Some of My Best Friends Are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers (3rd Edition)

by Judith Wynn Halsted

Book Overview

This book contains an annotated bibliography of more than 300 books recommended for gifted students, as well as some good advice about the importance of reading and how to encourage it in children and adolescents. Because gifted students often intensely identify with characters in books, it is important for them to read well-written books with complex characters and plots. When the characters in the books face some of the same issues and concerns...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0910707960
• ISBN13: 9780910707961
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Gifted Unlimited
• Length: 596 Pages
• Weight: 1.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent resource!

My daughter is turning 3 in a couple of weeks and I picked up this book because she LOVES books. It's providing me with a ton of book recommendations as well as ways to dig into the book beyond the words on the page. I highly recommend it.

Well organized with indexes for easy reference

A good book can give a child so much. Now in a newly published third edition, "Some of My Best Friends Are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers" is an advice manual for parents and educators of gifted and talented children who have taken a liking to the world of reading. Aimed primarily at parents, "Some of My Best Friends are Books" discusses the social and emotional needs of these children, as well as ways to mentor them and help them find more books that they would enjoy. Well organized with indexes for easy reference, "Some of My Best Friends Are Books" is a fine and very much recommended read.

If You Only Buy One Book About The Gifted Child....

....It should be this one.What a wonderful find! This is the road map for everything regarding the intellectually gifted child. Guiding the parent or teacher through both the heart and mind of the gifted child.I was one of the parents in the book who always felt my gifted son was missing out on something by spending time alone, or playing alone at school. I would very much encourage him to spend more time with friends, make new friends, invite friends over. Now I have a much better understanding on why he needs so much "alone" or "down time". I definite must for parents of gifted children age Preschool to High School! Although it even helped me figure out my gifted husband!

This book is definitely the best of its kind on the market!

Worried that her gifted child was spending too much time reading by himself, a mother admonished her son to go play outside. "But Mom," he replied, "some of my best friends are books!" Thus the name of this wonderful book which describes the role of books in a child's development, and summarizes the social and emotional needs of the gifted reader. In Part Three of the book, Halsted gives an annotated bibliography of over 300 books, each dealing with issues for gifted children. She then presents a set of easy-to-use indexes of the books by grade level and by topic, as well as by author and title. Topics include aloneness, creativity, differentness, intensity, moral concerns, etc. This book truly is "an excellent resource for selecting the right book to guide a child to better understanding of self and situations," according to the California Association for the Gifted Newsletter, and I agree. It is a must-buy or must-borrow book for the parent of any bright child from kindergarten through high school.