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This book is a great book to read to toddlers and young children who are about ready to start school. It shows them that it's okay to be nervous about going to school for the first time, yet at the same time calms their fears about school, thereby preparing them for when they begin classes.

Despite these minor objections, Denim does knows humor for the young set. In this story, the "dumb bunnies" confuse themselves and others during a zoo trip, and generally cause trouble for all. A lot of the humor is in the background zoo signs:"Free Admission. Free Ice Cream. Free Popcorn. All For One Low Price," and "Hot Dogs. Chilly Dogs. Room-Temperature Dogs." Dave Pilkey's illustrations are bright and colorful without overwhelming. A good book for around ages 4 to 7. Note: Although for older readers/listeners, Pilkey's "Captain Underpants" books deliver even more bathroom humor (for those who like that--and I know that many kids do), but they are more cleverly designed and plotted than this book.

Sometimes the book did seem to read a "truism" into every event, and often these "truisms" would contradict each other. I felt there was too much of this and it was not pointed out strongly enough that, sometimes, both "too many cooks spoil the broth" and "many hands make light work" could apply - it is up to one's judgement which has most weight in a given situation.

Generally a good read, and one I could relate to with my own life. Don't take every word of wisdom too seriously, but enjoy Brian's very good writing hand, and I hope you (as I did) will gain something worthwhile in terms of attitude from this tale.

Jokes To GO, is a historical collection of some of the funniest material by wellknown as well as up-and-coming comics.

Kudos to Judy for her dedication to the art and preservation of StandUp. This book is a great gift to anyone who is a lover or a student of comedy!

The funniest stuff from the funniest folks, sure to cause episodes of incontinence and milk through the nose the world over.

Brown does an excellent job of editing and the comics do a great job of doing what they do best (ie being funny)

Her mythology is well known, although not as well as it deserves to be: she elbowed her way into a male-only university department, lived alone in New York, and drove cross-country with a girlfriend in a time when such things Just Weren't Done. Once she'd exhausted the adventurous possibilities of North America, she struck out for Africa and then China.

She was a bohemian in Shanghai, and her flat enjoyed visits from even a grubby, earnest young Mao Zedong and the ever-dapper Zhou Enlai. Unlike other China Hands, though, Hahn mainly shied from revolutionary company in favor of the decidedly bourgeois literati, led by handsome dandy poet Shao Xunmei. (Read "Shanghai Modern" for more on him.) Hahn became Shao's lover and later concubine, and together they launched the literary magazine Tianxia, "Under Heaven". Emily was also a fixture in the expatriate scene, writing for the New Yorker and known for showing up at Victor Sassoon's lavish parties with a pet baboon in tow, clad in diapers after a few unfortunate mishaps.

She moved with the war to Chongqing, and from there to Hong Kong, where she began an indiscret affair and had an illegitimate child with the head of British Secret Services. She sat out the Japanese occupation, returned to the States after the war ended, and then moved with her lover to England.

Emily Hahn was more a writer and professional character than a journalist. Her best works are autobiographical, and when she ventured into research the result was painfully propagandistic puff pieces.

But that is the problem with this biography: Emily Hahn's life had already been documented with both care and color in her own writings, so Cuthbertson's account mostly rehashes Emily's own words in more prosaic terms. The main advantage is to find out the historical characters behind the fictional names, and to have a clearer chronology than Hahn's writing provides.

The thing is, Emily Hahn didn't lead that interesting or colorful or significant a life, not compared to the many other young Americans lured to the East at the same time. Rather, she was so talented at describing people, places, events with a sharply bemused eye for the ironic idiosyncracy. That is what makes her intriguing.

This is a life story that reads like a novel. Why the Chinese portion of this book has not been made into a movie is a surprise to me. There is a cinematic quality of Ms. Hahn's life in China (which she wrote about herself) that cries out for filming. Ken Cuthbertson tells the story of this life without judgement calls does not clutter his book with useless facts. The book is illustrated with photographs spread throughout the chapters where they are needed. I could not recommend this book more highly.

German psychologist Dietrick Dorner is a professor of cognitive behavior at the University of Bamberg and director of the Cognitive Anthropology Project at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. He is also the inventor of computer simulations that expose the errors in decision making that arise in complex situations. The book The Logic of Failure describes some of this research.

One of the most interesting aspects of Dr. Dorner's work is that much of the behavior, good and bad, elicited from participants in the computer simulations is seen in real settings. Depending upon the situation described, I found myself realizing that my own responses might not have been optimal had I been a test subject. Also surprising was that no matter whether one had the best of intentions or simply took the situation as lightly as a game, the outcome could be disastrous. (As another author, A. G. Cairns-Smith, has written, "Sometimes enthusiastic incompetence is worse than sloth!") Whether the improvement of living conditions among the imaginary Moros of Tanaland in the Sahel of North Africa or in the quality of life of the citizens of the simulated suburb of Greenville, the outcome of the decisions made was obviously highly correlated with the capacity of the test subjects for managing simultaneous, multifaceted, and interconnected analysis of the situations. Some were capable of summing up the key points of the problem, forming plans, taking actions, and assessing outcomes while others simply spun their wheels in an effort to look like they're doing something. Another surprising, one might almost say frightening, point was the almost natural inability of most people to interpret exponential functions, like growth rates, and to misjudge the effectiveness of measures taken to alter the course of outcomes. Real problems like the spread of AIDS in a population were off by a substantial amount and the effectiveness of programs attempting to curb its spread were totally misjudged, leading to an unfounded optimism. This lack of basic understanding of what amounts to compound interest is probably why so many people end up critically in debt because of credit cards.

Given the complexity of life in modern society and the decision making expected of the average citizen, critical thinking like that which Dr. Dorner's computer simulations help develop should be encouraged as early as early grade school. While the work gives some basic concepts that will help the reader improve his own responses to complex decision making, more than anything Dorner's work suggests that society needs to be more tolerant of those who are in stressful positions that require decisions based on inadequate data. It also suggests that it might be best to place individuals who are more skilled at making plans and taking action under these circumstances into positions of authority. Certainly testing of this type might serve as a better means of selecting them.

I always prefer books that are board pages and not paper so we can let him have the book for his own parousal without supervision. I see this as the only drawback on what is becoming a favorite for my son.