This is a wonderful book for both children and adults who would like to learn the "nuts and bolts" of sailing. Adkins explains why sails work the way they do, with an understandable discussion of the Bernoulli effect, vectors, and the airfoil. He also explains various sailing techniques, such as docking, anchoring, tacking and gybing. Various knots are demonstrated as well. There are very attractive and useful illustrations throughout, which make the book very entertaining and accessable. My favorite part of the book is the 2 page spread showing various rigs. When I first started learning about boats, this helped me figure out the difference between a ketch and a yawl, and taught me the names for the various parts of a sail. This book contains lots of useful, digestible information at a reasonable price.

Thoughtful, thorough, and visually beautiful, especially if you like old boats. Those who believe thay must wear lycra suit rather than old t shirt and shorts to go, say, biking or to go sailing might not find it glitzy enough. I have bought four of them. One to replace our tattered copy at home, one for public library and two for favorite young relatives

Jan Adkin's book shows a gift for teaching as well as illustration, and his style is literate, rather pedagogical. Because I am new to sailing, I brougt home many books from the library that I hoped would be helpful. The Craft of Sail was better than any of the others.

I have been a fan of this author since almost my birth, and this book is one of his best. Jan wrote this book in a personal, touching way that will find the adventurer and the dreamer in all of us. His books are magic, but this one makes my soul sing...

A Storm Without Rain was a fantastic book that made me think even after I was done reading it. The ending brought tears to my eyes in a happy sad way. I loved how Jack became best friends with his own grandfather who was the same age as him, 15. Jan Adkins is a great author and I hope to read more of her books!

This book is a fantastic introduction to castles and castle architecture as well as clear (with beautifully-drawn illustrations) instructions on how to build sand castles that look like real castles. For anyone who has progressed beyond filling a pail, patting it down, and dumping it on the beach, this book will provide you with ideas and techniques for making a truly magnificent sand castle. This book predates Sandtiquity and is better than that book, although that one is also good. Highly Recommended for anyone who ever built sandcastles on the beach.

Kids ages 9-13 years will find this accessible and inviting: a coverage of bridges around the world, with a healthy degree of simple engineering basics added to make the history appealing. The lively text and black and white drawings do a fine job of explaining differences between bridge construction and different builder achievements.

A very well done, simple to understand, text of the concepts and principles behind sailing. Any would-be-sailer in the entire family would enjoy this book.

My 7-year-old daughter and I found this book in our local library shortly after she decided that shw wanted to design houses when she grows up. It describes in the language of an architect *exactly* how a custom-designed house is built, from the need of the prospective homeowners to the day they move in. The drawings are both detailed and whimsical; the pages are architect-style drawings and the text is hand-printed. All in all, a wonderful book for a future architect.

I have owned and used and loved this book for years, and have given copies to good friends because I knew they'd love it too.

The anecdotes the author uses to explain the ingenious tools and techniques people have come up with to "move their heavy things", are so well written and sometimes humorous you'll find yourself reading them just for entertainment, even if you never have a need to move anything. With drawings as witty as the writing, this book honors the ingenuity of our forebears, before the age of the hydraulic brutes that do all our work for us today. Farmers, sailors, pioneers, builders of all kinds, have solved these problems, and this book passes on this clever heritage.

The pen and ink drawings are entertaining, and illustrate clearly how these tools and techniques work. One beauty is the trick of standing a tombstone up on ice cubes to facilitate positioning it over its base stone as the ice melts... without a scratch!

Adkins outlines a number of principles our grandfathers followed to arrive at elegant solutions, while minimizing sweat and risk of injury. Two of my favorites are "Applied Sloth" and "The Geezer Ploy". I could go on, but why give away too much? Treat yourself or your favorite "mover of heavy things" to this little gem. It's worth every penny! I tried to buy a copy a few years ago, but was told it was out of print. I'm delighted to see it available again. I have a few more friends in mind...

Not written for a wide audience, but for thoughtful, intelligent romantics this small gem of a book shines like the sun. In this short but memorable novel the author depicts in a wonderfully skillful way how even deep emotional wounds can be healed if the parties are willing to try to understand and forgive eachother. The first quarter of the book,perhaps, is pretty grim and the reader will be tempted not to keep on, but after a bit it's as though the sun begins to come out and starts to warm the soul. By the ending you may well want to write the author and thank him for giving you cause to hope again when you had almost given up on hoping; it's the kind of book you share with people who are really important to you when winter has been going on too long for them.

Toolchest was the first book I read on the art of woodworking. It is still the as fresh and interesting as it was then. Toolchest appears to be simple enough to be placed in the childrens book section. Don't let this fool you. While it does deal only with the basics of woodworking, it reveals what is wonderous about the ancient art. A masterpiece in wood results from just you, a piece of wood, and a few simple tools. Another point worth mentioning is the nice artwork which accompanies the text. It is fine in both detail, and direction, giving the reader a greater appreciation for the subject matter than a photograph could. All in all, this is a witty, truthful, basic and beautiful book.