Eve Bunting is fabulous author and I admire her work.. but she relate's rabbits and frogs to the holocost, really, think about this for a moment, can rabbits and frogs REALLY teach kids about went on during the holocost, the most aful thing that has happened, I think, cannot be put into words. But I'm older than the preferred reading level for this so maybe they are to young to know what really went on. Younger kids might rate this differently, butg as a 12 year old, I'm sticking to this.

Terrible things is a very touching book. It tells the story of the Holocaust in a slightly less potent way, it tells the story with animals instead of people. The book is one of the best children's books I've read, it's really very well written. Yet the book is very sad.
This book is a great way to teach kids about the terrible holocaust. It's teaches a great lesson to children about racism and classifying people. I like how they made the Germans just a big terrible black thing. It was amazing to see how quick the animals turned there back on each other. This is a wonderful book and I recommend it to people of all ages.

The Holocaust is an event so vast in the scope of its horror that it can be hard for anyone, let alone a child, to understand how it happened. Eve Bunting's The Terrible Things uses an allegory of forest animals to help children (and, frankly, adults) grasp how it is that ordinary people like themselves and people they know could have allowed the Holocuast to happen.

While it does not deal directly with the Holocuast itself, The Terrible Things does deal with the fear and shifting of responsibility that allowed it and similar events to happen. In the book "The Terrible Things" (which are never pictured concretely in illustrations) come for one after another group of forest animals while those not included in the roundup do nothing, until - of course - there are none left.

This book is clear and understandable but not frightening or disturbing. Indeed, it is a picture book much like any other children's picture book. Hence, I wouldn't worry about introducing it to elementary age students. In fact, this book would probably be my top choice for an initial introduction to the Holocaust.

This book also carries a poignant message about integrity and responsibility to persons of any age. Eve Bunting artfully captures the essence of what John Donne meant in writing "no man is an island." She also helps us to comprehend what is most incomprhensible: one of the reasons decent people allowed the evil of the Holocaust to go on.

Cynthia Rylant is a talented and versatile writer who has written for a wide audience ranging from kindergarten to high school. I enjoyed this book immensely, but recommend it for older children (grade 6 and above) especially if used in the classroom. The images, subject matter, and humor, can be appreciated by a more mature audience. Younger children might have a difficult time relating to topics of unrequited love, death of a parent, and coming of age topics in general.(The inside bookflap recommends this book for ages 11 and up and I can see why.) This is not to say that younger children cannot appreciate this book, but as a teacher and a parent, I would recommend this book for middle school and up.

Several years ago I taught third graders, and we read much of Cynthia Rylant's work together. I stumbled across this book, and it turned out to be the most useful resource for my teaching and the most intriguing book for the children. Through the poems we had a glimpse into childhood in small town Appalachia, and the light that this shed on the other books Cynthia Rylant read was talked abut for many months. The poems are specific in their imagery, often funny, and accessible.

My husband and I love this book -- fortunately our son (age 4 yrs) is finally able to listen to the whole story. He has shown great interest in the story and how it relates to his obsession with the transcon railway. (We call our son Train Brain).

He has been moved to draw after we have shared the book and we think that is wonderful, since it doesn't involve trains.

Seriously, it is a wonderful story and very well illustrated. We will probably donate this book to our son's classroom library later this year. We are grateful to have recieved it as gift from the artist in our family.

This book for children is about a young plains Indian boy who hears a folk tale about how buffaloes are formed at the bottom of a lake far to the south of the boy's village. He goes in search of the lake and, in so doing, saves his village from an attack by an enemy tribe. The book was illustrated by Stephen Gammell and it was a 1982 Caldecott Honor book (i.e., a runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustration in a book for children. Any child will love to have the story read to them.

As the title say this is a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very erie book.

Read this to your children in the car as you drive into Gettysburg. It is a great intro to the battle. I read it to 7, 9 and 10 year olds and the adults enjoyed it, too. It's about the experience of an adolescent girl who leaves her home for the day to help babysit some neighbor children and gets inadvertently caught behind battle lines in the famous battle at Gettysburg.

Incidents, places and people in this short book (read it in 20 minutes) are easily found in the actual Gettysburg area - making the story come alive and giving the kids concrete concepts to "hang" the sights on: For example, the main character flees to the Weikert farm for safety - there is a Weikert tombstone in the cemetary just opposite the Visitor's Center; she meets a General Weed, and his photo is prominent on the Park Service's explanation at the auto pull-off for Big Round Top; she lives in a red house with two linden trees in the yard, and many Civil War era houses can be found in town, several with linden trees, and so on.

The prose is very well constructed, exceptionally so for a children's book - and it reads almost like poetry. It looks like a simple little children's chapter book, but it really is a treasure.

This is a picture book about a bear that is going into hibernation, but wants to be awake for Christmas. The adventure he goes on would be exciting for younger children. This would be a good book to use to bring about discussions of hibernation patterns.

the characters and the dialogue are endearing. the illustrations are perfect. my 5 year old son loved it, but couldn't get over the fact that we still don't know what a wing a ding is.

This book Monster Mamma is about a boy named Edward Patrick who has a monster for a mom. Dispite her being a monster she loves her son very much. Whenever he's in trouble his momma always comes to help him.This book is great because it shows kids that no matter who your mamma is she will always love you.

Not sure I understand the parents who are worried about their kids reading about bullies or maybe eating too much cake. What would they say about Maurice Sendak's Wild Things? Maybe he should rename it Tame Things? I think kids know the world is a wild and wooly place-- but if you have a loving mama -- even if she is a monster, as she points out to her son-- it's got to help. Great lines of dialogue, wild illustrations, what's not to love? Probably all this controversy proves it's a great book.

A beautiful story about the all too familiar bully theme. My son and I could really relate to the bond of trust and protection between Patrick and his Mama. It's easy to pick on someone small in size, but the boys were cowards when confronted by Monster Mama. Mama's response gave Patrick the braveness and confidence he needed to stand up to the bullies, and stick up for her in turn. My son's reply at the end of the story was, "yeah,...nobody messes with Mama!" It made me laugh!

Only a Caldecott-award-winning illustrator/author could get such a shallow story published. It's too bad this brilliant illustrator is not taken to task by his editor(s). His talents are certainly wasted on this story of these inanimate objects acting like boys. Compare this book with last year's Elizabeti's Doll, a poignant story about a 'rock' doll, and you will understand why this story is so very disappointing. Gammell has shown us quirky before, but this effort is simply lame.