AS

This little book revealed the true personalities and capabilities of one of the most misunderstood mammals on earth. I used to think bats were cute, like mice with wings, until I read The Bat In My Pocket several years ago. The author helps people understand that bats are gentle, intelligent, long-lived and highly beneficial, by telling the tale of the injured bat she rescued and befriended one summer day. The little bat, Sunshine, captured Amanda Lollar's heart and will do the same to yours.

This book really makes a person realize that bats -- for all the bad publicity and myths around them -- are really wonderful creatures with distinct personalities and a lot to offer. Amanda writes a warm story with great detail about bat behavior and her own personal growth. I like that she doesn't sugarcoat the problems she had and that it is apparent keeping bats (and all wildlife, really) is not only unwise (and probably illegal) for the normal person but a difficult and challenging task. If everyone read this book, there would be a lot better understanding of the important role bats play in the environment and why they should be appreciated rather than feared.

I have met Amanda and now consider her a friend. After reading her book, it made me realize how wonderful Amanda is, and inspired me to begin learning even more about bats. In this endeavor, I have began working as a wildlife rescuer and am learning the joys and heartaches of the rehabilitation of these wonderful, gentle, benevolent creatures God has gifted us with. I recommend this book to every teacher, parent, wildlife enthusiast, scout leader, youth minister, or anyone else who has the ability to change the stereotypical image that bats have!!!!

I commend the author on his works. I have purchased many small books on Boids but so far this is the best. Most books overload their pages with pictures and unuseful information, but this author knew what he was doing. A great book for novice and intermediate boa lovers, and would recommend it over and over again. Thanks for a great book.

I have read some books about boas, and this one is very usefull when it comes to talk about diseases, even when the chapter about disease is short, it's clear and concise. It also talks about genetics, a little confusing for someone new in breeding but usefull too. I consider this book is for begginers and intermediate boa owners.

This has become one of my favorite snake books. It has really solid information for the size and price. The pictures are great, but it's the little details that make it unusual, things I never would have thought to do or not do.

I have been working professionally on capybaras since 1981 and this book is a beautiful portrait of what a capybara is like. The drawings, the details of the capybara's behavior are exactly what I would have expected a capybara would be as a pet. The story is also very nice, very well written and fun. Excellent book.

This book was my favorite as a child. Capyboppy is so cute and loveable what child wouldn't like him? Every time we went to the library, I'd beg my dad to check it out and read it to me. Even as an adult in my twenties, this book is just as entertaining as ever and I still think of myself as my dad's little capybarra. I'm so glad copies of it are still avaliable so I will finally be able to have my own copy and one day read it to my children.

Capy's got feelings. He's a ham. He knows how to have fun. He loves the other members of the family. The cats think he's a giant mouse and he takes advantage. When he grows up the family is faced with a dilemma. It's a charming story and the illustrations are delightful. My 6 year old daughter laughs with every page no matter how many times we read it. A sure hit with any kid who loves animals.

This wine book has assisted me in selecting the correct wine to accompany my cuisine. Consequently I do not have to rely upon a waiter to select the appropriate wine. Most importantly I am now able to impress my fiance who is a gourmet chef as well as a wine expert.

Recently, I was entertaining out of town guests who thought that they were very knowledgable about wine. Fortuantly. I had recently purchased this book. Because the book slips easily into your pocket I was able to excuse myself and retreat to the men's room where I quickly scanned the table of contents for the appropriate chapter, which provided me with the information to sound like a real wine expert by the time I got back to the table. What a lifesaver!!!

I have visited numerous book stores in an attempt to find a wine book that is easy to read and would provide me with the knowledge that I felt I needed to sound like a wine expert. I found it in Cataldo Uncorked: All You Really Need to Know About Wine to be "Pretentious" as well as "Obnoxious" and More.
I am now equally comfortable when ordering a bottle of wine in a restaurant or purchasing a bottle in a wine store. Also I can now describe the wine in terms that get the attention of people who are wine-savvy.

I read and reread this book as a youth. The stories read much like classic fairy tales with tragedy, irony, and moral lessons. The writing is very accessible and encouraged me to seek out the full length "stories" in their original (play script) form once I was old enough (6th/7th grade) to really read them.

For a child who has a love of literature, these retellings of the great plays may start a life-long interest in Shakespeare's art (as they did for me).

Romeo and Juliet

Felipe Gravier and Lorenzo Schiavo review:

We think that Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two star-crossed lovers whose families are in a terrible fight which prevents them from coming together. How far the couple will go to be together becomes the focus of the story. Of his richest poetry. The opening and closing choruses are some of his most outstanding work. Romeo's It is a brilliant love story but not much more. It still possesses however some wooing of Juliet is fabulously written. The Friar gets the best lines. Mercutio is one the best friends of Romeo. It is not as good as Shakespeare has written but it's still a fabulous book and up there with his best work. One part of the play we didn't like was that for the tow families get arrange there two kids had to die.
The English language wasn't finally finished so Shakespeare had the liberty to create words and play with the language, as he liked. That's why It was so difficult to understand what each character wanted to express so the teacher had to explain us each of that words and teach us all the words in that age and told us which were the words in the English of today.

This book provides lots of Shakespeare's Storys like "A Midsummer's Night Dream" and "Hamlet" with a children's fairy tale twist. The storys are the same as Shakespeare's, but easier for children to understand. My favorite story was Hamlet because I had just seen the play. A while after we read Children's Shakespeare and it helped me to understand Hamlet better.

My Medieval class is keeping me very busy reading about women in the 14th century. First, I read about Julian of Norwich and her book, "Revelations of Divine Love", which I found to be very wordy and dense. "The Book of Margery Kempe" was easier, in that the theological development is embryonic, and therefore easier to understand, and the reader gets more information about Margery and her personal life.

Margery Kempe lived in England in the 14th century. The daughter of a well-to-do who served as mayor of his town, Margery seems to have had high expectations for her life that weren't realized. She married a man who had money problems, had fourteen children, and ran a brewery business that failed. After the birth of one of her children, Margery had a vision of Christ, and her life was forever changed. The bulk of the book details her various pilgrimages and adventures, as well as detailed accounts of her discussions with Christ.

While this is quite a colorful book, in an emotional sense, Margery doesn't come across as a very sincere person, which is what one would expect from a bride of Christ. One small incident that comes to mind is when Margery is praying for one of her religious instructors to get well. She doesn't pray that he will get healthy for his own sake, but so that she will be able to talk to him again. This theme of self-centered behavior runs throughout the book. Problems are seen not as tests of her faith or spirit, but as personal attacks on Margery, and they are something to be confronted instead of endured, although Margery pays lip service to the concepts of patience and humility.

What got Margery into so much trouble in the first place was the expressions of her intimate dialogues with Christ. Margery would weep, cry, roar and scream whenever God willed her to do this. Of course, this often happened in church and at meals. This often infuriated people, who were convinced that Margery was faking her behavior. Some of the fits do seem to be descriptions of temper tantrums more befitting a child. Margery also had some fits in which she turned blue and twisted from side to side. The classic child tantrum! Another annoying habit was her constant talking about God, Christ and all the spiritual things that those two figures entail. It's not hard to imagine that this would have gotten old fast.

The book reads quick and the endnotes are very helpful in providing dates and places, as well as biographical information on some of the important people that Margery encounters in her travels. The timeline at the front of the book helps keep events in order, as Margery dictated her story to a priest, and her memory doesn't always place events in the right chronological order.

I read the Penguin edition and found it to be most enjoyable. Anyone interested in Medieval history or Christian mysticism should certainly give this one a spin.

As the earliest piece of English writing (in the sense of first-hand account of life rather than fiction) this book is irreplaceable.
I was quite surprised at the readable quality of the book, compared to other medieval writings. True, the book was dictated to an amanuensis by Margery, but that makes it all the more surprising - dictation generally does not have the flow that one's own writing has.
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There are some drawbacks ... the book is written with hindsight, and the facts are necessarily clouded by time and memory, but what does come across is that Margery was a sick woman, mentally, physically and spiritually.
She makes it very clear that she abhors the carnal side of marriage, yet dwells upon it at great length, as if 'the lady doth protest too much'.
Her frequents outbursts of wailing and self-abasement come across as an extreme form of PMS or hysteria brought on by self-denial.
Her excessive praying strikes one as an excuse for anything that she doesn't want to deal with normally.

As others have pointed out, she was well-to-do, had a thriving business, was not molested by her husband (apart from his alleged sexual demands, which do not seem excessive) yet spends an inordinate amount of time bemoaning her fate and her husband's demands on her.

Putting that to one side, there is a lot in this book to make one re-think our views of medieval life and the specifically the role of women.
For a woman to have a good business-head; have her own means of support; dictate conditions of marriage to her husband; travel as and when the mood took her; this doesn't sound like your archetypal medieval goode-wyfe...

Maybe this book should be more widely read ???

Just wanted to point out: Margery Kempe was actually extremely wealthy, not "lower class." There is evidence that John Kempe married her for her money. She was the operator of a brewery, which also provided a great deal of income. Lower class medieval women usually didn't have the means to travel around evangelizing.

BRINGING UP ZIGGY IS SUCH A DELIGHTFUL TALE, OR IN THIS CASE, IT COULD BE TAIL. THE HEROINE OF THE BOOK, ZIGGY, HAS A TAIL,THAT FUNCTIONS INDEPENDENTLY OF HER. THE STORY TAKES THE READER BY THE HEART AND LEADS THROUGH THE LIFE OF A BLACK CAP CAPUCHIN MONKEY-GIRL AND HER HUMAN FOSTER FAMILY. WHILE BEING A WONDERFULLY ENTERTAINING TRUE STORY, IT IS ALSO VERY EDUCATIONAL AND FACTUAL. HELPING HANDS MONKEYS ARE GIFTS FROM GOD TO PEOPLE WHO ARE QUADRIPLEGIC. FROM THE BIRTH OF THE BABY MONKEY TO THE TIME IT IS READY TO BE A HELPING HAND IS A FASCINATING AND MOVING TRIP. READ THIS BOOK AND PREPARE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THE CAMPBELLS AND THE LITTLE ZIGSTER.

Andrea Campbell's book, Bringing Up Ziggy, is a heartwarming and inspiring book. Campbell describes rasing a monkey as a foster parent for the Helping Hands Program. The Helping Hands Program provides quadriplegics with trained monkeys to assist in their daily care. Campbell explains the love, commitment, and sacrifice needed. For most people, it would be hard to imagine such an undertaking or how amazing the amount of knowledge that a human can learn from an adorable capuchin.

This book is one that the reader will not be able to put down once the reading has begun. Bringing Up Ziggy offers animal behavior facts, adventure, and comedy from cover to cover. Campbell shares her knowledge with the reader on living a life with a monkey in the home. The book tells about the rewards of being a foster parent in the Helping Hands Program.

I would recommend this book to anyone considering adding a monkey to their household. Bringing Up Ziggy will help the readers to understand the love, commitment, and sacrifice that is needed in raising a monkey in the home. Most of all, the book will enlighten the reader to the richness, love and joy the monkeys bring to the people they live with.

This book presents refreshing insight into the dedication and commitment necessary to raise a non-human primate (a capuchin monkey) for the Helping Hands Program (a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for quadriplegic individuals by training capuchin monkeys to assist them with daily activities) located in Boston, MA. Ms Campbell relates her journey with Ziggy, a female capuchin monkey, from infancy adoption to adulthood. The delights of raising a baby, the trials of adolescence and the compassion needed to understand the intricacy of maturity are all described with comprehensive detail.

The tantalizing prospect of living with one of our closet relatives is quickly dispelled as infant antics turn into potential difficulties. Each member of this family must learn their place in Ziggy's world. And, indeed, each member is quickly placed in a particular category, according to Ziggy's personal hierarchy. Ms Campbell weighs the pros and cons of having accepted the responsibility of foster caring this incredible creature. She holds back nothing in describing what it is like to share her home with a monkey. Controversy abounds in regards to some of the necessary procedures and Ms. Campbell presents them astutely. She interjects facts about these incredible creatures among the personal account of her life with Ziggy.

The accomplishments of Ms. Campbell and her human family, in learning to understand who Ziggy is, along with Ziggy's own accomplishments, makes for an engaging narrative. Several black & white photos enhance this account of one woman's devotion to her diminutive charge and her beliefs in the benefits proposed by the Helping Hands Program. It is a must read for anyone who has contemplated life with a non-human primate. Having raised a capuchin monkey from infancy to adulthood myself, I can speak from experience and highly recommend this book.

hi well i have read this book'from start'to end'and it is for real'if a builder took there time'and built to what is said'inthe book'you would build a real sports'car'even if you got the frame built by a welder'and built the rest'yourself still would work out as a low cost sports car''the car built inthe book'has a 1600 G.T ford motor'and it will do'130 mph'I was thinking how the hell can it do that'it can as it is built light'and has very little wind drag'just think'what it would do with a fast jap motor'this book'is for real'not a con'or rip off'

hi this book sounds like a must for a car builder'i want a copy'how do i get one'i am in new zealand'please tell me how to get it'

What a pleasant surprise when I opened the book and found detailed plans for the building of a 7 clone. I've often considered building one of these machines for myself,but wondered just how a 5'11",250 lb paul bunyan wannabe would fit inside one of these machines. Well, with the plans at hand, a sheet of paper, a pencil and some quick math, I can determine how I can modify the chassis to fit my rather bulky frame,and maybe even accept a different engine than the pushrod Fords or the Fiat twincams listed in the book. I think a 4-AGE Toyota twincam would be just the ticket...E ticket. Great book, can hardly wait to get started.

The book (a second edition with some additions) details the build of the Locost (Low Cost) replica of the Lotus Super 7. It's a solid primer on the subject, complete with plans for building the chassis, panels, suspension, etc. However, the book was written based on stripping parts primarily from a Euro Ford Mk2 Escort (RWD). While the car was sold in the UK, and other parts of the world, this car was never sold in America. Americans wishing to build a Locost will have to get a little more creative in sourcing parts!

Its an exciting read and I look forward to attempting my own Locost build (albeit with American-sourced components) at some point in the future.

This is an excellent book to help you develop your own first kit car. It will guide you step by step including how to weld, where to source parts, etc. It is an inspiring book!

What a concept! Building your own car! With this book Ron Champion outlines a plan for building your own Lotus Seven/Westfield clone. Some sections may be not as detailed as some people would prefer but overall it is excellent and informative. There are lots of builders and discussion groups that readers could join and learn from. The most valuable part of this book, in my opinion, is how to build the frame. The frame is built from square section steel tubing and welding equipment is required. Parts like the nosecone, windscreen, etc. can be fabricated or bought. There are quite a few Seven clone manufacturers around the world. The 'for as little as..' part may be a slightly incorrect but its much cheaper than most kit cars. In the course of building this car the reader will have to learn a lot about suspensions, drivetrain and engine rebuilding, fibreglass work, etc. It's almost like an outline for a course in Motor Vehicle Technology! I must say that this is one of the best car books I have ever read and if you've ever had schoolboy dreams of building your own roadster type car then you've definitely got to get this book!

This is a great book, but it left out the very frog I was interested in. That being poison dart frogs. However, for beginners like me it had great information and led me to believe I should start with a simpler frog anyway!

This is a great book for a beginner tree frog owner. Unlike other books which spend a lot of time describing all the different species of frogs without any honest-to-goodness practical advice, this book has plenty of both.

This book covers some absolutely necessary basics - how to select a healthy animal, how to diagnose and treat an ill one, how to set up a frog's vivarium, what to feed, and how to breed the frogs. Importantly, it is written for a beginner frog keeper and focuses on species specifically recommended to beginners - green tree frogs, White's tree frogs, white-lipped tree frogs, and red-eyed tree frogs. The general information offered on all the species is really thorough without being overwhelming. Because red-eyed tree frogs, White's tree frogs and white-lipped tree frogs need some specific advice, these species are devoted their own chapters.

The book is well-organized into chapters and includes many black/white and color photographs of frogs and vivariums. A must-have for any frog beginner.

While I was only interested in one frog from this book, the red eyed tree frog, it covered many others as well. This book is extremely helpful in providing both care and breeding tips for your frogs, and it even includes magnificent color photos. I refer to this book as my number one source for tree frog care and would recommend it to anyone.