I just finished reading this book to my 7-year-old son and we both loved it. I'm a fan of Terry Jones from his Monty Python days, and was delighted to find his irreverent, offbeat humor intact throughout this fast-paced adventure. Having said that, I must caution parents on the appropriateness of some of this material for the pre-10 age group. If you read it to your child, be prepared to occasionally edit for language and subject matter. Also, as the action occurs in locales throughout France, you may wish to brush up on your French pronunciations!

Okay, first of all, this book is superb. It has wonderful descriptions, the characters are unique, and it has an eventful plot. Could it get any better? You bet. It is funny, and a good book to get kids interested in reading. I would reccomend it those who love medieval stories, adventure stories, humourous stories, fantasy,... Pretty much anyone! Probably best for ages 7 - 14.
I read this book before I read the prequel, and it wasn't so confusing. I've been looking for the first one, The Knight and the Squire, but so far I haven't found it in any bookstores. (sigh!) Now here's what it's about:
Setting: medieval France
Characters: Tom - an adventurous young squire
Ann - a mischievious young girl who masquerades as a knight for most of the book
and Emily - a young Lady who Tom runs into and immediately falls in love with during his adventures
Plot: Tom is kidnapped, thrown in a dungeon with a cannibal, condemned to death, he escapes, runs into Emily (who decides to come with him), and as he is escaping he discovers that the whole English army is drunk. Oh, and later he falls into a well, jumps off a palace wall to avoid being captured by the Pope's guards, and Emily, who thinks Ann is a knight, falls in love with 'him' until she learns the truth (that Ann is a girl).
Now the plot isn't the only thing that will make you laugh until you cry - for here are some examples of chapter titles:
"The Town Where Everyone is Drunk" and "How Tom Nearly Invented the Flushing Lavatory Five Hundred Years Before Thomas Crapper" and "What Happened Under the Pope's Floorboards"
Okay, so if you don't think that's funny, you probably shouldn't read it.
But, anyway, it's a funny, suspenseful, exciting book. I congratulate Terry Jones and say to anyone thinking about buying it "If you don't read it, you're really missing something!"

Read the Knight and the Squire first, then read this installment. They are wonderful -- exciting storytelling, humor and excellent medieval research behind them. Terry Jones is a gifted story teller. We found the Knight and His Squire on a trip to London several years ago and loved it so much that we ordered this book as soon as it came out in England thry Amazon UK. It was well worth the extra shipping expense. We cannot wait for the next book in the series. By the way, the novels have excellent male AND female leading characters, and are witty enough to interest adults as well. Go for it!

This is a good set of stories about Erik's voyages and adventures. Oral traditions of these stories are blatenly obvious, but help younger readers follow the stories. These stories will make great bedtime stories or beginning reader stories. The lessons are timeless and will surely get any child interested in reading more about mythology or the Vikings.

The boys from Monte Python have done it! After reading this book, I was thoroughly satisfied. I don't know what I expected to find within, but the impulse buy was worth it. The illustrations are lovely, and the stories are filled with meaning that you will carry with you always. The tales weave into each another to make on big journey. Each ends up with a moral, therefore making it important for children AND adults to read (since we seem to thinkg growing up means to forget childhood "lessons"). Learn them again with this pleasing book, it will keep you fingering through the pages until there are no more.

Written by ex-Monty Python member Terry Jones, it tells the tale of a Viking named Erik, who, with his men, goes on a quest to find the land where the sun goes at night. It is involving, exciting, well written, and great reading for all ages. I highly recommend it.

Everyone knows Robert Louis Stevenson; everyone has at least one of the myriad books of his poetry. There are some stunningly illustrated collections of his poetry out now, notably two by Thomas Kincaide, among others. But how many of us have actually read all or most of his work? I'm guilty as charged.

This smaller, quieter version of Stevenson's poetry helped me finally, actually read all the Garden poetry. True, the illustrations are spare, but delightfully accurate. My children (7 and 10) were not as mesmerized by this book as they are by others with fanciful graphics, illustrations and larger type to accompany the poetry.

Still, this small book found its way into my purse to be used for waiting moments, e.g. at the orthodontist, doctor, and also to my bedside, where it's shear diminutive size did not dissuade me from reading "for only a minute or two." And within Stevenson's words and language lie the ferment of creative pictures. I liked to have my children close their eyes while I read short poems to 'force' them to use only their mind's eye.

I thoroughly enjoyed the adventures, moods, and images Stevenson conjures and at long last can understand why his poetry remains so classic.

Most everyone knows that Robert Louis Stevenson was sickly, both as a child and as an adult, and the happy result for the reading public was his nearly feverish flights of imagination. Here, in an edition of his classic "A Child's Garden of Verses," that fever is complemented in spades by the fantastical illustrations of English artist Joanna Isles.

Isles uses an arsenal of utterly frivolous flowers, borders, insects, birds, kings and queens, fairies, and more to expand upon the imagination exhibited in Stevenson's poems. The children in these pictures are depicted as being in charge, being at one with their environment, and being delighted to be alive.

Some of the illustrations hint at the influence of artists more famed than Isles (Henri Rousseau appears to be a special favorite of hers--see the illustration for "The Unseen Playmate," in which a boy lies down in weeds that might have sprung from the edge of Rousseau's painting "The Dream"). Using both primary colors and pastels, Isles creates a world within the world of Stevenson's verse. The marriage of the two is a happy one.

When I was younger, well 5 actually, I had the chicken pox. This was one of my mom's favorite books. The words in the poetry just soothed me. It seemed like the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, knew exactly what I was going through.

You can't forget about the little toy soldiers (a poem) at your feet because when you are sick for days, you can imagine all kinds of things in your mind. The curtains billow like sails, the bedpost is your anchor. I sat there in bed and just floated away with the fun of having someone to share my illness. It seemed like a had a friend right there with me.

I loved the pictures too. The little kids are old fashioned and it made me laugh because the boys wore silly clothes, but they fit the time period, my mom said.

I love this book and keep it by my bed when I need to be relaxed.

Hayley Cohen

The Jungle Books are usually marketed as juvenile fiction. True, this is essential reading for children, but it's even deeper when you read it as an adult.

Although "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and "The White Seal" are just as good as the least of the Mowgli stories, it is the various tales of the boy raised in the jungles of India that are - and justifiably - the heart of the collection.

As a baby, Mowgli is found and raised by a clan of wolves and three godfatherly mentors who each teach him about life in different ways - Baloo the Bear, who teaches him the technical laws he'll need to survive; Kaa the Python, the nearly archtypal figure who teaches him even deeper lessons; and Bagheera the Panther, who perhaps loves Mowgli most of all but understands all too well the implications of the ambiguous humanity of the boy he's come to care for.

The stories have it all, from the alternately humorous and frightening "Kaa's Hunting", where Mowgli learns an important lesson about friendship and it's responsibility, to the epic "Red Dog" that reads like something out of Homer, to "Letting in the Jungle" which, without giving anything away contains a disturbing paragraph that's both glaring and a long time in coming if you've read between the lines in the previous Mowgli stories and yet at the same time so subtle you can almost miss it's importance.

If you didn't read it as a child, read it now. If you did, read it again as an adult.

The story of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the jungles of 19th century India, charmed me when I was young no less than it does today. Kipling wrote this to celebrate his love of India and it's wild animals as well as to show again some of his frequent themes of honor, loyalty, and perserverance. While his writing may seem 'dated' to some, to others the truths he includes rise above politics and 'current correctness'. Baloo the Bear, Shere Khan the Tiger, Bagheera the Panther, Kaa the Python were all childhood friends of mine, and reading these Jungle Book stories to your own children today will result in their exposure to such old fashioned concepts as sticking by your friends in adversity, helping your family, relying on yourself. Good lessons then, good lessons now. Mowgli learns the value of 'good manners' early on, learns that 'all play and no work' leads to unexpected troubles, learns that thoughtless actions can have devasting consequences. By showing Mowgli in an often dangerous 'all animal' world, we see reflections of modern human problems presented in a more subtle light. Kipling leads children down the jungle path into adventures beyond their day to day imagining and along the way, he weaves subtle points in and out of the stories, he shows the value of 'doing for yourself', of 'learning who to trust'. All of this in a tale of childhood adventure that's never been equaled. The book is over 100 years old now, and there are terms & concepts from the age of Empire that aren't 'correct' today. Parents can edit as needed as they read bedtime stories, but I've found that children learn early on that the world changes, and that some ideas that were popular long ago did not prove to be correct. Explaining this, too, is a part of parenting. Some of our current popular ideas may not stand the test of time, but I suspect that 100 years from now parents will still read the Jungle Book to their children. And the children will still be charmed, thrilled and instructed in valuable life-lessons.

This was probably one of my most favorite books as a young child if not my favorite. The way Kipling shows the struggle of this young boy in the jungle is amazing. He fails to leave out any detail and throughout the whole story your totally caught up in it without one point of boredom. I recommend this to any parent looking for a good book to read to their children or to have their kids read. Kipling is a great author and after doing a report on him and reading some of his other works I recommend those as well, especially A White Man's Burden. If your looking for books by a author who mixes fiction with truth, action and adventure with tales that bring in more serious aspects Kipling is the author for you.

My grandmother bought this book for my three year old. We read the stories together at bedtime and enjoy them immensely. Rudyard Kipling wrote these stories for his young best beloved...don't wait to read them to yours!!!

Rudyard Kipling is a most briliant wrighter. Although his stories are geared twords children, anyone who was ever a child will enjoy them forever. This is a great book for bedtime tales, and will cause nightmares in only the most insucre and desturbed children. Children whom should be locked in a white padded room. These are the calmest non-violent tales to be told. Furthermore, your children will not be dissipointed by you not reading at bedtime, because you will be looking forward to it all day! Please parden the misspellings.

Kipling's JUST SO STORIES certainly rank in English-speaking children's literature right along with A. A. Milne's WINNIE THE POOH and Kenneth Grahame's WIND IN THE WILLOWS. They are fun to read to children 4-8, and even MORE fun for them to read for themselves at ages 7-11 (they're marvelous vocabulary builders --"the mariner of infinite resource and sagacity" ). My English-raised mother heard the stories when they were new and read them to me when I was a child, I read them to my own children, they read them to theirs, and I believe that same cycle has been repeated among millions of families since the stories appeared at the beginning of the 20th century.

It is my impression that today the JUST SO STORIES do not enjoy the popularity with children (and parents) that they once had. That may be because they are occasionally "politically incorrect" in their depiction of historical attitudes regarding race and culture. Joel Chandler Harris's UNCLE REMUS stories and even Mark Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN are sometimes removed from local library shelves on the same basis. In this reviewer's view, inattention to the works of Kipling and Harris and Twain deprives English-speaking children of some appreciation of the culture and civilization in which they live today. Worse yet, it deprives them of the fun of reading FOR fun.

Rudyard Kipling, referred to by one reviewer here as "not a very good writer" was the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize (not the Pulitzer) for literature, in 1907. He was staunchly pro-Empire in an era in which Great Britain not only ruled the waves, but a third of the globe -- the sun never set, it was said, on the British Empire, of which he sang in hundreds of poems and short stories and novels which also deserve reading today.

But imperial/colonialist notes are hard to hear in the JUST SO STORIES, which Kipling wrote for the amusement of a young niece. The stories are meant for FUN, and all children deserve to have some. Get this book; read it yourself if you haven't already -- and then read it to the youngsters for whom Kipling intended it.

Hearts will be warmed by this imaginative retelling of the traditional Christmas story. Mr. Foreman's moonlit illustrations are perfect accompaniments for this long ago tale about a cold winter's night.

According to the cat who lived in a barn in a distant land it was an exceptionally frigid night. It was so icy that the feline was glad for the warm company of the cows. But just as the cat was growing comfortable the barn doors flew open to admit a man, a woman, and a donkey.

Before long the animals heard a baby cry, and then other visitors arrived - shepherds, camels with their masters who were dressed like kings. Oddly enough all of these people knelt in the mud before the baby.

That was a night that brought much change to the world, and even to the cat who was in the barn when a baby was born.

Young animal lovers will especially enjoy this familiar story told through the eyes of a very observant cat.

This is a collection of tales and myths remembered from her childhood. The maori legends are richly told and beautifully, and sometimes frightenly, illustrated. Te Kanawa remains faithfull to the vivid storytelling ancestry she represents. Many of the heroes and villains are as real as the shadow in the night...the shadow that refuses to go away. While nominally directed at children, adults can certainly enjoy the tales while appreciating the illustrative efforts of her co-author. The marriage of story and picture have rarely been put to better use to maintain for posterity a fragile heritage.

Bought this one to take away on a beachside holiday with my son. The book imparts the mood of the beach as it drifts along. The beautiful illustrations create a mood of relaxation. I would highly recommend it at the end of a very active day to help calm the nerves of mothers or fathers and children.

J.M. Barrie entitled his book "Peter Pan and Wendy" because it was not only about the boy who never grew up but also about the girl who indulged him in his childishness. The relationship between the two children was apparently intended to be a sarcastic parody on the relationship between the immature father - Mr Darling -and the syrupy mother. We all recognize the character of the man who won't grow up and many women sigh and say, "I have three children - and my husband makes four." However what is not so obvious is that many women partly encourage their men to stay in this emotionally crippled role. For instance, there is the strange habit of women washing men's clothes for them. Anyone who can't operate a washing machine shouldn't be let loose in the family car but women persist in treating men as if they are incapable of organising their personal belongings and men cooperate in this. The husband of a friend of mine will say to his wife, "I don't know where my red jumper is." She puts aside the highly intellectual work she's doing, goes to the cupboard and says, "There's your red jumper - under the green one where I put it (after I washed and dried it)" They have a very happy marriage - unlike my own where I refused to do that sort of thing. I think the reality is that people feel good being treated as a baby some of the time. Men like being fussed over and having unnecessary things done for them. Women like to feel protected, at least some of the time. Both sexes like to act childishly at times, the classic behaviour of adults feeding each other food off their own spoons being a very obvious sign of two people falling in love. It seems that Barrie touched on something that runs quite deep through adult romances. What is interesting is that children don't notice any of that nor the rather snide and sarcastic way that Barrie regards the whole issue. Instead they love the magic of the imaginary island and the idea of being able to fly and all the wild and woolly characters. They love the fun of it all and they ignore the issues of who should grow up and when. Good on them, I say!