sometimes_samantha_reads's Reviews (283)

I'm working on increasing my social studies literature collection. In 5th grade, I teach pre-colonial Americas including ancient civilizations. 

This books is informative and formatted wonderfully for new non-fiction text readers. My only reservations about it is that it was published 14 years ago and I'm not sure how accurate archeological assumptions from then are to current knowledge. I will keep studying. I also am not a big fan that it was written by a theater major. I feel like this potentially ruins the accuracy of the book, which is why I'm rating it so. Again,  I will continue to do my research. At the very least, it is a first stepping stone resource for my students to use. 

I am reading a slew of new to me picture books to bolster my social studies curriculum before my new class of 5th graders joins me this year. I teach pre-colonial America through the revolutionary War and always try to support Native voices throughout. I think this will be a great addition for when we talk about the 5/6 nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

I also like that it was written by a Native person and includes a song composed and performed by the author! My students will like it.

I bought this for my 5th grade students. I like how it is written by Native people and that it's honest and straightforward. The kids will understand - it'  not too much and it's not sugar coated. It's the perfect amount of information for 10 year olds to get them wondering more about the topic. It will help the kids become curious and it let's students know that Native people are still here.

More religious poems than I care for. Not my ideal balance of uplifting poems - there were too many melancholy ones for what I was hoping for with the book title.

Weird pacing
    
I'm a 5th grade teacher and I read this to see if it would be a good read aloud for my students. I'm glad I previewed it. The idea is cute, but the pacing is very weird. More than 50% of the book was before the beach bash and it was just jumbled up chapters that kept waffling between Eddie talking to his family, lamenting about his choice to not do laundry, and going off on random tangents. I know Eddie is supposed to have ADHD so the chapters are written to express that because Eddie is the narrator but he loses track of what he's thinking so often that as a reader, its kind of hard to follow. Also because there are so so so many shifts in what Eddie is talking about and points where he makes intersections on himself and breaks the 4th wall, I don't think it's good as a read aloud. It also bothered me that the main action that the summary expresses (black out and missing parents) doesn't even happen until almost 60% of the way through the book... and it's left on an actual "to be continued." Yes, it's written into the book as "to be continued." I personally did not like this book. It was a little too messy for me. I don't think I'll be reading the sequel.

Saw a lot of myself in this one. It was published right before covid so I wonder how that would've been addressed.

This was a neat concept. I enjoy a good Sapphic horror/thriller. I wish the ending was a little bit more definitive. I wanted to know more about the French mediums and the curse.

I'm a 5th grade teacher and I chose this book to read with my students at the end of the school year. It had everything: humor, suspense, drama, and a satisfying ending. Each day leading up to the end of the year, my students would ask "Ms. K, are we going to get a chance to read more Styx today??" I will be adding this to my rotation of read alouds and I will also be checking out the author's other works!