This book is a great jumping-off point for family vacations in the US or abroad. It will inspire you to travel AND read with your family!

Thirty international locales from books aimed at 3- to 13-year olds are described. Each descriptive chapter includes a few sentences summarizing the overarching experience (with location and age information); a one to two page summary of the book; several pages relating an actual visit by an adult(s) and child(ren); and, one to several pages detailing the specific location(s) involved, including names, addresses, phone numbers and web sites. Also included are a list of twenty-five other literary travel possibilities, including Call of the Wild and Peter Pan, and an index to titles.

The books and sites included are:

The Adventures of Pinocchio, Tuscany, Italy
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hannibal, Missouri and environs
And Now Miguel, Taos, New Mexico
Anne of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, Canada
A Bear Called Paddington, London, England
The Black Stallion, Belmont Park, Long Island, New York
Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Child of the Owl, San Francisco, California
Eloise, New York City, New York
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York
Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, Haarlem Amsterdam and environs
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, London, Windsor and Durham, England
Heidi, Graubunden, Switzerland
Hill of Fire, Paracutin Volcano, Michoacan, Mexico
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Channel Islands National Park, Ventura, California

Kidnapped, Isle of Mull, Scotland
Linnea in Monet's Garden, Paris and Giverny, France
Little House on the Prairie, De Smet, South Dakota
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, New York City
Little Women, Concord, Massachusetts
Madeline, Paris, France
Make Way for Ducklings, Boston, Massachusetts
Maybelle the Cable Car, San Francisco, California
Paddle-to-the-Sea, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Hamelin, Germany
Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Portland, Oregon
Song of the Swallows, San Juan Capistrano, California
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Lake District, England
The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963, Birmingham, Alabama
Yolonda's Genius, Chicago, Illinois

You can tell moms wrote this book. It's entertaining AND practical. The material is fascinating, well written, and tells you everything you could want to know (except maybe where the bathrooms are located). The contact information makes this an invaluable resource. I hope the authors will continue to write more of these wonderful family travel guides.

Highest recommendation.

MY GRANDCHILDREN ARE JUST GETTING OLD ENOUGH TO TRAVEL, AND THIS BOOK GIVES ME A GUIDE TO MANY CHOICES OF WHERE WE CAN TAKE THEM (A FEW AT A TIME!) IT'S GREAT TO HAVE A PROJECT WHEN PLANNING A TRIP, AND IT WILL GIVE ME A SOURCE OF CONVERSATION WITH THEM AND A WAY OF DISCOVERING WHAT BOOKS THEY REALLY ENJOY. READING SOME OF THESE SUGGESTED BOOKS WITH THEM AND MAKING JOINT DECISIONS WILL ALSO BE FUN--THE BOOK IS SO WELL WRITTEN AND INFORMATIVE IT MAKES THE IDEA OF SEEKING OUT LOCATIONS OF BOOKS WHICH HAVE SET OUR IMAGINATIONS SOARING IN OUR CHILDHOODS, AND THEIRS, VERY SPECIAL. THE ITINERARIES ARE ALL THERE, AND TOURIST OFFICES,WEB SITES, RESERVATION NUMBERS---AND IT'S HONEST--NO FLOWERY DISCRIPTIONS OF EVERY LOCATION--I LOVED IT!!!!!!

Beth's Story is about a young girl named Beth March. When Beth and her sisters find out that there Marmee and Father are going to New York for business, but when the four March sisters find out that one of them can go to New York, Amy is the youngest and says that she sould go, for she will not get to go to New York as Marmee said, she would like to go now. But then the troble starts, Jo says that Beth sould go and so does Meg, Amy was not so willing to let Beth have her vote, but Beth went to New York and there she meat Mr. Lincoln, they had a very nice little chat, and when Beth got home and back to school, she was asked to tell the class about her vist to New York. She let her meeting with Mr. Lincoln slip, and so Amy was left out of everything. The whole class did not belive the simple old Beth March had met Mr. Lincoln. The next night and for the whole week Amy would not talk to Beth. I will not give away the ending so I must stop here. This is a very good book, and I hope you will read it.

This book review is by: Lindsay Tanguay

This book is simply wonderful and the best story in the "Portraits of Little Women" series. I couldn't put this book down and read it in four hours! Beth's Story is very well written and filled with emotion and fun. I could understand and relate to it because once I was in a situation like Beth's. A must read!

This is a cool new series about the Little Women when they are 10 years old. This one is about Beth and her trip to New York City where she meets Abraham Lincoln. The other books were cool, too. I can't wait for the new ones, MEG MAKES A FRIEND and BETH MAKES A FRIEND.

John found this book for me. Walking round the tables, he liked the square shape of the book, and I liked the cover art, so we bought it: Up the Junction. I don't know Nell Dunn's other work, but I love this collection of stories, narrated by a Chelsea "heiress," with her deadpan knack for mimicking dialect of Battersea women, who work at a candy factory and make fun of their love of men. Nights out in pubs! Overflowing toilets! Hairspray and panstick makeup! But there is sadness, there is violence, there are unwanted babies, there is laughter and toughness. It's a great paperback novel (or interwoven stories)--what you will--and it is about real life.

My friend found this book for me. He picked it out of a stack of paperbacks. The portrait on the cover, the square shape and design of the Counterpoint edition, the sixties London setting suit my taste. Nell Dunn, described as "an heiress from Chelsea," narrates these stories of working-class women and captures the rhythms of a dialect I've never heard. It makes me laugh, reminds me of Mary Lavin's stories, and weirdly evokes memories of my own girlhood growing up in a different country.

This is a great book to celebrate diversity and engage children's interest. We been using this book in a theme unit and getting a strong response from kids. It's very nice to have more than Western culture and languages.

Beth is picking apples in her great aunt's orchard when she discovers a ragged boy stealing apples. Beth comes to know the boy, Sean O'Neill, and his Irish immigrant family better. Mrs. O'Neill is widowed and can't find a job, and Sean and his two little sisters are starving and dressed in rags. Beth is determined to come up with a plan to help them. But does it mean stealing from her great aunt?

I stumbled across the Dunn and Larson book a decade ago, when it was new. It is STILL a vital text, and I am dismayed to learn it periodically goes out of print.

The book builds upon the now-eroded British primary school(i.e,. elementary) school model called "design technology." Firmly rooted in the tradition of John Dewey and Lev Vygtosky, design technology sets students and teachers to work together to construct meaningful objects that are initially just beyond the reach of any one child alone. In working on their constructions, such as mechanical toys, students are assisted in working through a cycle of several processes: contextualizing, clarifying, inquiring, planning, realizing, testing, modifying, interpreting, reflecting, and back again to contexualizing.

What sets this book apart from others is that it is situated in real practice. Liberally illlustrated with classroom pictures of students and teachers at work, the book beautifully blends theory with practice. The authors can talk about the value of planning and how it unfolds for children, and also offer very practical planning scaffolds for children, e.g., planning webs, project calendars, and task sequencing, illustrated with real children's work.

While the book is NOT particularly oriented toward computer technology, the reader will find today's software tools (Inspiration, Lego Logo, etc.) crying out for integration into the design technology process.

The authors address assessment issues, offer information on additional resources, even provide staff development stories and photos. The book is gorgeous, very readable, inspirational, and yet practical. See also: Stephen Levy, Starting From Scratch: One Classroom Builds Its Own Curriculum (available here at Amazon).

MEG MAKES A FRIEND was a great book. It is about a ten year old girl named Meg. Meg has been asked to sing in a wedding. But the groom's much younger sister, Julia, decides to play the wrong song (she will play the piano while Meg sings) and makes Meg sing the wrong song. So Meg is angry at Julia. But then Meg discovers why Julia acted the way she did, and that Julia is really very kind and is just sad because her brother is marrying, and the orphaned Julia, who has been raised by her brother, will be forgotten by her brother. This was a great book I highly reccomend.

I am surprised that there aren't more books out there tying together the American and French Revolutions. I read this book as part of the Brother's Book Club (BBC) and thoroughly enjoyed the e-mail discussions it generated. If you are looking for a chronological historical breakdown of the two revolutions, this would not be the book to get. If, however, an analytical breakdown of the causes that generated and fueled the two revolutions, the thought that kept them aloft, the intellectual connection and differences between the revolutions, and lastly the impact that they had upon the rest of the world; all sound compelling to you, then by all means go buy this book.

One detractor is Dunn's oversimplification in her critical look at everything involving the French Revolution and high praise for all things American Revolution. She follows this code, almost without exception. A more objective analysis would have been more meaningful and valid. The strength of the book is Dunn's revelation of the power of ideas. She makes it inducingly clear that the historically decisive actions of the world were driven by the power of ideas.

Perhaps the most compelling chapters come at the end, as Dunn stretches intellectually by portraying the two revolutions as models and exploring the effect they have had on subsequent revolutions around the globe. The biggest surprise is that after Dunn praises the American model, she concludes by finding America's current system of government inefficient and suggests that the British Parliamentary model is the best fitting for modern day democracies. How we come full circle.

Good book for those interested in the thought process behind the American and French revolution, but not so much for a historical breakdown of the two. Through exploring the power of ideas, Dunn comes up with some powerful ideas of her own.

Author Dunn explores the French and American Revolutions of the late 18th century. She does an excellent job of describing the differences between the two political systems, one based on concensus but with a loyal opposition (American) and one based on total unity (French). The most interesting idea developed is that the French Revolution served as a harbinger of the Russian Revolution. The will of the people would be served by an elite few who remained convinced of their leadership even when deserted by the people they served. The French leaders are portrayed as idealist who tried to create an impossible system while the American leaders were politicians who knew that to create a workable system, some ideas had to be sacrificed.

I would strongly recommend this book to any reader with an interest in history. Well written and well researched, the author ends the book with two chapters about the revolutions in Russia and Vietnam and how these revolutions borrowed ideas from the French and American revolutions.

Having read quite a bit about both the French and American Revolutions, I found this book to be a wonderfully written comparison of both the ideology underlying the movements and the continuing consequences of those ideologies. This is a very meaningful book, both for students of the two revolutions, as well as for people interested in political science and government in general. Not only does it do an excellent job of distilling the movements, but it is extremely well written.

An interesting fact of American politics - that many of our Presidents came from the "upper class" of American society - is the central premise of "The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America." In this book, co-authors James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn examine the role played in American history by arguably the most influential "patrician" family of the twentieth century - the Roosevelts of New York.

"The Three Roosevelts" is essentially a book containing short political biographies of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt (TR) became one of our greatest Presidents. Early in life, his sense of "noblesse oblige" caused him to choose a career in politics rather than a life as a member of the wealthy elite. He was elected, in turn, state representative; then governor of New York, as a Republican. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the McKinley Administration. Three years later, he was elected Vice President of the United States, and succeeded to the Presidency when President William McKinley was assassinated on September 14, 1901. His seven years as Chief Executive were some of the most successful of any Chief Executive up to then.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was a young man who appeared to have little of his cousin Theodore's intellectual acumen, driving ambition, or ideological bent. Franklin followed his famous cousin into politics, but unlike his cousin, Franklin became a Democrat. Like Theodore, Franklin's political career advanced steadily. In rapid succession, he was elected State Assemblyman, then State Senator. By age 31, he had been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson.

In 1921, FDR was stricken with polio, which paralyzed him from the waist down. In 1928, after a seven-year hiatus from politics, FDR was elected Governor of New York. His two two-year terms were highly successful, but by then FDR already had his eyes on the biggest prize of them all: the Presidency.

From 1929 to 1932, during the early years of the Great Depression, FDR proved himself a capable governor of New York. By 1932, after three years mired in the Depression, Americans were ready for a change. They elected FDR - the man promising Americans a "New Deal" - as President of the United States.

The vast majority of "The Three Roosevelts" is taken up with an account of FDR's "transformation of America" during the Great Depression. Here, Burns and Dunn portray Roosevelt as a man employing a pragmatic approach to governance... try whatever works! Congress passed a body of legislation that was tremendous in scope. For the first time, the Federal government actively intervened in American life in an effort to make life better for all. The modern welfare state was born.

The third of the "three Roosevelts" - Eleanor (ER) - was an integral part of her husband's political success. After her marriage to FDR, Eleanor remained indifferent toward politics, although she steadfastly supported her husband's political ambitions. As FDR's political career progressed, so did Eleanor's interest in politics. In fact, she was much more of an ideologue than Franklin. Burns and Dunn imply that Eleanor grew to have a tremendous influence on Franklin, possibly pulling him more and more to the left of center during his Presidency.

On April 12, 1945, after thirteen years as President, years which saw the United States struggle out of Depression and stumble into a world war, Franklin D. Roosevelt died. He had helped build the modern welfare state, and had guided the United States to a position of victory in the Second World War.

In the years following FDR's death, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to be a major influence on American politics. Through her nationally syndicated newspaper column "My Day," ER continually interjected her ideas and opinions into the national debate. She was appointed as an American delegate to the first organizational meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Later she would serve on a UN commission that authored the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. She championed the cause of equal rights for all Americans, and was vocal in her support of the new nation of Israel.

When "The Three Roosevelts" appeared in bookstores in the spring of 2001, I eagerly bought a copy. This was the first book I'd seen in over twenty years that was written by James MacGregor Burns, the historian best known for his two volume biography of the 32nd President - "Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox" and "Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom."

My hope was that Burns and co-author Susan Dunn would provide a penetrating examination of what caused this trio of extraordinary individuals to leave behind the values and traditions of their 19th century "patrician" class, in favor of a progressive and at times socialistic political agenda. It is a question left largely unanswered. "The Three Roosevelts" remains a book very long on biographical information and very short on historical analysis.

The authors show an almost complete lack of objectivity toward their subjects. Burns is well known as a liberal "New Deal" Democrat, and his political bias shows on practically every page. He is ably abetted by Dunn. The result: "The Three Roosevelts" is practically a paean of praise to TR, ER, and especially FDR. Criticisms of the "three Roosevelts" are few, and even those are largely muted. Burns and Dunn's unabashed, gushing admiration of the "three Roosevelts" is annoying, and limits the usefulness of the book as an objective study of these fascinating characters in American history.

James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, Democrats by conviction, give an unequal account of the life of three Roosevelts by dedicating most of their biography to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. MacGregor Burns and Dunn show their audience how these three patricians left behind a relatively easy life to descend into the arena of politics. Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had to overcome their prejudices about other classes, religions, ethnicities and races to get an understanding of the issues at hand and, at times make, painful compromises to get things done. MacGregor Burns and Dunn explain to their readers that the three Roosevelts have ultimately left an indelible imprint on the psyche of the nation by each setting an example of transformational leadership. On the domestic front, the country has been working on the best possible reconciliation of the respective interests of business, labor and consumers as well as the rights and duties of its respective races and ethnicities. Abroad, the country has weighed the pros and cons of an interventionist policy on a case-by-case basis to safeguard its vital interests, and to advance the cause of a world that espouses the values of responsible democracy and capitalism.

This novel was immensely informative and entertaining. I am an English teacher who reads a lot, and I could not put it down. I loved the descriptions of leaders such as Huey Long and Gerald Smith and the isolationist movement. It was also impressive that it was so well-balanced and avoided sensationalism and cheap shots. The authors did not take sides or make quick judgments. You must read this book. My two favorite sections were the descriptions of the New Deal and the class struggle in New York during TR's time.

I have the first edition of this book, and when I first moved to the LA area, it was great to have...but, I find it lacking a lot now that I know more about the area. It doesn't mention the Huntington Gardens, or the Rose Bowl, or Descanso Gardens (cool tiny train that runs on weekends)or other kid friendly venues. I found the restaurant listings useless...rest's are everywhere, and I tend not to make one a special destination when I'm on a daytrip!

I recommend getting an up-to-date California guidebook (Lonely Planet or some such) and decide where to go based on your child's and your inclinations, and ignore the ubiquitous malls that you can find anywhere in country.

Good Points: Give good descriptions of attractions, including an estimate of how long you'll want to spend, and practical issues like availablity of food/strollers/etc.
Good descriptions of natural sights (beaches, parks) as well as man-made attractions.

Bad Points: Seems to take a very narrow view of what kids are going to enjoy. Why assume that no child is capable of enjoying an art museum? Or, as the authors states flatly, that kids hate scenery, and that your teen would much rather stay home with his friends than actually travel with his family? (Author suggests spending time at the local malls if you are travelling with teens!) Or that kids won't eat anything but hamburger-based kid's menus?
Given that the book is covering a large geographic area, and given the author's abovementioned narrow view of 'kid-friendliness', many important attractions aren't mentioned at all.
Only a few accomodations recommendations are given, and most are very expensive.

(This review, incidently, applies to all the books in this series; California, Florida, and Washington DC).

I live in southern California, and this book has inspired countless Saturday family outings. I had no idea what was in my own backyard! It is fabulous to have someone's advice on what is worth spending the time, with kids, in traffic for. We have loved this book-and hope to find a similar one when we move to Philadelphia!