This book sat alone on the library shelf, amidst books of thrillers and mysteries. I rescued it, entranced by the title.

From page one, Berlie Doherty takes the reader through the mind of a woman, alone and abandoned by the world.

Here is a story of Rose, seeking something her parents failed to give her. Instead, she finds two loves gone wrong and a child that is not hers. Caring for the child begins to invade on Rose, who in turn begins a word affair with her eccentric neighbor.

Doherty leaves the reader turning page after page to discover the secrets of Rose and Paedric, Gordon and Edmund.

The longings of Rose combined with faerie tales and make-believe, 'The Vinegar Jar' is a soothing ride through the madness of being alone.

In her novel "The Vinegar Jar" Berlie Doherty has captured the loneliness of solitude. Rose is alone and does not want to be alone. Like the old woman who lived in the vinegar jar and was never happy, Rose is unsure of what she is missing but knows there is more to life. She looks for happiness first with William, then with Gordon but neither can give her the commitment and fulfillment she is yearning for. She turns to mad Paedric and for a time is happy, but her insane ecstasy is shattered when she is made to realise that her world is built of cobwebs and delusions. Berlie Doherty has written a brilliant and insightful novel that questions the meaning of life and reality. A sensitive and thought-provoking book.

This is a beautifully illustrated bedtime picture book with a short poetical text. It features the dream travels of a boy and his dog as they follow the Midnight Man with his sack of stars. When this mysterious stranger leaves them in his tracks as he continues on his starry way to the midnight land the gentle, motherly full moon sees them safely home. The short text is just the right amount of "tuck me in" attention that will make a little one feel snug and safe before going off to sleep and the pictures are shadowy blue, green and peaceful and sprinkled with starlight. Perfect for sweet dreams.

If you appreciate the gentle nostalgia of a Victorian Christmas, this lovely book is for you. A delightful read-aloud story for parents and grandparents to share with their own family treasures. Who minds a story within a story? It is important that modern children realize the simple pleasures of bygone days, when toys were fewer in number, but lasted much longer and were greatly prized!

Meloni's wonderful color illustrations (authentic and detailed) recapture the charm of this distant era, and will hold the child's interest while an adult reads. This quiet tale should stimulate quality-time discussions about warm family values at Christmas. An 8-year-old country boy and his 6-year old assume that an old man who is carrying a pine tree is actually Father Christmas. Their childlike logic projects their own expectations of his bringing them their first Christmas tree--a custom initiated by Prince Albert (from his native Germany). Is the old man really the special personage they wish him to be or will they be disillusioned by adult logic? A truly beautiful book where both story and illustrations blend to create the peaceful glow of a distant Christmas--no farther away than the reader's heart!

I selected this book to read to my 7 and 10 year old daughters and couldn't put it down. The illustrations are beautiful art quality drawings and the stories timeless. I would highly recommend this as a gift for a child or yourself!

This is a physically beautiful volume, medium sized and easy to hold while you have your arm around another person. The illustrations are unique and creative and accented with gold which adds to the magical ambiance. The pages have colorful decorated borders and the interesting use of silhouettes is striking. The text is true to the original tales while being melodious, fresh and inviting. Don't miss the enchanting picture of Cinderella that goes with this text, "She heard a fluttering as if all the leaves were unfurling at once, and the birds of the tree flew down carrying a silver dress and slippers that glittered like stars." Now isn't that a little better than Bibbity Bobbity Boo?

The artwork initially caught my eye with this book. Jane Ray's enchanting combination of watercolor, ink, and collage drew me in completely. The design is reminiscent of a beloved scrapbook, and it is truly beautiful. Text blocks and illustrations are bordered with gold accents, creating the illusion that they have been "mounted" on their exquisitely designed backgrounds. The colors are rich and the images range from simple silhouettes to intricately detailed landscapes and portraits.

Ray adds to the book's charm with her multicultural representations of characters. In addition to traditional (Caucasian) depictions, readers encounter a Black "Beauty," a Chinese "Aladdin," a Moroccan sorcerer, a henna-tattooed Indian princess, and a variety of other diverse characters. While the stories all hail from Western Europe, the illustrations and character portrayals add an element of multiculturalism and diversity.

Although many of the story titles are familiar, they are by no means ordinary or generic. Berlie Doherty has traced them back to their roots in order to maintain the original "essence" of the classic tales she has chosen. In a generation where many fairy tale classics have been altered and homogenized by the entertainment industry, Doherty's return to the original versions is both refreshing and pleasantly nostalgic. Fairy tale novices and veterans alike will be enchanted and intrigued.

This book has quickly become a valued treasure in my collection for its unique appeal and beauty. The text is candid and honest, incorporating elements of humor, sadness, joy, and more while still maintaining the original "magic" of the tales. A great book for yourself or as a gift - I highly recommend it!

As a longtime lover of Fairy tales, I've gotten rather picky about which picture book versions I pick up. And I wanted to buy this book the first time I flicked through it.

This one includes a variety of stories, all well known, from the obvious choices, like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, to Aladdin, and the Wild Swans. The stories are told well, though without any newness - these are familiar, comfortable stories.

Ah, but it wasn't the tellings of the stories which had me sold on this book. Jane Ray's illustrations are utterly beautiful. Normally, I am a fan of neo-renaissance illustrations - almost realistic, almost three dimensional, and full of elegant landscapes (See Kinuko Craft's work) The illustrations in this book are flat, far more stylized - but they're full of movement and feeling, and they look like they came from the best of medieval manuscripts. The touches of metallic gold only add to this impression. The full colour full page illustrations are also complemented by silhouette illustrations and border images along many other pages. This is inspired art, lovely to look on, and perfectly matches the feeling of fairy tale stories.

I am Mrs Townhill's daughter, aged 10, and have just finished reading this book.

This book is about the life of Jim Jarvis, a street boy in Victorian London. After his father died his life was hard and following the death of his mother and loosing his sisters, his life got worse until he met 'Barney', now known as Dr Barnardo, who looked after him.

This story is based on the true story of the start of Dr Barnardo's homes.

The book is exciting but sad in many places so I have only given it four stars, but I would recommend everyone to read it to realise how bad life was not very long ago in England and to realise that there are still children living like that in places around the world today.

Mum adds . . . I enjoyed this book too. It is well written for children. It is not too sentimental, neither does it hide the facts of the rough life of the poor, without being too frightening. It is gripping and keeps you caring all the way. An excellent read.

Street Child by Berlie Doherty is an extravagent book. It tells of the cruel fate a little boy named Jim must endure, all his adventures growing up, and terrible tradgeties. This book is extravagent and absalutely a must have. If you don't own this book you should go out and buy it immediately!!

THis book was OK. mean it was pretty small and well pretty boooooring. The story however was somewhat interesting. It was worth 3 stars. Summary: A 15 year old boy searches for his mother and later discovers that she was only about 14 when she had him.

...P> One thing I liked about this how this might be something someone might do in real life, wonder if their real mother wanted them. And in life someone might try to find this out. In this book he wonders this same question and tries to find her. The methods he uses to find the place his mother was were very realistic. I like how she portrait him as a regular boy in a not so regular situation. He was a regular boy who did unique things but still had regular, not farfetched way of life. He was a regular boy who did regular things, but had something about him that made the story. I didn't like how at some points the story didn't seem to go anywhere. Like during the story before the started his journey a few parts of the story lost my interest in the story. This didn't make me want to hurry back and read the book, but this happens very little and doesn't last long.

This is a good young teenage book for boys or girls. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes general reading. This is a good mellow but interesting book that grabs your attention. I enjoyed this book and I think you might too.

This story is about a boy and his quest to find his mother. It takes place in England during the early to mid 1990's. James is a competitive diver and is very good. He starts his quest when he looks through a box in his parent's closet. Which inside he found clues about his mother and where she is. He tricks his parents to sending him there and his journey begins.

One thing I liked about this how this might be something someone might do in real life, wonder if their real mother wanted them. And in life someone might try to find this out. In this book he wonders this same question and tries to find her. The methods he uses to find the place his mother was were very realistic. I like how she portrait him as a regular boy in a not so regular situation. He was a regular boy who did unique things but still had regular, not farfetched way of life. He was a regular boy who did regular things, but had something about him that made the story. I didn't like how at some points the story didn't seem to go anywhere. Like during the story before the started his journey a few parts of the story lost my interest in the story. This didn't make me want to hurry back and read the book, but this happens very little and doesn't last long.

This is a good young teenage book for boys or girls. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes general reading. This is a good mellow but interesting book that grabs your attention. I enjoyed this book and I think you might too.

The novel „Dear Nobody" by Berlie Doherty deals with the problems of young people who are going to become parents.
The main characters, Helen and Chris are about 18 years old, love each other very much and are full of dreams when they have sex without contraception and Helen gets pregnant. This changes their lives completely. At first Helen doesn't talk about her pregnancy, but Chris knows something is wrong, they get more and more distant. After Helen has told her boyfriend and her mother about the child, she feels relieved, but they can't really help her and Helen still considers the baby to be an obstacle, a Nobody. But this changes after she has been to an abortion clinic, there she realizes for the first time that it's a human being growing inside her and she decides to keep the baby.
From then on Helen's relationship to her mother gets even worse than it already was and she decides to finish with Chris, she only thinks of the baby now...
I can recommend this book to every young person, because it deals with all the problems and sorrows, but also the joy of an unwanted pregnancy. I guess it shows in a realistic way how the young parents experience this time and it's nice and exciting to read. You can identify with both Helen and Chris and can't stop reading until you know how the story goes on.

book review

the novel "dear Nobody" by Berlie Doherty deals with an unwanted pregnancy of a young woman.
Helen and her boyfriend Chris have sex for the first time, but one month later Helen has an unsure feeling in her. After having done a pregnancy test and having gone to visit a doctor it becomes reality: Helen is pregnant![...]this novel can give young people who are in a similar situation feedback and hope to handle with and it helps them to take the right decisions. It deals with realistic problems of teenies and because of that it is very interesting to read and at some parts surprising. I would recommend it to every young woman and man who like reading stories from real life.

Book Review of the novel „Dear Nobody" by Berlie Doherty

The novel "Dear Nobody" by Berlie Doherty deals with the topic of an unwanted pregnancy of an eighteen-year-old girl called Helen. [...]the novel "Dear Nobody" by Berlie Doherty a very good and sentimental book because Helen and Chris show their feelings, thoughts and fears very strongly. I like this book very much because it is about a taboo topic and because it is very realistic. You can really imagine how Chris and Helen feel because they are my age. I think that it is a novel that you can really read well in class because it is about a topic that everybody knows and which is interesting for young people who can perhaps identify with the main-character. When you read such a book, you really think about how the situation would be if you were pregnant. And so you think about how you would act. You also are informed how difficult such a situation can be. All in all I liked very much to read this novel and I recommend reading it to many other people.

In this book, Daughter of the Sea, the book was not interesting at all, and I would give it no stars if the computer would have went that low. It's pretty much about a woman named Janice, and her husband, Munroe, that find a baby and keep it as thier own and hope that no one finds out about it.They live on a ship that they also make thier living off of fishing and selling the fish they catch. This book is very fictional, since there is no way you could find a living baby on the shore, and expect to keep it. And there is no way to make a good living selling fish. This book was not one of my favorites. Taking into consideration I don't have any favorites, and I don't care for a subject about people living on a ship and keeping a baby. There is no way this book should have gotton a overall rating of four stars, but the no stars has my vote.

This book is abit wierd, and confusing to me. It's definitly not the best book you would want to pick for Lit Circles (people in elementary school knows what it is, *it's like a project*) This is how the story goes: It all started when there was this terrible storm hitting Hamna Voe, the island where it took place, Munroe Jaffery is still out in the sea trying to fish. He notices that the storm was coming and try to get back to the land, but when he finds out he couldn't, he got drifted into the selkie rocks. There he found a baby, just right under the water, he brought it home to his worried wife, Jannet, and made it their own baby and saying it to everyone that she's their's. They named her Gioga, that was the present name of the Sea Princess who saved a man's life. Eilean a.k.a the crab woman, knew that the baby wasn't theirs and told them that "they'll" come back for her. Jannet didn't believe her at first but she got creeped out by it. Years later, a man called Hill Marliner came and said that he was there to collect his child back, Jannet refused, Hill Marliner gave a month's supply of fish to Munroe (as Hill is the lord of the sea, he controls everything in there) who didn't know it was a reward. Jannet didn't give the baby to the strange man, so he left and came back years later. Jannet didn't tell Munroe about this. Hill Marliner cam back, this time he gave them a purse full of gold coins, Jannet still refused. But during these moments, Gioga became close to Eilean who told her tales of the sea. Jannet got worried, so she sent Gioga away to her cousin's house, which was in a valley where you can't hear or even see the sea. And everyday Gioga became to want the sea more and more. Later on the island, Hill Marliner came back again for the third and final time, this time he got shot and killed by Jannet, who was blinded by her love for the child that she became confused and killed a man. The seals wanted revenge, so they destroyed everything on the beach that the men owned and went away. The sea became rough, but they all knew the only way to get it to calm and get their main source of food back was to get Gioga here on the island again. So a boat with Munroe and Harris(Gioga's friend), led by Eilean to get Gioga back, than the three waves came: Wave of tears, Wave of milk and Wave of Blood, and Harris did what he was told, to his the Wave of blood with the harpoon straight in the heart of the wave. With that done, it was a sacrifice, Eilean was gone... dead... They rescued Gioga and went back to the island, there, Harris did what Eilean told him to do and showed Gioga her seal skin. Later, Gioga cried 7 tears into the sea for all the 7 horrible things that had been done. In the end, she slipped into her seal skin and went into the sea.

A great fable based upon many of the Selkie legends from different lands. A childless couple raise as their own a baby girl the husband found one night floating in the sea during a storm. Munroe suspects right away that this child is one of the Selkies (seal-people) but keeps the secret from his wife Jannet. But when a mysterious stranger returns years later asking for the return of his child, the desperate woman tries to hide the child - and brings upon her village the anger of the sea and the seal people. Finally their daughter must chose for herself whether to return to the sea, or stay with the people she has grown to love as her parents. A great addition to lovers of tales of the Selkie.

...make sure you are aware that this is not the same book you might have seen in your public library for the past ten years. For some reason, the publisher (author?) decided to have the book republished with illustrations by a different artist. The new illustrations are pleasant enough, but they are nothing like the elegant mosaic-like paintings from the original edition. It's the same poem though, with its jaunty rhymes, catchy syncopation and meaningful theme (expresses the value of tolerance, sharing and friendship). I would have given this book a 4-star rating had it contained the original illustrations.