8.Jun.2010 | Rachel Balik
A Rave Review: Heroes for My Son
Recently, people have been talking about how technology disrupts our brains and prevents human interaction, so we were thrilled to learn that Zealot Benmergui, a reviewer at MobilitySite, read Brad Meltzer’s Heroes for My Son with his 11-year-old son. We’re happy that the Vook provided this bonding opportunity for the pair–and we’re also pretty honored to hear what Dad had to say about the title:
“Though the name may sound like a creature that could eat you on Pandora, Vooks are actually clever little media hybrids. They are very very well suited for presenting information or stories which are episodic in nature or can benefit from having a lot of background material readily available. For example, if you have a biography of The Beatles, you can build video or music clips directly into the text at the appropriate places. If you want to watch or hear it, you click PLAY…if not, you can continue reading. The Vook makes use of the now somewhat ubiquitous “Pull and Release” method to change chapters. Pull the screen up past the end, and release it. You can also switch chapters using arrow buttons on the toolbar, or a drop down Table of Contents. Vooks are usually arranged in segments due to this method of changing chapters, each one standing alone and often able to be read in any order. Collections of short stories, poetry, essays, historical treatises, erotica (yes, I said it), self help guides, film or literary criticism…all of these would make fantastic Vooks.
It is easy to see the tremendous possibilities in the Vook format, especially when tied to a tablet device like the iPad.
I very much enjoyed my first experience with a Vook mainly because I rapidly dropped my attempt to think of it as a Book with video plug ins. A Vook is really a multimedia platform that centers around text, rather then a traditional “book”. It can gather information of all sorts, text, pictures, video and sound and merge them together in a sort of self-supporting package…a PDF on steroids. On top of that, it is charmingly non-linear and can be approached from many different angles…not just a straight forward “start at the beginning” sort of thing. A scholar’s dream. More a chocolate box than a book, especially if you are like me and enjoy really digging down into a subject while reading.
As for Heroes for my Son, I thought Meltzer put together an excellent collection of figures that would make great role models for any young person. I would have liked a little more content however, since he restricted himself to only one or two anecdotes about each figure. For example, he boiled Einstein down to a little about his childhood, and the Theory of Relativity. Since this is a Vook, some links to websites or more in depth information would have been very welcome.
However, the main thing Meltzer’s vignettes did (and I am sure were intended to do) was open a conversation which was still going on this morning about personal heroes, who they were and why. Using Meltzer’s list as a jumping off point, I talked to him about some of my own heroes, some he has heard about from me a lot (Theodore Roosevelt, Josef Trumpledor) and some he hasn’t heard as much about (Quentin Crisp, Adlai Stephenson)…and I learned a little bit more about who my son considers to be his heroes. If a good book makes for good conversation, then this was definitely a good book.
Heroes for my Son is a book I would recommend to any parent looking for something to share with a child. It will open up discussions on all sorts of important issues, as well as just being some nice, short profiles of some great people. It is also a great introduction to the world of Vooks.”
Read the full review at MobilitySite.com.
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