The story is very cute and the concept of some of the key words being in English and some in Spanish is great! Not only does it help children learn a few words in Spanish, it's great to help Mom and Dad too. :-)

This is an excellent bedtime book. My daughter makes her Dora Night Night book request ever since we purchased it. It has excellent pronunciations for the Spanish illiterate as well as great illustrations. I highly recommend this book for your little Dora fans as well.

If you're child is into Dora, this a well recommended book. I use it to help teach my daughter spanish and basic reading skills. Its fun and kids love it.

This book is very useful in parts: some of the idioms are very easy to incorporate into sentences. However, my main and only gripe about this book is that the translations are not literal. Learners of Italian can read the sample pages provided with this book on Amazon and see that the explanations do not exactly correspond within the context of the sentences. For beginner/intermediate level students of Italian such as myself, this book can be very frustrating when it comes to wanting to know what the non-idiomatic parts of the examples mean.
I recommend this book for more advanced learners of Italian because only higher level students will be able to fully appreciate what it being said in this book. Nevertheless, you could learn it parrot fashion if that is the way you prefer to learn.
A useful book regardless.

This is a fine bargain at the price. With the number of common idioms in Italian translated into English and common idioms in English set alongside their Italian equivalents, it is invaluable in expressing yourself, especially if you come from an English-speaking background that is in its own cultural flavor peppered heavily with colloquial idioms and expressions. Best thing since sliced bread!

Parents are living in a time when we cannot afford to forget the value of balancing our lives and the lives of our children with appreciation for prayer. Prayer let's us know that there is a power source we can tap into to make our lives better. Ms. Nettles' book offers parents an opportunity to give children an appreciation for the things around us. The prayers are non-denominational. And, even if a parent is an agnostic the book can still work for the family. It's not far fetched to invision some of the tragic stories we hear today about young children and adults going on killing sprees being prevented by parents taking time to pray with their children. Nettles' book takes life situations and turns them into prayer subjects. This allows a parent and child to converse about everyday subjects and place a higher value on them . What I'm sharing is that this book makes it easier to pray and converse with your children in one important setting.The prayers can then lead into stories you share from your life experience.That's how I make the prayers an event my grandson and 12-year old look forward to. If we are well off or not so well off, this book is a tool to help us guide our children. Every time I see or hear a news bulletin of a tragedy of mindless brutality the value of "Prayers and Meditations For Our Little Angels" is reinforced. The title is a message to our precious young ones. It's their book.

It is so refreshing to know that our children can read, or we can read to them, words of prayer and spiritual guidance, that can help them to know, love, and appreciate the word of God, the Father of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. In a world filled with so little good reading materials for our children, I find that this book a true delight and a blessing. I highly recommend it to all parents, and others, who love children.

As an early childhood educator, I found this book to hold the attention of children ages 3-5 years old. The clear and colorful illustrations blend well with the simple text, as a day in the orchard picking apples is embarked upon by several friends. I especially liked the descriptions of the various types of apples and was able to bring those particular apples to my classroom for hands on exploration. I will use this book for many years to come in my classroom and would recommend it to other early childhood teachers.

There is a lot of information that is crammed into one text. If you are looking to gain basis knowledge for Sports Medicine, Athletic Training in particular, then this is one book to get on your shelf. Good pictures of taping techniques, anatomy, injury basics. Outside of Arnheim, one of the better compilations out there.

Miss Melville and Miss Manners have a lot in common -- they both hold courtesy to be an obligation and propriety to be an art. But only Miss Melville has to decide the appropriate response to a death threat! And where else but in Miss Melville's New York would Mafiosi, Middle Eastern royalty, and our resident artist share a tea at a home for pregnant teens and chat about the problems of the residentially impaired? With wittier-than-usual writing and better-developed characters, "Miss Melville Rides a Tiger" is one of the best in the series.

The title Mosaic, along with the cover illustration, suggested to me that the book would delve into the culture of Istanbul, but this city is only one of the settings. The mosaic consists of a variety of cities, characters, and clues, all little pieces of a larger mystery. Journalist Fran, while living in Istanbul, falls for a mysterious stranger, who is later discovered murdered. Fran sets off on a quest to find his murderers, but becomes enmeshed in a web of characters all connected to a charitable organization which seems to be a cover for terrorist activities. Although the book was entertaining, I found the circumstances quite unbelievable, that Fran would happen to run into all the characters involved in this web of intrigue, in several different cities. The main character Fran calls it "synchronicity", but one needs to let go of the need for plausibility, because this much synchronicity is just not reasonable. The relationships among the characters was also just too inter-connected, and it was a little difficult remembering who was connected to whom. It was a pleasant read, but not overly exciting.

In the third of the Starbridge series we get a closer look at Neville Ayesgarth, who was at loggerheads with Jon Darrow in the second book. Here it is Ayesgarth’s turn to be stripped apart and laid bare by Howatch’s expert scalpel! I have to admit that though I didn’t dislike this book, I didn’t like it as much as others in the series. It began promisingly enough, with Neville falling under the spell of the young flibbertigibbet Dido. Dido – who later becomes famous in the series as a loose cannon - resists his advances until… well, that would be giving things away. I felt though that the second part of the book gets bogged down in the dissection of Neville’s past. I found it not so interesting to read about his background as he tells it to his spiritual director; as such the characters who are so important to Neville - his mother, his father, Uncle Willoughby – never came alive for me and his recounting of them felt rather slow. However, it is still a great book and indispensable to the series - but it should be read in the right order, after its two predecessors. I have started an online discussion and reading group around Susan Howatch’s novels (...).

In the third of the Starbridge series we get a closer look at Neville Ayesgarth, who was at loggerheads with Jon Darrow in the second book. Here it is Ayesgarth's turn to be stripped apart and laid bare by Howatch's expert scalpel! I have to admit that though I didn't dislike this book, I didn't like it as much as others in the series. It began promisingly enough, with Neville falling under the spell of the young flibbertigibbet Dido. Dido ' who later becomes famous in the series as a loose cannon - resists his advances until' well, that would be giving things away. I felt though that the second part of the book gets bogged down in the dissection of Neville's past. I found it not so interesting to read about his background as he tells it to his spiritual director; as such the characters who are so important to Neville - his mother, his father, Uncle Willoughby ' never came alive for me and his recounting of them felt rather slow. However, it is still a great book and indispensable to the series. (...)

For all that the plots of her novels tend to cross the border to melodrama, Susan Howatch's gift for characterisation, and for the integration of superb spiritual insight (into the dialogue, if not the lives of the individuals depicted!) is impeccable. Neville Aysgarth, whose commitment and faith are unquestionable, is an odd but interesting blend of hard sense and the ability to create a personal world of his own, where his natural dedication is lost in the inability to have any real compassion or understanding. Others in his life, though he remains clearly unaware of this and, indeed, capable of believing he has a remarkable and favourable role, are "prizes" which he creates for his own benefit.

The bizarre love match of Neville and Dido will keep anyone with interests in psychology or odd relationships pondering its aspects. However, Susan does not disappoint those used to her excellent spiritual and theological insights. Some of her other "clergy," for all of their failings, remain great men. Neville, by contrast, is one who has genuinely good qualities that show his ever unrecognised potential to be in that category as well, but this can never be achieved. He can see the truth and wisdom in concepts such as Aidan and Jonathan present, or the ideals of his modernist heroes, yet can never get past his inability to accept his own weakness, any need for others beyond their being his prizes, nor his tendency towards deceit in the garb of theological integrity.

With vivid characters and an intriguing, if rather bizarre, plot, even those readers who do not wish to be inspired can be assured they'll never be bored.

I started reading this book coz it sounded interesting, i like time travel books coz they are always fascinating. But this book did not do it for me. i thought Peggy was too much of a contradiction within herself one minute telling Owen he should fight, next minute getting upset when he does stick up for himself, and i thought Owen was a little bit too much, too nice, too trusting, too sweet if i don't like that in a heroine why should i like it in the person who's supposed to the basic hero of the book, it was a simple book, i thought a little too simple it din't particularly have a light feeling to it, instead had a somber feel to it,and instead of leaving me with that fuzzy feeling, i ended up feeling a little sad.

This is a new author and her first novel. It's a time travel where the hero travels forward in time. It is written in the first person (heroine), so if you don't care for that POV, I guess you'd want to skip this. The heroine is 29 year old Peggy Millwright , who is a widow approaching the 2 year anniversary of her husband's death. She was very deeply in love with him and is having a real tough time dealing with her grief. Enter Owen Sinclair, a sailor she finds washed up on the beach. He is 28 and was washed overboard in September of 1853.

I consider this a gentle book. The relationship between the h/h develops slowly and, IMO, is very enjoyable to watch. The problems Owen has to deal with are interesting and dealt with in a sensible way. The heroine's sister can be irritating and I wasn't all that impressed by the flash backs to her life with her husband, but over all, I really enjoyed this book. If you want hot sex, forget it, there isn't any. The sex is at the end of the book and gets a PG rating. But if you want a quieter book, light on the emotional angst, give this one a try. I don't believe you will be disappointed

Yes - I found this book amidst a group of Barbara Delinsky novels and mistook it for one in a hurried trip to the bookstore! Now I'm only disappointed that Delaney doesn't have any other novels to her credit yet! I've always steered clear from time travel books (they seem to breach a level of believability at which I typically draw the line) but this was one of those rare don't-want-to-put-downs for me! A gentle, unhurried, sweet romance - and refreshing! Owen, a lovable, shy and utterly bewildered man from the past is easy to embrace as a character. No macho-man persona here; Owen is...sweet; comfortable yet intriguing. The book is done well and realistically (at least as far as rather unrealistic storylines go!) Yes, a bit too much dwelling on her past with the perfect Peter, but not too wordy for me - a professed lover of detail. Overall, a refreshing departure from the typical romance genre, and a heart-warming gentle romance.

Subtitled, "my encounters with extraordinary people", this book is a treasure trove of tales about some of the most interesting (and to a great extent ordinary) people you'll ever read about and most of them are people you'd never know. Susan Orlean is a regular writer for The New Yorker and is one of their very finest. Her last book, "The Orchid Thief" was at once captivating and bizarre. "The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup," is a compilation of a number of her pieces from the New Yorker in which she details the comings and goings of very ordinary every day people... and manages to make them all seem extraordinary. The best part of Orlean's writing is that she keeps the space intact between herself as the observer and chronicler of these lives and the individuality expressed in each of the life stories these people have. Although the expression goes, "Life is stranger than fiction," I would argue that Susan Orlean demonstrates that "Life is funnier than fiction", too! From the couple who breed show dogs to an "average" ten year old boy, to the female bullfighter (not usually a woman's sport) to the African king driving taxis in New York, everyone who is profiled in this book is in their own way funny, interesting, entertaining, and some, to a tiny extent sad. We meet pre-teen surfer girls and the middle-aged women who were once "The Shaggs". We read about the guy who invented "the Big Chair" (you know that chair in which people are photographed at county fairs?) and a sweet group of southern gospel singers. No one is too bizarre, too ordinary, or too unlikely. Orlean makes it clear that we are surrounded every day by extraordinariness - everyone has a story and many of them have great stories.  I loved this book for exposing the wonders of the human condition.

After reading Susan Orlean's excellent The Orchid Thief last year and having followed some of her recent writing in The New Yorker (particularly a fantastic piece on the hapless New Hampshire girl-rock group from the 1970's, The Shaggs), I was eagerly awaiting this collection of profiles. It not only surpassed my very high expectations for literary quality, it is one of the funniest and most entertaining, lively and moving books I have read in quite awhile. She gets these people down perfectly and is a master of the revealing touch. The opening chapter on a typical 10-year-old American boy is my favorite -- it allows the reader to enter a kid's world very much from his point of view while overlaying a beautifully reported and crafted commentary that manages all at once to be empathetic, witty,ironic and highly informative. The ending of this piece, like the ending to both the introduction and the title piece on the first female matador in Spain which concludes the book, is hauntingly poignant and gets to what Orlean is really about here: showing the extraordinarily captivating nature of what seemingly ordinary people are really like when closely examined in their own subcultures. The intelligence and insight she brings to bear in joyfully sharing with the reader what she has discovered is what makes this book so wonderful.

Susan Orlean writes with more grace, style and wit than anyone in the magazine world today. These well-reported, beautifully crafted profiles of both known and unknown characters show her at the top of her form. Orlean has a knack for being at the right place at the right time to capture a telling detail or quote and, contrary to the wrongheaded and ignorant comments in a few of the customer reviews here, she is, if anything, self-effacing and unobtrusive as she brings the reader deeply into the lives of her subjects. Literary journalism as an art form necessarily includes the author's voice and point of view -- these are what make it less artificial and far more interesting than standard "objective" reporting. The rave reviews for this book in the New York Times and other publications are well justified.