Summer in the Country is cool! Marie is spending Summer on her cousins farm. The king demands a lot of grain and caterpillars can eat one fourth of the harvest in a few days! because of that, Maries cousins are very poor.She must find a way for her cousins to make money! But how?

This was another great Marie book. It is about the month Marie, her parents, and three sisters spend with relatives in the French countryside.

This book was a great blend of fact and fiction. Out of Many Waters is the story of a young girl in the Portugese Inquisition. Isobel Ben Lazar and her sister Maria were taken from their home in Portugal to a monastery in Brazil. At the time of the story, Isobel is twelve and Maria is sixteen. When the sisters are chosen to accompany two friars on their journey to Recife, Maria comes up with an escape plan. The sisters are Jewish, and they want to escape to Amsterdam, where they believe their parents are. The sisters board different ships bound for Amsterdam, and this story follows Isobel throughout her journey. Isobel hides under a longboat for several days, until the sailors on the ship discover her. She joins a band of Jewish colonists who are escaping the Inquisition. Though Isobel is a fictional character, the Jewish families she travels with are actual people. This story was a terrific blend of fact and historical fiction, a story of finding your inner self and stepping out to show your true beliefs.

"Out of Many Waters" is one of those rare books that combines historical authenticity with a great story. The main character is well-developed and her adventures are exciting. A great read that just happens to be educational!

This book was not as good as the first Marie book. It was ok, though, nothing really great however. I reccomend the first one more.

Mystery At the Paris Ballet was just as good as the first Marie book! I liked it!

At last Marie has realized her dream of dancing with the famed paris opera, but life at the ballet is not all she imagined it would be. the other dancers in the corps de ballet,jealous of her talent, tease her about her youth and inexperience. her long hours of practice leave her little time for her best friend,joelle. Her wealthypatron,Countess du lac, gives her lavish gifts, but it is difficult for marie to accept the Countesses extravagance while people struggle to provide for their families and poor children beg for food in the streets of paris.

This book is about a girl, Maria and how she got separated from her sister and escaped to Amsterdam. I learnded a couple of words in Portuguese. I really liked this book because it is adventurous. I recommend this book to any one who loves adventures. It is a great book.

i loved this book i recomend you buy it for yourself or someone else im a 14 year old girl and i think that even someone older than me should read it and would enjoy it i also read the sequel so if your buying this as a gift get the set or the gift getter will be mad you didnt give the otherone when they finish the first please buy this book it deserves a nobel prize.

Maria's story is a delicious mix from the above average. You'll want to read it and it's compainion, Out of Many Waters over and over again! The story is captivating, the charactors, highly believable

As a resercher in the historical field (Egyptology), I have to admit a little bit of disappointment. A better historical background should have been necessary than the "dozen books" mentioned by the author, to address such a subtle problem as slavery in the ancient Near East with a young public in mind. Nothing to object to the first chapter, where the treatment of the presumed origin and developement of slavery is reliabile and objective, although an approach in term of "involuntary labour" would have been appropriate: the reality behind the generalizing term "slavery" is quite eterogeneous. Yet several more or less evident flaws lies scattered inside: no Egyptian king ever owned and decided the destiny of all the slaves; that slaves were employed in pyramid building is unsupported by evidence; never heard of acts of mass-enslavement of foreigner (1550 a.C.); no archaological or epigraphic evidence of the "exodus" exists at present outside the Bible (just to mention a few points I am more concerned with). More than that, criticable and potentially missleading in my opinion is the confidence with which the matter is considered in the yet bare lack of agreement or clear formalization of the problem even among the experts (diffrently from the Greek-Roman world). More caution, I would also dare to invoke, in educational contextes addressed to a younger public in using as sun-bright thruths biblical references or names to enrich an historical portrait to which their original pertinence is far from being demostrable or accepted.

Studies into slavery at the earliest stages of human civilizations are tricky because we lack a lot of information we have later on in Greece, Rome, Hebrew society. Add into this the fact that the cultures being discussed here use languages which only a few scholars know and you are set for very limited information. Greene does a better job at finding useful information for the layperson in this book than in her other book on slavery in Greece and Rome. I was pleased to see the book laid-out according to culture and not just pushing all of the Mesopotamian world into one section. There are some things I'd disagree with but overall it seems like a very simple introduction for a younger junior high student. She needs better references on slavery itself to help such students further their independent interests.

doesn't excuse poor scholarship. Slavery is a tricky topic to teach and discuss today in the United States because of national history, current racism, and the ideal of personal freedoms. However, it is an institution that has lasted for hundreds of years and it needs to be taught. I want to applaude the Watts Library for tackling such a book but frankly they needed a better scholar. Greene's writing is well done and the images are great. But the sources she relied upon are horrible and out-dated. Her concluding sentence at the end of the "notes on sources" section should clarify to anyone who knows anything about slavery in the Roman world: "Just as in the Roman empire, it took a civil war, and many lost lives, before slavery finally ended." First problem: don't compare United States slavery with ancient slavery, they are not the same. Second, there is no civil war that ends slavery in the Roman world, it dies out overtime and that time extends into the Middle Ages. As an ancient historian who studies slavery and values education at all levels I am extremely disappointed by this book.