I really enjoyed this book and felt like it dealt well with some real feelings children might have about moving. I liked how the parents handled their childs way of dealing with his problems.

This grammar book is decidedly thorough, concise, and both extremely helpful and intimidating, especially to those who are grammatically-challenged! The passion of the professor's review seems to exude frustration and disgust with two groups of people.
Finger-pointing is done at the teachers who are unable to master sufficiently themselves the basics of the English language grammar that they are positioned to teach. There is also blame cast upon the students below college level, who are lacking the skills of recognizing and applying these basic skills in their own use of language.
Any teaching book by itself, even an excellent one such as this grammar book, often needs to have a guide to go with it. In this case a guide would be a knowledgeable, patient, and motivated teacher. As a high school English teacher for over 38 years, I have learned to pick my battles in the area of English grammar. My students have had more media exposure to 20 second-sound bites, telecommunication devices, and the whole world of the Internet than either my generation or the one immediately succeeding mine. This is part of their experience. We talk, and we read more than we write. From the Internet itself there has emerged from emails and chatrooms a whole series of shorthand that perhaps those responsible for this book might want to include in a chapter on "Telecommuncations Grammar For Different Occasions"! This is not to excuse bad grammar; this is to identify a cause and expand on a method of teaching.
To give an already grammatically-challenged student a superb grammar book and hope it will help without further interaction on the teacher's part is comparable to giving a top choice T-Bone steak on a fine china plate to a baby who's just beginning to teethe. The hunger is there; the food is there, but the child will starve to death anyway!
This is as complete and as well-done an English grammar as one can buy - when it is accompanied by either a competent, concerned teacher, or a most avid self-motivated, interested student. It's also an excellent review book for a seasoned grammarian to keep on hand.

I require my junior and senior high school English students to buy this grammar book. It is a nice size to tuck in beside the keyboard while typing up a term paper. I use the book in my weekly grammar lessons so that when the students study a concept, they also learn where the rule is located in the book. Then when they need to refresh their memory, they know how to look for the answer. I think many grammar rules are really learned as the need to be correct arises; the caveat is that the writer has to at least have a vague idea that there is a rule to apply to the question at hand.

As a community college teacher, I am absolutely frustrated and mystified at the lack of basic grammar and English skills these kids possess. What are they learning in high school? The sad part is that I have many students who want to become high school English Teachers themselves but can't even identify dangling modifiers or tell me the difference between colons and semicolons. It's appalling to think that they will be perpetuating this cycle--teachers who don't know grammar NOT bothering to teach it to their students because they don't know it in the first place.

I've given up teaching them what they should have learned in high school when they were probably wasting time doing group projects or watching movies based on books. It's not their fault. I blame the teachers. Unless we make grammar a mandatory element of high school English classes--and force the teachers to learn it in the first place--the level of proper English usage will continue to slip-slide away. I shouldn't have to waste my college class time explaining the elements of a complete sentence. (How on earth are they even graduating in the first place?) I make them buy this book, which I feel is the best handbook available, and pray that they will have the initiative to use it.

This is a great reference book for anyone with grammar questions. The index and page layouts are brillantly designed by the Parsons School of Design, and it shows on every page. I have never found a reference book so easy to navigate. The book is small (mine is 5.5" X 8.5") AND amazingly lightweight for 800 pages . The binding is strong and the book lays comfortably open as you use it. YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK. I buy it for every writing job I take. This is my third copy.

The Little, Brown Handbook is an invaluable resource for writing college papers. Everything from sentence structure to research paper formatting can be found in this book.

The Little Brown Handbook is a good resource for writing term papers. It's references for the MLA Guidelines make this book a good tool.

This book caught my eye at a gourmet cook shop. The illustrations are as luscious as the recipes. While there are many "new" vegetarian cookbooks, few measure up to the description as this one does.

I own a number of vegetarian cookbooks, and although all of them are good, they tend to be in the "nuts and grains" variety of cooking. Which I love, but its nice to get a different perspective sometimes, which is why this book is great. It breaks from typical veggie cookbooks in two aspects, actually: types of recipes, and the look of the book. Its simply beautiful, actually. I enjoy flipping through it and looking at the recipes. And so far, although I'm no master cook, the dishes have turned out as well as the pictures.

One downfall, I think, is the focus on mostly Asian dishes (again, I love Asian food, but it would be nice to get a few more non-Asian recipes... maybe in the sequel), and the small number of recipes in the book. I guess you can't have both huge, pretty pictures and lots of text at the same time... oh well.

However, it covers all the basics of vegetarian cooking as well as suggesting some exciting ideas. Pick up the veggie cookbook staples, and then this will make a wonderful addition to your collection!

I just got this book yesterday, which happened to be my parents' 33rd anniversary, and so I made them a gormet meal, which looked gorgeous, tasted good, and was veggie. I made the mushroom and chickpea salad (mmmmmmmmm) and the rasberry roulade, which was rather complicated, but had photos of each step. it was sweet and pretty. :-D the only drawbacks of this book come from its being a gormet cookbook. the recipies take a while to make (about 3 hours for those two dishes) and some ingredients are really hard to find (such as rosewater). but her instructions are excellent, and the food tastes wonderful. For simpler and faster vegitarian dishes, The Teen's Vegetarian Cookbook
by Judy Krizmanic is excellent. It also is very savory, but it is geared toward the college student, and therefore the recipies are a little simpler and more basic. well I hope that this helped, and GO VEGGIES! hehehe

~~Samantha R, MA, age 17

This collection of seventeen poems presents fourteen different species of birds to the reader. The poems vary in length from just a few lines to multiple stanzas. The poems are at times lyrical, thoughtful, and whimsical. Each poem gracefully presents a unique charactereistic, behavior, and/or habit of each bird to the reader. The poems are complemented by double-page water color paintings which accurately depict each bird. There are short notes about each bird at the back of the book. The book is beautiful and would appeal to elementary as well as middle school students.

In Bird Watch, the poet integrates a fact or two about the bird as she paints an elegant picture of its uniqueness and beauty. The reader can envision the cardinal, brilliantly sitting atop the white blanket of snow, "A brilliant blot on winter's page." Or see the song birds, sitting on telephone lines that in one's mind now become lines of music and the birds "like scattered notes." Other inviting features of the book include the bird facts in the back and Ted Lewin's illustrations, marvelously bringing each bird to life. When in search for nature poetry, Jane Yolen is the end of your journey. Enjoy!

The Big Bike Race by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

In The Big Bike Race the main characters are Sonny, Ernest, Melissa and Grandma. His Grandma has raised Ernest and his sister, Melissa since the death of their parents. Ernest wanted a sleek bike for his tenth birthday. Instead he gets a chunky yellow one with streamers and baskets hanging off. Since his family is poor he wasn't too sad when he got a bad bike.

He thought if he won the junior division of the Citywide Cup he would win the new sleek bike. Then he met a professional racer named Sonny. Sonny, his coach, taught Ernest to be a good bike racer. Sonny said that it's better to have a great body and a bad bike instead of the other way around.

The Citywide Cup took place in Washington D.C. Ernest was really good but his bike was too heavy so he finished in thirteenth place. This is amazing because he only got about a month to train. Ernest got lucky because he was friends with Sonny , who won the race and got the new bike. He gets Sonny's old bike which is better than his yellow clunker.

I think Ernest will win his next race because he has a good body and a good bike now.

I liked this book because it shows you don't have to do everything without help.Ernest didn't give up when he lost the bike race. His friendship with Sonny taught him how to be a good bike racer and helped him earn a new bike.This book is good because it presents a believable story. So bike on down to your closest library and get this book!

Reviewed by Eli (8 years old)

Coaching The Rider is written from the English/Dressage/Eventing angle of Horsemanship. It is equally relevant to the instructor of Western Horsemanship diciplines. The book's intented audience is the actively teaching riding instructor. The author uses her extensive background to cover lessons plans, teaching theory, competition and special teaching situations. She is clear and concise. Sample lessons and lesson plans as well as sample conversations with students are included. My only criticism is that, like any textbook, is that it is dry. Plan to read it in stages and practice the skills as you progress in the book.

This book, written by the world's foremost experts on Rhipicephalus taxonomy, will be invaluable to anyone who needs to identify brown ticks or come to grips with the many changes in their nomenclature. The high-quality SEM photos (several for each species, showing key morphological features) are a particularly useful addition. As a taxonomic work the book is great. Readers looking for ecological or phylogenetic details, however, will be disappointed. The limited quantitative data that are provided (host numbers, and measurements of tick body sizes) are spread throughout the book, with no summary tables provided; the distribution maps are coarse-grained; there is little discussion of tick population dynamics or disease relationships; and the comments on tick ecology reflect the state of knowledge in the 1960s. Despite these criticisms, the authors have achieved what they set out to do and should be commended for providing such a useful taxonomic reference.

This book was a Christmas gift from my wish list. I did not have a chance to look through it before requesting it, but had seen an enthusiastic blurb in one of my favorite shelter magazines. I was a little surprised to find it contained little "cutting edge" contemporary landscape design. Instead, it is more of a history of "modern" designs in the Twentieth Century. I was hoping for examples of gardens such as those pictured on the cover and featured on this website, but this was not really the case. Many of the photos are in black and white, from past decades and the most intriguing color shots are already on the jacket. There is a great deal of history and detail provided in the text. I think the book is a "must have" for landscape architects, but for a homeowner looking for inspiration for a mid-century house, it wasn't what I'd hoped for. Nevertheless, it has given me a new understanding of the principles which have changed landscape design.

This book gave an interesting point of view on the life, last days, and supposed death of Amelia Earhart. The author's use of descriptive phrases really add a lot to the various settings and scenes that take place in the book. It was a little hard to get into at first because the narrator jumps around from time to time and person to person. Once I got into the book I found that it was a pretty fast as well as fascinating read. All in all, I really enjoyed it and it made me want to find out more about the life and disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

This is not the greatest novel ever written, nor does it ever pretend to be. However, it has been one of the very few contemporary stories that flirts with originality and exploits imagination.

I read this book on a long, long direct flight from New York to Tokyo a few months ago. Perhaps the way I read this book had alot to do with its impact on me. Had I read it on the ground I would have surely perceived it differently. I have always loved airplanes, I have always been in love with something and I have always, always (don't quite know why or how) been fascinated by the disappearance of this remarkable woman.

So take it on your next long flight. Pick a window seat and enjoy it. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in aviation, the vagueries of love and Amelia Earhart. I do not really see it as a novel, but it very well may be a profoundly eloquent, lengthy and enduring poem. One of the best in my recent memory.

This book is all about creating beautiful, dream-like images. When I first started it, I was annoyed by the shifts between first and third persons. When I returned to it I was in a quiet place at a quiet time. I was able to focus uninterruptedly upon the language and images. It was then that the full force of the book revealed itself. If you stand back and evaluate the plot alone it seems implausible and a little silly. But within the dream world Mendelsohn creates Amelia's thoughts are enlightening. When I finished it I turned back to page one and began reading it out loud. It was as if I experienced rather than read this story.