This brilliantly illustrated story is about four different characters, a bossy woman, a poor man, a lonely boy and a young girl, all apes. Each of the moods of the characters personality is reflected in different seasons and each in a different font. With each voice described you begin to understand the story and the events that are occurring in the park that day. One voice at a time you begin to see them all fit together. The little girls story at the end ties them all together.
I believe that with the story the author is suggesting that we open our eyes and see the big picture. Appreciate what is happening around you. I may not be hitting this right but I read this book over and over and I see a deeper meaning in this story then just to describe the occurrence in the park. I believe that the author wanted to show the simplicity in children's thoughts and show that they are so peaceful and appreciate and want to know everything and everyone without any prejudice or immediate assumptions. Also within the pictures there are so many hidden meanings that you wouldn't notice first off. The pictures display the emotions of the character. An example is one picture where Charles, a boy being reprimanded by his strict mother, meets smudge, a happy go lucky girl. His side of the picture is all gloomy skies and her side is happy and colorful.
There are beautiful paintings in this book that catch the eyes of any age. The creativity of using different fonts was wonderful; it keeps kids interested in what they are reading. I love this book and I feel that every time I pick it up I will find something that I had not noticed before and I love books like that.

A rare book that combines exceptional kid-friendly artwork with a sensitive and subtle look at class. How many children's books do that? An outstanding choice for young readers and adult aficionados. I find something new in the illustrations every time i reread it.

Our class has discussed the book for a week, pointing out all the interesting things that are on each page. We just wanted to know a little something about the author and why he uses gorillias in his books.

I had the pleasure of seeing a preview copy of this book. It isa must read as we move toward understanding what it might mean for thefuture in making China richer and more powerful through trade.

This book puts a gentle face on a very brave people who have suffered not only the largest land grab of the 20th century through the bloody invasion by China (Tibet is the size of Europe) but have suffered a genocide by the Chinese that is the most widely ignored in history.

This is a beautiful book and worth the price. Add to your reading list "Tears Of Blood" by Mary Craig and "In Exile From the Land Of Snows" by John Avedon.

China will be one of the 3 big stories of the next century if we make it richer and more powerful. This book is as important as it is a beautiful undertaking. Congratulations to Mr. Harrison END

This book is a must see and read. Stephen Harrison truly captures the personal side of Tibetans in Exile. As you read the stories behind the Tibetans portrayed in the photographs, it's as if you are in the background while Stephen Harrison interviews these most courageous Tibetan people. The portrait photography is wonderfully presented in a landscape format providing for a personal backdrop behind the emotion and suffering of each Tibetan portrayed. This is a one of a kind presentation providing a first-time moving experience each and everytime you open the book.

In Whispered Prayers: Portraits And Prose Of Tibetans In Exile, Stephen Harrison showcases the inner experiences of being a Tibetan refugee through a moving narration combined with exquisite photography. This wonderful exhibition is a worthy and valued contribution is further enhanced with a foreword by His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Whispered Prayers will be read with deep engagement by students of Buddhism, of Tibetan history, and all who seek an enlightenment path through perilous and stressful times.

This book is classic Browne. A tale of transformation, the loser (Willy) becomes hero after a rigorous routine of hilarious self-improvement activies. Of course, he discovers (as do we all) that there are just some things about yourself you can't change.

This book has been a favourite with every child I have ever read it to since I was first introduced to it in 1985. It seems to be a big hit with the kindergarten crowd and Browne's illustrations seem to be especially appealing to boys. A must-read.

BULLIES AND HE WOULDN'T EVEN HURT A FLY. WILLY HATED THAT HEWAS CALLED A WIMP AND FOUND HIS OWN WAY TO BECOME PROUD OF HIMSELF!HE WORKED AT IT AND WORKED AT IT AND ONE DAY HE DIDN'T FEEL LIKE A WIMP ANYMORE! HE FELT PROUD OF HIMSELF BUT STILL STAYED THE SAME SWEET WILLY HE ALWAYS WAS. IT'S AN IMPORTANT LESSON FOR CHILDREN...FIND A SOLUTION AND WORK AT IT UNTIL YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL. AN EXCELLENT AND TIMELESS BOOK. I LOVED THE PICTURES TOO, THEY ARE SO COLORFUL BUT MORE THAN THAT THEY ARE SO EXPRESSIVE OF WILLY'S FEELINGS. BRAVO

Willy the Wimp is a hilarious yet touching story that will satisfy readers of all ages. At the heart of the story is the adorable Willy, a young chimp with a self-esteem problem. He decides to answer a "muscleman" ad in order to change his body, and in the process discovers his own inner strength. The book's illustrations are really fantastic (imagine bodybuilding gorillas). They support the text, complimenting the language and style of the story (as well as providing many laughs). This makes Willy the Wimp a perfect choice for young beginning readers as well as developing readers...and for the bedtime storyteller! A fabulous picture book that will be read again and again. You'll love it!

I don't know whom to start with, the writer or the illustator. The book is very funny and to top it the drawings add humor to it. My 8 and a half years old boy laughed and loved it. Because we liked it so, we bought winnie can fly which is just as great.
Ran to buy it or just klick it.

I found this book at the library. My 4 and 6 year old love it so much they asked for their own copy to have for always. Winnie's whole house is black and so is her cat Wilbur. This presents a problem when Winnie trips over Wilbur several times. She decides the solution is to magically turn him multi-colored but Wilbur is so unhappy Winnie changes him back and comes up with a much better solution. Any child will love this endearing story. Winnie the Witch is a great read anytime of the year.

A wonderful brilliantly illustrated book. It's impact has been so large in the UK, that children now draw their witches with socks the same colour as Winnie's.

Not just for Halloween.

I read Anthony Collins' "Winning Pinochle Strategies" and found it to be one of the most informative books on the play of the game and the strategies needed to win consistently. If you are a novice to this great game or an advanced player that has been playing for years, you will find this book will not only help your understanding of the basics but of the more advance play necessary in mastering this game. As a two time winner of the National Pinochle Association's national tournament, I even discovered subtle hints and techniques that have aided me in my understanding of the game.

Loved the book. Well written and easy to read. Lots of info on different situations. Keep in mind I believe he plays a game where a run counts 25 pts, which can really affect your bidding. Usual games I have been in and on the internet, usually use a 15 point count for a run. Liked the book and highly recommend it.

I have been playing pinochle for the past 40 years and can attest to the fact that the authors strategy is 99.9 percent correct. If you want to learn how to play a winning hand, or improve your game, this is a must read book for any rookie or professional.

This book, in my opinion, is the best wiretaps book out there. It includes intricate and easy to comprehend details in the using and purpose of various items in the intelligence field. I would reccomend this highly to all people who have the urge to learn wiretapping skills. Furthermore, the author, Anthony Alberti, has an obvious passion and deep understanding of his profession and can easily protray this in his book. So if you are interested in learning wiretapping skills, this book is top of the line and good for you.

I found this book to be highly informative. The author seems to be an expert in this field

way to go tony........

Part suspense, part mystery and all about coming of age (which, as Maccarrone proves can happen more than once in a lifetime), Abigail's Lake is a "must-read". The characters draw you into their lives to the point where you just have to keep reading to find out what's next. And what's next is -- deliciously -- something different than you expected. Maccarrone is a master storyteller! I can't wait for his next one!

I just finished Abigail's Lake - and WOW! It's the best book I have read in a very long time. By the time I got to the third chapter, he had grabbed me so totally that I couldn't put the book down until I finished it!

Maccarrone is an excellent writer. I can clearly see his book being translated to the big screen, and if I were a movie producer, I'd grab the rights. The suspense and drama built into his style are naturals. I hope he comes out with another page-turner real soon!

There is little I can add to the very thorough Atlanta review which follows this posting, except to say the following: the performing community has needed a book like this for a long time, and Dale Girard delivers in spades. Having had the privilege of working with Mr. Girard numerous times over the years, I can attest both to the depth of his scholarship on the subject of the sword, and to his being one of the finest teachers of staged combat extant. Combining years of the author's experience on stage, on film, and in the classroom, "Actors On Guard" is a marvelous guide to beginning rapier-play. With detailed text and copious illustrations, the book pulls off the marvelous trick of being simultaneously easily accessible and deeply comprehensive, making it an invaluable work for performers who have never touched a sword before as well as those with years of training under their belts. While no written work can ever substitute for instruction from a qualified teacher, "Actors On Guard" comes pretty darned close!

"Actors On Guard" represents many years of personal research and professional experience by one of the true scholars of the art of Stage Combat, SAFD Fight Master Dale Anthony Girard. In his prologue, Mr. Girard describes stage combat as a "living, maturing art". [p.xvi] Girard's work represents another leap forward in the maturing process. The 467 pages of text that follow include a thorough handling of the safety, training, acting, and performance of the single rapier, and rapier and dagger fights for the stage and screen. These are followed by equally valuable appendices providing detailed listings of the various fight Societies, Swordcutlers and Suppliers, information on weapons maintenance and an exhaustive glossary of common swordplay terms. In limiting itself to the concerns of just these weapons, rapier and dagger, Girard has, happily, accomplished a work far too detailed to be completely illuminated in such a short format. Mr. Girard's text begins in chapter one with the maxim that unites all Fight Directors and Actor Combatants of quality . . . "Safety First!", and this theme is echoed on every page thereafter. New students of the craft often find the task of teaching their bodies the mechanics of the art an exercise in frustration when what they really want to do is fight NOW. Girard recognizes this tendency and offers a detailed argument of just why the learning of these techniques cannot be rushed. "By rushing the learning process, you miss the inherent safety of the technique through an incomplete understanding of the process". [p.5] Girard explains that the basic principles of kinesthetic learning, total body-mind learning, provide the foundation this learning process. Mr. Girard is an outstanding scholar of the sword in history and offers a concise and useful history of the rapier before detailing the anatomy of the weapon itself. These explanations are accompanied with fine illustrations of various fencing and historical weapons, a valuable reference. The information is summed up with a thorough checklist to assist the reader in selecting a safe stage weapon. The meat of Girard's text, chapters 3 through 18, is concerned with the actual learning and performing of safe stage techniques for the rapier and dagger. While there have been many texts written concerning the general techniques of safe stage combat, I know of none that concern themselves with such excellent detail of practical technique and their historical background. Beginning with an explanation of just what is "proper alignment" and how to achieve it, Girard utilizes precise descriptions assisted by appropriate illustrations (excellently drawn by Zina Lee) to explain the basics of stance and footwork. I especially like the explanations of stationary offensive and defensive positions [chapter 3], an afterthought in much of the training I've received to this point, before moving on to actual footwork. Girard moves on to the basics of advances and retreats (broken down into 5 stages and accompanied with illustrations), passes, lunges, "circle steps", and each is presented in an easily understood format. Perhaps most valuable are Girard's drills and exercise detailed at the end of the chapter which are intended to develop individual consistency of stance and movement, and the maintenance of consistent measure between partners. These exercises, notated in easily understood terms, will undoubtedly aid in ending a new combatants footwork mistakes BEFORE they become ingrained as personal habits. The individual blade-work drills Girard offers should be a daily routine for any aspiring combatant. These drills do not require a partner and make for fun reading when you put a sword in your other hand. More importantly, these exercises develop precision and blade awareness and the ". . . strength, agility, and dexterity of the hand and wrist. . . "[p.73]. These individual footwork and blade-work exercises are a gold mine for those who wonder how they can train without a partner. The chapters concerning blade-work cover an amazing breadth of basic techniques. From a detailed description and application of Guards, to the complexities of kills and attacks on the blade Mr. Girard has managed to detail their execution and practice with clarity and precision. Chapter 6 is worth the price of admission for anyone teaching or studying the parries for its clear explanations and thorough illustrations. Every chapter concerning technique is accompanied by drills to develop the technique in practice and a review of their basic principles and safety measures. It is perhaps a testament to the thoroughness of Mr. Girard's text that partners do not cross swords until Chapter 8, where detailed discussions of measure, timing, "Action-Reaction, Action", eye contact, and safety are accompanied by four fine partnering exercises. Aside from the invaluable and painstakingly researched techniques described in this text, I must state that the chapter 20, "Acting the Fight", is the most essential text on the subject of stage combat acting I have come across. Girard explains this necessity of this subject by stating that "The artist needs to develop an acting process for combat that, after the physical skills have waxed, still provides a system of dissecting a physical encounter and making it and integral part of the acting process, the characters and the production."[p.433] Specific techniques for developing character choices within the action of physical conflict are presented to the reader in the format of the "Five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and the objective choices the actor must make in regard to the text, but often fail to do so when it comes to a choreographed fight sequence. The section titled "The Sounds of Violence" is certain to become required reading in all my future classes no matter what weapon is being taught. Girard advocates the "Vocal Orchestration" of a staged conflict in order to "reinforce the movement of a fight"[p.446] and breaks this process down into an easily understood format. Vocal heath, a discussion of "voluntary sounds" and "involuntary sounds" (such as reactions to injury), round out a section that is certain to become a much referred to text. Dale Girard's text, "Actors On Guard" is a culmination of many years of study, exhaustive historical research (evidences throughout the text by informative explanations of techniques and accompanying plates), and practical experience gained by years of teaching and performing stage combat as a professional. What the reader gains by obtaining and using this text is a great wealth of information and proven training techniques offered by a master instructor. I recommend this book highly, and am personally a better teacher and performer for having read it.

Having read so much 20th. Century literature in English, I was amazed and embarrased not to have come across this important book before now. This is doubly so having read Orwell since my teenage years, yet I believe this book is far clearer in its critique of state facism than 1984. The leisurely pace and clear prose, set in the beautiful English countryside is deceptive. The story builds up to a threatening climax. It is a story of authoritarianism and love, of clear and singular vision and muddled human reality. A real must to read. Primo Levi would understood this book all too well.

Much as I hate to admit it now, I'd never heard of this book nor of Rex Warner until stumbling upon a list Anthony Burgess did for the New York Times Book Review of his Top 99 Modern Novels. The copy of the book I have just happens to include a forward by Burgess, so it seems safe to say that he did his part to maintain the reputation and readership of this fine book. And it was heartening to see that it is still in print. Heartening because this is a novel that deserves to be read and should have made many more "Best of" lists.

One strange deficiency in the literature of the 20th Century is the relative paucity of novels about fascism, its attractions and its awful consequences for those who believed. Sure, there are plenty of books about the Holocaust, but almost all are written from the victims' perspective. But while we have a rich literature depicting the mindset of Communists (Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, etc.), there aren't many similar books describing how someone, a young idealist perhaps, might have been drawn to fascism, even Nazism, but then been disillusioned, or even eaten by the revolution they helped to foment.

In at least this regard, Rex Warner's Aerodrome may well be the best novel ever written about fascism. The book is a pretty simple allegory--which though the critics I was able to find say was influenced mainly by Kafka, seemed to me to owe much more to Orwell's Coming Up for Air. The narrator, Roy, has grown up in The Village, a bucolic country town with more than its share of drunkenness, adultery, and incest. Bordering on the Village is the Aerodrome, clean, orderly, modern, technological, it represents everything that the Village is not.

Amidst a burgeoning mystery over who his real parents are, Roy joins the Air Force, drawn by its orderliness, attempting to please his girlfriend, and deeply impressed by the rigid but charismatic Air Vice-Marshal. The Vice-Marshal is determined to expand the Aerodrome and bring the Village under his control, remaking it in the same sterile image as the Aerodrome.

Roy meanwhile comes to realize that for all the disorder and human frailty on display in his home town, it is at least alive with possibilities :

I began to see that this life, in spite of its drunkenness and its inefficiency, was wider and deeper than the activity in which we were constricted by the iron compulsion of the Air Vice-Marshal's ambition. It was a life whose very vagueness concealed a wealth of opportunity, whose uncertainty called for adventure, whose aspects were innumerable and varied as the changes of light and colour throughout the year. It was a life whose unwieldiness was the consequence of its immensity. No skill could precisely calculate the effects of any action, and all action was dangerous.

There, in a nutshell, is the human dilemma : on the one hand we long for a world that would be safe and predictable and would yield to calculation, but, on the other, such calculations are beyond our meager mortal powers, so that whenever folks seek to impose order, they succeed merely in eliminating freedom and stifling progress. The appeal of fascism--or communism, or Nazism, or all the other -isms--is precisely that it holds out the promise of having finally invented the human calculus which will provide security, without any of the nasty side effects. That this appeal has always proven false does not seem to dampen the human need for, nor the responsiveness to, such promises.

Perhaps the best aspect of this novel is its timelessness. Though it is clearly a comment upon the 1930s and 40s, the Village, with its verdant fields, its convoluted genealogies, its interfamilial murders, and lurking just across the way the orderly utopia of the Aerodrome, suggests Man after the Fall as much as it does Britain just before WWII. The themes that Warner is dealing with are eternal. That he manages to present them in such a natural and readable way makes the book one that everyone should read.

GRADE : A+