Now in a revised and expanded second edition, Grandloving: Making Memories With Your Grandchildren is more effective than ever as a compendium of tips, ideas and suggestions for grandparents to bond with their grandchildren. More than two hundred fun and easy activities drawn from 350 families are presented along with sound advice, helpful suggestions, and inexpensive do-together projects. Whether it something special for family holidays and celebrations, or just a rainy-day or weekend visit pastime, Grandloving will have everything you need to plan and implement a truly memory making event. Enthusiastically recommended for grandparents of any age or circumstance, Grandloving's engaging, "reader friendly" text is enhanced with reminders about child development, an extensive list of resources, helpful logos, and an easy-to-use index.

This book has great information for anyone who works with children ! Of course grandmothers are always looking for ideas and new things to do with grandchildren. Offering specific activities, as well as helpful information, this book is a MUST HAVE for any grandmother. It's also a PERFECT gift for any adult who has grandchildren.

This book covers the gamut when it comes to finding fun things to do with children. Because my new grandson is 800 miles away, I especially liked all of the long-distance grandparenting ideas. I would recommend it to anyone, mothers and fathers as well as grandparents.

...when I lost my wife. I looked for two hours in the bookstore before I found this, and I found a lot of books that sandwiched children's grief reactions to death with grief reactions to divorce, moving, etc. I was looking for something specific, not being sure how to help my daughter when I felt I was being crushed under my own grief. I read the first few pages, where Jim Emswiler describes the death of his first wife, and I knew I had found what I was looking for. This book never did disappoint.

If you need it, this is, in my opinion, THE book for families with grieving children.

I just finished this book and I am reading it again - a thoughtful, well written book that would be helpful to any family member, friend, or future family member of a grieving child. A wonderful book for a difficult time.

This is an excellent book for parents of children dealing with all phases of loss. They explain how children of different ages perceive death in different ways.

The authors go beyond the basics. They give specific advice on how to talk to children about different types of death including cancer, suicide and murder. They discuss different ways to rebuild after the loss. I particularly liked the section on stepparenting the grieving child.

The Emswilers balance illuminating vignettes with theory and advice. The chapters are organized so that one can pick and choose, based on one's particular needs.

This wonderful resource recently received a Gold Parenting Resource Award from the National Parenting Publications Award (NAPPA). Susan K. Perry, PhD wrote the following review: This compendium of ideas guides expectant and new mothers toward balance and a sense of control as they plan for and face the upheavals of new parenthood. A wide rang of issues is covered, and the tone is reassuring, helping both expectant and new moms relax. The tips are practical and specific."

A look of skepticism crossed my face as a friend handed me this book to read. Being a new, sleep-deprived, working mom, the last thing I thought I could find was time for a little quiet reading, but once I started flipping the pages I was hooked. Sheryl Gurrentz brings her own wisdom as a mother to a fresh new look on parenthood. She uses a mix of humor and real-life testimonials that not only provide good information but priceless wisdom and advice for surviving the many adventures of motherhood. The book talks about everything from dealing with the physical changes after childbirth to evaluating your career and life balance. It is packed with important advice including a resource guide in the back of the book containing contact information for manufactures, organizations and associations that you may need during that first year of motherhood. This book would help any new mom get through the twists and turns ahead. It is a book that new moms will use and treasure.

Written specifically for expectant and new moms, Sheryl Gurrentz presents a superb and infinitely practical compendium of advice, tips, and techniques to care of the new baby and themselves. Especially recommended for women who seek to combine child care with career employment, Gurrentz demystifies early motherhood by covering a diversity of relevant subjects such as how much the body hurts even weeks after giving birth; what to do when feeling jealous that your partner goes to work while you are preempted by child care responsibilities for a new born; how to get a spouse to act like a parent and not just an assistant helper; how to protect modesty while publicly breast feeding; and what to do when life with a new baby doesn't turn out quite like you thought it would! Highly recommended reading, The Guilt-Free Guide To Your New Life As A Mom is an invaluable preparation while waiting for baby's arrival, and even more welcome when trying to adjust to baby after she or he has arrived to enliven, enhance, bewilder, and change your life!!

Heart Wounds by Ann Isobel will capture your attention for hours and have you laughing and crying. I'm hoping for a sequel!

Carol Witt, Poet & Artiste

Heart Wounds by Ann Isobel will capture you attention for hours. and have you laughing and crying. I'm hoping for a sequal.

Carol Witt Poet and Painter

This is a very special book with substance and wonderful characterizations. I found myself deeply involved in the lives, struggles, and relationships of the characters. Ann Isobel has incorporated a quote before each chapter, which adds additional meaning to this outstanding story. This is a thought provoking book to read alone or share with others in a book club, as there is much to absorb, think about and discuss.

Welcome to the world of Anne Raver as seen through her garden. Here you will meet her loveable old dog Molly, "a twelve -year-old Saint Bernard squished into a setter's body with some collie thrown in," and Mr. Grey a long-haired feline acrobat that endears himself to both Molly and the author despite all their efforts to dislike him.

Here too you learn about Raver herself as she plots and plans her gardens, agonizes about a move to a new house, struggles with insects and pesticides, life in the city versus the pull of her country roots, and her conflicted if loving relationship with her parents. Raver's interests, even with gardening as a base, are eclectic and far ranging. In one essay she waxes eloquent, though tongue in cheek, about breaking the law by growing poppies. In another she tells how she came to discover that cricket manure is a great fertilizer. In a third she tells of her triumph over a paralyzing fear of climbing ladders. All in all it's a wonderful stroll through one woman's life with plenty of amusing observation and touching insight thrown in.

My one complaint was that the length of the essays (they are reprints of articles Raver wrote for The New York Times) often means that the reader is left wanting to know more, to hear how a story ended, how a problem was resolved, whether or not Raver ever finds a man she can co-habitat with, what finally happens to the old family homestead. While I realize this is a limitation of the genre, I am hoping that Raver will eventually sit down and write a non-stop tale of her rich and varied life. Otherwise this is a wonderful, uplifting read.

People who get the New York Times and read the garden section are probably totally familiar with Anne Raver's writing, but those in other parts of the country may not be. For many years she was the garden editor of the NY Times and although I don't think she holds this position any longer, I still do find her articles now and then in the Times.
I am a garden writer myself (Allergy-Free Gardening, Safe Sex in the Garden) and I read the work of as many different garden writers as I can. I especially try to read as much material as possible from writers who write for newspapers, since so often they are tuned in to the most current tastes in horticulture. Then too, as a writer I always appreciate extra quality work when I read it, work such as that of Ann Raver (who by the way, I don't know and have never met.)
Deep in the Green: An Exploration of Country Pleasures is a little book but it's packed with useful gardening tidbits and the writing is superb. Like some other reviewers of this book, I too would like to see another book from her, perhaps a sequel to Deep in the Green. I am always on the lookout for neat little books on gardening to give as presents to my friends who garden, and this one is always a hit. A collection of articles published first in the Times, each chapter here is lively, charming, often darn funny, and in the tradition of great garden writers (especially some of the great English writers), the material is based on true life garden adventures, and it is always close and personal. If you've never read any of Ann Raver's work, I suggest you give it a try. Almost anyone who loves to garden and read will enjoy this book.

I read this book for the first time in 1999 and I have returned to savor the pages each year since. I have bought 3 extra copies for gifts for my nature loving friends. I am hoping the "next generation" appears on the horizon soon!

Miss Ruocco writes as if she is reporting on the demise of sex, and yet manages to turn the subject upside-down and make it more interesting than usual. In her capable hands this book becomes a catalog of taboo secrets and fantasies. Compelling stuff.

Like any great bathroom book, you can start at any point in the book and read as much as time allows. It could turn into a few hours though. Then, spend another hour looking at yourself naked in the mirror.

Ruocco is obsessed with her rear end, to the point of mania. Quite a scatological book -- at least the first third. Recommeded for those interested in the 21st century wave of avant-pop, avant-porn, post-pos-post-modernist writing. Ruocco is the new Kathy Acker.

I liked this book. BUT I would like to say, to ANYONE, that Ann has no idea about Aus. I have never in my life heard anyone say "Bonza Sheila" or "laid one on" so, if you read a BSC book about Aus, we are not the cave people they make us seem.

Along with "Stacey and the Bad Girls," this is perhaps my favorite BSC book. I must say I still love this series even though it is old now and many of the books are hard to find-in new copies, anyway. Farewell, Dawn is sad, but somehow I like sad books. The cover is cool. (I love Dawn's outfit!) Dawn is one of my favorite (if not my actual favorite) baby sitter(s). She is very excellent (very excellent? does that sound right? I like to say it anyway.)...She was one of the best characters in the whole series...

I love Dawn and this book.Dawn has been missing california more than ever.Especially now that her best friend,Sunny in California needs her.Dawn must face the facts,while she loves Connecticut,her heart is telling her to return to California permanently.But it sure isn't easy.It is tough to hear her friends talk about replacing her in the BSC.Even worse,Dawn can't figure out how to break the news to Mary Anne.How can she tell her best friend and stepsister that she wants to leave,forever?

I have not had the good fortune to see a copy of Worwood's other books The Complete Guide to Essential Oils, which I understand is a bible of sorts, and Aromantics, whose title intrigues me very much. The Fragrant Mind is daring in the sense that it espouses a very unique theory, that of classifying personalities based on the scents they prefer. I may not necessarily totally agree with Worwood, and I have had difficulty figuring out what personality type I have based on her system, but this book is definitely interesting reading, especially if you're an aromatherapy fan like I am. Buy it if only to round out your aromatherapy library. You will find yourself picking it up from time and time to read up on her one-of-a-kind personality descriptions.

This book gives a deeper understading of aromatherapy. Essential oils are much more than something you use for a certain symptom, and Valerie Ann Worwood gets that message through in her book.

I used to think emotional ups and downs were a part of life until I read this book and found that the downs could be dealt with, and the ups could be enhanced. There are lots of chapters, including 8, which has wonderfully sensitive and understanding text, plus oils and formulas, for an A-Z of "emotional problems" from abuse, addictions,aggression, amnesia, anxiety, apathy ..... and that's just the A's! And it's all so thorough - Under addictions there's drug alcohol and nicotine addiction, each with suggested oils and recipes to use. But, hey, this book is about positive mind frame, so is equally thorough in it's advice for alertness, assertiveness, concentration, confidence, contentment, creativity, focus, happiness, joy, memory enhancement, peace, performance, positivity, restfulness, self-awareness, self-esteen, self image. DO I SOUND POSITIVE? It's no surprise - this works!

THIS BOOK IS THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING. MARY ANN THOMPSON OPENED HER HEART TO FIRST GIVE HER FRIEND A CHILD, AND THEN AGAIN TO WRITE ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE WITH SUCH HONESTY AND DEEP FEELINGS.
THE GIFT OF A CHILD IS ONE OF THOSE TREASURE CHESTS THAT YOU WILL WANT TO DIP INTO AGAIN AND AGAIN ONCE YOU HAVE READ IT, WHICH YOU WILL PROBABLY DO IN ONE SITTING. I DIDN'T WANT TO STOP ONCE I OPENED THE LOVELY COVER.
BUY TWO - YOU'LL WANT TO GIVE ONE TO A CLOSE FRIEND, BUT YOU WON'T WANT THE BOOK TO LEAVE ONCE YOU HAVE BROUGHT IT HOME.

It's all in there: Friendship and hope, anguish and tears, reconciliation and joy. Mary Ann Thompson, the mother of my daughter, has told our story with candor and sensitivity. She gave me our daughter. This book is another gift. A true story of how love and courage restore brokeness. I highly recommend it. You will not want to put it down until you read the very last chapter.

"When any child is born, many are born. A father is born, he who a moment earlier was only a man. A mother is born, who for months had been merely a pregnant woman...And beyond that: cousins, aunts, grandparents, perhaps the whole world is changed by one moment of emergence, that draining out of water and drawing in of breath. She is born, and we are born, too, changed by the startling, wavering announcement of life, of autonomy, of existence...." (The Gift of a Child, p.3)

This book is itself remarkable journey, as much as it is the telling of one. From the conception of the idea--to carry a child for a friend who is unable to conceive--to the birth of her daughter, the author's luminous writing invites us to share this experience as it unfolds in all its intensity. As her tiny daughter leaves her birth mother to begin life with her parents, we see, too, how a wounded friendship is made whole again. This is a must-read for those considering surrogacy, there is much to be learned in its pages. More than that, however, it is a book for anyone exploring what it means to love with an open heart....A lovely gift for anyone who has been a mother, or who has had a mother. In other words, a splendid gift for all of us...

Hearts, is a warm and wonderful historical romance of early American life with solid compatible characters and a well thoughtout plot--the perfect ending for the final installment in the 'Brides for All Seasons' series by talented writer Stef Ann Holm.

Stef Ann Holm has proven once again that she is the queen of the Americana romance. Reading HEARTS is like revisting old friends, as the book is set in Harmony, where the wonderful Brides for All Seasons series first started. I love reading books that give me warm fuzzies, and this book does all that and more. Jake and Truvy are a match made in heaven, and the chemistry between them is hot, yet sweet as Valentine's Day itself. As always, Stef Ann Holm's research and attention to detail is impeccable, and the characters really come alive. This is one of the best books of 2001 that I have read.

Truvy, an old-maid school teacher who secretly yearns to discover for herself "The Science of Life," meets bodybuilder, Jake, a man with secrets of his own, in Ms. Holm's fabulous finale to her Brides for All Season's series. Hearts is funny and tender. When it comes to Americana, no one does it better than Stef Ann Holm.