The Classroom Mystery by Tracy Packiam Alloway, Ana Sanfelippo

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

In what's looking like a series here, I got the welcome chance to review a second young children's book from the same writer (Alloway) and illustrator (Sanfelippo) team who brought us The Map Challenge which I positively reviewed yesterday. Who says Britain and Argentina can't get along? Okay, you got me. No one says that. I just made it up to get attention!

Seriously, this book explores ADHD in the same way the other book took a look at dyslexia. In this book, the main character is Izzy, who can't forget that someone stole the classroom rabbit's food. She has a form of ADHD and cannot focus on the math lesson. Eventually she gets everyone involved in the crucial effort to find that poor rabbit's crunchy snacks.

The nice thing about these books is that they don't pick on the one with the condition, nor do they put him or her in a negative light. Instead, they emphasize the positive, and it's because of her 'super powers' that come as part and parcel of ADHD that Izzy is able to recall things and make connections that others do not - so, yes, you got it - she solves the mystery!

As usual (so it seems!) in the back of these books are teacher and parent resource pages, advising on certain aspects of (in this case) ADHD, and discussing events in the story and ways to improve on some of the deficits of attention that may hamper an individual at times (and no, it doesn't involve medication!). I liked this book as much as I liked the first one. Izzy was actually rather endearing, and I commend this as a worthy read.

The Map Challenge by Tracy Packiam Alloway, Ana Sanfelippo

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a short, colorful, useful, and educational young children's book to open up discussion about dyslexic children.

Sammy is off to scout camp, but their first game when they get there is to follow a map and discover the flag, safely returning with it to the scout camp! Sammy, who is dyslexic, is chosen to be the map reader and he can't do it! After accidentally sending them in the wrong direction a couple of times, someone takes over the map chore, and Sammy is left to observe everything along the way. When the map is lost later, he is able to navigate back home by using the visual cues he absorbed on the journey out.

The book takes a sweet and simple approach, laying out playful issues and problems, with nothing too overwhelming. The children show a positive attitude and do not mock Sammy, and everything turns out well in the end because of Sammy's excellent visual memory which enables him to use his own personal set of 'signposts' to get them safely home. In the back of the book are tips for both parents (presumably including guardians and older family members) and teachers on dyslexia-related problems, along with discussion points about the story, and even tips for boosting memory skills - and when I say the first one is for the birds - I don't mean it's a bad tip!

As this book points out (and at least one study has confirmed: Enhanced Recognition Memory after Incidental Encoding in Children with Developmental Dyslexia Hedenius M, Ullman MT, Alm P, Jennische M, Persson J (2013) PLoS ONE) dyslexic children tend to have better memory for recalling things they have seen than do non-dyslexic children. Tracy Packiam Alloway is a psychologist with a PhD-level education, and Ana Sanfelippo is a talented Argentinian artist with a degree in graphic design. I congratulate them and commend this book as a worthy read.