Books Related to Gifted Education

In Local Libraries and on the Internet

The Friends of the Gifted and Talented (FRoG) has compiled a list of books on gifted education that are available in local libraries. Some of these books are also currently in-print and can be purchased on the Internet. All of the following books (except those noted) are available in the Downers Grove Public Library, and most appear in section 371.95. These books are also present in many other libraries of the Suburban Library System. Note: There is no particular order to the following list.

 

The Gifted Kids Survival Guide: A Teen Handbook

by Judy Galbraith, James R. Delisle, Pamela Espeland (Editor)

Free Spirit Publishing, 1996, ISBN: 1-57542-003-1

Available on the Internet for $12.76

From the Back Cover

Written with help from hundreds of gifted teenagers, The Gifted Kids' Survival Guide is the ultimate guide to surviving and thriving in a world that doesn't always value, support, or understand high ability. Full of surprising facts, step-by-step strategies, and practical how-tos, and inspiring quotations, featuring insightful essays contributed by gifted young people and adults, this book gives you the tools you need to understand your giftedness, accept it as an asset (if you haven’t already), and use it to make the most of who you are.


Your Gifted Child: How to Recognize and Develop the Special Talents in Your Child from Birth to Age Seven

by Joan Franklin Smutny, Kathleen Veenker, Stephen Veenker

Facts On File, 1989, ISBN: 0-8160-1663-1, 371.95

From the Back Cover

"Your Gifted Child is neither a cookbook nor a 'build a better baby book' as too many recent works on parenting bright children. Rather, this much-needed work empowers parents to invite gifted development in their offspring through finding and encouraging special aspects that may 'turn into magical gifts'." Nora Cohen, Ph.D., University of Oregon.


Gifted Children Speak Out

by James R. Delisle (Editor)

Walker and Company, 1984, ISBN: 0-8027-0725-1, 371.95

From the Back Cover

Dr. James R. Delisle collected the thoughts and feelings of gifted children on these topics: Defining giftedness, Getting along with friends and classmates, The expectations of gifted children and what others expect from them, Schools that work and schools that fail, Parents – a helping hand from home, and Future goals, future quests.


The Gifted Child, the Family, and the Community

by Bernard Miller, Price Merle

American Association of Gifted Children, 1981, ISBN: 0-8027-0673-8, 371.95

From the Front Flap

Comprehensive, knowledgeable and filled with informative insights, these thirty-three complementary essays provide an invaluable guide for adults who live and work with gifted children. The authors, all experts, describe the ways in which the family, the school and the community as a whole can help these young people develop their talents to the fullest potential.


Helping Gifted Children Soar:
A Practical Guide for Parents and Teachers

by Carol Ann Strip, Gretchen Hirsch (Contributor)

Gifted Psychology Press, Inc., 2000, ISBN: 0-910707-41-3, 371.95

Available on Internet for $12.96

From the Back Cover

This user-friendly guidebook educates parents and teachers about important gifted issues such as working together, evaluating classroom programs, forming parent support groups, choosing appropriate curriculum, meeting social and emotional needs, surviving the ups and downs, and much more! The information and useful advice provided make this book an ideal resource both for those just starting out in the gifted field as well as those who are already seasoned veterans.


Educational Resources for Academically Talented Adolescents

by Jhu Cntr for Talented Youth Staff (Editor)

CTY Publications and Resources, 1994, ISBN: 0-881622-08-8, 371.95

From the Back Cover

Middle school can be a difficult transition; a less flexible academic setting replaces the individualized attention of elementary school; most students now face many teachers with different concerns and academic specialties. At the same time, adolescents become increasingly concerned with whether they fit in socially, demanding a greater role in decisions that affect their lives; yet the intellectual gap between themselves and classmates the same age often increases. Opportunities don’t always keep pace with intellectual growth.


Identifying and Cultivating Talent
in Preschool and Elementary School Children

CTY Publications and Resources, 1994, ISBN: 0-881622-09-6, 371.95

From the Back Cover

Identifying and Cultivating Talent in Preschool and Elementary School Children was designed to address questions from parents and educators on the identification of talent, and provide a blueprint for educational planning.


Challenging the Gifted:
Curriculum Enrichment and Acceleration Models

by Corinne P. Clendening, Ruth Ann Davies

R. R. Bowker Company, 1983, ISBN: 0-8352-1682-9, 371.953

From the Back Cover

This comprehensive source book offers a wide selection of alternative methods of programming for the gifted. It includes field-tested models for entire courses of study for grades K through 6 and 7 through 12, as well as semester courses for the secondary level and single learning projects. Each model provides comprehensive content coverage, depth and breadth of skill integration, diversity of creative activities, variety of approaches, and a wealth of support media; so much so that all who are involved in educating the gifted – administrators, supervisors, teachers – can readily find viable program elements uniquely appropriate for and adaptable to their own program design and implementation needs.


Teaching the Gifted Child

by James J. Gallagher

Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1985, ISBN: 0-205-08421-4, 371.95

From the Preface

This third edition of Teaching the Gifted Child has been completed in a new era of increasing concern about American education. It is an era in which, more than ever, we seek ways to provide a quality education for the academically superior student. Changes in the educational climate reflect, in large measure, a wide pendulum-like swing of the interests of the American public between the equally important goals of (1) equity and equal opportunity for all students and (2) educational excellence, or the maximum production of all students. This book attempts to bring together the most up-to-date and relevant information on the needs of the gifted student and those instructional strategies that seem to be most effective in dealing with those needs. This is not to say that such strategies are to be limited to the gifted student; indeed, many of the instructional approaches can and should be used for students of all levels of ability. They are presented here not as unique to gifted students, but as particularly appropriate to the youngsters described.


Growing Up Gifted

by Barbara Clark

Merrill Publishing Company, 1988, ISBN: 0675208327, 371.95

From the Preface

As I offer this third edition to you who are interested in the optimal education of gifted learners, I note how much things have changed since the last revision. …. The first chapter is still concerned with discovering who the gifted are and just what giftedness means. … There are many alternative program structures available that can be used to build an appropriate continuum of services for gifted learners. … A variety of curriculum models that can be used in developing differentiated curriculum is offered… At the end of each chapter you will find questions that I have often been asked by teachers and parents around the country and in other countries.


Multiple Intelligences. The Theory in Practice

by Howard Gardner.

Basic Books, 1993, ISBN: 0-465-01822-X, 370.1523

Howard Gardner’s brilliant concept of individual competence is changing the face of education today. In the ten years since the publication of his seminal Frames of Mind, thousands of educators, parents, and researchers have explored the practical implications of Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory – the powerful notion that there are separate human capacities, ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in understanding oneself. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice brings together previously published and original work by Gardner and his colleagues at Project Zero to provide a coherent picture of what we have learned about the educational applications of MI theory from projects in schools and formal research over the last decade.


Raising Lifelong Learners: A Parent’s Guide

by Lucy Calkins with Lydia Bellino

Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN: 0-201-12749-0, 371.95

In Raising Lifelong Learners, Lucy Calkins, the nationally acclaimed educator who transformed the way our children learn to read and write in school, helps us to become our children’s first and most important teachers. Here Calkins brings her methods directly to the parents, giving practical suggestions for how we can best nurture the qualities of initiative, thoughtfulness, curiosity, resourcefulness, perseverance, and imagination that are fundamental to all that our children will do and become in their lives.

Drawing upon her influential philosophy of active learning, as well as her personal experience as a mother, Calkins shows us how to create a literate environment at home that will support our children’s skills as emerging readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and historians. By showing our children our own love of books we do much more than flashcards or quizzes ever could. And by creating homes where children learn with enthusiasm as they play games, do chores, or talk with us about their day, we provide the foundation for a lifelong love of learning.

In final section of the book, contributing author Lydia Bellino helps parents become knowledgeable and informed co-creators of our children’s school experiences. Bellino helps parents ask good questions and understand the responses, and to use this knowledge to negotiate our way and our children’s way through the precious years of elementary school.


Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades And What You can Do About It

by Dr. Sylvia Rimm

1995 ISBN:0-517-70062-X, 371.956
Available on the Internet for $23.00

From the Front Flap

It's one of the most common frustrations for parents: children who are capable, perhaps even gifted, students, yet do not perform up to their abilities. These children suffer from Underachievement Syndrome. Unless the syndrome is corrected, it can make not just school, but life, miserable for them.

In Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades, Dr. Sylvia Rimm offers desperately needed help for these students. Drawing on many years' experience as a parent, teacher, and psychologist, and her own clinical research, Dr. Rimm has developed a Trifocal Model for reversing underachievement. In this six-step program, parents and teachers work together to get kids back on track. It works for both gifted and average children, and for students from preschool through college.

Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades is full of real-life examples and practical advice. Hundreds of families who have come to Sylvia Rimm's Family Achievement Clinics can testify to her effectiveness. If you are the parent or teacher of an underachiever, don't give up -- get this book.


Guiding Gifted Readers from Pre-school to High School

by Judith Wynn Halsted

1988, ISBN: 0-910707-11-1, 372.4

Available on the Internet for $18.95

From Library Journal

School librarian and director of gifted programs, Halsted provides a veritable gold mine on promoting intellectual growth through guided reading. Hers is a thorough introduction to the emotional and intellectual developmental needs and reading patterns of gifted children and to current research on bibliotherapy. She outlines criteria for selecting books for the gifted and furnishes an annotated bibliography of more than 160 books organized first by grade level, then by categories that include identity, getting along with others, and developing imagination. Useful for average children as well. Shirley L. Hopkinson, California State Univ., San Jose.


See Jane Win

by Dr. Sylvia Rimm

Three Rivers Press, 1999 ISBN: 0-517-70666-0, 155.533

Available on the Internet for $11.96

From the Front Flap

Noted child psychologist Sylvia Rimm, along with her daughters, a research psychologist and a pediatric oncology researcher, conducted an extensive three-year survey among more than one thousand satisfied women who have achieved success in their careers. She explored in depth these women's childhoods, adolescences, and young adulthoods, noting what the women had in common and culling from her findings important advice on how parents can give their own daughters the same advantages.

Based on extensive original research, See Jane Win provides invaluable advice for helping girls deal with such issues as middle-school grade decline, math anxieties, eating disorders, social and academic insecurities, feelings of being different, self-esteem and competition, the career-family balance, and the glass ceiling. Included are profiles of seventeen women in disparate careers that illuminate the rewards and penalties of linear versus delayed career patterns and show us the typical pathways for women in specific fields, including medicine, science, law, business, education, politics, and the arts.


How Jane Won

by Dr. Sylvia Rimm

Crown Publishing, 2001 ISBN: 0-609-60758-8, 155.533

Available on the Internet for $17.50

From the Front Flap

Ask successful women what the secret to success is and you'll get a thousand answers. Every woman's story is unique. In this companion volume to the best-selling See Jane Win, Dr. Sylvia Rimm lets more than fifty women from all walks of life tell their own stories of success in their own words. Among them are plenty of household names, including Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, singer and actress Florence Henderson, New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman, space shuttle commander Eileen Collins, Harry Potter artist Mary GrandPre, novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard, and more. But there are also women you've never heard of — scientists, teachers, artists, homemakers, doctors, publishers, and more — who are every bit as successful. To learn how these women earned, struggled, and lucked their way to the top is both fun and inspiring.


Handbook of Gifted Education

by Nicholas Colangelo, Gary A. Davis

Allyn & Bacon, 1996 ISBN: 0-205-26085-3, LaGrange Library 371.95

Available on the Internet for $87.00

From the Back Cover

This is the most complete book in the field of gifted education. The contributors are all well known scholars in gifted education. The book covers all the main topics in the field and contains an excellent balance of research and practical applications. The contributors are the leading people in the field of gifted education. Chapters contain case studies and scenarios designed to bring out the lives of gifted children. Deals with counseling the gifted as well as social and emotional issues. Covers gifted/disabled. For professionals working with the gifted.


Education of the Gifted and Talented

by Gary A. Davis, Sylvia Rimm

Allyn & Bacon, 1997 ISBN: 0-205-27000-X, LaGrange Library 371.95

Available on the Internet for $85.00

From the Back Cover

In the mid 1970s, interest in accommodating the educational needs of gifted and talented children began its climb to higher levels with greater public awareness. Federal statements, definitions, funds, and professional staff were created, and state legislation formalized the existence and needs of gifted children. Now, as we head into a new millennium, this movement has taken a step backward due to a rise in a recommitment to equity in education, growing cooperative teaching, and the economics of funding a program. This book, however, continues to outline the best ideas that have come from leaders in gifted education. This up-to-date and well- organized best-seller begins with an overview of current issues and proceeds to characteristics of gifted students, program planning, and identification issues and methods. The problem of underachievement is covered as well as the challenges of parenting, understanding, and counseling gifted children. Designed for teachers and administrators who are seeking to teach gifted children, or to develop or enhance a program for gifted children.


Program Opportunities for Academically Talented Students

The CTY Publications & Resources, The Johns
Hopkins University, 1995, ISBN: 1881622061, 371.95

A Guide to over 450 summer and year-round programs in the United States and abroad.


Developing Talent in Young People

Ed. Benjamin Bloom, 1985, ISBN: 0-345-31951-6, 371.95

From the Back Cover

One hundred and twenty young men and women who had reached the highest levels of accomplishment in their chosen fields were interviewed by a University of Chicago research team to determine how and why they were able to develop such exceptional talent.

The results of the study indicate that talent development requires a minimum of a dozen years of commitment to learning. Central to this process is the amount and quality of support and instruction that children receive from their parents and teachers.

Developing Talent in Young People explores in detail each of the crucial stages of talent development, provides a highly readable account of the talent development in each field, and offers parents and teachers everywhere important new insights on this fascinating subject.