The littlest mouse is turning two, and he has a cowboy-themed party to celebrate. With all the fun and do-si-doing, balloons are popped and the cake is smashed. But the little mouse's siblings and friends save the party from disaster with quick thinking. All ends well, with the littlest mouse getting his birthday wish.
The text is terrific to read aloud, and the illustrations are bright and fun. The tiny cowboy mice and huge cupcakes and balloons are adorable. A great gift for a birthday child.

In this simple, rhymed story, mice joyfully bounce through their holiday preparations, decorating their house, wrapping presents, trimming their tree, baking cookies, and singing "Jingle Bells." Suddenly they see footprints- their old enemy, the cat, is lurking nearby! But all ends well in this story of peace and brotherhood.

The fun, colorful illustrations are full of delightful details, such as a postage stamp decorating the wall of the mouse home, and a thimble tree stand for the tiny twig Christmas tree. Even Santa makes an appearance, with his wish for "Peace to all!"

This book would be a great Christmas gift, and is quickly becoming a new Christmas tradition in our home.

This book and the cassette of the same title are wonderfully entertaining for children of all ages. The author combines music and stories to capture your attention. My kids request this over and over and can sing along and tell the stories as we hear them on the cassette. We found these available at our local library and it would be well worth having our own copy. Enjoy!!

The Easter Mice hop, hop, hop, and jump, jump, jump, as they hunt for Easter eggs. But one little mouse enjoys the Spring day so much he forgets to hunt for eggs, until it's too late . . . or is it? This charming book has bouncy rhymes, and colorful illustrations that are like a breath of Spring. A winner!

Researchers constantly find that reading to children is valuable in a variety of ways, not least of which are instilling a love of reading and improved reading skills. With better parent-child bonding from reading, your child will also be more emotionally secure and able to relate better to others. Intellectual performance will expand as well. Spending time together watching television fails as a substitute.

To help other parents apply this advice, as a parent of four I consulted an expert, our youngest child, and asked her to share with me her favorite books that were read to her as a young child. Mickey Takes a Bow was one of her picks.

Mickey is the youngest child in a family of trapeze artists who perform with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Unlike his siblings, he finds physical things hard to do. He was slow to walk, tends to be clumsy, and is afraid of heights. When he Mother encouraged him to be in the act by carrying the family's banner, disaster follows! His costume is too large, and he falls down. What makes it worse is that people laugh at him. Poor Mickey is miserable.

But Mickey has a good quality -- he likes to help people. Jody, the chimpanzee trainer, also points out that he's good at making people laugh. And making people laugh makes them feel better. Mickey points out that it doesn't make him feel any better.

Pretty soon the lion tamer is having trouble getting the lion to perform. The lion had a tooth pulled and is in a bad mood. Mickey did imitations of other animals for the lion, and pretty soon the lion was grinning. Boris, the lion tamer, complimented him as "brilliant." Then he found his friend, Molly, crying because her ostrich wouldn't take its head out of the sand. Mickey gently tickled the ostrich, and pretty soon the head popped out. Then Jim, one of the tumblers, was laid up with a sprained ankle and was feeling sad. Jim asked Mickey to keep him company. Mickey told some jokes and started juggling. Jim was soon laughing very hard. Jim felt better, and so did Mickey. After that, Mickey was pretty busy because everyone came to Mickey whenever they needed a laugh.

Then one night the ringmaster came to see Mickey. And Mickey went on to become the youngest clown in the circus.

The beauty of this story is that the child who is the butt of taunts and feels down on her or himself can see that people excel in different ways. This can be the beginning of learning to find one's own special self and what one's special talents are.

The myths of any society tend to favor some types of excellence over others. Yet balanced excellence across the society is the best for all. And this is what we are most likely to be able to produce, because we are all so different. Are you working at what you love to do? If not, use this wonderful book to rethink your work . . . as well as helping children to find the right roles for them.

The book begins with Mouse and Mole boarding the train for a long train ride. They travel through a bunch of different places, mountains, deserts, many other things. They go through a lot of different weather conditoins like snow, desert heat, thunderstorms, and just normal temperatures. Mole is the more mature one out of the two. Mouse always asks different kinds of questions and Mole answers them all with no problem.
I would recommend this book because at the bottom of all the pages they have a little box that teaches you all about weather, and you can learn a thing or two. My favorite character was Mole because he seemed like the more grown up of the two. He was always in good spirits and seemed very mature unlike Mouse, who seemed more like a little baby. This was just a very fun book to read.

I bought this for my youngest son and together we enjoyed a very well written and illustrated mystery. It's fun and exciting, and it gets you to think and see if you can put the clues together! I recommend this for any parent who spends time reading with their children.

My daughter and I found this book to be enjoyable. Not only is it fun to read (and quick) for dads, but a good book for new readers. The stories cover essential topics and how the three friends in the story handle them together. Easy for children to learn from and apply to their situations, such as what those noises in the night really are.

There was a time when I enjoyed Picano's novels. I remember liking THE LURE a great deal and recommending it to all my friends. I certainly thought LIKE PEOPLE IN HISTORY was well worth the read. I do not know what went wrong with ONYX. I read that Mr. Picano lost a lover to AIDS. Any gay male in any major city in the United States in the last 20 years who is fortunate enough to be alive certainly understands the writer's loss. That, however, is no excuse for this book. Mr. Picano should have written another AIDS memoir or worked harder on this novel. The characters are basically black and white. I had difficulty believing they were real. For example, Ray, an Adonis, in the most graphic of scenes, has sex with the "straight" blue-collar worker Mike, who is also an Adonis, over and over, then rushes to give a blow by blow description of his adventures to his dying lover Jesse, who is without jealousy, can't wait to hear such stories and encourages Ray, who feels no guilt. Mike and Ray do not practice "safer" sex either. Certainly we have all known too many parents of AIDS patients who are awful people; but Jesse's mother, Adele Vaughan Moody, nee Carstairs-- if one can belive that name--is totally bad, a complete caricature. The basest characters must have some glimmer of goodness if they are to be believed at all. Finally the awful hospital scenes were so graphic as to be unreadable. I think Mr. Picano achieved a first in his minute description of how a body is burned in a crematory. Surely the Greeks, who were right about so many things, were absolutely correct when they had some things happen off stage.

Many fine books about AIDS, both memoirs and novels, have been written in the past two decades. Monette's BORROWED TIME: AN AIDS MEMOIR, Mark Doty's HEAVEN'S COAST, the wonderful HOLDING THE MAN by the Australian writer Timothy Conigrave, Allen Gurganus' PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS, Edumnd White's THE MARRIED MAN, come to mind. Sadly this novel does not make the list.

Reading this novel was not a total waste, however. I think I'll rent some of the Astaire/Rogers movies one of Picano's characters keeps watching to entertain himself. I kept wishing I were watching the graceful Astaire and Rogers instead of plowing through this novel.

Felice Picano is considered to be one of gay literature's greatest assetts. I go back and forth on that judgement, mainly because his last book, Book of Lies, was so awful! It read like a tossed out script from some Aaron Spelling melodrama!

But with Onyx, you will find Picano in truly great form. The novel is crisp story telling that gets to th heart of its characters. Of love about to be lost (yes, AIDS) and the journey to go on with one's life in the face of adversity.

There are many surprise turns hear that one will read and find yourself screaming in shock. They all work. There is nothing that is contrived about this story.

While some of the "love" scenes may be something you feel you have resd before, the novel goes further to get to the heart of its characters. It doesn't just give you names to remember, but people to identify with and love or cherish them as you see fit.

ONYX is an amazingly fine novel from a writer who seems to grow with each published work. Though many may overlook this latest book as merely another Violet Quill opus chronicling gay life, this book is more than a solid story, more than a beautifully written novel, more than many other books in this genre. This novel is an elegantly written exploration of the quest of the individual in the 21st Century - the immediacy and inexplicable choices that death makes, how individuals deal with genetic agar plates peppered by the vagaries of childhood environments/family history/social mores/chance encounters, why we become puppets of our stage play of id/ego/superego. Picano has created thoroughly 3-dimensional characters who leap off the page as both good and bad acquaintances we've all encountered. There seems to be much autobiographical material here: how else could the author know the complexities of his characters unless he'd lived in their skins of mixed in ther minds!

ONYX, the title, refers to a life long thwarted desire for an unobtainable object (an onyx ring) that becomes available only after Charon guides the main character across the river Styx. Love, relationships, family, finding physical solace in a surrogate sexual fling, the vileness of AIDS and the accompanying tragedies encountered at the demise of a loved one whose family has never accepted the life of the victim, the true meaning of friendship, the equal vileness of cancer, of vehicular deaths, of family hate gone wild - all are components of this book. There are surprising elements that inform us of practices unknown to most of us (were you aware that you could watch a cremation with all its gothic elements?), as well as pages of simply lyrical prose becoming poetry. Picano knows how to create atmosphere, how to lead us through the complexities of nature's erratic moves, and most of all he knows how to keep our attention focused in reading a book that becomes addictive.

For those who have not had the pleasure of reading Picano, jump in and ready yourself for a ride you'll not forget. From another artistic viewpoint this book design, cover, printing choices, page layout are the work of an extraordinary craftsman. This reader finds ONYX to be his finest novel to date.....and waiting for what is next!