What an extraordinarily beautiful and moving book this is. The text is simple and moving, as it limns the story of a 19th century Lakota Sioux boy through "his own" words and sketches. Although fictionalized, the book has the power of truth, and the "Ledgerbook" style illustrations are filled with vivid and unsentimental-though completely captivating-life and power. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, for children or adults.

Of the many excellent reviews of this book - starred in PW, for example - why did you choose the Kirkus Review's? The Ledgerbook was supervised, vetted and blessed by Arthur Amiotte, a Sioux Elder, with more credentials than you can count. A leading advocate of the power of education, Mr. Amiotte 's approval of and great delight in the authenticity of this book has obviously been overlooked in the KR reviewer's research. Throughout the entire country, this book has been cited again and again by educators and parents alike as being the most powerful, interactive teaching tool they've come across in years, not to mention being an extraordinry feast for the eyes. Please research your reviews before choosing the one that will (incorrectly in this case) represent the book to your many readers. Subjecting an extraordinary book to bad PR out of ignorance should be beneath you

Won the Christopher and International Readers Awards in 1995 because it is an authentic history, fictionalized, with stunning illustrations in the style of Plains Indians. We found it in the museum stores of the Southwest, where it was a favorite of the librarians. There is also a cd-rom called Journey of Thomas Blue Eagle, done by the illustrator.It is a favorite gift book of ours and hugely appreciated by the recipients

If you find yourself in a situation where the fantastic capabilities of the HP-48G/X are just out of your grasp, and you still need to devote most of your time to class rather than learning how to operate this calculator, then this book is probably for you.

It is lightly documented that the two User Manuals that come with the HP-48GX do assume that you have some level of working knowledge of the terms, and stadards used in advanced HP calculators. It is not necessary to buy this particular book if you are already comfortable with the HP-48G/X and are just striving to learn more about programming or how to answer the question of time.

Jump Start is a good book if you are like me, going to school because you don't know everything already and you certainly don't have all year to figure out how your new calculator works.

The examples the author chose were excellent for my needs. Surely, they won't be for everyone, but as an Electronics Engineering student, what he offered fulfilled the demand I had to gain enough experience on this mini-computer so that I have a positive direction to go toward to learn the specifics of the types of problems I will use it to solve. And clearly that is the authors intent. And that was my goal when I bought this book. I simply needed some guidance.

This book will not teach you Calculus, nor will it teach you all there is to know about the HP-48G/X. What it will do is assume that you are trying to learn the HP-48 series and give you some general problems that are the foundations of many common problems so that you have a broad base of knowledge and a common platform in which to solve them.

One of my favorite examples in the book was that of isolating variables in a complex equation. I needed to know how to do this because frankly, some of the math I do takes like 4 sheets of legal sized paper to write out and I knew there had to be a better way.

The equation he chose as an example has a piece of everything in it and once you learn how to enter in his example, and then isolate whatever variable you want, you have now the power to solve any equation only limited by your ability to enter it into the calculator. And using the powerful Equation Writer, entering in complex equations gave me a sense of security because you can, using the methods covered in this book, actually look at the equation as you entered it, and then convert it to what it looks like in your text book. Probably the HP user manual shows how to do that, but since I could not even figure out how to enter an equation in the first place based on the HP manuals, I will give this author that credit, on my behalf.

Bottomline, if you haven't figured out how to enter an equation, create a subdirectory, move around subdirectories, write basic programs, purge memory, write complex equations, convert anything to practically anything else and solve for any variable....and you WANT to be able to do these things, then you can get that information by reading this book and practicing the examples. If you don't even understand an equation like 2x+3y=4, then you probably won't enjoy this book. It won't teach you anything about understanding math or the problems. It assumes you know why and what you are trying to solve, but it importantly assumes you have no idea how to tell the calculator what you want it to do. In my book, that is a perfect Jump Start.

I give it Five Stars because the author only offers a Jump Start and I certainly got that out of this book.

The Hewlett Packard 48G family of handheld graphic calculators are superb instruments suffering only from a slow processor and what has become famous as a User Guide useful sole to those who already know how to use the calculator. This book will for the most part clarify things so one can use the User Guide although it can do nothing to speed up the calcified and arthritic slowness of this calculators processor.

Unlike some calculators the 48 has NO GUI at all. It also uses the postscript, or RPN, input method which most who deal with maths adore and which befuddles many history majors, dance majors, football players and ilk others. Moreover the 48 dates from the earliest part of the 1990s and has had several O/S tweaks. As a result some of the step by step instructions even in this book may be off a keystroke or two for your particular machine. This volume is, however, a real Missing Manual.

After I bought my first 48 it took 3 weeks of messing with it before I was able to do much more then 2 + 2. That was years ago. Just as beaming parents used to present a slide rule to their young scholar off to engineering school this beaming grand-unki has now presented several plastic packaged H.P. 48g+ each with a copy of this book [that to save from frustration and the English Majors or high school calculator the T.I. 83]

The book claims to be "known to be far superior to the generic manual provided." It isn't. As noted in previous reviews, the examples are worthless if you've every heard of, say, an if-then-else statement. If you know the basics of RPL, you won't need this book. If you don't, read the manual that came with your HP. I should also note that reviewing a book that you admit to not having read is rather bad form. And yes, it does claim to be what the reviewer from Loiza believed. Oh, and racial stereotyping, also, is bad form. Have a nice day, hopefully with a better book. (Or, hell, just go to your neighborhood friendly search engine and type in "hp48g" and you'll get a ridiculous amount of resources, many of which are utterly excellent.)

What this book offers is basically the same thing as the user's manual, adorned with words we mortals understand. I think that the user's manual, and a little practice, is all you need to get started with a HP 48G.

Just wondering why 11 of 13 people found Pablo's review helpful?

From the title and description of this book, it does not claim to be a HP48 programming book.

There are plenty of those, this is obviously a better user manual.

No offence to Pablo, but giving a book a poor rating because it does not meet criteria that it never claims to, is really bad form.

I have'nt read it (yet), but my rating is an attempt to help rectify the poor first reader review.