Wednesday 30 October 2013

S Daniels & M Piechowski: Living with Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and Emotional Development

Gifted children and adults are often misunderstood. Their excitement is viewed as excessive, their high energy as hyperactivity, their persistence as nagging, their imagination as not paying attention, their passion as being disruptive, their strong emotions and sensitivity as immaturity, their creativity and self-directedness as oppositional.This resource describes these overexcitabilities and strategies for dealing with children and adults who are experiencing them, and provides essential information about Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration. Learn practical methods for nurturing sensitivity, intensity, perfectionism, and much more.

Sunday 27 October 2013

Jenny Colgan: The loveliest chocolate shop in Paris

As dawn breaks over the Pont Neuf, and the cobbled alleyways of Paris come to life, Anna Trent is already awake and at work; mixing and stirring the finest, smoothest, richest chocolate; made entirely by hand, it is sold to the grandes dames of Paris. It's a huge shift from the chocolate factory she worked in at home in the north of England. But when an accident changed everything, Anna was thrown back in touch with her French teacher, Claire, who offered her the chance of a lifetime - to work in Paris with her former sweetheart, Thierry, a master chocolatier. With old wounds about to be uncovered and healed, Anna is set to discover more about real chocolate - and herself - than she ever dreamed.

Having struggled to find a gripping read, I stumbled across this book and started dipping in. Although the storyline is quite predictable, the humour and the characters were fascinating and enthralling. The ending to the story's loving couples are realistic and make for an enjoyable women's fiction novel.

Friday 25 October 2013

CS Lewis: Narnia 4 - Prince Caspian

The Pevensie siblings are back to help a prince denied his rightful throne as he gathers an army in a desperate attempt to rid his land of a false king. But in the end, it is a battle of honour between two men alone that will decide the fate of an entire world. A battle is about to begin in Prince Caspian, the fourth book in C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy series, which has been enchanting readers of all ages for over sixty years.

Very quick and enjoyable read about the return to Narnia. Somehow I do miss an overarching storyline involving the Pevensie children from previous books, but the story makes for great reading.