hey everyone! maximus here, and i just wanted to say that this book is superb. althought a little hard to read because of typos, it is still excellent!

This handbook is just what I was looking for to conduct a science fair. It's easy to read and presents all the needed information and resources to conduct a successful fair. The forms provided are useful and can be used directly out of the book. A must have for anyone putting on a science fair!

Who knew I would be looking for information about moose? Then I was traveling to Maine and wanted to know all about them. Adult or child, this is the book to start with. Simple, basic chapters explain the strange appearance of the moose, their habits, their habitat, and their social customs. Grand, solitary creatures, members of the deer family, they are actually making a comeback now, particularly in the northern tier of states. The pictures accompanying each little chapter are breathtaking, magnificent and appealing. The text is completely lucid, easy enough for a child to read, but packed with enough interesting information to satisfy an adult's curiosity. (Well, mine, anyway). If you are headed for moose country (or just interested in animals) I recommend this one highly!

Compact yet complete, less than 50 pages, but packed with fabulous photos and facts. Simple enough for the kids but with enough information for adults. Great buy.

Thank goodness I found this book before I started teaching a class on Oceanography! "Exploring the Oceans" was not only a clear and well thought out book but it was clearly written by someone who understands children. The book is riddled with fun and educational activities that work exptremely well for kinistetic learners. it was organized into managable chapters that allowed the students to focus on a cohesive set of ideas while previewing the concepts to come. A wonderful tool for getting kids excited about science and the ocean.

This book provided a fun way to get kids to read alond and practice their reading skills. Not only were they learning to read with expression but they were also having fun. The stories are comical and enjoyable for the readers as well as the audience!

Especially recommended for use in curriculum planning for classrooms of students in grades 4-8, Science Fiction Readers Theatre is a handy and "user friendly" resource for teachers interested in a participation-based approach that uses creative, science-fiction themed scripts to fuel students' imaginations and help them develop their reading and speaking skills. A very useful book for language arts curriculums, Science Fiction Readers Theatre is a welcome and recommended addition to Educational Resource & Curriculum Supplementation reference collections.

The experiments in this book are very basic and simple fun activities that are easy to follow and which children -even adults- will enjoy. The book simplifies and explains many fundamental scientific concepts that we encounter daily. The scope of these experiments is very wide , from daily science to weather, chemistry,... which are all implemented with very readily available items. This is a book that will keep inquisitive children motivated and busy for hours, they will especially love the science tricks. The second book : "365 More Science Experiments with Everyday Materials" complements this book. One should get them both!

I purchased this book for the science division of our home schooling studies. It is laid out very well and it's easy to understand.

Using materials most people have around the house you can simply flip to the beginning and follow the headings for ideas.

What can you use straws for? Try out the section on "Clutching at Straws", make an Oboe, balance scale, spear a potato, etc.

Would you like to know other uses for lemon juice? Start on page 36. Keep going- check out soap suds, strings, paper cups, experiments with temperature, etc.

Basically you get it, you could spend many great minutes or hours teaching your kids through hands on learning.

Many of these can be done by an older child with very little help- a perfect solution to the "I'm bored" problem.

Please- turn of the TV, electronic games. etc. and let them use their brains- actively.

This is a wonderful book, one that every household would benefit from.

I've picked up many books which claim to demonstrate science with "everyday materials." Most times the "everyday materials" are not something I keep on hand. Like cheesecloth. Who keeps cheesecloth on hand? But the demonstrations in this book really are simple and really do include basic household supplies. I've used the book with my five year old and have found the demonstrations and explanations to be thorough enough to engage his interest. And I've enjoyed myself too!

In this curious autobiiography, Anthony Trollope sketches in the outlines of his life. He relates the misery of his childhood, the heroism of his mother, the tragedy and ultimate failure of his father. If not banal, at least typical material for an autobiography, and makes for good reading. The second two-thirds of the book summarizes his writings, and relate his ideas on everything from literary criticism to suggestions for young writers. Perhaps most interesting are his assessments of his own work, praising or condemning them with little emotion. Of course there is the famous analysis of his working methods, where he counts words and disciplines himself to an astonishingly regular routine of writing. He produced 47 novels, edited and wrote for magazines, all the while working full time for the post office. One distressing feature of this work is the almost complete lack of intormation about his wife and family....It is clear that he lived with and loved his fictional characters more than his corporeal family. Also, the grammar and punctuation are often awkward but this is still a highly readable and fascinating book.

If one has read a number of Trollope's novels, one would expect that Trollope would have written precisely this sort of autobiography. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine it having taken any other form.

Trollope writes not so much of his life (though he does touch upon the major events), as of his occupation. Although employed most of his adult life by the postal service, Trollope decided to engage in a second and parallel career as a writer. He is forthright about his motives: the satisfaction of writing, but also fame, financial reward, and social standing. Looking back on his career, Trollope is proud of a job well done. The oddity is that he seems quite as happy telling us about how much he sold each work for, and the financial dealings with his publishers, as he does about his books and characters. In fact, near the end of the book he gives a complete list of his novels and how much he managed to sell each one for (with very few exceptions, he preferred to sell the rights to a novel, rather than getting a percentage of sales). What emerges is a portrait of the novelist not as an artist so much as a dedicated, disciplined craftsman. He explicitly denigrates the value of genius and creativity in a novelist in favor of hard work and keeping to a schedule of writing.

The early sections of the book dealing with his childhood are fascinating. By all measures, Trollope had a bad childhood. His discussions of his father are full of pathos and sadness. What is especially shocking is the lack of credit he gives to his mother, who, in early middle age, realizing that her husband was a perpetual financial failure, decided to salvage the family's fortunes by becoming a novelist. He notes that while nursing several children dying from consumption, she wrote a huge succession of books, enabling the family to live a greatly improved mode of existence. Her achievement must strike an outside observer as an incredibly heroic undertaking. Trollope seems scarcely impressed.

Some of the more interesting parts of the book are his evaluation of the work of many of his contemporaries. History has not agreed completely with all of his assessments. For instance, he rates Thackery as the greatest novelist of his generation, and HENRY ESMOND as the greatest novel in the language. HENRY ESMOND is still somewhat read, but it hardly receives the kind of regard that Trollope heaped on it, and it is certainly not as highly regarded as VANITY FAIR. Trollope's remarks on George Eliot are, however, far closer to general opinion. His remarks concerning Dickens, are, however, bizarre. It is obvious that Trollope really dislikes him, even while grudgingly offering some compliments. Quite perceptively, Trollope remarks that Dickens's famous characters are not lifelike or human (anticipating E. M. Forster's assessment that Dickens's characters are "flat" rather than "round" like those of Tolstoy or Austen) and that Dickens's famous pathos is artificial and inhuman (anticipating Oscar Wilde's wonderful witticism that "It would take a man with a heart of stone to cry at the death of Little Nell"). Even the most avid fan of Dickens would admit that his characters, while enormously vivid and well drawn, are nonetheless a bit cartoonish, and that much of the pathos is a tad over the top. But Trollope goes on to attack Dickens's prose: "Of Dickens's style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules . . . . To readers who have taught themselves to regard language, it must therefore be unpleasant." If one had not read Dickens, after reading Trollope on Dickens, one would wonder why anyone bothered to read him at all. One wonders if some of Trollope's problems with Dickens was professional jealousy. For whatever reason, he clearly believes that Dickens receives far more than his due.

Favorite moment: Trollope recounts being in a club working on the novel that turned into THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET, when he overheard two clergymen discussing his novels, unaware that he was sitting near them. One of them complained of the continual reappearance of several characters in the Barsetshire series, in particular Mrs. Proudie. Trollope then introduces himself, apologizes for the reappearing Mrs. Proudie, and promises, "I will go home and kill her before the week is over." Which, he says, he proceeded to do.

you should consider reading this too! Trollope writes candidly about his education (and about being a poor, mostly overlooked student), his lack of professional ambition (and how he finally got around to witing his first novel),and the ups and downs of his literary career (and his early rejections). He does all of this in the same conversational tone employed in his novels, making this autobiography feel more like a chat with an older, experienced friend than a learned, classic autobiography

The activites in this book are enjoyable for children to perform, but there is very little science taught.

My daughter very much enjoys performing the activities listed, however, I need to heavily supplement the material and description given in order to provide any scientific explaination of what she is doing. Additionally, the scientific method is completely missing from the 'experiments.' The simple activites are prsented in a "do it and observe" form, with no specific idea or result which is tested by the activity.

A good book for entertaining activities, but not for teaching science.

I have got both these books (The first one being 365 Simple Science Experiments with everyday materials) for my kids (aged 8-12) and they find the experiments extremely fun and interesting because they don't need much adult intervention when trying them out , it helped them at school by providing them with a good background of practical science; the kind you encounter everyday but take for granted. It is written for kids, not for adults who then have to explain it to kids. The book covers many scientific concepts to do with physics, time, nature and space.

I loved it! The experiments are so much fun! They were interesting and fascinating! A *Must* for any scientific youngster.

Elephant tails can be 5 feet long, African elephants can be 13 feet high and Asian elephants can weigh 12,000 pounds. These are just a few of the many fascinating facts children will learn by reading this book. Children may know that elephants do have good memories, but they might not have known that elephants walk on tiptoes, flap their big ears to keep cool, and that their trunks can reach higher than a giraffe. Wonderful photographs accompany the interesting text.