GB Books

I didn't know if I'd like this book when I took it out of the library because of the style it was written in but as I read the story took on the rhythm of the poem as if you were actually on the ship on the water. I re-read it about a year later and liked it even more the second time around. It would be a great story to read to anyone who enjoys a good pirate, sailing adventure.

Unbelievable. A 'NEW' sort of book! Quite unlike anything else available on the shelves, this is a real family read. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I'm in the UK for a while, where I first read this and where, I'm told, its something of a best-seller. Should do the same over here.

This charming adventure tale, told in verse, is a pleasure through and through. The varied rhythm keeps it from sounding monotonous, and the lively story kept me turning the pages. A delightful bedtime read.

I am 38 and I enjoyed reading this book myself although I bought it to read aloud to children (My nephew is 6 but it would be great for older kids-too hard for my 4 year old niece). It captures the best of the mystery of the sea and the brave people who sail it. It is also a deeply moral tale of a man, Bruno, seeking to right the wrongs he has done even if he has to wander through all time to do it. The book never preaches but draws the reader in, making you share bruno's quest. This story is made more magical by the verse used by the author to tell the story. Although it is set initially in England the locations are so reminiscent of the feel of the New England coast that you can readily imagine the characters walking through Gloucester or Edgartown.
A great gift for children but you will enjoy it most if you read it with them.

Nate the Great is a Great Detective! This book kept us interested! We liked when the dog had the shoe with the stamp on it! The Dog's name is Fang. We liked that the dogs were characters in the book. We recommend this book to other people!

It was an incredible easyreading book.Nate the Great is called by his friend to find a missing stamp from his stamp collection.Onthe way he finds some wet clues and finds the stamp in a wacky spot.What I liked about the chapter was that Nate's dog gives him the last clue to solve the mystery.What I didn't like about the story was that the mystery was absolutly dreadful.

Claude asks Nate to help him to find the missing stamp from his collection. He used some sticky clues along the way. This was an exciting story because Nate found the stamp in a very surprising place!

This was a great idea-- a book of photographic maps covering the entire sky. I purchased my copy from another website for much less than it was sold here.

The book could have been improved if it had closeup maps enlarging parts of the sky which contain many objects-- even individual constellations such as Cygnus, Orion, Sagitarius, and Virgo, which contain many galaxies, clusters, and other objects of interest to the observer. The wide field photos simply can't show everything of what the sky has to offer.

Still, this is a unique atlas and deserves a place in every amateur astronomer's library. It is the perhaps the only photographic atlas now available which shows many of the stars visible to the naked eye and in binoculars.

The book is generally awesome. The entire sky is photographeddown to 8th magnitude (meaning you need binoculars to see them all inthe sky) stars. Typically each full-page photo has three back-up pages including narrative and a corresponding chart which identifies all the interesting objects. Now here's where the book is frustrating: Pages 14 through 19 contain ultra wide angle photos which together DO NOT cover the entire sky. Also, these ultra wide angle photos are miniaturized and don't get the same treatment as the photos in the rest of the book. The result is a beautiful book that shows a lot of "trees", elating amateur astronomers, but which does not show "the forest". Beginner astronomers who want to quickly, photographically see the relative positions of constellations must turn elsewhere.

There are no errors in the plotting of any of the objects shown in this star atlas. Why? Because all the maps are photographs! Each map consists of an unmarked photograph, a black and white copy of the photograph marked with star names and other useful landmarks, and a text description of many of the interesting objects on the map.

The authors have made a supreme and largely successful effort to calibrate the colors and scale to match human perception of the night sky. A few notable nebulae and stars appear different in the atlas than what we would actually see due to the differing sensitivities of film and human eyes to certain wavelengths of light. Also, the limiting magnitude of the maps correlates closely with what binoculars can see, not what the human eye can see. Consequently, sometimes the sheer overload of stars and objects visible on the map can be confusing.

All 88 constellations are covered, some on several photographs. Because each map covers such a large area of the sky, many of the deep sky objects noted in the text are difficult to pick out. Also, it seems that for some maps the text was written for earlier or later exposures than what was actually published. This is evident after looking for variable stars mentioned as "bright" in the text that are not even present on the photograph!

Overall, a great work but no substitute for a "real" star atlas like Sky Atlas 2000. A bit expensive for its usefulness, but obviously a labor of love for the authors and great for casual naked-eye or binocular stargazing.

I've been trying to interest my daughter in sciences, and Stars is a big hit in my house. My daughter can't put it down. What a clever idea to bring down to earth (so to speak) a really complicated subject.

The book might be ok for a very young reader. However, from the summary and from the other review, I thought the book would be helpful to a young person with a telescope (to help them find what's out there). I just received the book today and am returning it because it will certainly not be useful in this way.

This is a fantastic introduction to astronomy for kids! Dussling does a great job in making a very complicated subject easy to understand. And I learned a lot as well. The illustrations are also very well done. A super introduction to non-fiction and science. A true must buy!

Harper's highly readable account of the Scottish exodus is exhaustive, stimulating and impeccably researched. There are hazardous, often deadly voyages, rapacious emigration agents, and a sense of precious resources departing for foreign shores, draining the country of talent, manpower and human capital. The luminous accounts from contemporary newspapers show a people acutely divided between a bitter quest for improved circumstances and their abiding love for their homeland. There is a heart-rending chapter on orphan emigrants sent to a controversial, uncertain and often exploitative future on foreign shores. Tells you the why, the where and the how of their exodus and occasional return.

As an amateur genealogist searching out our family's Scottish roots, I found this book to be an exellent reference to add to my library. It should prove especially valuable to Canadian genealogists, but I was a little disappointed in the depth of coverage of Scotland-USA exodus, which was my primary interest.

All in all though this is a well researched tome that sheds a bright light on the Scottish diaspora. Definitely recommended.

My daughter is an enthusiastic Brownie, but, alas, a reluctant reader. It's always a challenge to find something that holds her interest. She LOVED this book--says she wants to read all of them. Although the book seems formulaic and predictable from an adult point of view, from her second-grade viewpoint, it was a thrill a minute. She was really on the edge of her seat! And delighted with how it all turned out.

As a Brownie leader, I am always looking for ways to help girls understand the meaning of being a Girl Scout. What a great introduction.

Looking for a new planet to picnic on, Commander Toad and the crew of STAR WARTS descend to the planet and immediately discover that everywhere they step giant purple grapes sprout up. In no time at all, Commander Toad, Doc Peeper, Lieutenant Lily, and Mr. Hop are swallowed up by the giant purple grapes and are telling some of the worst grape jokes in the universe! And it looks like there's no way out!

Jane Yolen is an award-winning children's book author as well as a writer of adult science fiction and fantasy. She's earned the Caldecott-given for the most distinguished picture book, the Nebula-given to the most distinguished writing in the field of science fiction and fantasy, the Golden Kite-given by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and the World Fantasy Award. She's written seven Commander Toad Adventures, including COMMANDER TOAD AND THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, COMMANDER TOAD AND THE PLANET OF THE GRAPES, COMMANDER TOAD AND THE SPACE PIRATES, and COMMANDER TOAD AND THE BIG BLACK HOLE. With dozens of books written in many genres, Jane Yolen is a great author to introduce to young readers.

COMMANDER TOAD AND THE PLANET OF THE GRAPES is an absolute blast to read out loud to young readers or pre-readers. The short, descriptive sentences push the story along at a frantic and fun pace, and the color and black and white illustrations are great fun for a young audience.

With all the interest young kids today have in space-based programs on Cartoon Network, books like the Commander Toad series will bridge the gap between movies, video games, and the written word. Jane Yolen is an exemplary entertainer for young readers and parents willing to endorse the habit of reading.

This is another silly outer-space book in the Commander Toad series, which my sons, ages 4 and 8, thoroughly ENJOY. In _Planet of the Grapes_, the crew arrives on an unknown planet only to discover that it grows huges grapes the moment they touch their feet to its surface.

Due to a chance accident with a loaded syringe, Doc Peeper with the green grass hair discovers that the planet is allergic to *them*. It is Lieutenant Lily's sneezes which give him the clue. He was about to inject her with antihistamine, which is the reason for the syringe.

Complicated plot, lots of funny stuff. These books are enjoyable to both kids and adults.

A group of fossil hunters ride along in a jeep in search of fossils of birds from dinosaur times. When they first started looking around they found some rocks about the size of a grapefruit. Upon further inspection these turned out to be dinosaur eggs. " For fossil hunters, this was like striking gold. Some of these eggs still had baby dinosaurs inside them!" Because these babies had never hatched they turned into fossils, and some even had skin.

The illustrations show the progression of the eggs with the skulls and bones inside. The illustrations are vibrant with the eyes on these dinosaurs looking mean while others scurried away. The scientists discovered that the grown-up titanosaurs had bony plates in their skin, similar to a crocodile, while the baby dinosaurs did not have these.

Through out the story of these fossil hunters in Dinosaur Eggs are questions for children to ponder and explore further within the pages. " So, why didn't these babies hatch? What happened at the nesting ground?" This sparks the imagination in my son and offers him the chance to respond when reading along with various thoughts and ideas.

The series is entitled, All Aboard Reading, this being a level two book. The level two has a smaller text than the previous level with the sentences broken down in an easy to read fashion.

For any dinosaur enthusiast this would be worth the purchase so they can master the art of reading on an interesting subject. Each page covers roughly one or two sentences along with the illustrations that were prepared by Pamela Johnson. The fossil hunters are shown in the early pages with the bulk of the illustrations being the background settings with the dinosaurs.

"Dinosaur Eggs," by Jennifer Dussling, is an educational text directed towards readers from grades 1 to 3. The book follows a group of fossil hunters on a quest in which they discover fossilized dinosaur eggs. The text also goes back in time to depict the lives of dinosaurs, and to show how their eggs became fossilized.

Dussling's easy-to-read text is nicely complemented by Pamela Johnson's illustrations. Although I found Johnson's dinosaurs to be a little too "cartoony" looking at times, her illustrations are generally effective, and make good use of a lot of soothing earth tones. Overall, a good choice for young readers with an interest in dinosaurs.

This book has a collection of experiments which draw from other grossology books. (Some of the actual experiments are in the other books.) I have used a lot of the Grossology books in my classroom to really help turn on kids to science, but this particular book is more suited to at home fun. If you have the other books in the series, this one wouldn't be worth it.

My 7 year old son just loved doing these cookbook style experiments in the kitchen. It's great indoor fun on rainy days. It combines reading, following directions, treasure hunting through the house, and gross words that boys really love to say out loud. My son's favorite was making "fake dookie" which looked like animal feces but was edible!! Sounds gross, but nevertheless, tons of fun.

My daughter loves Nate the Great! She laughed through the whole book, "who wants a tuna fish can as a prize?" All the little characters in this book. I could see her trying to figure out where the tuna fish can went. A nice way to keep them interested through the whole book.

This story tells about Nate entering his dog Sludge into "The Smartest Pet Contest". Rosamond loses the prize. Read this funny story of how Nate the Great and Sludge find the "Fishy Prize".