Purchasing USE THE NEWS as part of our school's NEWSPAPERS IN EDUCATION week activities, I was reviewing the activities at home and found that many of them were exercises I could use with my 5-year-old twins. I'd recommend USE THE NEWS not only to classroom teachers looking for ways to get students involved with current events, but for parents introducing their children to the daily newspaper. The book covers every major curriculum area with lots of suggestions for individual, group, or class work. When I have to be out of the classroom, I always mark a few pages of USE THE NEWS for the substitute to complete with my students. This book has something for everyone!

Wow, was I suprised when I finially read this book. I had looked at all the pretty pictures, (one on nearly every page) but with all the books I read, this one took a back seat for awhile. I must say that in reading the book, what I liked best, is that they kept it down to just five major houses. Ms. Brierton not gives a good discription for each house, she also included how it was aquired, what was done to it and what is yet to be done to it. The people who restore these homes are just like you and me. They are all trying to save money and still have the finest restored "Victorian" home around. It was very helpful knowing that the homes didn't necessary start out nice, but were appartments houses or sometimes just very run down. This give me HOPE in restoring my home. I like how she presents the homes as a restored yet liveable addition to the neighborhood. Her reviewing different eras of homes helped also. Mine is a very late victorian . I would like to see a bit more information on the "how to's" but she really has done a fine job. I heartily recommend the book to anyone restoring an old "Victorian" home.

This attractive handbook emphasizes the need for adequate training of museum volunteers, for developing structures which enable volunteers to take responsility for their own programs, and for museums to recognize that volunteer programs require the same kind of attention as that given to other departments within the institution. The resource guide in the last half of the book is extremely helpful, as in addition to giving some sample forms, it enables volunteer program administrators to network with others throughout the country. This is a workmanlike and very useful volume.

The sanctity of a Cornish convent stands in stark contrast to the evil which pervades the nearby countryside. Sister Joan begins to feel that all is not well in the homes of the children she teaches in the small convent school. She plans a school project and visits the homes of her students, while getting an uneasy feeling about some of them. It is hard enough to create a unified class between the local farm children and the Gypsy children who seem to have little in common, but some of their families add to the problem by being less than supportive of them. Suddenly two deaths occur which put the community into a fearful frenzy. Sister Joan does not wait for the local law enforcement agencies but does her own investigation and turns up some shocking evidence which points her to the murderer. This is an interesting series with some insight into the cloistered life.

Change is in the wind as visitors come to the convent of the Order of the Daughters of Compassion. Two prospective nuns, Magdelen and Bernadette, travel to Cornwall and are met by Sister Joan. They both seem determined to enter the religious life, but Joan is not sure of the suitability of one of the girls. Added to this, there are several new-age travelers who are camping nearby, and a hermit who has taken up residence in the former schoolhouse. This cast of characters provides plenty of suspects when one of the young postulants is found murdered. Although Sister Joan is on the trail of the perpetrator, she needs the help of Detective Sergeant Mill in order to escape the murderer herself. This is an interesting and well-written "cozy".

Sister Joan returns from her retreat to Scotland and is greeted with the news that the school in which she taught has been closed. She asks permission to visit the school for a final goodbye and is granted that permission by her prioress. What was intended as a sentimental visit becomes one of horror when she makes a terrible discovery. Again, Sister Joan has to make a trip to the police station to report a murder. The police never seem to move fast enough to suit her so she conducts her own investigation. The nearby band of gypsies always fall under suspicion when a crime is committed and particularly the mentally ill brother of one of Sister Joan's friends. However, she decides to cast her net into a wider circle until the perpetrator is caught, but not until two more crimes have been committed. Sister Joan is an interesting heroine, always having an inner conflict between what she feels is her duty as a nun and what she wants to do as an unofficial investigator of crimes.

Two new characters enter the scene of the fifth novel of this series. One is a priest and one is a nun, but they share the trait of being cold and hard to get to know. They also seem to have an unusual propensity to endure more penance than most who have a vocation for the religious life. When the local priests' housekeeper is found dead, the police assume that it is suicide. Sister Joan disagrees and, as usual, conducts her own investigation. She suspects the two newcomers but it could always be a townsperson or someone from the nearby gypsy camp. This is a good addition to the series.

This book is an interesting combination of pacifist-Quaker tract, coming of age novel, and post-holocaust science fiction. The story is set in a near future after a nuclear holocaust-nuclear winter. There are small colonies of survivors in communities maintained by enigmatic aliens, whom some survivors suspect of triggering the holocaust. The main character is a young woman coming to maturity in a community of survivors in Pennsylvania, a community where many survivors are Quakers. The point of the story is the necessity of pacifism and Quaker respect for life beliefs. The characterization is convincing and the author's depiction of this future is equally convincing. The quality of writing is very good.

I stumbled across this collection of stories in the library one day -- I'm always on the lookout for new authors to experience -- and what a nice find it was. Joan Connor's stories are intelligently written portraits that draw the reader into their world almost immediately. The characters that populate them are not necessarily extraordinary at first glance -- and not necessarily likable as we get to know them -- much like the people we meet in our everyday lives. Their thoughts, and the choices they make -- the way they view their world and the people around them with whom they interact -- these things make them stand as unique individuals. It is Connor's skill at developing these characters -- almost without us realizing that she is doing it -- that allows me to feel that I know them on a much deeper level. Even in the shortest tales in this collection leave me with the feeling that I have learned much.

Also impressive are the author's descriptive skills when applied to the natural surroundings in which these stories take place -- the islands, hills, forests and small towns of New England. She has a way of applying human feelings and attributes to nature that evokes a soul and personality that is there in our environment that many people miss by looking too quickly. For example, take this short but effective passage from the story 'October': 'A few golden leaves drift idly down. October strips itself down to an essential solitude, the bare rough branches of a maple tree raised, pleading.'

My favorite selections here are 'The thief of flowers', in which the young narrator learns a lesson about giving and love; 'Ursa Major in Vermont', a rather mystical tale of a bear being repeatedly sighted in and around a small community; 'The Bowlville Cemetery', a wryly humorous tale about a man who is so mean that he won't stay buried; 'Summer girls', a touching recounting of a life-long torch carried by a man for a woman he knew he would never have; and 'Second nature', which I think is my favorite, revealing great unknown depth of character in someone generally regarded as a rustic, eccentric hillbilly.

A couple of the works here left me with a deep sense of strangeness, as if I had dreamt them. 'Bluebeard's first wife' is written as a fairy-tale allegory --- it starts out simply and winds up giving the mind quite a spin. 'The last native' also has this dream-like quality to it, but in a more hallucinatory sense.

The characters -- and their lives -- in many of these stories are dark, some suffering from alcoholism and depression. These feelings are well-depicted by Connor, but she never allows herself (or her characters) to wallow in them. The feelings are there, and are a part of them -- they are viewed, they affect their lives. I didn't come away from any of these stories with the feeling that I had been subjected to listening to someone bemoaning their fate.

I see from the notes on the author that there is another volume of short stories available by Joan Connor, HERE ON OLD ROUTE 7 -- I look forward to experiencing it as well.

[For readers who enjoy well-written fiction set in this part of the country, I can also highly recommend works by Howard Frank Mosher, Russell Banks and Ruth Moore.]

Both my 12 year old son and I read this book. It gave us a common vocabulary to talk about what was going on. It made the problems and feelings that he was having seem normal. Lots of other families are going through the same things.