The Three Investigators series is MUST reading for all kids. As a teacher I encourage all of my students to delve into the adventures of Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews. None of my young readers has ever been disappointed!

This (the second book in the series) mystery is one of the best. It's a fast moving story that gives readers a lot of mystery and action. All the familiar Investigators charms are here: bad guys galore, red herrings, riddles and clues, chases, and the fun of the revelations in the last pages.

I strongly encourage anyone who reads (no matter their age) to pick up this series. It'll put a smile on your face and make you glad that you shut off the TV and dove into a book.

In this second book about the Three Investigators, Robert Arthur has exceeded the achievements of the first. Whereas The Secret of Terror Castle detailed the boys' attempt to prove their investigative powers, The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot relates the story of the boys' first real case. Having been charged with finding a missing parrot, they soon find themselves intimately involved in a search for a valuable work of art. The story is much fuller and more satisfying than that of the first book. Here we see the case evolve from a seemingly simple, far from dangerous search for a missing pet to an expanded search for seven mysterious parrots (the significance of which are not at first apparent) and finally to a race against an international art thief to acquire a lost masterpiece. Along the way, they face mysterious foreigners working against them, make sense of an enigmatic coded message, and ultimately triumph (albeit somewhat by accident). Admirably, they also go out of their way to generously help a young Mexican immigrant and his uncle establish a more comfortable life for themselves.

This is the Three Investigators at their finest. The mental acumen of Jupiter Jones is put to the test, and once again his mental prowess proves up to the task. For an adult such as myself, some of the obvious clues are not picked up on in as timely a fashion as I would expect, but one must remember that even Jupiter Jones, genius that he is, is only a lad. This book is an unqualified success, eminently enjoyable to both young and old alike. I feel just as I felt twenty years ago upon first reading these books--anxious to read about the boys' next case.

This book and other books in this series are excellent reading material. I am 25 now and still find the same thrill and excitement on reading these books as I found 10 years back. These are simply unputdownable at any stage of life.

Well, I hate to throw in a dissenting voice and vote when surrounded by such accolades, yet I must. Perhaps I expected too much after reading 84 Charing Cross Road. If you haven't read that book, I HIGHLY recommend you do so. In this, the sequel to that book, Helene Hannf talks about her experiences that resulted from the unexpected success of 84. Parts are indeed very interesting and do answer some questions that arise when reading the first book.
But on the down side I found some of her exploits long and trying on my patience. Her love of the theatre is evident in this and other books of hers that are about the theatre. I, however, do not share her enthusiasm and found these sections quite long. I would have been more interested in her reactions to the making of the movie 84 Charing Cross Road. Yes, I know, I know, this book came out longgg before the movie was made. Hey, it was just a wish.
Bottom line, if you enjoyed 84 Charing Cross Road, pick up a used copy of this as parts are worth reading.

What an upbeat book!
This is the romance of life's unpredictability; of life's path. Helene Hanff the author and our heroine in this autobiography is a person we can all identify with: with a high school education, a survivor's tenacity, a bright mind and a bit of luck she turns what could have been a mediocre existence into an exciting if quietly successful life! One could not have a more prototypical American dream. But here, it appears represented without the scrubbed clean, sanitized methods of Holywood.
Her wonderfully charming narration, leads us through her struggles as a writer in New York, through the apparent lucky accident of her book "84, Charring Cross Road," and the mesmerizing consequences that a successful book brings to her life. It is her persona though, who is fascinating: a strong woman with few doubts about likes and dislikes, who fights doggedly for a living, with a good sense of humor, generosity towards others and an apparent humility. What a combination! But to top it off she is sharp, quick, loves books and what they can teach her.
This is a book to be read in one sitting, but only after you read "84 Charring Cross Road." It is fun, upbeat, a charmer and it also has an almost oldfashioned value: it celebrates life!

When Helene Hanff runs out of money and has to leave college, she takes her education into her own hands. In the public library she searches for books on English literature "the Best -- written in language I could understand." Beginning with the A's, taking down one volume after another, she works her way through the alphabet, arriving at the M's without finding what she wants.

Most of the books were of 19th and 20th century writers and she wanted the great works of England: Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, the Bible, etc.

"I went on through the N's, O's and P's," she writes, "fighting a suspicion that what I wanted didn't exist. There was only one book under Q."

And what a book. ON THE ART OF WRITING by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, M.A., King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge. Impressed with his credentials and the simplicity and clarity of his writing, she decides she can study with "Q," as she calls him, "without necessarily agreeing with everything he said." So she takes him home.

"In the first chapter," she writes, "he threw so many marvelous quotes at me...from Walton's ANGLER and Newman's IDEA OF THE UNIVERSITY and Milton's PARADISE LOST -- that I rushed back to the library and brought home all three, determined to read them before going on to Q's second lecture." And so it went. From PARADISE LOST to the New Testament to . . . ad infinitum.

Life and reality (the need to find a job) intrude; she gets involved in community theater, becomes publicity agent (sort of) for the Theater Guild of New York, works as a reader for the New York Story Department of Paramount Pictures, all the while reading her way through Q's list of classical English literature. Then, one morning, she sees an obituary in the Times: "Quiller-Couch dies at age 80."

She feels as though she's lost a friend. "I felt suddenly lost with Q gone. Till I looked at the books of his lectures ranged on the top bookshelf and thought, 'He's not gone, you nut, you have him in the house.'" So she sets out to buy the books he taught her to love.

Enter the Out-of-Print books column of the Saturday Review, where she finds an ad: "Marks & Co., Antiquarian Booksellers, 84 Charing Cross Road, London." She writes for books and thus begins the correspondence that will quicken her romantic imagination, break her heart, and make Hanff a celebrated writer in 30 years.

In Q's LEGACY, Hanff tells about writing the book, the play and the television production. She describes the trip to England that takes her to Q's study. There's a lot here about her fan mail and her fans, as well. It's a portrait of a bright and persistant woman in pursuit of knowledge and culture, a dance with destiny, and a fascinating picture of the rewards (and problems) of success.

Best of all, it's written in an easy, natural style. It's a love letter to life, books, learning and bibliphiles.

Arthur Magida has done a fantastic job of bringing the details and motivations behind a shocking crime to light. Far more than a journalist's recounting of events, the author sheds valuable insight on the meaning of faith, congregation, community, and spiritual leadership. He skillfully weaves the facts of the crime and investigation with the disturbing details of the Rabbi's narcissistic, sociopathic personality traits. The reader is taken inside the congregation and made to understand how Rabbi Neulander captivated an entire congregation, seduced several of its members, and came to believe he was above the laws of man. A captivating story from beginning to end that forces us to look inside and to question those in whom we place our faith and trust.

This book should come with a disclaimer: Read only on a weekend when you don't have early morning plans.
Magida effectively portrays Fred Neulander as the rabbi from hell: a sociopath who breaks every possible commandment while abusing the trust of his congregation and community, not to mention his profession. That Neulander meets up with Janoff, the hitman, is tragic karma for Janoff, the classic loser, who is easily manipulated by this evil man. Had the two not met, Neulander would have found some other mechanism through which to kill Carol.
This book demonstrates Magida's journalistic skill. He does not moralize but rather salts his narrative with quotes from Jewish sources that leading the reader to conclude that Neulander's lifelong behavior and choices represent an inversion of normative Jewish values and ethics.
I hope that Magida sells the film rights to this book to a foreign director. I don't know if an American could capture the sense of "film noir" that the story demands.

Jewish Bulletin of Northern California -- 6/13/03

"Magida's cast seems to have been recruited from the dank, smoke-filled and, invariably, black-and-white alleyways and barrooms more commonly conjured by Philip Marlowe or Raymond Chandler.... Yet this is not make-believe, but horribly, vividly and even nauseatingly real.... The result is a dense yet tightly paced retelling that reads like a top-notch crime novel and has more angles than a dodecahedron....
"... a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying read... Magida's writing demonstrates his backbreaking research and is spiced with just enough emotion and personality to avoid the banal tone of daily newspaper reporting but not dip over the top into a morality play."

this one is very well researched ... great ending and absolutely no loose ends

This is a great book. It has many plot lines and tons of characters that seem to intertwine for a great ending. The characters and the plot are very well developed. This is a great book for anyone to read!

I was attracted to this book after I seeing it on the shelf (while looking for Alex Haley's "Roots") and reading the forward. The development of the intertwining plots held me for the length of the book and reading the last 30 pages left me with a feeling of a job well done (both for me and the author).

This is the first volume of a multi-author endeavor to trace the changes in private attitudes, beliefs, benaviors, and lifestyles from the early Roman Empire to the late twentieth century. The first volume begins with the early Roman Empire and ends with the apogee of the Byzantine Empire. Containing five lenghty essays by different authors (mainly French -- the whole project is a French one) dealing with the early Roman Empire, the late Roman Empire, housing and architecture in Roman Africa, Merovingian Gaul, and tenth and eleventh-century Byzantium.

The project is a fresh and invigorating look at the ways that societies change. There are several excellent illuminations in this book. We are shown that the notion of Roman "sexual liberation" is not well-founded; that Christianity did not change Western views on sex and the body, but that Christianity adopted the views of the poorer (and more numerous) Roman classes; how architecture can reveal much about a society; and that the major change between the late Empire and the early medieval had to do with notions of "private" and "public."

Although the book is interesting and useful, there are some reasons to criticize it. Most of the attention is given to the early Roman Empire, which consumes almost one third of the book. Entirely too much space is given to the chapter on architecture in Roman Africa -- it is significantly longer than the chapter on the late Empire. The chapter entitled "The Early Middle Ages in the West" is really only about Merovingian Gaul, and does not always have the change between the late Empire and early medieval as a focus. The chapter on Byzantium did not seem to fit with the rest of the book. The reason for including Byzantium in this volume rather than the next volume (Middle Ages) was to show Byzantine culture as a continuation of Roman culture. Unfortunately, the piece was not about the early Byzantine, but rather the middle Byzantine era, thus having no connection with the rest of the book. It is also dubious that the book begins with the Roman Empire, not the Roman Republic or classical Greece. Paul Veyne says that this decision was made because Rome was essentially Greek in character, and that a section on Greece and a section on Rome would be repetitive. This is weak reasoning at best, but, given the lenght of the book as it stands now, it may still have been a good decision. Finally, the book is not footnoted or endnoted. There is a lengthy bibliography and a small notes section in the back, but assertions, ideas, and evidence are not clearly referenced. I do not know if this is how French scholarship is done, or if this major chunk of scholarship was left out in the interest of marketing the book to a lay audience. Either way, it is frustrating, and only hurts the academic value of this major project.

Despite these critical comments, I view the book as an excellent effort and an enlightening read. Too often history is about events, not people, and these historians have made a noble attempt to humanize our past.

This book covers about 1,000 years of private life, from the polytheistic era of classical Rome through the acceptance there and then institutionalization of Christianity in the dark ages. It is a dazzling side glance into the cultural evolution of these tumultuous times with some reference to the larger political context.

The distinctions between these cultures are at once subtle and brutal. First, we view the civitas of Rome, that is, the obligation that Roman citizens felt towards their cities, which involved complex community-oriented mores and expensive public displays that were paid for by private means; aristocratic children, brought up with relatively less sense of their individuality than we enjoy, saw their lives and careers as reflections of the glory of their cities. The reader is also treated to the way that slaves and families were treated in great detail.

Then, in the early Christian era, more privatized cultures arose, first with the increased introspection that the christianization of the empire entailed. Next, the barbarian invasions - in which nomadic tribes smashed the urban cultures in whose wealth they had wanted to partake - merely accelerated this trend; they greatly valued their possessions, often war booty that they had to carry with them, and hence had little regard for fixed property and its supporting laws that enabled cities to flourish. Infrastructure and larger communities and political units in this period deteriorated, which severely impacted trade and hence economic welfare. The standard of measure of a life at that time became purely personal wealth and power.

A sub-theme of the book is the influence of monasticism, which created its own closed communities and became the model for family life at the beginning of the gothic era. Monks and the clergy were the holders of standards of conduct and literacy through this little-known period, and exerted immense influence on the mores of the people who lived nearby. In all its detail, this was new to me. Indeed, if it were not for their labors, much of classical learning would have been lost forever. They are also virtually the only source for information about life in Byzantium.

While there is something lost in having so many authors involved in a single volume, the chapters in this book are so long and detailed that they are like self-contained books. Ample illustrations transport the reader to each era, revealing the mystery of what made us who we are in the west over so many centuries. Nonetheless, the chapters are uneven. The chapter on Roman architecture in N. Africa is very boring indeed, and the one on Byzantium is dull as well. But those on pagan and then Christian Rome are superb, as are those on the dark ages.

Finally, this book relies more on written sources than on archaeology, which is a pity in my opinion, as the sources written after pagan Rome are rather formulaic and outright boring in their rhetorical flourishes as you read about them over hundreds of pages. At times, it reads like a compendium of obscure sources, including exhaustive analysis of funery inscriptions, though that is often what academia comes down to. Another odd thing is that there are only two pages of footnotes, which are followed by a rather poor bibliography. While the book is trying to strike a balance between popular and specialized audiences, I would have preferred better info on sources.

In spite of these criticisms, there is no question that this book is an ample and fascinating meal. Recommended.

The back of the book says that the "History of Private Life" series is "written and edited by leading scholars yet intended for any reader who wonders how people lived and behaved in earlier times". In this, the first volume has definitely succeeded. It is divided into five parts: The Roman Empire, Late Antiquity, Private Life and Domestic Architecture in Roman Africa, The Early Middle Ages in the West, and Byzantium in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. Each of the five sections is divided into chapters, which are then each divided into portions, each portion with its own heading, for easy identification. So, for example, under "The Roman Empire" is a chapter entitled "Marriage," which is divided into sections headed "Criteria for Marriage," "The Transformation of Marriage," "Marriage as a Duty," "The Harmonious Union," etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed most of the sections, although "The Roman Empire" was a bit too long-more than 200 pages, twice as much as any of the other sections. Often it sounded like the author was repeating himself.

I didn't find "Private Life and Domestic Architecture in Roman Africa" very interesting, probably because the emphasis was on the Domestic Architecture part. Since the section was based mostly on architectural excavations, it had little information on "private life." Most of the section was overviews of the plans of houses and cities in Roman Africa. Since minor details, like furniture arrangements, often do not survive to be discovered by archeological expeditions, there was little information on such minor details.

The other four parts were much more interesting. The book contains a wealth of information on private life: the way people thought, the way they acted, the way they lived. It is extremely readable. I am not a scholar of the period, but I found the book very easy and enjoyable to read. This simpleness in writing means that a lot of scholarly arguments and debates are left out. The whole text is sort of streamlined. Generally this is a good thing, but sometimes it makes one suspicious of some of the author's statements. On page 224, for example, one illustration's caption reads, "Tomb of a physician, 3rd-4th century. He is not, as was once thought, reading a medical treatise but rather his classics..." Looking at the illustration, the scrolls the physician is reading are blank, with no identification on or around them. How could one decide what the man was reading? The author may have had a reason for making this statement, but without the reason given, I found myself thinking, "For heaven's sake, the man could be reading ANYthing." However, if nothing else, this forces the reader to realize how subjective interpretations of history often are. The editors of this book are to be commended for having included enough information that the reader can make their OWN subjective judgements about how to interpret the evidence.

This book's biggest problem, I think, is its length (600+ pages). The large number of illustrations helps, but this is a book that has to be read in bits and pieces. Luckily, the book is divided in such a way that reading it a piece at a time is the easiest way to read it.

Neresian has the talent to create tales which are easy to swallow in a few sittings but are surprisingly loaded with character depth and strange twists and turns. This novel, like his previous works, does the same: by taking an under achiever-below avegerage character and putting them into extraordinary circumstances. It's very hard to even explore these stories without giving away some of the plot devices which make them so addictive.

The book was a compelling story about a selfish, paranoid egotistical pig of a man. The book is completely crazy and has warped my mind forever. I didn't think it could get any better until the end when Joey was tricked by his so-called buddy for the last and final time. It was incredible, well writen, and the best book I have ever read. Arthur Nersesian has permanently found himself a space in my heart and many others.

well, it is hard to describe this book because it is literally unlike anything i've ever read. i can't even say that it's one of the best books i read because it is so original it defies the "good/bad" labels. it is truly weird beyond belief and it is occasionally difficult to understand the plot through a style that goes beyond satire, paranoia, fantasy, insanity, and identity reversals and double-reversals. for example, i have never before read a book where you don't find out until halfway through the book that the protagonist is a fat dwarf. among other things, this is one of the most subversive books written about the yuppiefication of the young american soul

I completely agree with other reviewer's opinions on this book: it contains fascinating subject matter, but is a little rough in the delivery/presentation.

My major complaint would be that the author needs to learn to keep certain things in perspective, most notably, to avoid stopping in the middle of an interesting historical lecture to rant about the state of affairs in our country's War on (Some) Drugs. While I feel that this is a positive thing to do, I also feel that it detracts from the flow of his lecture. (My suggestion would be to save such speeches for either the footnotes or as an appendix essay at the end of the book; you won't lose your reader's interest that way and will have all the space you need to confront these issues).

That aside, I still enjoyed this book. Be prepared for an interesting look at how the majority of the world's major religions are most likely based in the use of entheogenic substances, particularly the Amanita Muscaria mushroom. The author guides the reader on a walk through of the mushroom symbolism found in historical religious imagery (including some of Christianity's most cherished icons, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus!)

Admittedly, some of the author's observations seem to be stretching things to some degree, but he still provides some great food for thought. A fascinating subject that I hope the author will see fit to expand on for us later.

The visionary James Arthur is the opposite of the careful and straightlaced Dan Merkur in the field of the entheogen theory of the origins of religion. This book is so wide-ranging, it's hard to form a clear mental picture of its scope. Arthur has innovative coverage speculating about entheogens in Egyptian and Asian as well as Christian religion.

This subject is just getting started so there are few books and what few there are are speculative. The entheogen theory of the origin of religions *makes sense*, particularly when focusing on the specifically religious aspect of religion rather than other aspects such as political, ethical, or sociological aspects.

Scholars, including esoteric and Literalist Christian scholars, agree that entheogenic plants are basically reliable triggers for religious experiencing. Historians of religion are trying to use "psychology", "anthropology", and "sociology" to explain the origin of religions. These explanatory threads point to entheogens at the fountainhead of religion, religious experiencing, and religious myth.

This book provides some evidence but most of all provides the all-important *perspective* from which we can see how well it makes good sense to look to entheogens for the origin of mystic experiencing at the root of religion. There's really no reasonable argument against the entheogen theory of the origin of religion -- it enables a full-spectrum, integral-theory explanation of religion to finally come together.

I rate this book 5*s exclusively based upon the information contained therein. The formatting could use some polishing and it would be nice to have a hardcover available (color pictures etc.) I did manage to find Arthurs website which has many of the same images in color.

I have not seen as broad a look at the subject of Ethnomycology, as far as Amanita muscaria goes, either in contemporary writings or the classics, but I would like to see this author explore more information on Psilocybe sp. My only beef is; I would like more. I hope he has an aim to comment further in future works in regards to some of the subjects only briefly touched upon in this book. I also enjoyed the writing style and will comment that sometimes things just need to be said no matter who doesnt agree with it. Arthur says a lot, about a lot, in this book..

This is a welcomed addition to my library and I find myself commenting on the book and showing it to my friends quite often. The seemingly unrelated areas tend to grow on you and as an example understanding certain connections continues to dawn on me still. Also it is refreshing to see so many new ideas I have seen presented nowhere else. In a world becoming increasingly redundant and robotic I can see the unique combination of ideas and Philosophical viewpoints contained in this book to be revolutionary!

For those of us using the NKJV, this is very helpful to have. The quality of the information presented is excellent but I have to say the binding and paper quality are horrible. Nelson should be ashamed of themselves. The binding is of the same poor quality as their concordance. It feels like it's going to fall apart with any serious use. The paper looks to be recycled. It's a shame that Nelson doesn't have the integrity to produce reference materials that reflect the subject they are working with.

"A translation can only be as good as the greek text it's translating from"

Hodges/Farstad is a good translation from a not-so-good greek text.

I prefer the UBS4/NA-27 text, but if you like the Byzantine text, this will be a good interlinear for you.

If your unfamiliar with text types, the KJV/NKJV uses a text type that has much more manuscript attestation. (hence Majority text) However, more mss does not mean that this text type is closer to the words of the original mss. (which after all is the goal, right?) The text of Nestle-Aland and UBS uses older and more acurate manuscripts for their greek text. (i.e. p46,p66,p75,Aleph,B among other ancient witnesses.

Most all versions in the 20th century (both Catholic and Protestant) are based on the UBS/NA text (aka Critical Text) ---
[i.e. NAB,NRSV,NIV,NASB,RSV, and a ton of others]

While the NKJV still holds to the inferior Byzantine text that the KJV used. The Bodmer and Beatty Papyri (3rd cent) along with Aleph and B (4th cent), must be regarded as much weightier witnesses than the Byzantine mss. (despite their sheer volume, the vast majority are miniscules from the 10th-15th century, characterized by conflations and smoothed out readings)

I thought that was important to know before deciding to buy an interlinear based on the Byzantine text.

So I would recommend a UBS/NA based interlinear text, such as Comfort's or McReynold's.

Eric

I myself have not taken any Koine Greek studies but I do plan to in the future. This is a great aid for beginners and advanced users alike. This book utilizes the Greek Majority Text. This set of text claims the most Greek manuscripts than any other text. The textus receptus, the Greek text of the King James Version, is included in this set of manuscripts. This translation of the New Testement, a nterlinear one, puts a literal translation of EACH Greek word right under the word. This way you can get a completely pure and unbias translation of the Greek. You can get down to the original meaning of the text, without having to deal with idioms and pharaphrasing which take away from the purpose of the text. If you get a little stuck with abnormal phrasing (which is common with interlinear translations because of the difference between Koine Greek and modern English) then there probably will be an idiomatic translation of that phrase just under the interlinear text. Last but not least, in the left margin, next to the corresponding text, is the New King James Version translation of the text. You can compare this understandable literal translation with the purely literal translation of the interlinear translation side-by-side. I would recommend this product with an Greek-English Interlinear using the Critical Text as opposed to the Majority Text or the Textus Receptus. This way you can compare the Majority Text, which has the most acient manuscript backing, with the most widely accepted (including language scholars) Greek set of manuscripts today (the Critical Text) The translation most likely to be coupled with the Critical Text is the New Revised Standard Version. I would also recommened getting a beginner's guide to New Testement Greek so that you can read the Greek text for yourself. Both of the products I just mentioned are readily availible by different authors here at Amazon.com My final regards to this product is that it has been a blessing to my Biblical studies :-)

Swallowdale refers to a story the children and Captain Flint wrote over the winter... this is it, which accounts for the more fantastical elements some of the other reviewers mentioned! (Missee Lee -- pirates in the South China Sea -- is a story in a similar vein.) Great fun although I do slightly prefer the more "realistic" books in the series. But the whole series is great -- I first read Swallows and Amazons at the age of 9 and return to it often.

"It was enough to make anybody happy, just to be afloat and sailing, to see the green shores racing past, to see the bubbling wake slipping away astern, to see all the sails drawing, to hear now and then a gentle, low thrumming in the shrouds, to see the sunlight sparkle in the spray thrown out to leeward by the bows of the little schooner." - Arthur Ransome

Though listed as the third volume in Arthur Ransome's *Swallows and Amazons* series, *Peter Duck* is chronologically the second adventure of this group of four plus two children, taking place in the Winter of 1930/31, a few months after the events narrated in *Swallows and Amazons*.

As its subtitle indicates - "A Treasure Hunt in the Caribbees" - *Peter Duck* is a book of much greater geographical scope than the first volume: instead of merely pretending to be explorers and pirates, the six children, accompanied by the Amazons' uncle, Captain Flint, and a benevolent sea dog, Peter Duck, cross the Atlantic in search of a real treasure really buried by real pirates.

Every single event in the first book seems to be reproduced here, but on a much greater scale: the ships are now full-sized, the lake is drowned in an ocean, the island can no longer be swimmed around, the petty thieves have turned into murdering thugs, and England's summer rains are drenched by a tropical storm.

Even though the plot is more contrived and far-fatched, with the elements playing a rather providential - and therefore improbable - role, the tone is generally more realistic, as the children are no longer shielded from the more dangerous forces at work in the world. They even befriend a young, abused pauper, Bill, whom Ransome, in a Dickensian vein, portrays more lovingly than any of the recurring characters. And quite significantly, instead of referring to such novels as *Robinson Crusoe* or *Treasure Island*, the children (and especially the one I identify with the most, Titty) are now enthralled by Hakluyt's and Columbus's accounts of their voyages.

*Peter Duck* may lack the simplicity and freshness of the first volume, as well as the feeling that nothing serious could happen to the children, but it is a wonderful adventure story which I wish I had read (or been read) as a child. And for those who don't know Jack about sailing, it is also very didactic, containing several explanatory illustrations and footnotes by Captain Nancy herself.

It's the best book i've ever read! Everyone must read it!

It's making your kid think they can have anything they want...and encourages the wrong behavior. I just have to say it that I've seen better by Seuss

There are a handful (less than 5) of the Dr. Seuss books that go overboard on imagination, and this is one of them (some others are, "Happy Birthday to You!", and "Oh, the thinks you can think!") So for visual imagery and imagination, this is a wonderful book.

That being said, however, nobody has addressed the moral problem raised by this book, e.g., the parent is trying to "mis-direct" a child's wants to some day in the future (that does not exist) when all their wants and needs will be satisfied all at once - On the first of Octember!

My wife grew up dirt poor in a foreign country. She did not think very much of this book.

Imagine reading the book to your child, shutting the book, and fielding a question, "Mommy (or Daddy), when is the First of Octember ???" If you can field this question adequately, then go ahead and buy the book.

Please Try to Remember the First of Octember is an interesting book...it is about a kid who thinks he will get everything he wants on Octember the first, the things he wants could be beyond your imagination but i think it can relate to all the kids whos parents have said "you will get want u want on teh second tuesday of next week!"