literature

I'm only 12, but this is the best book of the hundreds I've read. Alice McKinley's aunt reminds her that she's almost 13 and will be Woman of the House soon. (Her mother died when she was four.) Alice gets a head start on her womanhood by cleaning the entire house, having her father and brother get physical checkups, and throwing a birthday bash for her father's fiftieth birthday. Besides that, she must survive the latest crisis at school: the boys are matching the girls' chest sizes with a state according to its mountains' heights! Perspective yet hilarious! My favorite book ever until the next Alice book comes out

Alice in April is a really a good book.Alice is about to turn 13 and her dad and her Aunt Sally say that she going to be Woman of the House.Her mom died when she was little.As woman of the house Alice think that her dad and her brother Lester should go get a Physical.IF you want to know more about the book READ IT. Amanda S.-14

This book is about how Alice gets used to being the woman of the house. When she finds out that a man docter is going to examin her she starts to freak out but then reilizes that it isn't so bad. The boys are naming girls after states according to how big their breasts are.

This is a wonderful story of a postman's route to deliver the mail to well known fairy tale characters. This book is unique because its pages form actual envelopes with letters in them. They are addressed on the front of the page. Some of the characters receiving the letters include: The Three Bears, THe Wicked Witch, The Giant, Cinderella, The Big Bad Wolf, and Golilocks. This story could be used in the the classroom during a lesson on letter writing and addressing envelopes. The story would interest the students and motivate them to write their own letters. Also, the book could be read during a unit on community helpers when discussing the jobs of a postman.

In this book, the Jolly Postman is delivering the mail to the residents of a quaint fairy tale village, and you get to read all the letters -- even the junk mail! Every other page is an envelope with some type of correspondence tucked inside. The Three Bears get a handwritten apology from Goldilocks, complete with misspellings and invitation to a birthday party. The occupant of Gingerbread Bungalow in The Woods, who happens to be the Wicked Witch, gets an advertising circular from Hobgoblin Supplies Ltd. A certain snout-nosed grandma gets a demand letter addressed to Mr. B.B. Wolf from Miss Riding-Hood's attorney, who also states, "On a separate matter, we must inform you that The Three Little Pigs Ltd. are now firmly resolved to sue for damages. . .all this huffing and puffing will get you nowhere." Some of the funniest moments in this book come from the illustrations of the Jolly Postman stopping for tea with each mail delivery. At the Wicked Witch's cottage, he peruses the newspaper, the Mirror Mirror, while the witch reads her mail and her black cat does the dishes. At Cinderella's castle, he enjoys a glass of champagne poured by Prince Charming, who is still in his honeymoon Hawaiian print shirt and white slacks. This book is perfect for sharing one on one with a child, but if there aren't any children available, it's also amusing for solitary adults.

I admit - Im 15 years old, and i just fell in love with this book! It's an original piece, using stories that are familiar to every child. This could be one of the best presents you can give someone.
Very reckmended!!!

I bought Berry's novel Jayber Crow in a sales bin for $--new, hardcovered and as fully intact as the wisdom within. Berry's nostalgia for what America once was is both lovely and yet realistically realized. There was no jumping into all too familiar pastoral ideal, but rather this novel is a treatise about sustainable life and land practices. For the introspective Christian reader, this novel is surely a rarety and a comfort. It is skeptical of common practices in modern religion and also searching for truths and hypocrisies while retaining loyalty and tenderness. For the non-religious or non-Christian reader that same introspection will surely be welcome. Berry is democratic, open, and above all, humanitarian. One finds the true meaning of care for others, for the environment, and for a "place" (the idea of the small town or community is lovingly rendered and displayed in terms of mortality and immortality. The idea of a barber who moonlights as town gravedigger/church custodian is a clever and enjoyable way to approach the small town of Port William's inhabitancy in its journey from cradle to grave.

I have read Wendell Berry's nonfiction, but I am a newcomer to his fictional Port William community. Reading this book is like a visit to a simpler life in rural America. Set in 1986, this novel tells the life story of Jayber Crow (1914- ), orphan, doubting preministerial student, bachelor barber, grave digger, church janitor, and progressive pacifist. Although an ordinary man, Jayber is a truly memorable character who, from his later years, reflects upon his life with clarity and poetic insight. "I am a pilgrim," he says, "but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a staight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order" (p. 133).

This book is about many things, but should be read mostly for the sake of experiencing Berry's really fine writing. It is the story of Jayber's unrequitted love for a married woman, Mattie Chatham. It is a fictional memoir about faith, loss, farming, and finding one's place in the world. "I will have to share the fate of this place," Jayber writes about his declining community. "Whatever happens to Port William happens to me" (p. 143). It is also about bearing witness to dying farms and small businesses.

Jayber's memoir is filled with page after page of profound insights. For instance, about growing old and loss he writes: "I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of the loss) found everything, and is ready to go" (p. 353). Examining marriage, Jayber says: "I saw too how a marriage, in bringing two people into each other's presence, must include loneliness and error. I imagined a moment when husband and wife realize that their marriage included their faults, that they do not perfect each other, and that in making their marriage they also fail it and must carry to the grave things they cannot give away (pp. 193-4). About the pace of modern life, he observes: "The people are in an emergency to relax. They come for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above their motors. The look neither left nor right. They can't slow down" (p. 331).

Although somber in tone, Jayber's story reveals that wonders do happen in life. Jayber learns we live our lives with questions, the answers to which must be lived out "perhaps a little at at time" (p. 54), or which may take longer than a lifetime for us to find. "This is a book about Heaven," Jayber explains. "I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see through the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like a reflection of the trees on the water" (p. 351). This book is Berry at his best, and one of the best novels I've read this year.

G. Merritt

I just finished reading Jayber Crow, a novel by Wendell Berry. It relates the sojourn of a Kentucky boy, orphaned early; raised by his uncle and aunt to age of 10. Orphaned again by their death, he ends up in a real orphanage. His next stop is a provincial theological seminary where he stays until he finally decides that the stories of the bible are not real. Leaving the seminary he makes his way to Lexington where he finds employment as a stable boy at the trotting track and takes classes in English literature at the University without mingling with other students, taking examinations or otherwise becoming part of the University. His employment status improves as he finds work as a barber using skills he had picked up during his long stay at the orphanage. This is his life until loneliness drives him to place his few belongings in a cardboard box, stuff his savings in his shoes and jacket lining and set off for Port William, the hamlet that held the graves and memories of his childhood.
At some point in his growing up, Jaber had gotten the idea that he had the latent ability of "make something of him self and amount to something."
He ends up as the bachelor barber of Port Williams where most of the male community sooner or later drift into his shop on a more or less regular basis, "...men such as Uncle Isham Quail and Old Jack Beechum and, later, Athey Keith and Mat Feltner, intelligent men who knew things that were surprisingly interesting to me. They were remembers, carrying in their living thoughts all the history that such places as Port Williams ever have. I listened to them with all my ears..."
Jaber Crow does more than just listen. He develops a deep affection for them and an abiding linkage with Port Williams:

I came to feel tenderness for them all. T his was something new to me. It gave me a curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather-toughen old faces. They had known hard use, nearly all of them. You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved. Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis. They had used their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather. The backs of their hands showed a network of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thornstuck, pinched, punctured, scraped and burned. Their faces showed that they had suffered things they did not talk about."

But Jaber Crow found more than just interesting faces in Port William. He found himself and he found his community...his place. He had carried with him his loneliness, his isolations, and his self-reliance for a long, long time. " I learned to think of myself as myself. The past was gone. I was unattached. I could put my whole life in a smallish cardboard box and carry it in my hand."
But when he got back to Port Williams and recognized some of the folks he knew and who knew him "...well, that changed me. After all those years of keeping myself aloof and alone, I began to feel tugs from the outside. I felt my life branching and forking out into the known world. ...nothing would ever be simple for me again. I never would be able to put my life in a box and carry it away."
Jayber's place in his community, his role there, his thoughts, his unattained love, and his relationship with the fields, streams and forests of the place provoke an inescapable reflection on what it means to "amount to something, to make something of oneself."

I bought several of these type board books for my 2 year old speech delayed daughter. We are currently working on building her vocabulary, and this book has been one of the best because it not only catagorizes the objects (as mentioned in another review), but it also has full color photographs. Young children are unable to distinguish that an abstract drawing of a cow is a cow, but with photographs of actual items they can more clearly understand and label the objects.

This book is durable, colorful, and has many many pictures to help give my daughter the vocabulary she needs to communicate with us. She loves to "read" her book, and now her older sister is reading it to her, which also helps my seven year old in her reading skills.

I got this book as a gift and my 1-1/2 year old twins love it. They like to point at the pictures and hear me say the word. Then they made a game of pointing at the object after I say the word. It is really working wonders with their vocabulary even though they don't talk yet. We had to buy a second book for the other twin to prevent fights. The same author has other books on animals. All are great. Only one minor criticism: some objects in the book don't look like modern objects in my American home.

My son loves this book. He loves to turn each page & see which category is next & go through each thing on the page (of animals, foods, clothing, automobiles, etc).

I bought this book figuring it would be a great thing to do. I was right! Filled from cover to cover with imaginative drawings to trace onto Shrinky-Dinks plastic/paper, you can spend hours with your nose inside. :) You simply pick a picture or design you like, trace and color it, cut it out, place on a cookie/baking sheet, and bake at the required temperature! In a matter of minutes your designs are shrunk. There are instructions on how to make keychains and jewelry, both of which actually turn out very nicely. I'm sure adults will like this book, too. You can buy refills for the Shrinky-Dinks plastic once you've used it all up, which you probably will!

I'm 30 years old and I remember having Shrinky Dinks as a child. I loved them sooo much. Coloring them and then watching them shrink up. I think I still have one around stuffed in a memory box of my childhood. Its an owl. I am now older and I have a 5 year old niece that I know would love this. I've looked everywhere for them. Toy stores. I even looked on Ebay to see if I can get an old set on auction but they are expensive. Then today I was Christmas shopping and found this book in Waldenbooks. A great big smile appeared on my face. But, I knew I wouldn't be happy with it cause I needed more plastic sheets. I saw there was a website....and here I am! You can buy additional sheets and that is exactly what I am looking for. I recommend buying this kit for children. Its hours of fun. Yahoo! I'm sooo excited.

I have been using shrink art platic for ages--as a crafter I use the shrink art refills for my own crafts--the plastic sheets can be die cut, painted, inked and coloured with pencils. So easy to shrink in the toaster oven.

I was so pleased to see shrink art packaged for children. The book is clear, simple, lots of ideas and everything together in one place. The book is careful to emphasize adult help with the actual "baking" of the finished art. My kids have created all kinds of things besides the designs in the book, which is what it's all about, isn't it?

Amidst the chaos and debris of dismal Mexico City Kerouac tells us the stroy of his most intense love for the lovely but flawed Junky, Tristessa. This is Kerouac at his most poignant and this is the best glimpse he ever gave his readers into his soul. But don't read this book if you're a manic depressive, it might drive you over the edge. One has to wonder if Tristessa could have made Jack happy. Some people are addicted to self-destruction.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the way it ends. It ends with an ellipsis. How many books to you read that end like that? Not many would be my guess. As for the story this book is more about the voice of Kerouac. He is exposing more of himself than in any other book. The book is less about a story and more about to be Kerouac in Mexico, without anything to give him comfort. Rather he is lost in himself, drunk and confused. He finds a woman who he wants to be with. Someone he can hold someone her can touch, yet the problems lies in the fact that he can't tell her.

Yet you can read between the lines and see a man who is giving up upon himself. Faced with uncertainty, wavering from his strong Buddhist beliefs. This book is more personal than I ever knew. This book can almost be seen as Kerouac moving against what he believed. Everything comes into question. The fact that Tristessa is addicted to drugs, plays on the point of what is he to do? On the one hand he loves her and on the other he can't bring himself to tell her that.

I have loved this book from the first time I read it when I was a junior in high school. The beauty of this book is amazing can never be stated enough. This is a must read for any Kerouac fan.

The basic story line in this book surrounded a junky Mexican prostitute named Tristessa of whom Jack(Kerouac's "alias") has fallen madly in love with. Jack can't find a way to tell her, and she sends him completely mixed signals, and is constantly too hung up on her drug addiction to care about love. At one point he leaves to go up to California(in which period of time "The Dharma Bums" takes place), and the story picks up a year later when Jack returns with his urgent need to see Tristessa.

Another story line of Tristessa involves Jack sitting in the pad where Tristessa and her friend Cruz live, and his fasination with the animals that live there (a Chihuaua, a cat, a hen, a rooster, and a dove). He meditates and watches them, wondering what they're thinking and trying his best to earn their trust and respect.

This was quite an amazing book, the second best book I've read this year after The Losers' Club by Richard Perez. I find any of Jack Kerouac's works hard to put down, as there is always something new and interesting and fascinating to read and learn from his writing. I would recommend this story to any Beat Generation or Kerouac reader.

Whose Kids are these anyway is a must read for any parents out there. As all of us know, parenting takes a certain level of humor to insure our sanity. Ken Swarner jokes his way through his own parenting adventures and in doing so, shows us that we are not alone in our parental frustrations. So the next time your kids have you ready to pull your hair out . . . pick up Ken's book. Think of it as your own personal therapy ...

Having a community website in Dallas, Texas, I am very familiar with the writings of Ken Swarner. You will laugh until you are blue in the face because we have all been there at one time or another with our children. Fortunately, he has put those funny stories into a book that we can enjoy for years. After reading it, you will want more copies to give to your friends...so load up your shopping cart!

This book made me laugh outloud. I highly recommend it.
This book, along with Bruce Cameron's "8 Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter" and Debbie Farmer's "Don't Put Lipstick on the Cat!" will make a perfect gift for any parent, new or old.

This book is the darkest painting of suburbia I've read in awhile. If your life stinks, replace it with Jernigan's. Here's what you get----alcoholism, self-abuse, teenage son on drugs, shacking with mother of teenage son's girlfriend, death of wife, death of rabbits for food, loss of job, plus did I mention drinking large quanities of gin. Now why does this character continue to shot himself in the foot (or in his case hand)? Seems like he just doesn't give two hoots. What makes the book work though, is Jernigan's wisecracking nature, basically condescending everything, as his life drops away by his own powers. This is brought on by the tight, descriptive naratives by David Gates, Jernigan's creator.

Not that Jernigan is alone in his life of horror. There's a cast of characters that are barely functioning. Of course, Jernigan cannot stand them. He's going to do things his way and it's a way so unimaginable yet possible, it leaves you riveted.

This book is a true killer. Like a suburban "Heart of Darkness," it suggests what evil lurks in the modern American male... and he continues to get away with it all...Peter Jernigan is a bizarre and somehow totally believable mix of charismatic intellectual and emotional bully. It's probably impossible to read Peter's story and then NOT make attempts to change your own evil ways. In the tradition of "Hunger" by Knut Hamsun, and the better works of John Fante, "Jernigan" has got to be one of the most brutally-honest and lovingly-crafted books one can read. Jernigan is a desperate character, who, sadly, all too many of us can relate to. Gates has a new book out, "Preston Falls," which, while remarkably similar to "Jernigan," is written with the same kind of astonishing clarity. In my opinion, it doesn't get any better than this book.

This novel is a great exercise in language. Its bleak, unsparing outlook is similar to that of the great Richard Yates. Not to be missed.

As with all the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories, the deep love and rich feeling Laura herself felt and lived jumps comes across as a real, physical thing. I read one of these stories as a child. I remember liking it but I went back and read them recently as a mother. It gave me both a clear, real view of pioneer life. With both the hardships as well as the joys. As through all of the Little House stories, Laura's love and feeling for her family jumps from the pages. I could only wish that all books I read were so true and real.

My mother read this book aloud to me when I was 7, and I cannot remember anything else that enthralled me as much during that entire year. Laura Ingalls Wilder tenderly describes the fun and hardship her family experienced as early American settlers, and Garth Williams' illustrations gave me fodder for countless dreams. One of the best books I can imagine buying for any child.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is an amazing, adventurous pioneer girl. She grew up in the big woods in Wisconsin. She went from the prairie to Plum Creek. Laura has a mother, father and three sisters named Mary, Carrie and Grace. Laura also had a dog named Jack. On the banks of Plum Creek, Laura moved into a sod house. When Laura or her sisters played outside, they might see a cow standing on their sod house. A sod house is mainly made of mud. Over the mud layers laied a nice layer of grass. My favorite part about this book is when Laura invites a mean girl from her class to her house, and then Laura took her down the creek and splashed an insect on her. Laura grew up to be an amazing author. She died in the 1960's. I like to read about people who were pioneers and lived in the 18-1900's.

Michael Patrick Hearn really has done a grand service to the American literary world. While the book Wizard of Oz in itself will be a classic of all time, Hearn's annotations breathes life into this book like nothing else I've ever read.

His exhaustive, extensive research illuminates this classic, and brings us into the life of L. Frank Baum in connection with his writing of this story. I also loved the reproductions of the the original color plates from the first printing, which Baum painstakingly wanted.

As a true devotee of the film, and a casual devotee of the book, I now considered myself converted and find joy equally in both, due to the reading of this new classic.

Take advantage of this low price while you can still get it!

I believe the Wizard of Oz is one of the greatest children's novels ever written. It has fantasy, horror, beauty and fun characters, but it also has some wise comments about life. (The scene where Dorothy unmasks the Wizard as a fraud and they chat about life back home and his life in Oz is one of the most touching conversations in children's literature. When the Wizard floats off and abandons Dorothy, we feel, as she must, the pain of disappointment.)

If you are reading to your children, this book is a top choice. Kids who are read to become better readers. And what can be more quality time that hearing the loving voice of a mom or dad or even elder sibling, reading an exciting tale?

The centennial edition has 70 pages of biographical information about Baum, info on the entire Oz series (it's quite a number of books), a section about W. W. Denslow's beloved illustrations and much more. This makes the book not only a great family gift but also a good present for a child to treasure for his or her entire life. I still have my copy of Wizard of Oz, complete with a torn page (the pretty picture of Glynda on her throne), a souvenir of my baby sister (oh well) and I would NEVER part from it. This is a gorgeous edition and should be a top choice for your shelf of good children's literature.

I don't need to tell you about the Wizard of Oz - you already know the story.

What is amazing about this edition is that the original story is completely reprinted in it's original form. That means that all of the illustrations are included with the text arranged exactly as it should be, something that almost no edition has done correctly.

Believe it or not, it makes a difference. The text makes a bit more sense, as the illustrations are integral to the text. The illustrations actually flow INTO the text! It's hard to describe, really, but there is an interaction. This book was a collaborative effort between Baum and Denslow, who split the profits evenly.

Okay, so that's it for the actual story.

The forward gives a brief but very readable biography of Baum, and the annotations are also quite good. There are a number of color pictures of rare Oz Ephemera, and many good black and white pictures of film and stage productions as well.

The type is clearly set, making this book very easy to read.

The only faults with this book are that it's a bit heavy for casual reading, and the annotation sometimes severely impact the flow of the story. These faults are easily overlooked when the material is so good!

If you've ever read this story and thought that it was merely okay, you really should read a good version such as this, it will change your preception radically!

Enjoy!