This was the first book I learned to read all by myself. That was almost 30 years ago! I can't believe it's still in print, but I'm so glad it is. I'm going to be getting a copy for my great-nephew's 3rd birthday in May. The reading level is more appropriate for a 4-6 year old, but he'll "grow" into it. It's a really great story that inspired my young imagination. Besides, even at 3 years, he'll be able to appreciate the absolutely splendid watercolor illustrations. I can actually remember the SMELL of the book just by thinking about it now! My copy had a recipe for blueberry pancakes either on the inside or outside back cover. I can't remember, because I tore it off to give to my mom so she could make some! I still have my copy, by the way - minus the back cover. Many thanks to the Devlins for so many wonderful memories - and for creating the first of my thousands of adventures in reading!

I first read Old Black witch when I was seven years old. That was thirty two years ago. I recently ran across the book at the library while there with my eight year old daughter. I was so delighted to see her again with her fat little body, beedy eyes and funny pointed shoes. As I read this book to my own daughter. I found myself falling in love with it all over again. When old black witch makes her room in the dusty attic, complaining all the way, she sits upon a cozy patch work quilt. Her head is tilted, looking into the spider web above her bed for comfort. My heart breaks for the funny little wonderful creature that she is, and how wonderfully she is represented in the illustrations. Old Black Witch speaks volumes about the unspoken love between children and their elders, especially those elders who may not be as demonstrative as they could be. Though old black witch is grumpy and difficult, Nickey knows that "she really is a good witch." And we know that Old Black Witch loves Nickey and will always watch over him. The story is a simple one, nicely told, of a displaced boy and his mother looking for a life. They find a family and a place in the world when they enter the domain of Old Black Witch. What really makes this story magical though are the illustrations, filled with bright 1960's color and detail and yet they are timeless. Just the tilt of OBW's head as she sits upon that quilt is and will always be a master piece to me. I'm so glad to see she's still around.

This is undeniably my favorite book of all time.

I don't say this lightly. Wende and Harry Devlin's Old Black Witch is the first book that I have any memory of. If I'm feeling low, I still get it out and give it a quick read, even today. It still brings a smile. You could say this book is my oldest friend.

My copy has seen more wear and abuse than any book should. Not only did I draw on it (on almost every page) but I also took it into the bath tub, added a few of my own crayola styled illustrations and cut pages out--removing them to cut out the Old Black Witch herself, so I would have a facsimile to play with.

Several years ago, I spotted a paperback reprint and bought one for myself and my nephew. He was completely indifferent to it. I guess a pancake making New England Witch can't compete with Pokémon in the eyes of a modern child.....but she sure wins out with me.

If you ever find a copy of this, do yourself a favor and grab hold of it.

The pancake recipe on the back is great too!

If you are easily offended, don't bother. However, if you have a twisted sense of humor, by all means GET THIS BOOK. It is definitely not just another run-of-the-mill joke book. It is clever and irreverent, and will make you laugh out loud, no matter where you might be while reading it.

Never have I seen such a collection. It's not the one or two funnies here and there type of book. Every joke, every page, this one will either make you laugh or make you sick.

This is the best joke book I have read in years. The author has a terrific sense of humor. Everyone needs to get this book and share it with friends.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK CALLY HALL PERSONALY FOR SUCH A EXCELLENT WORK ON GEMSTONES. THE WORK CANNOT BE DESCRIBED IN WORDS. I AM A JEWELLER AS WELL AS GEMOLOGIST, GOT QUIET IMPRESSED WITH SUCH PIECE OF ART.

Where to begin? Photos, interesting facts, chemical compositions, broad range of stones!!!! The perfect reference for jewelers, libraries, hobbyists, homeschoolers- and to all you crystal/light workers, here is an awesome way to get a view of the crystals mentioned in the text-only guidebooks. See the Rocks & Minerals guide also.

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS AND THIS BOOK HAS TERRIFIC PICTURES AND VERY CLEAR AND CONCISE DESCRIPTIONS. EVERYTHING THAT I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE SUBJECT IS ANSWERED IN THIS BOOK. THERE'S A VISUAL GUIDE TO OVER 130 GEMSTONE VARIETIES AND A COLOR KEY FOR EVERY GEMSTONE. THERE ARE SO MANY INTERESTING BITS OF INFORMATION HERE THAT THE READER GETS A COURSE IN HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, SCIENCE AND FOLKLORE. FOR INSTANCE, THE CUSTOM OF WEARING BIRTHSTONE JEWELRY STARTED IN 18TH CENTURY POLAND; THE MASK OF TUTANKHAMEN WAS MADE OF LAPIS FROM AFGHANISTAN AND THE BEAUTIFUL PINK MORGANITE WAS NAMED AFTER J.P. MORGAN. THIS IS A SUPER REFERENCE BOOK!

son nuestros hijos...
¿Que hay mejor que encomendar su cuidado ?

ESE ES EL OBJETIVO DE ESTE HERMOSO LIBRO !

dedicados al cuidado de nuestros niños!¿Qué más podríamos pedir? Me enterneciö este libro coo no se imaginan: Nos señala a un angel especial para cada situación o necesidad: El angelito de los resrriados, el de la pureza, el del quirófano.. Es una belleza de libro!

PORQUE CUBRE NIÑOS HASTA DE DOCE AÑOS !
Todas las madres damos la bienvenida a un "socio-auxiliar " que nos auxilie a cuidar de nuestros niños !
¿Y QUÉ MEJOR QUE UN ANGELITO ???
UN LIBRO BELLÍSIMO !

I am one of the millions of people in the USA with an education degree who are not teachers. Behavior theory is the rule of the school today. I couldn't figure out why we treat children like guinea pigs instead of like the human beings that they are. This book opened my eyes. There IS more to life than rewards and consequences. I think science has backed itself into a corner, though, because religion has a corner on the love and respect market and science has repeatedly assured us that all that spiritual stuff is nonsense. This book is a must read for anyone with an accessible heart.

Like many others, I never forgot the pictures in my intro psych text of Hary Harlow's baby monkies and their surrogate mothers. Blum's very readable book reviews Harlow's work and places it in the historical context of psychology and the social perspectives the middle part of the 1900's.

Although the descriptions of Harlow's experiments were well written, the last chapters of Blum's book were most interesting to me. In these chapters, Blum describes the feminist and animal rights back lash against Harlow's work. One can't help be stunned by the irony that Harlow's work, which ultimently championed the importance of mothers' relationships to their children and the deep intelligence of monkies (and their similarities to human beings), would be vilified by these groups.

Blum's book is, thus, not only about one of the most innovative psychologists of the past century, but also a great perspective of how we change our thinking about what we are as a species. It is far more than a book about the man who took baby monkies away from their mothers.

For a biography / psychology book, I was pleasantly surprised by just how readible this book is (once you start reading, plan on being glued to it until you're finished). A fascinating slice of history, it's useful and insightful reading if you're a parent (or planning on becoming one), or if you're interested in the roots of the controversy over medical research with primates, or if you're just looking for tips on what makes humans tick. Well worth the read if only to put B. F. Skinner's experiments and theories into a frightening human perspective.

History is boring? Not if it's written by George MacDonald Fraser. India comes alive in a way most authors can only dream of, and you can taste the chapattis. I didn't think Fraser could top Flashman at the Charge, but he has done it. Read this book! Imagine a world without fiction, or worse, a world without Harry Flashman? No thanks, I'll keep them both.

This is my second favorite Flashman book, after (by a close margin) "Flashman and the Mountain of Light". History, plot, and characterization are superb, as are all the descriptive parts. As for the suspension of disbelief... I found nothing inconsistent in Flashman's recount of Moss Troopers torturing their captives. Exactly because he is utterly selfish, Flashman does not identify with Moss Troopers any more than with sepoys, or with anyone else for that matter. Also he derives sadistic pleasure out of exposing other people's baseness whenever he can - to justify his own, perhaps.

Only two things about Harry Flashman I found really hard to believe. One is his linguistic ability, which sometimes borders on supernatural (although in this book it is merely very good). In "Flashman and the Dragon" he becomes near-fluent in CHINESE in less than a month - his first tonal language, I might add, - and in "Flashman and the Redskins" he switches to thinking in Siouxan upon hearing it for the first time in 25 years. And the second thing which defies belief - how did a man in his nineties manage to write all these manuscripts in a few short years? His fingers should have fallen off!

This book and "Flashman at the Charge" represent the summit of the Flashman series. The author is deeply involved in Indian history and Flashman is in top shape as political agent, soldier, lover and major domo. The death of his school mate Scud East even provokes Flashman into (possibly) showing his own feelings.

I was really surprised when i found that Debbie Harry had written a book. It was really wonderful to start reading it and find that she was such a good author. She's open and honest, and she has really interesting ideas and philosophies which she shares in the book. "Making Tracks" really takes you into the world of Blondie and shows you what its like to get famous and tour and have to deal with bad management. Chris Stein's pictures are lovely and really add to the book. The only problem I had with the book was the miscellaneous photos of people never talked about or photos out of order with the text. But its kind of like "oh, we were chummy with this famous person" and "here's me with Ray Manzarek" which is cool.
Overall, it was a book that says exactly what its trying to, and does a good job of doing so.

Reading the book "Making Tracks", I found it very interesting and informative. Reading how Deborah and the boys had a rocky gritty start and really had to persevere in New York to make it big was entertaining. I liked the part where they had to convince people they were a rock 'n roll band but still wanted to play a disco song in "Heart of Glass." They found many of their followers did not get the irony. Nor the media also, as they thought Blondie was a punk band, a radical and rebellious term that held them back. Yet they broke out and made it to the big time, with more than their fifteen minutes of fame. Making Tracks is a book that lets you in on the inside of the record business. When I read that Blondie was paid a weekly salary, I thought this was kind of odd, even successful artists can be treated as simply lowly employees of a big corporation, just like anyone. And be just as powerless to change things. The book states how the movie scripts Blondie received were shockingly horrid. One movie script was about Harry in a band, and has a manager who kills a fan for publicity. Other scripts draw her as a nymphomaniac. So obviously they turned them all down. Too bad no independent film producer was found to make a good movie for the band. Rock 'n roll stars are big these days and still comeback because it seems the culture has unfinished business with them. There seems to be something about Blondie, there is of course, there is something behind the music we need to find out. Making Tracks is a book worth reading for those interested in music and the business of music. And of course the great band Blondie and the great singer Deborah Harry.

This book traces the "rise of Blondie" from the early days when the group started, right up until the split. Many fabulous pictures, writings and lots of information. Looking forward to the new Biography coming soon and Keep on rocking Blondie!

For math background, all that is needed for this book is a first semester in calculus. If you are looking for a book to learn ordinary differential equations (ODEs) from or for a second book for a class, buy this one. The book (which covers methods of solving/applying ordinary differential equations) are explained in just the right amount of detail--it isn't a novel, but it isn't something you should get too bogged down in. Also, there are LOTS of examples, which are all very helpful! The problem sets were put together very well--there are lots of problems and they start out easy and get harder. Also, one of the best things about this book is that it has most of the answers to problems! This makes this book more than sufficient for self-study. This is my favorite Dover Publications book!

After going through this book and finishing a few weeks ago, and looking at some other comparable titles, I have to come to the conclusion that this is quite possibly overall the best introductory text on ODEs out there.

The book consists of six major subtopics: first-order equations, general nth-order linear equations, systems and nonlinear equations, series solution methods, numerical solution methods and existence/uniqueness theorems. Most of the subjects tend to be divided into two or three chapters, with the first one or two containing the theoretical aspect and computational techniques and the other consisting of applications to real world problems.

At some 800-odd pages the book is quite long, but the sheer amount of material covered is simply astounding; the book has several types of special ODEs and solution methods that I have not seen anywhere else, and the authors go to great lengths to make every concept fully clear to the reader while still being quite rigorous. I am personally somewhat pure-math oriented but also needed some practice with applied problems, and this text is sure to please both students of mathematics as well as those of the sciences due to the very large amounts of subject material contained in both areas. (the book is split about 55-45 in theory/application)

One very nice thing is that if there is some doubt as to whether or not the reader is comfortable with something from another subject (i.e. real analysis), the book does not assume that the reader is familiar wih that topic, but rather it goes through a short review of the topic that is self-contained enough for readers who have not heard of the topic before to get a good idea of it. There are a variety of well-designed problems that provide plenty of practice along with some that expand upon the original concepts, and the average difficulty generally seems about right for the target audience. The numerical methods are also surprisingly robust considering that the book was written in 1963 and calculators/computers were not all that standard. Also, as was remarked earlier, this is one of the very few texts out there that contains the answers to all of the exercises, making it perfect for the self-study that I used it for; other authors/publishers should learn from this.

All things considered, this ranks among the best textbooks on any subject that I have ever seen, and coupled with the extremely low price, it definitely lies in the "must buy" category.

This is definitively the best introduction book to the differential equations that I Know until this moment. Although there are other excellent books on this topic, this one has the particularity that for each one of the topics that tries, has a collection of carefully elected exercises for the author, in such a way that the student won't feel frustrated of finding exercises that don't have a direct content with the exposed theory, also ordered in upward difficult . Each chapter is divided in lessons where it introduces step to step the elements that will serve him later on in particular in the understanding of some differential equation. With detail and accuracy, the only resource that is needed is to know how to integrate, the rest is in the book. The author doesn't consider that the reader knows something, it simply supposes that he doesn't know it, and then it enriches the text with methodological explanations that make that the text is almost self contained, without for it, to subtract depth in the topics. It is for my a true pleasure to sit down to read this book, of which I always learn on what should be made when one thinks of writing a book: to think of the more general possible reader.

It's an exceptional book that can give rise to a family tradition. The story of "Cranberry Thanksgiving" centers around Grandmother's Famous Cranberry Bread, and the recipe for the bread is on the back cover of the book. My mom and I read the book and made the bread for the first time when I was 4 years old, and 32 years later the tradition is still going strong. I still enjoy going to the bookshelf in the weeks before Thanksgiving to find this book and bake the bread.

The book's story is engaging, the illustrations are lovely, and the characters are memorable - who could forget wild Mr. Whiskers or snooty Mr. Horace? There's even a moral for those who like morals - don't judge a book by its cover.

Who cares if the silver spoons don't match, or if the red hall carpet is worn and mended?!!!
Thanksgiving is here and it's time for grandmother's famous cranberry bread!!!!! I can almost smell it! It is a secret recipe, hidden in the...,,,, well, I'll let you find out for yourself when you read the story.
Maggie and her grandmother live at the edge of a cranberry bog.
Maggie has invited Mr. Whiskers over for Thanksgiving dinner and grandmother is not too pleased at the thought of him in the house! After all, he smells like seaweed! But each year she tells Maggie, "invite someone poor or lonely", so Maggie invites Mr. Whiskers.
Mr. Whiskers actually ends up saving the day!
The pictures in this book are very warm and charming, and the story holds the interest of my squirmy 2 year old, as well as my older children.
We read it often and have even baked the cranberry bread from the recipe included in the book. It's yummy!
A delightful story for Thanksgiving or any time!~

when i was in the third grade, my teacher mrs. higgenbotham read us this book, and then we made the cranberry bread in class- i thought that it was the greatest thing back then, even though everyone hated the cranberries! i am so excited to have found this book again and cannot wait to share it with my stepsister who is in the 3rd grade this year- im sure she'll hate the cranberries as well, but im also sure she'll love the book-

This book is a collection of children around the world and is a wonderfull way to introduce your children to how people live around the world. Children of many different religious, finantial(very poor to quite wealthy), and ethnic backgrounds are given introduction within.

You and your kids will meet children like Carlitos, a boy who lives on an Argintine ranch in a three bedroom house and rides horses and drinks Mate tea. -- Or Suchart, from Thiland, a 12 year old budhist monk in training who lives in a small hut on stilts, has no toys, and starts his day begging for alms in his small village. He likes the cats who live in the temple, and is always losing his sandals because he has to take them off before he goes into the temple and forgets where he left them. -- And Thi Lien, in Vietnam who wears beautiful batik died traditional clothes made by her mother, helps feed the families chickens and harvest rice, and collects firewood. -- And Celina, who lives in the Amazon Rain Forrest of Brazil in a mud brick two room hut. She likes to paint herself with die made from a local root every day, and has never worn shoes. She likes to take the canoe out on the river her family lives near.

There is information about each child's favorite activities, what they eat, what they wear, pictures of thier home, family members, religious practices, and special things about thier cultures. This book has many children from Australia, Africa, The Americas, The Philipenes, Europe, Asia, India, and more. I have enjoyed looking at all the childred in this book and reading about how they live. Even though it's for children, anyone can enjoy this book. I only wish it had more children to meet. This book shows how children and people everywhere have the same thoughts, and fun, even though they may live in vastly different conditions.

I used this book in my third grade classroom. My student population was very diverse and it was a great way to help discuss not only the many ways that we are different but also the many ways we are all the same. My students loved to see how other kids dressed and were especially interested in what other kids ate!! A great book to have in any classroom and I even bought it for my two year old son's library.

I bought this book for my daughter who is adopted from China, and I subsequently bought it for five or six other children and am buying it again. It's great for kids of all ages. My daughter is four and loves paging through it, asking questions about the children. It is especially good for adopted children from China because the page about the girl in China tells about how in China they may only have one child. I highly recommend this book!