I bought this book to use as resource for my environmental education and religion/spirituality work. As a musician and songwriter for the Earth Mama projects, I review lots of current music materials. This is the finest I have seen. Notation is clear and accurate. Commentary and notes on the songs and ideas are articulate and thoughtful. The entire volume (over 400 songs)is a rich resource of material from many traditions which I will savour and enjoy for years. References, incidentals, quotes and comments sprinked throughout are the icing on the cake. I have given several of these as gifts to schools, music departments and organizations. They are always delighted to add Songs for Earthlings to their library.
Joyce Rouse, AKA Earth Mama...

This is a great resource for anyone who likes to sing earth-friendly songs. Great selection, well organized, and the hole-punched format fits well with the many notebooks of music I have.

I am a choir director for a small, non-denominational Christian church. We like to do music from a wide variety of traditions. This book has been like a gift from the Gods! It's an amazing resource for music from so many different traditions, organized in an easy to use way. Every time I look through it I find something new.

Fine collection and one we see people refer to very often on discussion lists and web sites. From the simple to the complicated, from the overt to the sublime, you will find some story of value in this book that speaks to you and wants you to speak it. Well worth the price and a book that you will read and tell often.-Storyteller.net Review

Having had the pleasure of seeing Ms. Forest perfom live in Louisville, Kentucky, it was my pleasure to become reaquainted with her work. This book is as alive as her live performances. I could hardly put the book down once I started it. I would recommend this book to storytellers, story lovers, parents, and preachers. A great source of some of the world's finest tales. A job well done Ms. Forest!

I have read several books in this series with my 4 year old daughter. She loves taking turns reading the pages. The books hold her attention much more than other beginning reader books that we have found.

The hardcover copy of The Baker's Dozen is my favorite Christmas book. I read it every year to children at a school across from my office.

This little book is full of interesting information about creatures in the forest and how they relate to one another. Each chapter is cleverly linked to the next, so the book makes a little circle of nature. My child enjoyed the book a great deal, especially the chapter on beavers called "Busy Builders." A nice educational book with cute narrative.

Stone Soup is a popular folktale in many countries that has been told for centuries. The Author Heater Forest tells a contemporary version of the popular folktale. Her Stone Soup is an imaginatively creative story with colorfully descriptive pictures that bring the plot about sharing to life. The author's writing is so clear and vivid that reader's can see the characters even before looking at the pictures. The illustrations are realistically drawn and help kids follow along with the story. The author uses the illustrations to teach kids a lesson about sharing. In Stone Soup, two hungry travelers stumble into a village. The travelers go door to door asking for food. Because the villagers say there is no food, the travelers decide to help them by making their magical soup. In the process of making the soup, the village learnes that if everyone shares good things can come out of it. The language and concept is simple for kids. When the traveler talks to the villagers, he uses simple words. "Please ," said one of the travelers, "we are hungry. Do you care? Will you share? Do you have any food?" These simple sentences express many ideas about sharing. "Do you care?" says that if a person doesn't share it's because they don't care. "Do you have any food?" says that if a person has food they should share it. Stone Soup isn't just good reading that is imaginative and creative; it also tells a moral, which teaches kids a lesson but doesn't preach to them. The moral, that if everyone shares then the outcome is huge, comes across clearly in this imaginative story. The travelers said the magic ingredient to their stone soup is sharing; every contribution counts from the smallest to the largest when people share. This is a idea kids can use in their lives. The author tells a well-written story that, even without pictures, could put the characters vividly in one's mind. The author makes a vivid picture of the travelers hopelessness in the reader's mind: "...travelers came along. Their coats were tattered. Their hats were torn. Their dusty shoes had holes in their soles." Using these descriptive words helps everyone enjoy this story. Susan Gaber illustrated this book. She made the pictures so detailed that a person can see the hair on a man's beard and the buttons on a kid's top, but not so much detail that it takes away from the story. The pictures are realistically drawn and colored. There are no purple trees or orange-haired people. This adds to the realistic plot of the story. Gaber does a great job drawing difficult items, for example: a kernel of corn and a green bean. The colors that are used are bright. When characters talk there is a picture of the main topic in the bubble of what the person is saying. An example of this is when a man says he has a potato and the picture shows a bubble with a potato in it. This helps kids follow the story. From start to finish, Stone Soup is a page-turner, with colorfully detailed pictures to its descriptive wording, which bring alive the imaginative story. Stone Soup is well-written for its age group, using word and concepts kids will understand, while at the same time teaching them a moral and new ideas about sharing. This is definitely one book to check out. -Michele Jicha

In World Tales Of Wisdom And Wonder, Heather Forest narratives a wonderful, enthusiastically recommended collection of folktales in a minstrel-style storytelling presentation that combines poetry, prose, original melody, and guitar. Drawn from around the world, these are tales that showcase homespun wisdom of an oral tradition that uses fantasy as its means inspiring and influencing the listener. The ten stories comprising World Tales Of Wisdom including The Dancing Lass of Anglesey (Scotland, 5:03); Feathers (Eastern Europe, (4:25); The Magic Brocade (China, 15:16); Paca and Beetle (Brazil, 4:28); Feeding His Clothes (Middle East, 3:16); Giving the Moon (Japan, 4:59); The Tiger, The Brahman and The Jackal (India, (8:27); Drakestail (France, 7:31); The Read and Blue Coat (Congo, 5:32); and Ode to 398.2 (a unique song celebrating the Dewey Decimal System number for folktales, 1:12).

Heather! Great Story! I really enjoyed this book. I sawyouperform in Charleston, SC last year and I found that I needed toread all that you wrote. This well done. I recomend that all Storytellers read this one! Plus you kids!

I enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed the Wisdom tales(I may have accidently called the Wisdom tales Wonder tales)again, having seen Ms. Forest perform live was a great pleasure. I enjoyed all the helps provided as to how these stories were found. I hope to use these resources in my own further research. I recommend all of Ms. Forest's tapes and books for enjoyable reading and listening to teachers, parents and children. Let your imagination go and you will discover the joy of story! A great effort!

This is one of my favourite folktales, and Forest's adaptation, with Greenstein's witty illustrations, adds to the amusement and truth behind this classic story.

In an twist from versions I've heard before, it is a village wise woman that the father in the story consults, rather than the traditional male rabbi/sage. She is just as wise as that rabbi ever was, though, leading us straight to a happy ending your kids (mine are 6 and 8) will enjoy over and over.

Forest has chosen a loose, semi-rhyming scheme which is soothing but never predictable or "doggerel-ish." And the ending, though it IS predictable, is delightful when it comes, as this beleaguered "baalabos" (homeowner) is finally able to get some rest.

With children's books, more often than not it is the illustrations that bring the story to life. I have heard this story many times, in many formats but the illustrations in this edition are wonderful, vibrant, and with a wonderful woodcut quality. The illustrations give this old and somewhat tired story a new life! They are so wonderful that they would be perfect by themselves without the story line, framed as decorations for a child's bedroom-or any other part of the house for that matter.

If quality illustrations, and not the typical run of the mill canned cutesy drawings, are what you value when picking a child's book than this one is for you!