Entry 2017-08-18: Book Review

Book Title: The Adventures of Robin Hood (Treasury of Illustrated Classics)

Author: Howard Pyle

Illustrator: Eva Clift

Publication Information: New York : Modern Publishing

Physical Description: 188 pages ; 12 cm

ISBN: 0-7666-0764-X

Book Review Proper

                “Rise and rise again until lambs become lions.” – Robin Hood

First published in 1883, Howard Pyle’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (Treasury of Illustrated Classics) is the most classic Robin Hood book for children. Pyle took his inspiration from the legends of 13^th century famous outlaw, Robin Hood. The genre of this graphic novel is fiction, specifically children's literature and historical fiction. This review was made to examine and give out the writer’s personal evaluation of the novel.

Since the beginning of time, there have been those who chose to live a life of crime: the outlaws. The story plot of this novel took place in medieval England where an 18-year-old Robin unintentionally killed one of the king’s deer and starts living as an outlaw in the Sherwood Forest. He gathers around himself young outlaws, who are also noble and righteous against the injustice of rich people. The story starts when Robin Hood decided to partake in a king’s archery challenge. At his way, he met a squad of men, who were making fun of him but Robin manages to escape the drunken archers and even kill one of them.

Pyle's storytelling and illustrations are the book’s main strengths. One reason I love this book is because I enjoyed looking at the wonderful illustrations. It has made an impact to me since it added details to the plot and it becomes more child-friendly aside from the fact that the book uses simpler words and is large print. Also, Pyle’s writing style and perky tone suit the book's intended audience, which are children and young adult readers. The author speaks to the readers while describing numerous adventures, usually with a lot of humor involved, making it more interesting.

Introducing modern readers to legendary classics will be simpler with each of the twelve chapters in The Adventures of Robin Hood (Treasury of Illustrated Classics). Each chapter is intentionally concise for trouble-free comprehension and long-lasting satisfaction adorned with beautifully illustrated covers, hardcover editions are a decorative addition to any reader's library. The beautiful illustrations in this work round out the narrative that made a memorable and most enjoyable reading experience.

However, the story is pretty straightforward with how the things are sequenced. There seem to be no plot twist or not surprising or very significant at all. It’s just a plain story that basically gives everything to the readers without making them thrilled with the plot. Yet considering that the author’s target audiences are the children, the story’s plot and flow of events become reasonable and justifiable.  

I recommend this book to those children interested in reading storybooks and fictional stories. You should read this book because it's fully packed with adventure on every page that will keep you reading until the end. Moreover, I still assess this book as dragging, cliché and too predictable since it lacks an exciting plot twist and climax that could’ve add huge impact to its plot. Still, this book will teach you moral lessons essential in your life as you get older. 

I. Things I Learned and Insights

   Measures of Position is a method which deals to the position of a value, relative to other values in a set of observations. I learned the different approach in finding the decile, quartile, and percentile class/scores of the grouped and ungrouped data.   

   My skills in studying the measures of position were enhanced since I already encountered this topic in 8th grade. 

   The following are the informations I have learned in this lesson:

Quartiles and Percentiles

    Both percentiles and quartiles are statistical measures of position; that is, they do not measure a central tendency or a spread (dispersion), but instead measure location in a data set. (The exact definition of percentiles and quartiles differs; these differences, however, tend to be minor and are focused on certain fine points.)

 Determining the Quartiles

1. Order the data from smallest to greatest.

        2.  Find the place that occupies every quartile using the expression , in the cumulative frequency table.

Determining the Percentiles

1. Order the data from smallest to greatest.

      2.  Find the place that occupies every percentile using the expression 

 in the cumulative frequency table.

II. Concept Map

Different approach in finding the deciles, quartiles, and percentiles
of the grouped and ungrouped data.

III. Difficulties

 Measures of Position for grouped data is quite difficult to deal with, mainly because of its long formula that is hard to memorize considering that there are many ways to do it and the answer of each method may even vary from each other. It's really confusing for me. 

   What makes it much harder is when we have to solve for it without using a calculator, just mentally do it. There are a lot of variables to remember and a large list of number that has to be tabulated. 

IV. Unforgettable Experiences/Activities

   The most unforgettable experience that I had was when we had to answer all the activities in Grade 10 learning module. Yes, that one was hard. It was really challenging for me especially because I don't know much about measures of position at that time. Yes It was discussed in our 8th grade Statistics class, but I didn't really give much importance to it before which was really a bad decision. 

   I realized that having general knowledge on this particular topic would really benefit me in the future.