I enjoyed "The Year of My Indian Prince" a lot. It is about a girl that is stuck in a TB (Tuberculosis) center where she is receiving treatment. Meanwhile, she meets up with a handsome prince from (where else) India. They become buddies... etc. The plot is interesting but I was a bit skeptical at first. The title reminded me of another story. The Summer Of My German Soldier. Do you see the simularities?

This book was about 16 year old April who is diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB). To get well again, she must live in a TB hospital where she must undergo various treatments. April soon meets Ravi, an Indian prince, and he show interest in her. As April's condition worsens, April and Ravi's love for each other gets stronger.

This was really an amazing book! It is also based on the author's actual life experiences. For me, I could not put the book down, I was hooked. I would reccomend this to everyone, especially those who are in the mood for reading about a truly sweet romance.

Teen April is ready for a fine year in 1945, but instead is diagnosed with tuberculosis and confined to a long bed rest in a TB hospital. Her friendships with an exotic Indian prince who begins to court her and a seriously ill roommate struggling with health decisions changes her life as much as illness in this poignant story which is hard to put down.

You could blame me.....it was a great book, but I found the solution too simple. I mean, Abby is faced with a seemingly impossible and unusual situation, and she and her friend solve it within a matter of a week. Yeah, right. I mean, the book was good, and maybe I just grew out of it. I read it numerous times, and I don't recall what I thought 2 years ago when I first read it. I haven't read any other books by the author, but this one was pleasing. Maybe I will try to find more selections by her.

Here and Then was a book about a little girl and her dreams. The setting was a real place because it took place in Kentucky.The characters are believable because they went to school and had regular friends.The main character was not a likeable person because she was bossy a whole lot. Yes, I liked the book because she has a lot of dreams. My favorite part of the story is when they were on the bed eating nachos because I like to eat nachos. The main character learned that if you believe in something it might happen. I would recommened this book to a friend because it is a ghost story. If my friend liked this book he might like The Pizza the Size of the Sun and Poppy.

Forget haute French cuisine, vegetarian and fusion cooking. This book is strictly country cooking for the serious eater. With recipies like cornbread meatloaf and scrambled eggs for 50, you can't go wrong with this great book. In a world of contrived and complicated recipies, this book is a refreshing belt buster.

firefly,bvrose39215@compuserve.com,Sheila Rosalynd Allen, are these the same people?

Kids in second to fifth grade wil enjoy this book. I will give this book four stars. It has good illustrations and is a little funny. This book takes after a story called Cinderella. Slender Ella has evil stepsisters like Cinderella, and they like to boss her around. In the end Slender Ella marries a prince just like Cinderella.

I have looked high and low for books that would tempt my reluctant reader. You name the beginning chapter book, and I have tried it. I saw Slender Ella and Her Fairy Hogfather and absolutely had to try it. The illustrations are so bright and cheerful---they truly draw you into the book. My daughter loved the parody on one of her favorite fairy tales and laughed through the whole book. By the way, my reluctant reader gobbled down this book in 15 minutes! She now goes back and re-reads it almost everyday!

The composure of the novel breathes life into such a dramatic event of U.S. History. 'Through Ordinary Eyes' makes not only the war itself, but the surrounding aspects of family life and personal hardships, understandable and reachable to its readers. Throughout history, war has been battlegrounds for the ordinary persons. This historical recap speaks from the life of not a highly positioned general, but only an average private. As a reader, we are allowed into the personal battle of one private while gaining an overall appreciation for the time and all that it encompasses. Wonderful depth and insight!

I have read many books dealing with the Civil War. This book is reminiscent of James MacPhearson's book Why We Fought.

The book is most revealing because not only does it provide primary sources (letters from a soldier to his family over a fifteen-month time span), but also it has response letters from his family, revealing the concerns, sacrifices and dedication of both those at the battles and those at home. It provides us with a window on military history and mid-nineteenth century society.

Overviews of exploration in Central Asia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when virtually nothing was known about the region. In the West, anyway.

Of particular value are the bibliographies at the end of each chapter, tempting you with hard-to-find books on each of the explorers or expeditions. It is tragic (not to mention expensive) that the books written by the participants are so difficult to come by.

It's too bad the book doesn't cover the Haardt-Citroën expedition, something I've been unable to turn up much information on.

This book is a real bargain, buy it now while it's still in print!!! I personally couldn't put it down (much to the chagrin of my three year old son, who wanted to do something other than watch me read)!

Buy this book! It's a kind of roadmap to a lost world of real life adventure from a far more innocent time when the world was a much larger place.

"Alluring Target" is a captivating collection of the exploits of eleven explorers and travelers in Central Asia. Written in the splendid tradition of Peter Hopkirk's "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road," Wimmel's work is even easier to read.

No armchair explorer should miss the real-life exploits of these "super-heroes" of Central Asia--both male and female. You may be familiar with one or two of these intrepid adventurers, but some are bound to be new. Action, privation, triumph, discovery, mysticism--and an absolutely bizzare quotation attributed to Winston Churchill--await you. Order this book before it goes out of print!

Thanks for this opportunity to write something about a really good book. Aficionados of Central Asia (east of Kashgar) are going to like this book. It brings to life the exploits of such famous travelers as Roy Chapman Andrews, Hedin, Younghusband, and the intrepid Alexandra David-Neel who reached Lhasa in 1923. It is full of interesting historical anecdotes and photos. For example, the author has a wonderful photo of Sir Francis Younghusband (p.96) in full dress uniform receiving the Chinese Amban in Lhasa. Another is Alexandra David-Neel in Tibet (p.148) with her Lama traveling companion. The book is well researched, has an index, useful bibliographies, and reads easily. My only quarrel is with the title which says little about the contents and its subtitle which is hard on eyes over 65. Nevertheless, if you've seen this part of the world or are planning a trip there, this is the book for you. A really good read. Submitted by the Assistant Dir (ret) Colorado State University Libraries.

There were interesting and vital characters. There were three independent plots woven together by a very clever subplot. But something was missing. Theokild, Grethe, and Paula seemed to wander aimlessly for a little too long. I wanted to tell them to get out of their isolated worlds and find each other. Paula came the closest. I'm not asking for time-travel but the book needed a more unifying theme--perhaps their physical home or an animal?

I confess that I am awarding this novel 5 stars in part to counter some of the low ratings given to the book by other customer reviewers.
I was not put off in the least by the three-part structure. Every third chapter is about the same generation. The generations are presented in chronological order and each block of three chapters is prefaced by brief description of the interior of cave, the significance of which is made explicit at the end of the novel. There is absolutely nothing confusing, puzzling or arbitrary about any of this. Quite the opposite: it makes the unfolding of the plot(s) more dramatic and drives home the theme of the novel, which is a meditation on the difficulty of finding truth in your life.

The recent movie "The Hours", based on a Michael Cunningham novel that I have not read, uses much the same technique, but is focussed on a different theme and the geneaological relationships among the characters are not as extensive. Each group of characters in the Leffland novel are members of the same family, one separated from the other by two or three generations. Leffland is quite good at making connections among the generations, some of the physical, such as the flowered rug made by Grete Rosted that has talismanic significance for Paula, although she never finds out that her own grandmother made it. Some of the connections are metaphysical, such as the compulsion to travel extemporaneously shared by Thorkild, his grandson and Philip. She is also quite good about showing us the hazy boundary between the memories of old people and the written historical record. And the varying reliability of both.

Leffland is an excellent plotter. The narratives are each compelling in their own right and while some threads are tied together at the end, the author has the art and good taste to leave some hanging, allowing the reader to imagine, for example the grimness of Thorkild's end. She uses a trick of switching to the present tense at the beginning and ends of each chapter, which makes the action quite immediate and has the effect of repeatedly building a bridge between the generations. One can almost sense the author's growing excitement and engagement as the book progresses. The prose of the initial chapters is a bit halting and the chapters are short. But as the novel progresses, the prose grows more fluid and the chapters stretch out to accomodate the sprawling plot.

If the book has a weakness, it is the failure to bring the theme into more focus. The Rosteds are not world beaters. They are intelligent members of the aristocracy in the nineteenth century and of the upper middle class in the twentieth century, but they are not geniuses or great in any sense. Therefore their struggle to find truth in their lives is constantly doomed to less than complete success. Thorkild wrestles with life's verities in his endless writings, which he eventually burns. Holger and Grethe throw Bohemian parties and Holger paints, but only as a gentleman painter. Paula is a sculptor of no discernible talent and Philip deserted his creative side while still in college and became a businessman.

So no one in this novel ever has a sort of 'aha' moment. Rather they all fail to discover the whole truth and must learn to settle for that. While this is the situation that most of us find ourselves in, I thought that perhaps Leffland could have limned the theme a little more clearly. However, it is quite possible that I simply need to read the book again. It is a great temptation in the last third of the novel to read very quickly as many of the climaxes approach. I may well have missed some of the art in order to know the end of a sad and beautiful story.

The nine year wait for Ella Leffland's new novel has been worth its while. This three generations saga of a Danish family is at once unique and mesmerizing. "Take care!" Is the opening line. The words warn the reader--as much as the child clutching the cat, Olaf--to take care! Read this book with care! Nothing is quite what it seems. The leitmotif of the novel is finding continuity, permanence within this world of impermanence. The heroine, Grethe, muses that everything in life is fleeting, all goes somewhere, but where? The existential question of what will survive when we are gone, is repeated throughout this novel. Leffland's novel is provocative and sad, and at the same time strangely uplifting. There is rain and fog, ice and sleet, but there are also midsummer-nights and a plethora of flowers, "...Golden chains and bursts of fiery reds and lakes of blue, of violet, of sparkling white. ...Blooms bursting up everywhere." A little later Grethe thinks with a foreboding pensiveness, that "...these same blooms will only flake and shred and in their seeding decay give rise to more of the same." Leffland weaves order out of chaotic lives spanning three centuries, and leaves the reader to marvel at her ability to braid darkness with light. Sophocles' thought, "Man is but breath and shadow, nothing more," has given rise to Ella Leffland's finest book.

I had heard great things about "Ella in Bloom" by Shelby Hearon. I had heard what a great book - wonderful characters - gripping story. Everything. So, I gave it a shot.

It started off really great - I was interested. Getting to know the characters, learning the story - appreciating the language and prose. I was moving right alone and then it just started to get stale. About half to three-quarters of the way, I was bored. It just didn't move along anymore. I kept waiting for the next big crisis or climax. Never happened.

I think this book could have been great - perhaps more help with the ending would have really saved it. I was disappointed - a shame really, since it started off so wonderful.

I work part-time in a bookstore so every now and then, while shelving books, I will find a sleeper (not one of the best sellers you find on the plexi at the front of the store) that sparks my interest. This is my first novel by Shelby Hearon but not my last. I loved the characters in ELLA IN BLOOM. Ella is lovely. A little lost but very real. In her eyes she has gone through life in second place--the younger daughter falling in love with her older sister's cast-off boyfriend who gave her nothing but an interesting daughter, Birdie. I like how the story works. Hearon is successful at developing the sexual chemistry between Ella and her man (who I won't name here because I don't want to spoil it for you). This novel won't disappoint you.

Nobody can create a loveable character like Shelby Hearon. This is the story of Ella, the little sister who feels she can never measure up to her perfect older sister, Terrell. ..., this family built on carefully woven lies begins to unravel. For Ella, with this unraveling, comes truth, love and revelation. This was a beautifully written book that I pulled a late nighter to finish. Ms. Hearon's descriptions of the rose gardens were awesome. You could literally see and smell the roses in Ella's "imaginary" garden (which is a tale in itself). I also highly recommend all of Ms. Hearon's books. She gets better with each successive novel!

Have you ever read the novel Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix? This is a classic Cinderella story with a bit of a twist. Ella Brown is a fifteen-year-old girl who is about to marry Prince Charming, or should we say Prince Boring. Ella must learn castle etiquette because she is from a village with peasant manners. She meets a few friends along the way including her good friend Jed, who cares about his people. Ella realizes that Prince Charming is moronic and foolish, so she decides to break off the engagement. The Prince does not allow such things and she gets locked up in the dungeon. Will She escape?
This story has two themes. You don't always end up where you think you are going and that happiness is like beauty- in the eye of the beholder. These two themes mean a lot because that this is what the story is based on. Ella has an immense journey to travel and there are many twists and turns.
Just Ella is a story full of complications. We found this book full of surprises. You can always ask, what will happen next. This story is one we will never forget. Why? It is a spunky book that is more enjoyable than poor old Cinderella and her ways of cleaning the floor.
Many books are similar to this story. The book Catherine Called Birdie by Karen Cushman has a similar theme to this novel because Catherine is forced to do many things that she doesn't want to do. Will things go her way? What will happen to Ella?
Sherin Witz

Cinderella is really one of my favorite fairy tales, well when I was a little kid; it was my favorite Disney movie. Well, behind Aladdin and the Little Mermaid. But anyway, I have loved all of the Cinderella retellings that I have read so far. This was a fresh new retelling of the tale, and really did a good job explaining what the downside to palace life is like.

The Prince, for example, infuriated me with his lack of a brain. He may have been a Charming, and incredibly handsome, but he was so dull-witted, well we all know someone like that. I really liked how I could identify with the views of Ella. Whenever I can relate to the opinions of any of my favorite characters in a book, I just love it! And Ella is the type of good role model that you sometimes can't find in fairy tales, for the females are usually dull-witted, just like Charming.

Ella doesn't fit into the carefully sanded edges of a typical princess mold. Madame Bisset knows this, and tries to change her frequently. I hated the characters of Madame Bisset, Prince Charming, and Quog, that disgusting rapist guy. They just made me so ANGRY!

Well all I can say is, I really enjoyed it, so buy your self a copy! Try Haddix's other books too; I liked all of them. One of my favorites is Leaving Fishers.

Just Ella shows that not all fairy tales have good endings. The life after Cinderella wasn't exactly a fairy tale life. It was more like the opposite. Sure, she didn't have to do all the chores anymore, but she couldnt't do anything else either, and the prince wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box. She found herself longing for a different life with someone else.
She learned that royal life wasn't what everyone thought it was. She learned that a simple life is what made her happy. I think everyone who longs for that perfect fairy tale life could learn a lesson. Even if your happy with you life you have, you should still read it. You could learn something, too.

Though this book is fairly good in its own right, the magic of the All of a Kind Family series has waned in this one. This book focuses a lot on Ella, who by this time is a fussy teenager and does not really interact with her younger siblings unless it is to complain about them embarassing her in front of her boyfriend Jules. The family dynamic was what made the other books in the series so delightful, but in this book all we see is Ella struggling to be free of them as she tries to find her independence. However, Ella is not charismatic enough to have the bulk of an entire book devoted to her. Her siblings, who rarely appear in this book, are the saving graces to the slow and weak plot. Here they are the same witty trouble-makers that they'd been in the previous books, but they do not appear enough to make this book as good as the others. If you like the other books in the series, this one is a big disappointment.

I first read the All of Kind Family series in grade school, and I loved them. But I had never read Ella, which is the final one. I saw the book lying out at the library the other day, and on impulse, I sat down and read it. I must say, it had none of the magic I remember from the other books. And I don't think it's because I'm an adult now--I have reread other favorite childhood stories and they are still wonderful.

Anyway, what I found most disappointing was Ella's decision to forgo her singing career to get married. I realize that is what most girls did back then, and I guess the book was originally written in the 1950s (not our most enlightened period) but still, couldn't Ella have been a trail blazer? Couldn't she tell Jules that if he wanted to marry her, then he'd have to agree to her career? It would've been so refreshing, such an inspiration for any girl reading it now. Instead, it made me want to throw up. First her mother lost a chance at a singing career, and now Ella.

There's better books for young girls out there. Read the rest of the series, but skip this nonsense.

This is the fifth book in the series and focuses mostly on Ella. We still get to hear about Gertie and Charlotte's misadventures in babysitting and about Henny's hijinks in school, but the book does focus primarily on Ella. The year in 1919. The first World War is over. Women have had to step into men's roles during the war and now want something more. The Suffrage Movement has begun. Meanwhile, talented Ella is continuing her voice lessons and is soon discovered. Now Ella has a choice to make: Fame or family? Will she become a star or marry Jules? Older girls will probably appreciate this book more than younger girls. The previous books focused on all the girls which gives the reader several characters to relate to. Ella is a young woman now and is facing serious decisions which may bore younger readers. Overall it is a wonderful book and makes you wish all the girls and Charley had a book focusing just on them.