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A Place to go Someday brought back many memories of growing up in a small town. Flowery Branch was like going home again. Cleda Hedrich touched my heart with her first novel. I am waiting anxiously for her next one.We will be hearing a lot about this author. Her writing is like homemade ice cream, a special treat.

Think way back to your years in school. Do you remember playing a game of classroom "baseball" to review important information before a big test? I can still remember the question and answer from our government class that gave our team the "grand slam."

Do you remember "Dale's Cone of Learning" from your teacher training? Dale Edgar's model is that students learn best through direct experience, simulations, games and excercises.

If you would like to add fun "game show" style learning to your programs, please get a copy of the latest spiral bound book from St. Mary's Press: "Ready to Go Game Shows that Teach Serious-Stuff-Bible Edition" by Michael Theisen. This little book contains a dozen learning activities modeled after popular current shows such "Who Wants to Be a Millonaire," "Wheel of Fortune" and others. By the way, a variation of the baseball game I mentioned above is in this book.

Preparation for these games is easy and the supply list is, in typical St. Mary's Press style, inexpensive and easy to obtain. A working knowledge of the game shows helps, but is not required. Unless your teens have been raised in a media vacuum, they will recognize and be ready to play these games. If, however, it is you who has been in the media void, Michael explains the games in a clear, easy manner. The included diagrams for the room set up will help you to quickly construct the right environment. Questions and answers are clearly listed for the Bible based subjects and include simple notes for the "teachable moment."

Both classroom school teachers and volunteer teachers will find this volume useful. You will also like the size of this book. It is small and light which makes it easy to put into a book bag. The spiral binding lets the book lay flat for easy reading. We need more spiral bound resources!

I would invite you to encourage your teams to create their own question sets for future games. What a great project for older teens to do- create questions and games for young teens. The old quote, "If you would truly know something, teach it." applies here.

"Who wants to be a better teacher?" You will be when you use your copy of "Ready to Go Game Shows."

And that's my final answer

I have used this book for my 200 level course in Human Growth & Development at our local community college and the students have said how much they have enjoyed the book and the course. The authors took the time to include information about many different cultures and this was very helpful.

A very good childres book, still quite good even in todays times so that children can grasp the story and understand it.

I really liked this book. I am not a huge science fiction fan, but I read this for a Children's Lit. class and really enjoyed it. It contained a mixture of factual history and time travel. I became really interested in whether or not Sarah would change the history of her life or not, and I liked the fact that it was set in WWII and was told from England. It gave a different perspective of the war than those that deal with it from the American perspective.

It's rare that I come across a role-playing game that expands my mind like Unknown Armies has. It's even more rare to find a prepackaged adventure or campaign for any RPG that can blow your mind as much as the RPG itself does. To Go is a full campaign for Unknown Armies that sticks the dynamite right in at the base of your brain and twists the detonator.

What's it about? Here's the back cover blurb:

"For a decade, the occult conspiracy known as Mak Attax has been infusing America with magickal power, one super-size fast-food meal at a time. Now the symbolic batteries of the nation are charged up and crackling. The seven chakras of the American body politic have come alive, and the great kundalini serpent is winding its way across the landscape. The lords of the occult underground are riding its tail, fighting for a prize so big nobody even knows what it is. And this is no mere street saga. All the heavy hitters are stepping up to the plate, while the ascended archetypes of the Invisible Clergy choose sides and dispatch their avatars to the front lines. The stakes have never been higher and when the dust settles, your cabal of mystic high-rollers will cast the dice."

Basically, To Go is a road movie and all that it entails. The PCs go chasing after the kundalini spirit from coast to coast, with episodes in seven cities along the way. Each city symbolizes (as a chakra point) some element of America so the events that take place in those cities tend to be metaphors. This is sometimes subtle (in the episode dealing with justice) or gaudy (in the episode dealing with luck and fortune). The thematic connections between the events and the locations they take place in is a really nice touch.

The overall feel of To Go reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman's American Gods in theme and tone. There are also a good deal of gonzo Hunter S. Thompson moments as well. I like the kitschy feel the campaign lends itself to. I can easily imagine the PCs in road trip mode, driving across the Nevada desert in a beat up old sky-blue Chevy, listening to some static-y easy listening station on the radio. The spaces between the main episodes in the cities a GM can fill with his own ideas, and once you start grooving on the riffs the campaign itself is laying down, you can come up with some really whack scenarios to lay on your PCs. Driving across the U.S. can be a very surreal experience!

The opportunities for role-playing in the campaign are numerous and sometimes quite involved. There is plenty for good group of players to chew on. All the major NPCs are well developed with real motivations and goals. Even the minor NPCs provide good characterizations. One thing I like about the characters in Unknown Armies scenarios is, when they're crazy, they're really crazy. Some of the characters in To Go are pretty funny (despite being dangerous lunatics). This fits well with the sort of black comedy you often seem to find in Unknown Armies scenarios.

There are a couple of set piece action scenes, but this isn't Feng Shui and I wouldn't try to play it that way. If your players are taking the Unknown Armies approach to violence seriously (that is, try to avoid a fight) they'll probably come through unscathed (though a couple of times, you just gotta do what you gotta do). But really, this campaign is all about the role-playing and the bulk of the episodes give the PCs plenty of tough choices and interesting moral questions.

Another thing I like about this book is the art. There isn't a lot, only one full-page piece per chapter. But each picture is a snapshot of events in the chapter. The done in a clean, comic book style, that is both detailed and efficient. What I like about it is the pictures follow four "PCs" through the campaign - a big bald tough guy, a sort of skateboard chick, a guy in a suit, and an old granny. As the campaign develops, so do these characters (in the pictures). By the last picture, a couple of them are bandaged from injuries taken earlier in the campaign. The diversity of the characters suggests the comedy inherent in the kind of cabal of characters likely to get involved in an Unknown Armies campaign. Very effective artwork if you ask me.

I can't find too much wrong with this campaign. Maybe I'm biased. Having written something like this myself, I know how hard it is to write a full campaign for publication. Perhaps the only fault could be the railroading necessary to all prepackaged campaigns. In To Go, the plot rails aren't so rigid anyway, and Stolze gets away with it mostly by simply setting scenes and goals for the characters and letting everyone go to it, then figuring out the results afterwards. This is not a campaign for beginning GMs. Given the kind of leeway the PCs have in resolving events in this campaign, the GM had better be able to deal with the unexpected.

The other sticking point might be the power level. To Go is written for the "cosmic" level of play, and assumes the PCs (and thus the players) are familiar with the way things work in the Unknown Armies world. Actually I don't think this is such a problem for a crew of smart players who are into UA, but it could present a bit of a learning curve to newbies (though zooming around that curve could be fun!)

I hate Greg Stolze because he's so damned good! I want to write like him! He catches the essence of the UA game world and puts it all into this campaign. To Go is a real gem and I'm looking forward to running it.

This book is plain and simple. It really has no outstanding features except that the 5 babies pop out of the front cover. (This is the only thing that makes this book outstanding, otherwise it's pretty dull.) You then have to match them to the animal of the same color. Good for teaching colors and numbers and for your child's dexterity. Great book if you find it on sale.

This is one of many books that are currently very popular which deal with items from the mid 20th century. Sure there are lots of toys that many of our parents and grandparrents will remember, especially if they spent formative years during WW2. Yet my feelings about this book are torn. For a comparable price you can purchase similar themed books (albeit not about war toys) that is presented in full color. That minor quibble having been said, it is still a one of a kind book that most collectors should own.

This one was hard to put down. I don't why this new author does not get more recognition. This is an excellent sequel to "Sudden Despair." I hope to see more from Smith in the near future.

I thought this was a very thought-provoking book. It had a serious side as well as several humorous touches. It gives a very real view of Glasgow/Scottish life, and an insight of a child growing in to a man. I couldn't put this book down!