schoolers. Some readers liked the many sidebars which explained various technical issues in detail, as well as Thai culture, and Buddhism, both of which played a strong role in the boys' frame of mind as they endured during this heart-wrenching 18-day period when they were trapped by a flood in a cave that they had been exploring. We agreed that all of the maps, graphs, photos, and illustrations throughout the book were very helpful although a couple of readers found the appearance of the sidebars in the middle of the actual text somewhat distracting. We also liked the author's explanation at the end of why she wrote this book and how she went about putting the pieces of the puzzle together. We felt that the book could be used in so many ways in classroom situations: in science, geography, culture, religion, social studies, history, engineering, physics, weather, and political systems discussions. This very long, very dense, very heavy (in weight!!) book was definitely appreciated by all of us.
