Fay Tran's heartfelt message is cleverly interwoven in a very short story about Clarry who loves life, has a wonderful family, is really looking forward to learning to read - only to find it's not quite so easy as he thought it would be. We learn why this is the case throughout the story - and the effect this has on Clarry which we can see through the illustrations - including Clarry's illustrations! This is a book for children and for adults alike.
This is my personal review and my recommendation which I sent direct to author, Fay Tran:
This book is very timely as recently worries were flagged up about a BBC documentary, 'B is for Book', which featured a few children just like Clarry!Well, I have just read through your book, Fay, ‘Clarry and the Little White Cloud’ and by the end I had goosebumps from top to bottom.
This is a book that every student-teacher, teacher-trainer and teacher should be given to read.
Plus, all the politicians and detractors from phonics.
Plus, all the Reading Recovery personnel and teachers who persist with multi-cueing guessing strategies.
As I read it, the faces of children I have known, children just like Clarry, real children, flashed through my mind. So many of them. So much unnecessary misery and loss of self-esteem and loss of life-chances.
I inherited such children in various schools in various contexts.
I don’t get why others don’t get this scenario and why they persist with reading strategies that set children off on an entirely wrong trajectory for their reading profile.
Fay – this is a wonderful little book with a very, very clear, fundamentally important message.
It would be a wonderful book for children, but actually the book is very much an adult book, for adults, for all of us, to know it just as it is in millions of schools to this day.
Well said and well done.
I love the clear illustrations – they speak volumes from the child’s perspective.
This book should be on the reading lists of all teacher-training establishments.
Now let’s get it publicized as much as possible.
For this reason, I've cross-referenced this thread with the thread featuring the BBC documentary, see here:
http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=613