Exploding The Reading

Presents essays that discuss the various reasons for how, what, and why teenagers read, and some issues involved in why they do not.

One 200-year-old folk tale, 30 teachers, and 1,000 students. Ride along with literacy guru David Booth as he takes the same story to a wide variety of classrooms, from kindergarten all the way through grade 12, and be amazed by the learning generated. David argues that "it takes two to read a book". He reasons that sharing responses and bouncing ideas off others guides students to deeper thinking, and challenges them to reconsider their views and increase their understanding. This intriguing book also shows teachers how to help students discover the world outside the text: the origins, connections, place, values, and the different perceptions that readers have. It illustrates ways to transpose that original text into other forms that let students look at the text with different eyes, to ponder what might have been, to challenge what they read, and to add their new learning to the construct of the world. Throughout the book, authentic student samples and actual transcripts present students experiencing the featured story in a multitude of ways -- from poems and retellings, to visuals and arts, to conversation and blogs -- that will "explode" your definitions of comprehension, response, and engagement, and have you looking at classroom literacy in a whole new way!

Based on learning generated by a 200-year-old folktale used by thirty teachers and a thousand kids, Exploding the Reading explores how to "dig deep" inside the story and encourages teachers to incorporate a variety of response modes. David Booth demonstrates that when students share their personal interpretations with others, they alter, grow, reframe, and extend their understanding of the text. This practical book also shows teachers how to help students discover the world outside the text: the different backgrounds, connections, places, values, and perceptions students bring to their reading. Student samples and actual transcripts present students experiencing the featured story through poems, visuals, blogs, art, conversation, and more.

Bogs, brains and bonkersness make this the perfect read for fans of David Walliams,Simon Mayoand Liz Pichon. Shortlisted for both theRedbridge Children's Book Award and theLeeds Book Awards 2014and WINNER of Worcestershire's Awesomest Book! award Quirky twelve-year-old Noelle Hawkins may be the brightest student in her class, but even she is completely miffed to explain how her dad, wacky scientist Brian, "Big Brain" Hawkins, spontaneously combusted while sitting in a portaloo. It's true that he was working on a new top secret Brain Ray machine and was on the point of a great break-through . . . could this have had something to do with it? Know-All is sure all is not as it seems. With the help of her grumpy sister, Holly, she is determined to find out what really happened to her dad! ''The ideal read for anyone who loves a mystery (in a toilet)' Sunday Express

There is a book with the power to destroy any book different from itself. Do not fear. This is not that book. This is the story of that book. An explosion occurs in a library, destroying all the books except one: an untitled book whose author is unknown. Unless someone can prevent it, the untitled book will soon become the only book in existence. Mike Russell's The Exploding Book is a unique, surreal novel. Filled with bizarre characters and fantastic imagery, The Exploding Book will take you on an extraordinary journey of cosmic proportions.

Ava and Ella receive a very exciting gift from their uncle - a fish! Ella wants her fish to have the biggest, shiniest, most sparkly castle to live in. Ava, on the other hand, simply wants her fish to feel at home among the seaweed. After a few days, something strange happens. Both Ella and Ava's fish start to get chubbier and chubbier, until... something rather terrible happens.

“A rollicking history of the telephone system and the hackers who exploited its flaws.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review Before smartphones, back even before the Internet and personal computers, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world’s largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bell’s revolutionary “harmonic telegraph,” by the middle of the twentieth century the phone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. But the network had a billion-dollar flaw, and once people discovered it, things would never be the same. Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T’s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell’s Achilles’ heel. Phil Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of “phone phreaks” who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, the explosion of telephone hacking in the counterculture, and the war between the phreaks, the phone company, and the FBI. The product of extensive original research, Exploding the Phone is a groundbreaking, captivating book that “does for the phone phreaks what Steven Levy’s Hackers did for computer pioneers” (Boing Boing). “An authoritative, jaunty and enjoyable account of their sometimes comical, sometimes impressive and sometimes disquieting misdeeds.” —The Wall Street Journal “Brilliantly researched.” —The Atlantic “A fantastically fun romp through the world of early phone hackers, who sought free long distance, and in the end helped launch the computer era.” —The Seattle Times

In August 1988, Zia gets into the presidential plane, Pak One, which explodes midway. Who killed him? The army generals growing old waiting for their promotions, the CIA, the ISI, RAW, or Ali Shigri, a junior officer at the military academy whose father, a whisky-swilling jihadi colonel, was murdered by the army? A Case of Exploding Mangoes is sharp, black, inventive, and utterly gripping. It marks the debut of a brilliant new writer.