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Wow! Not long ago I reviewed for Chessville what appeared to be “the pre-emptive (and preeminent) choice for top honors (during whatever time period we use)” for a second round of PerryPawnPusher awards: Chess On the Edge Volume 1, 2 and 3 - 100 Selected Games of Canadian Grandmaster Duncan Suttles, by FM Bruce Harper and GM Yasser Seirawan, with contributions by IM Gerard Welling. Today’s title, Igor Sukhin’s gorgeous Gary’s Adventures in Chess Country, has to be the hands-down leading candidate for the Perry PawnPusher’s Young Readers Award. Gorgeous? You better believe it. The artwork from Creative Center – Bulgaria makes every page of Gary’s Adventures an eye-grabber. Librarians can expect this title to fly off of the shelves (and should order, accordingly) based on first, visual impressions alone. The cover features chess kids Gary, Cassie, Riddle and Zug, standing behind a fun, stylized, anthropomorphic chess set, and in front of the golden walls and towers of Caissia. The background of the pages of each chapter, to give another example, is not white, but various pastel colors. (Even the overleaf – the inside covers and the pages facing them – has colorful renderings of the main characters, including pawn, rook, bishop, knight, queen and king.) It would be a mistake to be solely attracted to the book and consider it all flash, however – remember the rule about not judging a book by its cover? The outside only hints at what’s inside: a fun story, lessons on how to play chess, and puzzles to help the reader play chess well. Author Igor Sukhin, with almost 50 educational chess books to his name, is the only chess author whose books have been recommended by the Russian Department of Education. As he noted in an interview with ChessBase:
Sukhin’s first book was Adventures in Chess Country, the fore-runner of the current title (which is given as the “First English edition). An introduction of chess to early elementary school students, it was published in Moscow in 1991 – and then put to work for the next near two decades.
So begins Gary’s tale, with the appearance of “a girl in a checkered dress” who, with the aid of a six-seated tricycle, whisks him away to the Chess Pavilion. Gary learns about the chessboard, about the chess pieces and how they move, and he picks up skills on his way to a match with Zug. Review questions help the reader/learner think through the content, and there are puzzles that teach as well as quiz. It is here that it is especially clear that the author knows how to present his material to young learners. Of special note are the “Army of One” puzzles, where the challenge may be “Capture all the black pieces with the white rook, taking one piece each move (Only the white rook can move, the black pieces are ‘frozen’).” Sukhin also includes fun “Capture the Flag” and “The Amazing Maze” puzzles, where the reader must move to (marked with: red flag), or avoid (marked with: mines), certain squares – anyone familiar with the computer game “Minesweeper” will know the graphics I’m referring to. The answers to the puzzles are in the back of the book, tucked in after a short tutorial on chess notation. Gary’s Adventures in Chess Country is the ideal book for a parent, teacher, or chess coach to work through with young elementary students. For somewhat older children – or for parents who want to learn the Royal Game themselves, without having to become conversant with Nimzovich or Kmoch – Gary’s Adventures can be a self-study option. As past Women’s World Champion, Grandmaster Susan Polgar writes in her Introduction:
My congratulations to Igor Sukhin and Mongoose Press for presenting a great resource for the coming generation of chess players.
Readers: you know that you know someone – or a class, or a chess
club, or a school – who could benefit from Gary’s Adventures in Chess
Country. What are you waiting for? It can be found in the
Chessville Book Store, and at just over $20 it is remarkably affordable,
too. From the Publisher's website: Download a PDF sample of Gary's Adventures in Chess Country:
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