The pictures of the cold arctic climate and wildlife work well with my kids as a summertime bedtime story book.

The pictures are really great. Kind of a panorama of Audobon animals

I just bought this book last week for a bedtime story book for my 7-year old. He has requested it again every night since. The pictures have really caught his imagination. They are nice and detailed but a bit repetitive for me. But my boy loves them and that's what matters. I wish I could buy more books that make this big an impression.

I read this book as a bedtime story for my young son. The text flows nicely and the pictures are soothing and natural. He usually asks to read it again when we're finished, sometimes a third time. I think he has been dreaming about being in the desert in the pictures.

This book has very good illustrations of the typical American desert animals (gila monster, jackrabbit, etc.) My six-year old has requested it every night for the past week. I tried it out on a cub scout group yesterday, and they were rapt at attention. Their favorite is "find the hidden animal." I recommend it.

Mr. Kanze and I seem to agree on at least one thing, that Ms. Wadsworth's JOHN BURROUGHS: THE SAGE OF SLABSIDES is an excellent contribution. As for my own book, I've searched it for the word "kidnap" and can't seem to find that phrase anywhere. -- Edward J. Renehan, Jr., author of JOHN BURROUGHS: AN AMERICAN NATURALIST

Ginger Wadsworth, distinguished author of children's books on John Muir and Rachel Carson, brings the naturalist, literary critic, and philosopher John Burroughs to life in The Sage of Slabsides. As a Burroughs biographer myself (my THE WORLD OF JOHN BURROUGHS was published in 1993 by Harry Abrams, with a deal in the works to revive the book next year in paperback), I am in a position to judge the quality of Wadsworth's treatment. I think she does a brilliant job of telling the story of Burroughs's long and eventful life in a way that children will find captivating. There are quotes from Burroughs's published writings, journal entries, and an array of fine photographs, all well chosen to appeal to kids. The scholarship is first-rate, too. For example, Wadsworth notes the adoption of Burroughs's son, Julian, in July, 1878, as is documented in his journal, rather than repeating the false claim of Edward Renehan's JOHN BURROUGHS: AN AMERICAN NATURALIST that the boy was essentially kidnapped from its biological mother in April. The secret of Burroughs's success may be that, with his playful humor and passion for nature and the out-of-doors, he remained a kid at heart throughout his nearly 84 years. He had a genius for passing along his childlike enthusiasm to others, which explains why people could not get enough of his company. Wadsworth keeps up the tradition. Boys, girls, and adults reading this book will likely be inspired to walk a few of Burroughs's forest paths.

I liked this book because I like suspence and action. And it's a very good mystery. But it's kind of fake though. Sally, Andy, and Peter are left on the beach while their dad went on a business trip. But he told a hotel manager to keep an eye on them. When they were adjusting to the campsite, a boat runs over a dolphin and that dolphin has a baby. But the mom swims away. So they feed it bottles of ginger beer. Then two people that had a crash on the beach lost a missing fender. The kids say they know nothing, but they have the missing fender. Then the two people come on the beach with a gun and take Andy and Peter. Sally has to get them back. I'm not going to tell you anymore unless you read the book yourself.

In this action-packed, blitz-a-rama, book taken place on Crab Island, of the Caribbean, you'll feel as if you're actually on the Caribbean, watching every little bit of this happen! It's so exotic that it moves you!
While Sally, Peter, and Andy Grant stay on Crab Island alone, due to their father going off to a medical conference, many mysterious, emotional, and stressful things occur while their father is away.
This includes caring for a dolphin that has deep gashes due to a motorboat, Jan and Jon arguing with the Grants about the fact that they got there first, and finally, they witness a jaw-dropping boat tragedy, due to inexperienced sailing. What they eventually uncover about Gloria and Benito, who had the boat crash, becomes a horrific nightmare, no one ever wishes to live, [most wouldn't have lived through]!
I loved this book! I enjoyed it for many reasons. Dolphins are absolutely my favorite animal. I also liked the fact that it was on the Caribbean, so it made me imagine that I was actually there. Also every chapter ended with a problem, which really allured me to read on furthermore!

Given that it is allegedly a scholarly review of the Scopes Trial of 1925, and its background, this book falls flat on its face in almost every respect.

In the first place, although it does indeed present us with the basic facts, they are so heavily fortified with what I imagine must be the author's own prejudices that the book is virtually useless as a serious historical record.
What exactly was it about William Jennings Bryan, I wonder, that drew such frequent and vicious attacks from this writer?

In the second place the author's research appears to be seriously inadequate. Compare this book with Prof. Edward Larson's brilliant study of the same material ("Summer for the Gods") - which includes close on 40 pages of notes and references - and "Six Days..." looks more like a sophomore's essay than the work of a professor of history.

And thirdly, because he was not content to simply record the facts, Ginger's work is now deeply scarred by the ignorance that still prevailed in the late 50's.

For example, though Ginger was indeed a professor of history, not geology, biology or any other of the sciences, he works hard to show how valuable the expert testimony of the defense witnesses would have been, had it been allowed. Yet it is those same aspects of the evidence which Ginger so staunchly defends which are now recognised as being totally useless, or worse, from a scientific stand point...

Or again, Ginger reminds us, with not a hint of doubt or qualification, that the "gill slits" seen in human embryos are a sign of our "aquatic ancestry". What we now know is that they aren't "gill slits" at all, but the rudimentary version of what develops into the middle ear, the parathyroid and the Thymus gland.

And the rout goes on. Ginger tells us about the significance of the numerous so-called "vestigial structures" (down from 180 in 1925 to less than half-a-dozen today); of crucial the evidence provided by homology (shown by microbiologist Michael Denton to be quite useless as evidence of evolution); and so on and so on....

In the conclusion to "Six Days or Forever?" Ray Ginger identifies two purposes for writing his account of the Scopes trial. First, getting "the facts straight," in order to correct "many mistakes in previous accounts of the episode," believing his book "comes much closer than do those accounts to telling what actually occurred." Second, Ginger "tried to view the Scopes trial in the broadest possible context." The book was published in 1958, when interest in the Monkey Trial was revitalized by the success on Broadway of the play "Inherit the Wind."

Ginger's primary reference sources were the published stenographic transcript and Leslie H. Allen's edited version, along with the scrapbook files on the case of the A.C.L.U. and Kirtley F. Mather. Ginger made use of the available biographies of several participants as well as full-length studies of Fundamentalism and antievolution, histories of Tennessee, official records of the Scopes appeal, and books on various scientific and religious topics. Ginger also acknowledged several participants who shared their memories in interviews or through correspondence. Finally, in the interest of factual accuracy, Scopes himself read portions of the manuscript.

Ginger prefaces the trial with a quotation from Andre Gide on how Christian orthodoxy either absorbs or rejects any other truth, which clearly indicates Ginger's perspective on what happened in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925. The passage of the Butler Act and the other developments leading to the trial are detailed in "Law as Symbolic Action." William Jennings Bryan is considered in "Hot Rod Halidon" while Clarence Darrow is presented as "As Uncurried Mind." The trial is covered in five chapters each with an insightful title, with the chapter of Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan called "The Stillborn Miracle."

Ginger's most significant rhetorical aspect is his criticism of both Bryan and Darrow. Calling Bryan's undelivered speech "no mere lallation," Ginger wonders what Bryan hoped to accomplish in Dayton with "a supposed summation to a jury, begun long before he had heard the evidence or investigated the law, and disposing of those topics hastily." Ginger labels Darrow "Almost an anarchist," who "was certain of nothing," a position leading to a paradoxical mix of "skepticism and curiosity." Reminding readers that Darrow had repeatedly dismissed colleges as being worse than useless because "they destroyed compassion without imparting wisdom," Ginger actually forges a common ground between the extreme positions of the literalist Bryan and the agnostic Darrow. Although Darrow was more realistic and more democratic than his critics, Ginger faults the attorney for having ignored the majority. However, in the end Ginger must credit Darrow with providing ridicule as a major weapon against the fundamentalists.

At the end of "Six Days or Forever?" Ginger tries to maintain a balance between Bryan and Darrow and ends up advocating reading the Bible with a scientific and human mind. But even if Ginger perceived Darrow to be the lesser of two evils, Bryan still receives a substantial scouring through the book. Ginger strips Bryan's argument down to the syllogism: "Law, civilization itself depends on ethics. Ethics is derived from religion. Therefore government cannot be indifferent to religion." Ginger accepts the major premise, but argues that ethics was rarely regarded as a high law to be applied to government. I think Ginger's major accomplishment in "Six Days or Forever?" is his presentation of a more rational and less emotional foundation for assaulting Bryan and the antievolution position. Indeed, reviewers at the time praised Ginger for his unwillingness to dismiss the buffoonery of Bryan and the Tennessee yokels in the manner of H. L. Mencken, and most commented on the fact that he found Darrow's open-eyed skepticism to be as myopic as Bryan's blind fanaticism.

Ultimately, Ginger argues the Butler Act rested on the belief that truth could be determined by taking a vote, a belief rooted in a century of American democratic tradition. But while Ginger sees both Bryan and Darrow as propagating the Jacksonian bias that "one man's opinion is as good as another's on any topic," he also argues the overwhelming pressure of society is against this idea, pointing out that most persons hold opinions that point to conflicting decisions on most questions. In the end Ginger advocates a reconciliation of science and religion. However, his prediction that eventually evolution would be found to have nothing to do with religion, the fate of previous scientific truths challenged by orthodox dogma, has certainly not come to pass. While L. Sprague de Camp's "The Great Monkey Trial" provides the most detailed story of the Scopes Trial, Ginger is the first writer to really offer up an objective consideration of the trial in terms of its legal, social, and rhetorical ramifications.

This book does an excellent job of placing the Scopes trial within the context of long standing currents in American culture. The progressive/conservative and scientific/fundamentalist tensions have long been present. The book places the evolution debate in context with the social currents that drove abolition, women's suffrage, and prohibition. It helps us understand the social and historical context of the modern Christian Coalition, and more radical ideologies like the Christian Identity movement.

This book changed the Scopes trial from something in "history," and thus far removed and abstracted from my everyday life, to something that might have affected my Grandfather, something that might have happened to people I know. Something that, given the recent decision of the Kansas Board of Eduction to drop evolution as a requirement for an accedited science cirriculum, could happen to my own children.

The book is choppy in places, with momentary digressions into detail that do seem to distract from the main point, but I'm not about to suggest I could have done better. I recommend this book.