Elephants Books

My 2 year old LOVES this book...we read it over and over again. Really cute, sweet story.

Linas Alsenas' PEANUT tells of Mildred, who gets a new pet named Peanut and decides he's a dog: the only problem is Peanut won't fetch, roll over, or do anything that other dogs do. The problem is - he's not quite a dog at all. A fun and different tale about pets and companionship evolves.

Our 3-year old loves this simple book. I thought it might be too basic for him at first, but the story moves so well in combination with the illustrations that much of the reading experience is talking about what is going on rather than just reading a really cute story. It is always a favorite moment to contradict the book each time gleefully squealing, "That's not a puppy" when Mildred finds the stray "puppy" Peanut.

We talk a lot about people's feelings and discuss why Mildred is sad before she finds the "puppy". Our son still calls the camel at the end of the story a giraffe, but he knows it's definitely not a "kitten."

Ideally it is geared for a slightly younger child, but he's already "reading" it to his younger sister, so it crosses the two ages well.

I had just finished reading "Water for Elephants."Water for Elephants: A Novel I decided to search for books by Reynolds Price at my local library. One book which my library has that I had never heard of was "A Perfect Friend," a children's chapter book. I checked it out, read it, then bought it for a friend who loves elephants. A Perfect Friend Both books are set in the 1930's and both focus on small circuses touring small towns. I learned a few things in "A Perfect Friend" that I hadn't learned in the more recent book. One of these was the fact that all elephants, male and female, are called bulls by those in the circus -- or at least in the 1930's they were. I am grateful for the serendipity that lead me to Price's book. I recommend both highly. Both are beautifully written. The protagonist in Price's book is 11. I checked the book's readability and an average reader at age 11 ought to be able to read it, or an advanced reader at a younger age. For sure, the tale and message appeal to all ages. Barbara Morgan

It's been a year since Ben's mother died, but he misses her daily. His only consolation is his love for elephants, which his mother loved too - his involvement in the life of a special elephant who has been a survivor brings a bond to both which can heal in this unusual story.

In this sweet children's story, Reynolds Price tackles one of life's most difficult subjects, a youngster's loss of a parent. Ben, who is eleven, after the death of his mother is left alone with only his father and a very old dog Hilda for company. And a couple of friends. "He was the only boy in school who had a girl for his best friend, and he could usually smile at Robin's [his cousin] joking. After his mother died, though, Ben's outlook changed; and he went on feeling sad for a long time." Rather than attempt to answer the unaswerable, Mr. Price lets Ben tell his story. And a fine and moving story it is. In this marvelous little tale, Ben prays for an elephant, the animal his mother has taught him to draw. "See, there's really no question at all that elephants are better than people. They always take care of their young, they never kill anything unless they have to, and they talk to each other over miles of distance in voices so deep we can't even hear them." This lad may be onto something here in my favorite passage from the story.

The characters are all well drawn and completely believable-- from Ben's friend Dunk to his father who sometimes handles his own grief by getting drunk. Ater all, malt may do more than Milton cab to justify God's ways. . . Ben's grief for his mother and loneliness are palpable. The story, however, never becomes maudlin. Ben copes and survives; and there is not a "grief counselor" within a thousand miles.

No one writing today is better with words than Mr. Price. His evocative, concise language is both beautiful and moving. I bet children love this story. This adult certainly did.

This is the best photographic book every printed. I bought two, because one day they will be worth a lot of money. Try and get one for yourself, and keep it in pristine condition as part of you superannuation fund.

As I started to leaf through this epic; tears welled in my eyes; Tears for the the art, tears for the subject, tears for the artist and tears of joy.

The destruction of life has never been so beautiful.

Peter Beard is one of few artists whose life is art, in the truest sense.

Five Stars for the best Big Book effort
since Helmut Newton's SUMO.
If you can not afford Peter's six figure
art creations this is the way to go.. if?
you can find a copy for sale.
Additionally, a classic document of overpopulation's
tragic consequences for any species including our own.
When you have it get a glass of wine
and settle down for two hours of life
and death in another world.

The Right Number of Elephants is as silly as an elephant driving a car. First, each page helps the child count from ten to one by illustrating it with whimsical pictures of elephants doing everyday activities. Second, learning to count is a very important skill for young readers. Third, mixing fantasy with reality is a very good combination. For example, getting ten elephants to block the sun at the beach is ridiculous. If your child is having trouble with counting, this is the right book for them.

My 20 month old son LOVES elephants, and when my grandmother gave him a copy of this book we could hardly read all of it because he was excitedly shouting A ELEPHANT! over and over again. The reason I'm looking it up here is because we literally wore out our first copy. I like the book because it's different, and cute without being cutesy. The illustrations are fabulous. I highly recommend it to anyone.

This is a fun, imaginative counting book, great for young children (2-4). "If you suddenly need to pull a train out of a tunnel and save everyone on board, then the right number of elephants is 10." It counts down to one elephant as a "very special friend." Very nice, and cute illustrations.

A man abandons the city, leaving behind a life drowned with alcohol and haunted by his past. Accompanied by his beloved bottle of vodka he seeks refuge in a Cycladic island. An unexpected encounter and the instinct for survival revive the vocabulary of love. The absence of a genuine life is vaguely reflected in the cracked mirror. However, while his mania for drink is an indefatigable, and highly clever opponent who makes no distinctions, love takes him to places that act with increasing violence: from Paros to Munich and London and then up to a mountain village in Central Greece. The harder and the more ruthless the game gets, more obvious it becomes that the most attractive magic is reality itself. As you can see the novel's plot unfolds in different places in Greece as well as abroad. It starts with the anonymous hero's arrival in Paros - since at no point in the narrative is he given a name- where he goes still haunted by the memories of a recent broken up love affair. The hero has an obvious drinking problem that in no way helps his situation. In the island he meets an interesting young Anglo-German woman who is on vacation there and with whom he starts a relationship. This woman's powerful personality exercises a strong influence on his sensitive self. While she extracts pressure on the concentric circles of his loneliness, he increases his alcohol intake. The ups and downs of tensions and clashes, the partyings and the rejoinings that take place during their affair constitute the fundamental spark and stimulation for the hero's successive recollections that reach the depth of his past. These retrospections that take shape as he seeks refuge in earlier memories that reach down to his childhood - contribute to the creation of a another narratory subsoil which expands the time schedule of the whole story. The main character's life is given by four distinct interpretations - optic angles a. That of the narrator-author , who by speaking in the third person gives the basis for the time space of the story's framework b. That of «Z» the anonymous girlfriend, who in the letters she addressed to him -necessarily in the second person - during the period of her absence - tries to explain his erratic, inconsistent and self - destructive behaviour. c. That of the discussions between Z and her sister, thereby introducing a sequel in the third person d. That of the main hero, and his recollections, creating a introspective perspective, in this case in the first person , in the forefront of which it is only he who is visible

The novel consits of 25 chapters, each one has its own subject and the novel is subdivided into a hundred small sections. . Each chapter has a title starting from a specific letter of the English alphabet. each such word has a Greek root. Diptych, Haemorrhage, Genesis etc

A very intersting novel by a young Greek author.

«The novel's `hero' - we're never told his name - leaves Athens for a holiday in Paros, taking with him a bottle or two of Absolut vodka just for the journey. He is `drinking to forget' , and indeed the author forgets to tell us just what has upset him. A woman, one guesses. Short flashbacks describing parties and brief affairs from ten or fifteen years earlier show that he' s always been a heavy drinker, but now he's dangerously alcoholic, and will need more than a week or two in Paros to reassemble his disintegrating personality./ Almost inevitably he meets a girl in Paros; a German holiday-maker from whom he tries to conceal his alcoholism and later at least his bottles. She is alternately attracted and repelled by this egotistic, self-pitying, destructive young man, but the relationship continues on and off for some time, in Athens, London, Germany and a Greek mountain village, with some occasional returns to Paros. Only when she can take it no more and leaves him for good does he make a real effort to pull himself together and the book ends hopefully, with the hero working - writing it seems - again...

...What is interesting here is the elegance of the writing and the skilful drawing of character,. Like Dickens in Great Expectations, if the comparison is not too far-fetched, Stamatis succeeds here in making sympathetic a central character who is in many ways repulsive. Or like Lawry in Under the Volcano, in making us interested in that essentially boring person the far-gone alcoholic. I would' nt want to suggest that Stamatis is a fine a writer as Dickens or Lawry, but this is a first novel , and to show such skill promises much for future work

We've all passed through and survived those phases when things become frighteningly dark and blurry and when social interactions only serve to loosen an already transient sense of self. When the memory of a lover lingers and the pain associated with her/ him seems as though it will stain our every thought for an eternity. In Alexis Stamatis' The Seventh Elephant we follow a young man into his distorted mental world as he flees Athens, wanting to escape from relationship failure and a habit of lethargy that saw him spend "two years of voluntary confinement at home." Clutching his bottle of Absolut vodka, like Linus clutching his security blanket, he arrives on Paros again - sweetly intoxicated he "smiles at his swollen eyes" - after two years. But this time, he is alone. "Alone this year? Where's..." asks Mrs Vasso. His memories flash brightly and persistently like television commercials annoyingly do just as one is trying to simply get on with the story of the movie. His return is not a pleasant one because this time he really is alone, "without a house to hide in, without a woman, without an alibi." Our protagonist doesn't know whether the "pang" he feels in his gut has something to do with nostalgia, fear or expectation. But really it's fear. He's scared of going through the motions of peeling away his facade, his fortress, and allowing himself to get to know another person again, and for another person to get to know him. He has no plan. He's at the mercy of chance. "There's no programmed sequence of action, he has no course mapped out. Everything will come of its own accord, he won't force anything." Sounds like a nice philosophy, but for our protagonist it's not so intellectual, he simply can't physically force things, he has no energy - after all he's been fighting with his soul, he's generally intoxicated and don't forget, everything is weird and blurry - he's been in "negotiation with his surroundings at every moment". Sure love is the motivation here, but this is no Mills & Boon romance. Stamatis' prose reads elegantly - he's a poet with several published collections to his name. Be sure to read with a pen in your hand ready to mark phrases, such as "I like travelling, it's the only way to live in this world", which you may like to memorise and incorporate into your own vocabulary at some later point. Stamatis has a sharply critical eye. We get a taste of this right from the start as he depicts the French tourist his protagonist meets when he first arrives on Paros. "He was obviously in a mood for a conversation," thinks our hero and corrects himself, "or rather for a monologue." It's a cynicism bred from temporary exhaustion from struggling with understanding oneself and being understood rather than anything else since phrases like "you can't connect", "I've nothing in common" and "I don't belong here" often plague the young man's thoughts. Nonetheless he does meet another girl and his alcohol-induced lethargy doesn't paralyse him when it comes to love. However, it's a slow and gruelling process that kicks off with a plethora of doubts and fears - is it different this time? Or will it end the same way? How will she compare with the others? - but sees him face the reality of loving another as one faces the mirror to discover one's self. Well, if nothing comes of it, the love letters will remain - "thanks for the wonderful moments, the sharing, the understanding, the identifying, the conversation, the dancing, the bars, the beach and the bed".

Larken Bradley has won national recognition for the local obituaries she pens for the Point Reyes Light, a small-market weekly newspaper that serves an area north of San Francisco. For "Stories of West Marin," a collection of short stories about an eclectic group of people from her neck of the woods, Bradley had the opportunity to write about folks, who were still breathing and able to share their life stories firsthand.

The oldest among them died before the book went to print. Bradley writes: "Just before his death in the spring of 2004 at age 101, the community's most influential centenarian granted a visit to one more soul eager to hear about life in West Marin in the good old days."

Bradley listened to the recollections of 22 West Mariners - those whose roots run deep and those who are transplants from such places as Michigan, Mexico, Philadelphia and London. She interviewed ranchers, entrepreneurs, artists, educators and eccentrics, most of whom are environmentalists and free-thinkers.

I especially liked the story of Barbara Keady, a hairdresser who runs the Village Snipper salon, and her "emotional, spiritual and psychic bond" with Tootsie, "a 2,200-pound Holstein - one busty, bodacious, big-boned bovine." Bradley writes: "It was almost as if she and Tootsie knew each other before."

Anastacio Gonzalez introduced barbecued oysters at local restaurants. Bradley lists all the ingredients - except for the secret one - in Gonzalez's special sauce.

Xerxes Whitney, an athlete, physical education teacher and poet, was born with cerebral palsy. Bradley inserts Whitney's profound poem, "What's Your Name?"

Her stories reveal the history of the area. Some show that these are the good old days. Collectively, the book leaves at least one more soul eager to hear more about life in West Marin.

Larken Bradley's eloquent Stories of West Marin portray a people who have left the stereotypes of peacock feathering hot tubbers far behind. Interviews with locals from all walks of life, up and down the economic and social scales, find Bradley drawing out the humor, beauty, richness and occasional magic of folks you would love to have for neighbors. These glimpses leave the reader chortling, tearing up or simply happy to know there are such folks in the world. With Bradley as your guide, you feel as though you've stopped in for a cup of brew and a cozy chat and found a treasure trove of life stories. Like Oliver, you will be left wanting "more, please."

I purchased this book while visiting the POint Reyes National Seashore. The book is a collection of short stories about real people who live in the area. They aren't celebrities, but actual people who have relevant, humorous, and touching stories to tell. The beautiful black-and-white photographs accompanying each piece make the book feel like an art book, or one to leave out on a coffee table for friends to flip through. If you know someone traveling to this area of Northern California, or fans of the region, it would make an absolute perfect gift!

This book is a trip back in time and deals with the author's experiences of his life in Laos. The stories he told described a wide array of adventures, customs, compassion, hardships and war that intertwined with his personal journey through a tumultuous era in the history of the United States during the Vietnam War. Adventure-seeking men would envy his experiences.

Review by Chris Russell

Several days ago I received your book and sent off a letter to you expressing my conviction that your memoirs are the best yet written about the period in which some of us served for varying lengths of time in Laos. Congratulations, Howie! Your revision of the original manuscript is a great success and the final, like the original, is fascinating, insightful, entertaining and wonderfully lively.

Review by Earl Young

"From the eye-catching photograph that draws the reader's attention to the book cover, through his very personalized account of adventures that spanning twelve years in the unbelievable Land Of Nod, aka "The Royal Kingdom Of Laos", Howard Lewin has turned out a fine first effort.

Either deliberately, or by great good luck, he has chosen to give an intimate, day-by-day account, warts included, of his service, first with the American International Voluntary Service team and then as a member of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He has retained most of the details and the book often reads like a diary, as he frankly discusses his successes and problems.

He breaks new ground here, detailing the day by day life of an ordinary civilian trying to accomplish meaningful tasks in a war-ravaged country, The more popular route would have been the usual expose of CIA activities in Laos, the bombing campaign by the U.S. Air Force or the swash-buckling activities of Air America pilots. But the plentiful supply of good photographs that accompany his story of everyday life make even clearing a road through the jungle clear even to non-engineers.

The book will appeal most of all to the "Old Hands" who served in Laos, and undoubtedly raise the blood pressure among many....But, as Mr. Lewin writes in the dedication, his story- elephants, bulldozers and romantic interludes included- is something he wanted his children to know. They can be proud of their father..."

Great mystery read for kids of all ages! Very accurate historic detail.

Great book! My son and I loved this mystery from the gold rush era in California. The descriptions are marvelous. It is a good book to learn about the Gold Rush in an interesting way; with a young boy and his day to day adventures. This book makes history come alive. It is wonderful way for young people to learn about the history of the Gold Rush in California.

A fun mystery for kids with a lot of California History. I highly recommend it!

My three month old was captivated by the bright colors throughout the story. The single word pages allowed me to make up the story as I read. I could talk for an extended amount of time if she was interested in a particular page. She would coo and ahh at the red car. An excellent book for an infant.

Wonderful illustrations and simple text make this an all-time favorite with babies and preschoolers!

Another excellent book in Pratt's four-book series. Olaf and Venus get in their car and head to the beach, checking out the sights along the way. A bird, a porcupine, a plane, the sea are all part of the trip. Pratt's charming and simple artwork bring each item to life--a word on one side of the page is shown again on the facing page with a full-color illustration of Olaf and Venus having fun. A wonderful book that kept my 9-month-old son amused on a plane trip recently. Highly recommended.

I LOVED this book. It gets going from page 1, it's an easy read and I just couldn't put it down. There was nothing I didn't like. The story line is unusual. It's well written and you get a good sense of things without long, boring descriptions of characters and places. I would recommend this book to anyone who is as harsh a critic as I am and only enjoys books that are engaging, fast reads that leave you wanting for more.

It's not often that a book leaves me cheering out loud, but WATER FOR ELEPHANTS did just that.

Packed with delightfully-unfolded information about depression-era circuses, this book is more than a history of the big top and most definitely more than a mere boy-meets-girl story.

For a young man, the glamor of running away to join a circus isn't really all that glamourous after all. Gruen shows the seedy side of the big top, the desperate times of the depression, the multilayered personalities of performers, roustabouts, owners, and even the animals, and balances it all delicately with the memories of an old man in an assisted living facility.

I loved the way the title tied in to the story. No one, apparently, carries water for elephants, since elephants drink far too much. But in our memories - perhaps we all believe we have carried water for our own private elephants.

I admit I read it twice in a week - inhaling it the first time, savoring it the second (particularly the ending). Tasty indeed, and five-star all the way.

"Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen, © 2006

Ms. Gruen writes an odd story. It is really two stories in one. The main one is of an almost veterinarian, Jacob Jankowski, who becomes caught up in the life of a circus. It is a romance: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back (whoopee). In the afterword the author explains that she was wanting to do a story about the photographer of circus', but she got caught up in all the rest of the circus history and it became this book. It is worthy and good. The second is of the same man in a nursing home, or some such place, who sort of does not belong there. He has lived his life and remembers it well. The instigation is the circus has come to town!!
The chapters are defined by when is the story being told. Sometimes it is now: he is old and ornery; the next one, he is remembering his life in the circus. The value is in the perspective: as an old man, he has problems, but he deals with them, somewhat; as a young man he grows up and finds the love of his life. It is always wonderful to read a story of love growing and becoming the be all to end all. But real love is of the animals, horses, elephants, orangutans, chimpanzees and doing something constructive. In the end you feel that everything is wonderful and has come out all right.
The odd thing, like in some other places I have seen ("Passenger 54"), the title comes from out of the blue, once, and it is never explained or spoken of again.