Goes

This story was a misguided attempt at a world that was never meant to be. I feel this book would be better targeted at the three to five age group, with its lack of alliteration and its monotone writing style.

Walt Rikard has done an excellent job describing a hunting adventure with his dog Rocky. It is almost hard to believe that this story was written by a 6th grader in Oxford, MS, at Lafayette Elementary. This book is a shining example for creative writing teachers to show to their students for inspiration. Larry Kegley (lkegley@olemiss.edu)

The graphics in this book were written for a four year old but the story is for an 8 year old. You would think this book would be about Torey and his skiing adventure but about after four pages Torey meets and bunny and it turns into a love story between a turkey and a bunny.

This was an amusing story for my three year old, and an interesting, even absorbing tale, for my seven year old. This is a children's book that does not insult the intelligence of children. How refreshing!

I bought this at the bookstore, paying full price, hoping to familiarize my three-year-old daughter with the dentist prior to her first visit. Unfortunately, the plot line which has Vera jumping from the dentist chair and running around the block when faced with the whirring tooth polishing machine frightened her, rather than bolstering her courage. She got the idea that the dentist was someone to fear, rather than someone to care for you and your teeth. Our visit to the dentist a week after reading the book every night (her choice) was filled with tears and her crying "I want to go home!" And, yes, for those of you who think we just read the book with no discussion -- please! We had long talks about the dentist, how she counts, cleans and checks your teeth, how the chair is big and she uses various instruments and the room might smell funny and you might hear unusual sounds . . . The only thing my daughter DIDN'T do was leap out of the chair and run around the block. But only because I stationed myself at the door to catch her if she tried. I'd recommend for older readers who have been to the dentist before!

My 2 1/2-year-old and I love reading this book together. Instead of being scary, the scene in which Vera flees the dentist has become one of our favorite games: My daughter loves to run through the house "being Vera," and I chase after her as Dr. Knoll, saying "Come back, little girl! I want to clean your teeth!" My daughter loves the illustrations and now asks to go to the dentist all the time. It's a good read and has lots of details that kids would find fascinating.

I was very misled by the title of this book. I expected a comprehensive counseling guide and instead found a children's picture book. It was disappointing. It is useful as a picture book ... .

According to the National Association of School Psychologists there are approximately 1.5 million children in the United States with a parent in prison. Children with parents in prison are five times more likely than the average child to commit crimes and be imprisoned. By the next decade, one half of all prisoners will be from a family which had a parent in prison. In When A Parent Goes To Jail, professional family counselors Rebecca Yaffe and Lonnie Hoade have successfully collaborated to provide an invaluable resource to children ages 5 to 14 with an incarcerated parent cope with the resulting psychological and behavioral traumas including the physical, emotional, and social stigmas, as well as feelings of guilt, anger, fear, and shame -- thereby guiding them in maker wiser life choices than their parents did. Unique and very highly recommended for use by parents and counselors, When A Parent Goes To Jail is a comprehensive and informative approach to prevention when dealing with the symptoms of children under the stress of parental incarceration.

Professor Richard Sherwin concludes his book with an explicit statement of his thesis, the usual format for mysteries but not for academic studies. If you are a reader who prefers to know where the case studies are headed before reading the case studies, you might do well to read the last chapter first. I hesitate to advise readers to do so, however. Many of Professor Sherwin's analyses of one or a few movies are rich with insight and will inform, enlighten, and even entertain. In contrast, his theoretical contribution (affirmative postmodern theory) is too skimpy to justify a place in my library. Thus, I recommend that readers locate this book in a local library and consult it regarding legal matters in popular culture.

I recommend Mr. Sherwin's analysis of Errol Morris's "The Thin Blue Line." I shall never watch or show that classic without thinking about Professor Sherwin?s gloss thereon. I disagree with his comparison of the older and younger versions of "Cape Fear." I suspected that each of his characterizations of one film might just as easily be asserted about the other, but he held my interest and impelled me to watch both versions again. Mr. Sherwin appears to believe that films of David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino tell us much about theories or institutions of law and law enforcement. I was not convinced but found the argument interesting.

I recommend highly Sherwin's comparison of the "jigsaw puzzle" closing of Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden in the first Simpson trial to the heroic saga narratives favored by Johnnie Cochran and Gerry Spence. Sherwin is especially good at exposing Mr. Spence's skill. Mr. Spence appears to be the shrewd country lawyer whom he plays on television.

I also recommend Sherwin's account of myth making in famous cases of the 19th and 20th centuries, although consideration of landmarks of sensationalism calls into question just when the law began to go "pop."

I recommend that readers skip the numerous lists of questions with which Mr. Sherwin mars his manuscript. I could never be certain where the questions were headed and where I was supposed to the find the answers, if any. Readers should be underwhelmed as well by Mr. Sherwin's generalization from aberrations, including the aforementioned Simpson trial. In these matters, Mr. Sherwin seems to succumb to pop law and to see the world in a sound bite of the erstwhile "Rivera Live."

Most of all, I urge readers to overlook his every attempt to generalize about law and legal institutions from movies. As I have said, Mr. Sherwin's analyses of movies are intriguing. However, getting from the movies analyzed to legal institutions is no minor trick. When Mr. Sherwin would generalize to the legal culture from this or that trend that he claims to see in this or that movie, the reader should indulge his impulse to attend to the movie critique and to ignore the alleged social criticism that, it appears, the author believes his cinematic analyses justify. Mr. Sherwin's methodological justification for this twist on cinematic verity is almost self-satire: "My working assumption is that film, like notorious cases, provides a reasonably reliable indicator of shared, conflicted, and newly emerging beliefs, values, and expectations"(p. 171). With working assumptions such as that, what hypothesis wouldn't work out?

Mr. Sherwin separates postmodern sheep from postmodern goats, but the author's renditions of postmodernism seemed to create multiple Potemkin Villages. The specter of skeptical postmodernism may haunt some in the Western world, but Mr. Sherwin's manifesto will strike most readers as disjointed and overwrought.

Law professor Richard Sherwin argues that the law has fallen prey to the representational form of the mass media, television particularly. The law, in its most noted form, the criminal trial, finds that it must present itself like a television drama in order to conduct its business.

This wouldn't be so bad, argues Sherwin, if the law's ability to curb popular passions, objectively search for "truth," maintain the public's faith in the system, and win the battle between legal truth and the public desire for closure all weren't hamstrung in the process.

In these days when most Americans frame their view of the world based on what they see on television, Sherwin's subject is extremely important. The question is whether this book is worth the effort it will require of many readers. And early on, it's hard to know if it is worth all the trouble.

Mainly, Sherwin couches his central argument in the opaque language of literary criticism and legalese. Perhaps this is done for the sake of greater precision. Nevertheless, as a consequence, all but legal and literary scholars will find themselves back on their heels when reading this dense work. Sherwin does, thankfully, buttress the core of his assertions with illustrations from popular trials, movies and television, which allows many readers to better follow his line of reasoning while getting their feet back under them. Still, the case Sherwin's arguing has been argued at least as well elsewhere and with less technical language.

Tough sledding aside, if you enjoy popular culture and hold the law in high regard, then ready a thick dictionary, find a firm chair, get in good light and read Sherwin's book. Only your stamina will determine whether the outcome was really worth the work.

Well, it was good... but not great... if you follow me.
Still, if your a hard core Garfieldian I recommend you buy this... book.

Cheers.

If you have a child that has ever been to a Derby, watched one on TV or loves horses this is a great keepsake book. The pictures are colorful and bring Churchill Downs to life. This may in fact be one of the only, or at least one of the few, Kentucy Derby books available for children of this age range. You can remember this book again and again the first Saturday of May as you and the gift recipient experience the greatest two minutes of racing!

This book is nice for children who are beginning school for the first time and are not sure what to expect. The story tells how a typical first day of school might go. It is also nice that the other children in school are portrayed as friendly and helpful. The story itself is pretty unimaginative. Page by page, the boy learns about what he will find at school. Then, towards the end of the book, he find he has lost his "friend" and the kids help him search for it (thus the "helpful" portrayal I referred to earlier.) The search is short and ends abruptly with no real message. Overall, the story was just okay.

This is a lovely book. Large and coloful, with tabs to pull to move pigeons, change hats, help Moo Moo eat ice cream, and more.
I do, however, have one reservation. The book is tearable. And I do mean TEARable. In our first reading my 1 year old easily removed one of Moo Moo's rollerblades, and Moo Moo's head nearly followed. I think the book is lovely, and my daughter thought it was facinating too ("birs!!") but for the next year or so we'll be sticking to the durable Spot.

I am a 21-year-old college student, and I gave the book 3-stars due to it being hard for me to follow. On the other hand, Paddington's shinanigans were pretty funny.