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Sylvia!: The Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Biography
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 24, 2021
What an interesting Biography! I got a bit tired of Sylvia reading it - she is nothing like the fantastic person I thought she was when I first heard about her wonderful teaching two decades ago. Now I know why the reaction was muted when I inquired about her in Teacher's College. Well, let's say she was much more controversial, flawed, and even to just read about her, annoying. But I think Lynley Hood has done a stellar job of trying to piece together into one coherent book a life so ... fractured and kind of bizarre. Glad I finally read it.
June 6, 2017
This was a really suprising and interesting book. I knew nothing about Sylvia Ashton-Warner except her name before I started reading it. As a biography it is absolutely superb.
August 5, 2019
Mum got this for me years ago (so many years) and I was a bit stumped because I couldn't remember who Sylvia Ashton-Warner even was, or why I would care about her enough to read an author's diary about writing her biography. Mum figured I might appreciate reading about an author's life and process, and as it turned out she was right. Once I finally got into it, the view into the long process of researching and writing a biography was quite interesting.
Mum had probably read the biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner first. She's very well known in NZ (where we're from) and in the US (where SAW lived for some years). I learned from this book that she was an teacher who pioneered new ways to engage with NZ Maori beginning readers, who was a revolutionary educator (or not), and a published author with a larger than life and extremely polarizing personality. The teacher's college at my university named their library for her, but I don't recall her name coming up in my theoretical (not practical/teaching) education degree. I was able to glean plenty of biography from the diary, enough to know that I probably don't care to read the biography any time soon, but maybe I'll change my mind. She sounds like quite the character, although it seems much of her "character" was based on alcoholism and addiction, childhood trauma, and possibly repressed lesbianism/bisexuality. She sounds pretty messed up and rather sad, actually. People loved her or despised her, but no one forgot her. The author had quite the task trying to make sense of her life.
The author kept an interesting writing diary. It was quite readable and I imagine it was very helpful for her during the process - a pretty cool idea, actually. I'd love to know how Aunt Maude reacted to this book - she sounds like a bitch, and the kind of person a writer needs to cut out of their lives to stay sane. I'm wondering if the author's marriage survived too. I'm not sure how her husband was going to handle her success - he didn't sound like a great cheerleader.
I know the author has written at least one other acclaimed book but it was about a horrible child sexual abuse case that I have no desire to know more about. So maybe I'll have to read Sylvia instead. If the author's diary reads this well I'd say she's a very good author.
Mum had probably read the biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner first. She's very well known in NZ (where we're from) and in the US (where SAW lived for some years). I learned from this book that she was an teacher who pioneered new ways to engage with NZ Maori beginning readers, who was a revolutionary educator (or not), and a published author with a larger than life and extremely polarizing personality. The teacher's college at my university named their library for her, but I don't recall her name coming up in my theoretical (not practical/teaching) education degree. I was able to glean plenty of biography from the diary, enough to know that I probably don't care to read the biography any time soon, but maybe I'll change my mind. She sounds like quite the character, although it seems much of her "character" was based on alcoholism and addiction, childhood trauma, and possibly repressed lesbianism/bisexuality. She sounds pretty messed up and rather sad, actually. People loved her or despised her, but no one forgot her. The author had quite the task trying to make sense of her life.
The author kept an interesting writing diary. It was quite readable and I imagine it was very helpful for her during the process - a pretty cool idea, actually. I'd love to know how Aunt Maude reacted to this book - she sounds like a bitch, and the kind of person a writer needs to cut out of their lives to stay sane. I'm wondering if the author's marriage survived too. I'm not sure how her husband was going to handle her success - he didn't sound like a great cheerleader.
I know the author has written at least one other acclaimed book but it was about a horrible child sexual abuse case that I have no desire to know more about. So maybe I'll have to read Sylvia instead. If the author's diary reads this well I'd say she's a very good author.
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November 16, 2009quotes#304014 from my notebook
When I review the information I've got on Sylvia's childhood I can't help marvelling at how lucky I am that my informants come from a family that made a religion out of storytelling. The importance of their stories lies not so much in their objective truth (though many can be independently verified), as in the fact they provided emotional and spiritual sustenance to this beleaguered family. p102
I told Julia Faed that one elderly teacher I'd met had said that Keith Henderson was boring, but all the others had said he was a saint. She observed, "You can't be a saint and be interesting. If you're interesting someone's bound to dislike you, but if you're dull and innocuous people will say you're good." p78
When I review the information I've got on Sylvia's childhood I can't help marvelling at how lucky I am that my informants come from a family that made a religion out of storytelling. The importance of their stories lies not so much in their objective truth (though many can be independently verified), as in the fact they provided emotional and spiritual sustenance to this beleaguered family. p102
I told Julia Faed that one elderly teacher I'd met had said that Keith Henderson was boring, but all the others had said he was a saint. She observed, "You can't be a saint and be interesting. If you're interesting someone's bound to dislike you, but if you're dull and innocuous people will say you're good." p78
June 19, 2016
Sylvia Ashton-Warner was one of the "great educational innovators" of the 20th Century. I hadn't realised how many of her classroom techniques were revolutionary and still relevant today. The fights she had with system over her career were eye-opening.
Ashton-Warner was also an artist, a writer, a wife, a mother, and a woman tormented by something dark and powerful within herself. The author's detailed description of Ashton-Warner's life left me feeling like I had just ridden a rollercoaster.
Ashton-Warner was also an artist, a writer, a wife, a mother, and a woman tormented by something dark and powerful within herself. The author's detailed description of Ashton-Warner's life left me feeling like I had just ridden a rollercoaster.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews