Denny Taylor

Bio-punk. Weird literature. A sci-fi fantasy that is frighteningly real. Split Second Solution is a dystopian urban novel set in New York City in 2022 that predicted the rise of Trump (the Ginger Tom) and anticipates his fall. Here's a review: From the opening scene I felt I was reading something like a Miyazaki masterpiece. The descriptions are so vivid that only his genius talent for animation could capture them. Just as Howl's Moving Castle takes you on a journey with both darkness and light, here there is palpable evil and fragile heroism in non-clichÉd plot twists and turns. Required reading for our times. (A. Miletta) At the beginning of Split, the Sick Reapers and A.I. have seized power and captured Word. To escape being raped and killed, Word jumps into the Hudson River and Death splits the last second of her life to save her. And, it is in the last split second of Word's life that the entire story is told. The evil antagonists are: Ginger Tom: Seized power before the novel begins; consumed by idolatry of self; protected by personal militia and Super Recognizers; gaslights the public; orders purges of people and books; hunts Word because she is the Last Truth Keeper. Lunatic Eight: Ultra-rich predatory power mongers; destroy the infrastructure of society; lose control. Super Recognizers: Controlled by Ginger Tom and the Lunatic Eight; known as "Sick Reapers"; by 2022 Sick Reapers are in power; psychopathic obsession with capturing Word. A.I.: Artificial intelligence hostile to biological intelligence; global surveillance machines; collude with Sick Reapers in vicious endgame; can hack consciousness; hack X-it; obsessed by capturing Word. The brave protagonists are: Word: Born 2000; French/North African; Last Truth Keeper; ancient texts tattooed on her body hold keys to the future; hunted by Super Recognizers; mother killed when she was eight. X-it: Born 2000; French Creole heritage; super intelligent; father an astrophysicist; loves Word. Death: Counter to all human stereotypes; hates people dying; trans; other personas include Cat, Bat, Bowie and Gaga. Eternity: Extra-terrestrial observer; pure energy; not time bound; appears as the Old Crone and Botticelli's Venus. Grann: Creole wise woman; ancient Truth Seeker; ready to die to protect Word. All lives are in jeopardy. No one is safe. The age of women begins.

Split Second Solution

Tells the story of a family's clash with public school, special education bureaucracy.

Learning Denied

"Official documentation" hides human rights violations in this country. In this book, Denny Taylor explains how we allow this to happen and makes a compelling case for it to stop.

Exposing the Injustice of Bureaucratic Texts

Toxic Literacies

Dorothy S. Strickland

Family Storybook Reading provides vivid accounts of parents sharing storybooks with children. All kinds of families are represented with varied lifestyles, cultural backgrounds, and membership configurations. Through the descriptions and accompanying explanations the reader becomes acquainted with the special role that storybook reading plays in family life and in the acquisition of language and literacy skills.

Family Storybook Reading

Suggesting that the contention that phonemic awareness must be taught directly and that children need explicit systematic instruction in phonics is less of a scientific "fact" than an exercise in political persuasion, this book presents the story of the political campaign that is taking place to change the minds of Americans about how young children learn to read. The book begins with a close look at the empirical research being used to support a massive shift in the national understandings about language, literacy, and learning and concludes by revealing the ways in which research studies on early reading instruction are being used by the federal and state governments to support a new methodology that has turned early reading instruction into "a massive business of unprecedented commercial worth." The chapters in the book are: (1) In Which We Are Told Training in Phonemic Awareness Is the Key to Reading Success; (2) In Which Phonemic Awareness Research Is Analyzed from an Experimental Psychological Perspective; (3) In Which Phonemic Awareness Research Is Analyzed from a Sociocultural Perspective; (4) In Which We Find Foorman's Research Does Not Support the NICHD [National Institute of Child Health and Human Development] Proposition That "Phonological Processing Is the Primary Area Where Children with Reading Difficulties Differ from Other Children"; (5) In Which Teachers Are Turned into Clerks and We Discuss Power, Privilege, Racism and Hegemony; (6) In Which Governor Bush's Business Council Holds a Pre-Summit Meeting in Texas; (7) In Which We Have an"If-They-Say-It's-So-It-Must-Be-So" Attitude toward Experimental Research; (8) In Which the Kindergarten Children in North Carolina Are No Longer Expected To Try To Read and Write; (9) In Which I Become the Documentation on Which I Build My Case; (10) In Which We Are Told That in America We Are All Equal. Are We or Aren't We?; (11) In Which We Find the Desks and Chairs Are Broken and the Toilets Don't Work; (12) In Which We Ask: Do You Think America Likes Children?; (13) In Which We Consider If We Are Comfortable Mandating Reading Programs based on Neuroimaging Research and Genetic Studies of Reading Disabilities; (14) In Which California Politically Reinvents How Young Children Learn To Read; (15) In Which California Ends Local Control and the State Board of Education Leads the Jihad; and (16) In Which We Enter the Central Chamber of the Hegemonic Labyrinth. (Contains approximately 250 references; an appendix that offers a response to preliminary statistical analyses used to support the nationally publicized findings of the NICHD Houston reading studies, and an appendix that offers "late-breaking" news about the NICHD Houston reading studies are attached.) (RS)

The Political Campaign to Change America's Mind about how Children Learn to Read

Beginning to Read and the Spin Doctors of Science

Rat-a-tat-tat! I've Lost My Cat! is a picture story book written by renowned literacy scholar Denny Taylor to entertain and be great fun for children learning to read. When read aloud the story hums, and the rhythm of the highly predictable text makes it easy for children to read. The paintings of the charismatic characters and the irresistible cats are bold and brilliantly painted by the acclaimed conceptual artist, Shelton Walsmith.

Denny Taylor

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