Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Review: Revelations


Revelations
Revelations by Allis Wade

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a didactic book wrapped in a story and needs to be evaluated as such. It is not classic fiction, but it does convey the teaching messages in a interesting format. Realistic situations arise and the children work them out, using information they have learned and are taught about Dabrowski's overexcitabilities. The way the children talk is a bit stilted, but it works OK. This is the second book in the series and there are still some unresolved issues at the end, so I am expecting a third book at least. The parts of the story that work best for me were the explorations of how feelings work into academics and social experiences, but I have the emotional OE, so perhaps that is why I gravitate to those parts of the story.

There is at least one quibble I have, though. When Everett takes an Intensive Class in music, he is given various mouthpieces to try and then is eventually assigned to the clarinet as the best instrument for his mouth. He is also shown a video on how to read music. After this one class, he concludes that he doesn't have extraordinary potential in music. First of all, one class on mouthpieces and reading music is WAY TOO restricted for a view of music. There are loads of instruments that do not use mouthpieces and these aren't mentioned at all. Reading music is hard and even gifted kids wouldn't be expected to pick up music notation in one class. The "class" sounded like a single long session - maybe three hours. This is simply a far too simplistic conceptualization of discovering musical talent. I understand following your interests, but concluding that you aren't interested in pursuing music further, on this limited basis seems to actually devalue one of the things that the book is advocating: learning persistence. I am sorry, but one music class is just not enough to let him get away with this self-assessment.

Still, I think this book would be valuable to gifted classes, ranging from 4th through 8th graders. Younger profoundly gifted children might also be ready for it. I like Dabrowski's conceptualization of the sensitivities of gifted children and it is an interesting method of teaching about them.



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