This story beautifully balances a child's inner self-esteem with a wonderful sense of adventure. The young boy in the book looks for "a quiet place" to escape from the intesity of the outside world. My son and I have read it every night for the last week, just before bed. Wonderful writing, truly breathtaking illustrations. The author's earlier work, GRANDAD'S PRAYER'S OF THE EARTH, is one of our favorites.

This book was above my almost-four-year-olds head, but I can see the positive educational impact it might have for older children in a classroom setting - perhaps children learning about life in war-torn countries.

The illustrations are beautiful and the story is bittersweet - there's war going on all around the poor narrator and the future is so frightening and uncertain. A neighbor - a cellist - makes a brave move to brighten the lives of his neighbors - just a little bit - and help make them feel less afraid.

I'd recommend this book for mid-level gradeschoolers and be prepared to discuss this further with them, using current/recent events for examples.

I work as an elementary school librarian and this is one of my very favorite anti-war books. It has such a powerful message about doing what you can to stand up for what's good in people.
It's a great book about heroism, by the way, and about people looking out for each other. I use it with children from ages 7-10. A great discussion starter. This is a book I thrust into everyone's hands. Read it to your kids!

Mr. O! You have inspired us with your courage and peaceful spirit. Our love of the cello has grown deeper as has our ability to be touched by the warmth and depth of its song. The Cello of Mr. O is a touching story of the affect that one man and his music had upon a community torn apart in war. Mr. O showed courage and wisdom (and a bit of national pride) as he played his cello in the public eye daily, even in the midst of shelling and the turmoil of war. A young girl tells the story. Her life is unpredictable. Her father is away. Her family has to stand in line for water. She plays with her friends under the stairs and pulls pranks on her neighbor, Mr. O. Yet, as she watches the old man she realizes his talent and becomes familiar with what becomes his predictable appearance on the street with his cello. It calms and entertains the girl and those around her. And his commitment to this community service continues even after the shelling destroys his cello. This is an inspirational story. Touching.

Went and borrowed this from the library when I was recommended it from amazon.com.....I wish I had known how good it was beforehand, I would have purchased it for my son! It is a very good book to read to your kids, and because of the cute illustrations to go along with the wonderful story, it helps the adults who have to read it over and over again! lol

Mr. Carey is different. His garden is different. He looks at things just a little different. This book offers a wonderful message to young and old. We are different. We like different things. And we do things for different reasons. Come join the snails in Mr. Carey' Garden and find out just how different his garden of lace is.

This book was introduced to me during student teaching in kindergarten as part of a science kit on snails called "Snail Trails." I loved the book so much that I bought it myself (before it was at this great price!), and have been reading it to my 4th grade classes ever since. Although Mr. Carey and his neighbors don't directly agree on how to treat the gentle creatures in this book, they do agree on what beauty means, which, along with the lesson of letting all creatures live to perform what they were put on this earth to do, and their agreement blossoms into a ritualistic friendship that children will understand and appreciate. I recommend this book as an aid for children to see seemingly one-sided issues from a "different light," as Mr. Carey himself would say!

This book puts words and pictures to many of the feelings young children have about having a new sibling in the family. The "Gran" in the story helps children to manage their feelings, answers questions, and ultimately reintroduces Darcy (hence your own child) to the family. My favorite book to give to families with new siblings, thought not easy to find.

I've been thoroughly impressed with this book. It throws a wide net over most of the current web services standards and technologies, and gives you at least an understanding of where they all fit, while still providing you with enough depth on the crucial ones (SOAP (with Axis), UDDI, etc.) so that you can get started with real projects.

I particularly liked the way in which the authors have created an all-in-one reference book on the most important web services technologies. For instance, I've never been able to read SOAP messages without having a reference on XML namespaces and XML schemas handy -- no more -- it's all here in this book.

The coverage of the new Apache Axis project is especially good; not only does it explain the advantages of the new architecture for handling SOAP headers, but it gives code examples for making use of these new features. This is to be expected, since many of the authors of this book are major contributors to the Axis project.

I also found the chapters on Web Services security and UDDI to be helpful and enlightening. While all of the chapters in the book don't live up to the promise of these excellent chapters, it's still overall an great introduction to this new set of technologies.

And by the way, the guy that gave the book 1 star because it has "no source code downloadable" should have first tried going to www.samspublishing.com and done a search on the author's names -- the page for the book CLEARLY has a section for "downloads" where you can get the source code.

This is by far the best book on Web services I have read! There are so many good things going for it. Let's start with the authoring team. I did some research on the Web: three members of the W3C Working Group on XML Protocol (next-generation SOAP), two co-authors of the UDDI specifications, two architects of the next-generation Apache Web services engine (Axis). These people know what they are talking about from both a theoretical and practical standpoint. The book addresses all levels of the Web services technology stack with amazing focus and depth. This book does not just regurgitate the specifications--it goes well beyond them to cover adjacent domains that are relevant. With the knowledge that I have gained from reading this book I feel I am in a much better position to analyze my web services needs, design a service architecture and implement the services necessary to bring it to life. Most importantly, I feel like I have learned how to evaluate the inevitable trade-offs I'll have to make doing real-world development. There are so many examples of this... Chapter 3 does an excellent job of comparing and contrasting RPC-oriented Web services with document (messaging) oriented Web services. This is the kind of out-of-the-ordinary material that imparts truly valuable knowledge on the reader, stuff you will not find while reading the bare specs or one of the quickly hacked together books on Web services. Chapter 5 talks a lot about security, an otherwise missing topic in the Web services space, and about enterprise-quality Web services. I learned some things about configuring application server security that I had missed after two years of J2EE development. In short, this book is a must-read for both beginning and experienced Web services developers and anyone interested in better understanding the space. If you're a pro, you will learn a lot from the realistic examples and the authors' real-world experience. If you're a beginner, do not despair. Chapter 1 makes the drive towards Web services easy to understand by exposing the technology and market forces behind the rapid change the industry is going through. Chapter 2 is the best, simplest, most focused introduction to data-oriented uses of XML I have ever seen. After these two, you'll be all set for tackling the rest of the book. As for me, I'll go study the example code now...

I do not dispute the view that this may be one of the best books
on web services.Yet I have a suggestion to make.The chapters are too long.People like me,who read from cover to cover,would have prefered,say,three chapters on SOAP,WSDL,UDDI,and then and only then three more chapters on Advanced SOAP,Advanced WSDL,and Advanced UDDI.For people who do not read from cover to cover or who would use this book as a reference,this may not be so critical.

This book is unique in the sense that it takes an evolutionary approach to web services by considering where web services came from and where they are going.In this context,the last chapter on the future directions of web services is a very good quo vadis chapter.

It is very unfortunate that most popular books on computers take the opposite approach as if new ideas have no fathers and no sons.This is very dangerous because such an approach can only produce sterile bastards in name of new ideas.

I generally do not review books but with this first review I want to start breaking this rule.

I was assigned this book in a college class. I laughed at many of the things that this girl does and thinks about adult issues. Also a serious look at the changes a 12 year old goes through during WWII. A good book

Ellen is such a good character. I loved this book so much. I've read it two times already. I liked it a lot because I love reading about the olden days.

The worst book I've ever read. Terrible humor, terrible stories, and only 1/4 of the book has to do with the animal called a rat. Do yourself a favor and DON'T BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!

I think the true measure of a children's book is how much children enjoy it, and mine LOVED this one. There is humor in it appropriate for various ages (both my 4- and 8-year-old laughed constantly). The interaction between the brothers is very believable, and instructive in many ways to my two boys.

I noticed that another reviewer was upset that the book wasn't all about rats; I wasn't actually expecting that.

We all heartily enjoyed "Rats!". I highly recommend it!