Form-4 Books

This is the fourth collection of "Stone Soup" strips to come my way since I discovered them last May. This one takes it almost up to where I joined in with the daily releases. I'm happy to have a lot of laughs, and to learn something more about the goings on among them.

There's something for everybody in "Stone Soup." There's Val, who's the glue of the whole strip. She struggles with an awful job while raising her devil children Holly and Alix, dealing with her live-in sister Joan and her two-year-old Max, and her mother as well. All this barely leaves her time to pursue a relationship with handsome motorcycle cop Phil Jackson.

There's Joan, a single mom struggling to raise her two-year-old, while her own financial shortcomings force her to live with Val and the rest of her family. She's engaged to Wally, the next-door neighbor, but has a serious case of cold feet, largely because of her disastrous first marriage to Leon.

Wally, meanwhile, wants badly to be a husband to Joan and a father to Max. But he's had his fifteen-year-old nephew Andy come to stay with him, more-or-less permanently, and Wally has to deal with all the strains of raising an adolescent male. This while trying to persuade Joan to "set the date" for their wedding.

All of them spend their time cracking wise, usually at each other's expense. In this collection, it all comes to a happy ending...but half the fun of comic strips is getting there. There's plenty for anybody to laugh at along the way.

This is a quite beautiful book made with high quality materials and containing many lovely color illustrations. The six stories included in this compilation are: The Memoirs of a London Doll by Mrs. Fairstar (1846), The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Anderson (1838), Ruth Ainsworth's Rag Bag, a Baba Yaga tale, Laurence Housman's Rocking Horse Land (1894), and The Town in the Library by E. Nesbit.

Each story is preceded by a paragraph of introduction about the author and the story, and the pictures by Angela Barrett are superb. These tales are a bit lengthy and too intense for young children, but just the thing for the more mature young reader. This would make a lovely and special gift.

A delightful compilation of Beatle fan fic in different genres. If you are looking for good short stories that are not the tired cliche fan gets Beatle/Mary-Sue format, this is the book to read.

Put aside your tired old travel guides. Harold Flagg's "Roosters, Rebels & Royals" is all you need for having the best darn time in Key West, the Bahamas, Cuba, Hawaii, Japan and England and Paris - and, of course, Fort Lauderdale, the author's home town (if you don't count his Ohio farm birthplace). Every reporter swears he or she will write a book about a lifetime of adventures. Few do. Flagg did. His book takes you along as he visits "Papa's Islands" - with rare details that his favorite author, Ernest Hemingway, would have forgotten. He missed catching up with Hemingway at the Ritz bar in Paris at the end of World War Two, but he tells you what it's like today. Flagg's book is sprinkled with more names of fascinating pals than a year of Vanity Fair pieces by Dominick Dunne - from Queen Elizabeth (well, maybe not a really close pal, but he did have drinks with her aboard the Royal Yacht) to Hemingway's fishing buddies to Japanese lovelies to Key West Conks and grizzled Florida newsmen. If you ever hoist a few with Harold Flagg, there's a good chance you'll wind up in his books - as long as you have a great story to tell. Flagg shares words to the wise about champagne travel on a reporter's beer budget, memories of wildly sexy pre-Castro Havana, doing the limbo through Nassau's "Peas 'n Rice" rebellion, and mouth-watering recipes, like that of his prize-winning Key Lime Pie, which is so easy to make it turns Martha Stewart green with envy. Indeed, if Martha were a traveling lady, she certainly would have met Harold Flagg for Margaritas on his orchid-filled patio. After reading "Roosters, Rebels & Royals", you'd want to join them.

Excellent resource for early childhood. In use with frog curriculum unit, letter writing, and to do lists.

This book is wonderful, my two and three year old love the book and we read it over and over. We speak only spanish to our children and try to foster the spanish language by reading to them in spanish. This book is easy to follow for the children and the characters, Sapo y Sepo, are definitely characters and your children and yourself will get a kick out of thier adventures.

Anyone who has ever read one of the countless "how to" screenwriting books will apreciate this scathing parody. The book may be a bit too inside at times for non Hollywood industry readers, but there is enough humor to appeal to all. This is truly one of the funniest books on the subject, whose humor is dead on. The book never overstays its welcome at a slim 130 pages. I believe writers (and even some film executives) will know many friends they can buy this book for. It's hilarious!

Isaacson does a wonderful job of tying all sorts of art forms together in this short volume [I read through it in <30min.]. I'll get nit-picky below, but let me say I heartily recommend it: first, for adults looking to understand "art" themselves, and secondly, as an introduction to the process of sharing and beginning to explain the arts to their children.

Now, to the "picking"...I would beg to differ with Isaacson on a few fine points, chief among these being 1) Pyramids belong in a separate chapter! to be called "Useful Things We NOW Consider 'Art'"; 2) don't [unless you must be totally PC] shy away from the term "primitive art", parents, look in a dictionary and share the definition of 'primitive' with your kids...there's a much deeper meaning than the derogatory-superficial meaning it's picked up; 3) in the chapter "Photographs" Isaacson, in an affront to all of us who have ever labored over a piece of ART [made with a camera+darkroom or otherwise] destined to be utilized to ILLUSTRATE something or other, flat out states that photographs which are 'illustrations' are "not works of art" and refers to an adjacent photo of the Taj Mahal.

Oddly, I had just done a double-take on that very same photo! It had struck me, as an RealArtCritic might say, as "exuding such an ethereal quality, such a misty moodiness, unlike the harsh photo-images of the late 90's..." that I at first mistook it for a PAINTING!

All in all, this book would make a great textbook for your very own "Family Art Appreciation" class.

This is a song and dance books, and the illustrations jump and jive right off the page. Colorful, fun, and has lovely little extra elements that are fun to catch on each page (see what you find in the sky on each page, for instance). My kids love this book. You'll love it.

In the beginning Snoopy meets a poodle. He tells Charlie Brown how happy they are and that they have decided to get married. Charlie Brown is sad but he agrees just as long as Snoopy is happy. Snoopy writes to his cousin Spike to come to his wedding. Spike sruggles to get there but he makes it. Snoopy starts feeling nervous. The day of the wedding something happens! Something also happens with the poodle but YOU'LL have to find out. This book is fun, funny, and worth reading. I'd say it's good for any age! :)