Reviews for Courage

The average rating for Courage based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-10-13 00:00:00 Sandy Morgan The book's concept is to show different kinds of courage. The problem is that many of the examples do not demonstrate courage at all. For instance, according to the author, courage is: "remembering a silly joke and trying not to giggle", "deliberately stepping on sidewalk cracks", "arriving too early at a birthday party", "deciding to get your hair cut", "having two candy bars and saving one for tomorrow", "a scenic car trip and being stuck in the middle seat"... There's even a dog allegedly having the courage to eat his own dog food. I suspect that most people would not use the word "courage" to describe those situations. I think children would be very confused by those kinds of examples. It confused me as an adult. I don't know if the author is unclear on the concept of courage or what he was thinking. There are so many other great examples of everyday courage that could have been used. If I was reading this book to a child, I would ask the child to come up with better examples, and the child probably could do it.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-06-07 00:00:00 Bradley Calcaterra This could be a good book to start conversations about courage and what that means to each one in a classroom, including the teacher. Speaking from different viewpoints, human and animal, Waber's story is a succession of kinds of courage, some in the mind, some physical, and some in the heart. The illustrations are cartoon-like, small pictures by each sentence. For instance, there is a couple of boys, with one tapping the shoulder of another. The caption is "Courage is being the first to make up after an argument." Another example is a dark drawing, with only alarming looking eyes showing: "Courage is going to be without a nightlight." This is not for the very young. I'm not sure they would understand it. Perhaps middle grades only would enjoy it, and perhaps they could create their own illustrated picture of what courage means to them?