Kangaroos Books

Tully Sanderson is an overseas correspondent. The book starts with Tully waking to find his daughter Carrie pointing a gun in his face and asking if he was the one who killed her mother Briony.

We are then taken back in time to find out how these events unfolded and we learn about Tully's time in Vietnam where he meets and falls in love with Kate and then saves the life of Soo Ling. With the close of the Vietnam war drawing to a close Tully loses contact with Kate and then Soo Ling. We find out more about Kate, Soo Ling, Tully, Carrie, Briony and a few others along the way. The book takes us to many places such as Sydney, London, Belfast, Bosnia & Vietnam.

A great read, Tully has a hidden past but then so do all the women in his life. I think the book picked up pace once Tully meets Soo Ling. It has some great characters and I think this book would really make a great movie or mini-series. I have now read 4 novels by Bruce Cooke and this is my favorite. My main problem is rating this I would have liked to give it 4.5 stars but could not.

In this book, a little girl complains that her baby brother gets away with sorts of misbehavior that she's told she can't do, because she's a big girl. She can't make messes or yell without being corrected, but the baby is allowed to... On the other hand, she realizes, she gets to do all sorts of things the baby can't - stay up late, go to school, etc. Eventually she decides it's okay that she's not a baby anymore, and she looks forward to her brother growing up, too. These issues have been explored in many books before, but this one is pretty nice, with a fairly skillful story arc. The artwork, with the little girl as an orange, cartoonish kitty-cat, is appealing as well. (ReadThatAgain)

Parents and children are missing out by not knowing and reading about Joey and his mother. [This book is the original, followed by the even better story "Joey Runs Away".]

Joey and his mother, of course, are kangaroos. In this story Joey's mother worries about him getting lost "...as mother do."

"She worried that Joey might get lost.
So, to keep track of him
she put Joey in her pocket."

Joey is initially comfortable in his pocket home. He has coloring books and toys to play with, but after a time he wants friends too, and this is where the fun comes in. Joey's mom invites his friends over, and for a while they are happy to bounce around with her as she goes about her business.

Then someone suggests TV. Since Joey's pocket doesn't have one, a friend brings one over. Next it's a stereo system, and then the gang decides they need to start their own band.

With each addition, mom's pocket get larger and her eye's begin to bulge more. The final straw comes after the addition of a guitar, tuba and drum set, when one of the friends pushes up a baby grand piano.

"That will do!" said mother.
OUT! OUT! Everybody out! she said.
Out went the TV and the stereo. Our went Bob and his horn.
Out went Billy and his drums.
Out went Betty and her piano.
And out went Joey.
"OOPS!" said mother. "I didn't mean to throw YOU out!
"Well, as long as I AM out," said Joey, "May I go play?"

With a sigh mom says 'yes', and reminds him not to get lost.

Four Stars. A lovely, silly tale that is very popular with my children (3 and 5 years old).

This is a wonderful book for use with first or second graders. It covers 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 in an engaging way that demonstrates realistic everyday uses for fractions that young children can relate to. Animals devide into two groups for a tug of war, three groups for a swimming race and four groups for a canoe race. A great introduction to fractions!

An absurdist farce about the life of Fan Fanych, alias Etcetera; a thief in Stalinist Russia who is sent to the gulags for the supposed crime of raping an aging kangaroo in the Moscow Zoo. Narrated by the same criminal shortly after his release it begins with an elaborate interrogation and show trial where the prisoner begins to doubt his own memory. Followed by many years in the camps with a cohort of early Bolsheviks and his reminiscing of earlier escapades (Picking Hitler's pocket, and eavesdropping at Yalta, etc.)

Yes, this is another story of a russian writer who has suffered through the senseless paranoia of Stalin's judicial system, yet the writing is original and the dialogue crude: I kept thinking of a Kathy Acker novel. The whole carries you along and definitely makes this an interesting companion to Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, etc.

I was given this book at at party in Jackson Hole, WY in August of 2001. It is self published. I did not expect the book to be anything special, therefore I was surprised at how good the story was, and how well written it was. It is so rare to see a good story, well written, with a plot that brings everything together.
This would be an excellent book to give to middle grades and up.

This book we read in the local library

It has a good balance of technical and daily information

Has a mating timing chart which is handy.

I think it also had some cattle showing tips in the last chapters.

Detailed a couple of ways of throwing a cow. Very good to know

Have read a couple of House cow books. This is the best so far.

Has as much information that you would expect from its size. Every page is worth reading. But if it were bigger it could cover additional material. Calf mainteneance in particular is a little light.

If you have children who are interested in learning about animals from around the world, this enchanting animal adventure book, `Lost In A Strange Land: The Adventures of Willamena Wombat' is a good book for them to read. Written by an Australian author Elaine Ouston, for early readers, it relates the adventures of four unique Australian animals that become lost in an English forest. It educates the kids about the animals of both countries and shows the comparisons in the way they live. The interactions between the animals are handled sensitively and promote a strong moral of not judging others by appearance. My kids loved it and can't wait for the next book in the series. Check out her website elaineouston.com for other books she has written that will be released soon. Lost In A Strange Land: The Adventures of Willamena Wombat

When Rachel Barthelme has a car accident one Halloween night in which she believes her car hits a young child, a group of frighteningly masked youths surround her, including a girl who shouts to her that she has killed her brother. Frightened by their hideous visages and believing they are out to harm her, she flees the scene of the accident and runs for her life, calling the police the minute she gets home.

The problem is that the police fail to turn up any such victim. Rachel, however, remains convinced that this occurred, despite no evidence to support her assertion. With her marriage failing and her ambitious husband believing that she is losing her mind, Rachel begins to question her own sanity. Complicating matters further is her new born baby, who keeps her tethered to her loveless marriage.

As her teenage children become friends with two teens with strange ideas that give her the willies, she finds that something about each of them seems strangely familiar in an unpleasant way. She also finds herself reliving the accident, as she continues to find herself haunted by brief glimpses of those youths she believed to have been there. It is as if they were stalking her. Moreover, Rachel seems to be falling in love with a police lieutenant, Sam Lomax, who is investigating the matter of the accident and seems to be the only person really listening to her.

This is a suspenseful, well written work of fiction, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing.

What a strange book this is, an odd mixture of denial and passion. It's often hilarious in it's outrageous, over the top, retelling of the heyday of Il Duce. But the glossing over of the realties of Fascism and Mussolini's pact with Hitler can get very sickening. In the end Signora Mussolini claims that "peace prevails in her heart", but somehow, in her narcissism, she has forgotten all the people that suffered besides Duce and her.