This is an 11 yr old reader.I read this book and it caught my attention after the first chapter.I likes it so much I finished is less then a week.I must say out of all of the mystery books I have read this one is the best.I mean once u start readin it is to hard to put back down!

I really liked this book because it was a mystery novel and those are my favorite! I also felt so much suspense all the way from beginning to end it was like the coolest book! The novel was a fiction one and I really like those because they tell a little bit of truth and the rest is mostly make bileve. The best part in this book was when the boy and his friends went inside the broken down, old restaurant and went to look around. They finally got the guts to go upstairs to see inside the bedrooms and then found the body! That was the most suspenseful part and my favorite. The two story elements that were most vivid to me were the scenery and the plot. Scenery was one because it told a lot of detail where they were and what they were doing, it got a really good mental picture in my head. The plot was also very specific in that it gave me great detail on the steps on who did it (the person who broke in) and what happend to him.

This is one of my favorite mystery books. Right away I found it difficult to put down the book. The plot was the most exciting and grabbed my attention. It kept me thinking trying to solve the mystery even when I was not reading the story. I was interested and involved throughout the book. It was very descriptive so that I could picture everything. I plan on reading more stories written by James Howe.

This book is mostly about zoo and problems that occur in there. The bool is called Morgan's Zoo because Morgan is name of the man who owns the zoo. he also had two friends of his and their names were Alisson and Andrew and they helped Morgan to take care of animals and all the zoo. the zoo was called Chelsea Park Zoo and Morgans family were his animals and he treated them all as if they were his children, calling each by name. In the morning Morgan was walking around and looking how animals doing, but this morning he went around and didn't say nothing and the animals knew something was terribly wrong. Williame the pigeon was the first to hear the news and the news were the zoo is about to close and Clarence the chimp would be the first to go. Morgan was heartbroken so were the animals, but Alisson and Andrew had some plans to save the zoo and animals had some plans of there own. It seemed that nothing could stop from not closing the zoo, but something should work because closing zoo was most imppossible thing of all. So it was day before closing and some man came up to Morgan while he was walking around and said that they were closing the zoo and they will start taking parts apart today. While they were talking one of the man dropped the diament and chipm saw it and when they went on chimp picked it up and showed to the Morgan.Morgan saw the diamemts and he knew that those man were robbors and in the news he herd about them. Morgan knew that the zoo is being broken by those man.The closing day was today and Morgan called cops. When cops came they didn't find any man there. Sone Nan Potter the boss came to the zoo znd gave speech about zoo and to not close the zoo and everyone was with him. MOrgan was happy so were the kids that the zoo is not closing. Those man the robbers were found later in the trees souranded by lions and tigars. For many families zoo was unthinkkable to close as a summer without lemonade. Everyday there were more and more people coming to the zoo and day after day and all summer.

Morgan's Zoo is a brillant story about animals that try to help Morgan (the zookepper) save the Chelsea Park zoo from being torn down.James Howe wrote using lots of details. I really admire this because in school I have always learned to be very vivid.For example, he said, Mayor Thayer's secretary informed him that the Mayor was out.I had a brillant time reading this book,I recomend you to read it.

It's the first day of school, Nick Kramer walked up on the school grounds and sees his worst enemy, Augie. Nick walks up to Augie. They both get ready to give each other a putdown, when someone caught their attention, the new girl, Jennifer. Augie made a bet with Nick that Jennifer would ask him to the vice-versa dance and not Nick. The person, who Jennifer doesn't ask, has to dance around on the basketball court at half time and wear a tutu. Nick finds out Jennifer is in a class called Childcare 101. So Nick signs up for it too. Little did he know he would have to really babysit for the class. I thought this book was good. It kept me reading. I would recommend it to anyone who likes to babysit and do exciting things. Who will Jennifer ask to the vice-versa dance? Check out the exciting book by James Howe called "The New Nick Kramer, or My Life as a Babysitter" to find out.

The genre of this book is fiction.
I think this book is directed towards 10-12 year olds, because it takes place in an upper school, but it isn't that hard to read.
James Howe likes to write about many important characters that change the main character's life. He also gives a lot of good detail when he describes the characters feelings and settings. He also gives you a clear picture of settings and where the character is in his or her life.
This is the plot: Nick Kramer makes a bet with the grade bully, Mitch Buckley. The first one of them to get asked to the Visa-Versa dance by the most popular girl in school, Jennifer Edwards, wins! The loser? He has to dance in front of the whole school, alone and wearing a tutu!
Nick tries to change himself so Jennifer would notice him, by taking a babysitting class, changing his 'look' and becoming a 'sensitive' guy. Will this new act change the way Jennifer looks at Nick? In this book I learned that even if something looks great outside it might not be great inside.

These authors are well-established as the premier non-fiction authors of "Doctor Who". Here, we are presented with another familiar book in a familiar format, which works without being outstanding.

The pentultimate volume in the Doctor Who Handbook series contains exhaustive detail about all of the adventures of the Doctor as portrayed by Patrick Troughton. Since so many of this era's episodes are lost, the detailed summaries are invaluable to modern day lovers of sixties' Doctor Who. As with previous Handbooks behind the scenes and production information is presented along with the often diverse opinions of the three authors on each of the stories as televised.

The second Doctor handbook is invaluable to Dr. Who fans. It continues with the way the other volumes in the Dr. Who handbooks have always been. But this one is ever more so different than the others. It's production details of how the second Doctor was concieved is very interesting, because such a thing had never been done before on changing the lead actor in a TV series with a completely different actor, but yet as the same character (with a new persona than the previous Doctor), was completely unheard of. A huge risk at the time for the BBC, unsure if the regular viewers of the show would accept this change. Reading about this is very unique to know. The usual handbook format is here, and this book's story production focus is on the sixth season story "The Mind Robber" (1968).

The one aspect that is very much priceless is the episode story summaries. These are very good, as I could almost imagine that they were on TV again. Also, the fact that almost all of the Patrick Troughton era of Dr. Who episodes was virtually wiped out from the BBC archives, makes these story summaries ever more so good to read about.

Another great book in the Dr. Who handbook series. The author trio of David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, and Stephen James Walker continue with their reputation as the definitive research team on Doctor Who's history. This was the sixth volume in the series, published in 1997.

Henry James's, "The Bostonians," is a simple, but increasingly entertaining love story set in the years soon after the end of the Civil War. Basil Ransom, a true Southern gentleman from Mississippi, has moved North (specifically, to New York City) to try and start a career away from the impoverished South of the Reconstruction days. Shortly after moving North, he pays a visit, at her behest, to the Boston house of his distant cousin, Olive Chancellor. Olive, a stalwart in the women's rights movement of the time, invites Basil to her home in order to offer help and assistance to her Southern cousin, but she also wishes to save him from the flawed ways he certainly must have taken on growing up in the South. Her self-seeking, ulterior motives fail miserably, of course.

It is through Olive that Basil Ransom meets Verena Tarrant, the young woman who has left her lower middle-class family to move in with and be molded by Olive. Verena has a tremendous speaking ability which caught Olive's (and the other women's (womyn's?) movement leaders') attention. But ultimately, Verena also catches Basil's attention... not for her feminist diatribes, but for her beauty and the passion of her speeches. Basil is instantly struck by Verena, and from this point onward the plot focuses as Basil attempts to seek out his love interest who is highly guarded by Olive, Verena's parents, and several others.

The dialogue between Olive and her friends with Basil Ransom, is a constant back and forth that is civil on the surface, but boiling with hostility underneath the social niceties. While Basil is always cool and focused as he tracks the object of his love, Olive Chancellor only becomes more paranoid as she sees that she is gradually losing her young charge... to a Southern Neanderthal. "The Bostonians" meanders through the first couple hundred pages with witty dialogue between the alien Basil and his new peers, but as his focus intensifies, so does the plot. James draws all this circling and stalking into a final, climactic scene that many will be cheering, but one that many modern-day feminists and their sympathizers will be cursing.

Though James is certainly not known for his sense of humor, he displays a keen sense of satire in this novel. The two senses are not identical--many readers expect satire to make them laugh out loud, and those readers will be disappointed in this book. James' satire is more likely to make readers feel uncomfortable. He repeatedly mocks the two main characters and their struggle to control a young woman who hardly seems worth the effort that these two egoists put into her pursuit. James allows Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom (whose names evoke the satiricomic tradition in which he is writing) to take themselves seriously while allowing the readers to see them as stereotypes. While satire depends on such stereotypes, James' fiction typically delves into the psychological. At times, he is able to keep this balance, but often the tension is too great and the characters seem to fall flat. Verena Tarrant--the object of Olive and Basil's affection--is virtually absent psychologically (as others have noted), but her lack of character is built into the novel. She begins as her father's possession, and the novel hinges on whether Olive or Basil get to own her next. While the novel is certainly not without faults, it is interesting to watch a novelist as self-conscious as James attempt to write a novel of this type. While he wasn't destined to become a comic genius, this novel is a step toward the psychological, satirical and comic success he was to have in a novel such as "The Ambassadors."

When he says the "Bostonians" he means "the lesbians." I was pretty interested in the story of a Boston marriage, but it got increasingly mean-spirited toward the end, when the dashing right-wing Mississippian convinces the young woman to leave the older one and a full suffrage lecture-hall and run away with him-- she finds it seductive to be told she must have no will of her own.

I went looking for criticism of this book and found little in Gale, but two essays from 1990s by Wendy Lesser and Alison Lurie. Lesser argues against the feminist line that the book is a misogynist polemic; she responds that Olive (the lesbian) and Basil (the Mississippian) are both complex characters, sometimes weak, sometimes strong and sympathetic. (She quotes Hardwick that James is our best female novelist because his women are powerful and interesting.) Lurie looks at the novel as more about politics than gender: James came home from Europe and found he hated America; showed the South re-conquering the North in Basil's conquest of Verena.

I disagree with Lesser: Basil is shown as naive and occasionally weak but dashing and full-hearted -- I'm sure he is an idealized self-portrait of James. Olive is honest and principled but so bleak and unhappy that her love is purely destructive. Her strength lies less in her principles (Mrs. Birdseye after all is equally principled but utterly weak) than in her vaulting ambition. She reminds me of Dixon's Thaddeus Stevens in The Klansman -- passionate, scheming, perversely principled, but essentially evil. Both come from Milton's Satan, seen as a Yankee.

Which brings me to Lurie's version. I agree with her that the novel is about politics, but disagree that he was writing against America -- I think he was just writing against Boston. The hostility the novel met at the time stemmed from his nasty portrait of the old transcendalist Elizabeth Peabody (his minor character Mrs. Birdseye); this is a less irrelevant reaction than critics portray it, since she's a stand-in for everything he despises about his own Boston roots, a hatred which drives the novel. An equally weak but even more despicable character is Verena's father, a mystical fraud whose nomadic career has certain resemblances to James's father's -- resemblances strengthened if Verena is modeled on Alice James. The Boston reform tradition is alternately weak-minded and hard-edged, and basically loveless -- a spirit of drafty wet lecturehalls. Where Basil is hot-blooded -- he feels about Mississippi a tragic love he can't bear to speak of in conversation -- Olive's New England feeling is only cold philosophy.

How real is the political alternative which Basil represents? We see much less of him than of Olive; James knew Boston but not Mississippi. But I think James like some of his peers yearned for a certain reactionary romanticism which northern intellectuals associated with the South -- a Burkean spirit of cavaliers and kings. (Basil's name means "king," and his emerging career is writing political essays said to be hundreds of years out of date.) Basil's defeat of Olive to marry Verena -- he imagines his own seizure of her from the podium of Fanuiel Hall as a political assassination, with shades of John Wilkes Booth -- is clearly a re-conquest of the North by the old South. What he offers for an American future is less Enlightenment, more Middle Ages -- less rights, more responsiblities -- less cold charity, more warm friendship.

James/ Basil reminds me of Henry Adams in the "Education." On the one hand, Adams saw the warm (mildly homoerotic) friendship of exceptional men (modeled on himself and John Hay) as a strategy for national progress. On the other, Adams developed a similarly St. Gaudensian aesthetic of the medieval -- the cathedral against the dynamo. This was the first, aesteticist reaction of the northern elite to the soullessness of postbellum America, which we forget because it was replaced by Teddy Roosevelt's more muscular alternative.

This book was decent in my opinion. I wouldn't recommend it to younger ages to read. I didn't like the face that the writer skipped around characters, although the book was call "The Watcher" it wasn't just based on one person, it hardly even talked about her or also known as the watcher, it mostly talked about another character in the book called Evan. Other than that I liked the fact that the author wrote it so that it seemed real, he used real life innocents that could really accrue. This book made you feel like you were reading something that really happened even thought it was fiction. I definitely recommend this book to the older readers because of the language used in it.

This book is one of the best books I've ever read written by James Howe. The author describes the characters in great detail. It tells how you can't judge a person by their appearance.It's like the saying you can't judge a book by its cover. The author explains how the watcher judges Evan and Callie's family saying that they have a perfect family, but really the parents were maybe going to get a divorce. The author also explained how the watcher was depressed and was abused. This book was one of my favorites and I recomend it.

This book was one of the best books I have ever read. It helped me and others to understand that everything in life is not what it appears to be. In this book, for instance, Evan and Callie's family looked like a perfect family, but Jeff and Karen were thinking about getting a divorce. The Watcher also looked like a pretty normal girl , but at her father abused her at home. This book is a very descriptive book. James Howe makes it a lot easier to understand the characters life from their point of view. The way he described the Watcher showed her lack of self-esstem and how lonely she was. I hope that everyone that reads this book will enjoy it as much has I did.

I read the story "Summer of Love" by Annette Curtis Klause. I thought it was a really good short story. I like this story because it is funny and I think vampires are cool because they are wicked. I thought is was sad because Simon was alone until he meets a cat. Then when the cat died he was alone again.:( Other kids in my class think the story is sad, but they liked it too. :(

This book is so moving, especially if you are somone who has just lost someone you love, like a parent or grandparent or even a pet.In a way the book lets you know that it happens to everyone and it shows it from several differnt points of view. which lets you see how other people deal with some of the same losses teens go through today. I loved this book,I hope more people enjoy this as much as i did.

This book makes for a good read. it has theraupitc ways of dealing with death, loss, and ways of finding hope.

A really interesting book with some great information. The main problem is the writers begin to think that their 'opinion' of the show really matters. The factual stuff is great but when their opinion of some of the seasons begins to cloud the judgement of some of these facts it becomes a problem- example being their description of why some seasons rated beter than others. Despite this it is better than a lot of DW related stuff. Long live the 5th Doctor!

This is a wonderful book which is complete with just about everything you could ask about Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor. The reason it got 4 stars instead of 5? No photos. To be truly complete it needed photos of the Doctor himself and also of his companions.

Nevertheless, this is a fantastic book which is well worth buying if you can get your hands on one. Add it to your collection.

When the hugely popular Tom Baker announced that he was leaving the role and show "Doctor Who", the producers of that show knew that they had a big problem. Both Baker's long tenure and strong personality had resulted in most fans thinking of him as the only Doctor, rather than the 4th. The producers, taking a rather risky move, decided to cast an actor that was the exact opposite of Baker's interpretation. Years later, many are still debating whether or not this was a good idea.

The "Handbook" series provide a detailed behind the scenes view of the Doctor Who show, including many insights into the development of the characters, and the difficulties faced. My favorite section is the scene by scene disectiion of an episode by the show's creative team.

A must for the serious Who fan.

Little spoiled Mary Lennox is orphaned in India and sent to live with a distant relative. Alone and scared she has to learn the English way of life. Martha her maid teaches her how to dress herself, and gives her a jump rope opening up a whole new world to Mary. The gardens of the 100 room mansion. Here she meets the head gardener and learns of the Secret Garden. Mary also finds that there are many other secrets in this house, her hunchback caretaker that seems so sad, and the crying at night.

The setting of Yorkshire England and the rich cast of characters including the maid Martha, Dicken, Martha's brother, and many others make this a wonderful book for all ages. I have read the secret garden hundreds of times and each time I get something new out of the book. It's a true classic.

This has to be one of my all time favorite Hallmark movies. I have seen other movie versions of "The Secret Garden," all of which seem much darker. I have to say, Hallmark has made the most enjoyable version of "The Secret Garden" to date. the childeren in this movie are wonderful.

Child characters: "Mary Lennox," spoiled, lonley, sad child. Taken from her home to live with a guardian in England after her parents death. "Dickon", Mesterious boy who communes with nature. "Colin," son of Mary's guardian, is hidden from society.

In the movie Mray sets out to find and unlock the secrets to the mesterious garden, making friends along the way.

The scenery in this movie is breath taking at times. One of Hallmarks best! A must have for any Hallmark Hall of Fame fan. Good to have in any movie collection!

Little spoiled Mary Lennox is orphaned in India and sent to live with a distant relative. Alone and scared she has to learn the English way of life. Martha her maid teaches her how to dress herself, and gives her a jump rope opening up a whole new world to Mary. The gardens of the 100 room mansion. Here she meets the head gardener and learns of the Secret Garden. Mary also finds that there are many other secrets in this house, her hunchback caretaker that seems so sad, and the crying at night.

The setting of Yorkshire England and the rich cast of characters including the maid Martha, Dicken, Martha's brother, and many others make this a wonderful book for all ages. I have read the secret garden hundreds of times and each time I get something new out of the book. It's a true classic.

This was a great Because it shows that avery one is good at something. Becuase Horace can sing high notes and Morris can sing low notes. But there friend Dolores just sings notes that no one had ever heard before. So he gets cut from the chorus because and just cant sing at all. so he writes a letter to teachers. Saying he loves to sing. Then the teacher reades it and its a peom so he lets Dolores sing it in the concert.

Horace and Morris are two talented singers. Dolores decides to for the three of them to join the school chorus. Now, the only problem is, is that Dolores can't really sing that well. Horace sings the high notes, Morris sings the low notes, and Dolores just sings off key.
After trying out in front of Moustro Provolone, Horace and Morris make the "team", but Dolores gets cut. Dolores starts feeling sad for herself, but pulls through and thinks up a way to get into the chorus. After writing a letter to Moustro Provolone, he realizes her true talent, and invites her to help him.

A nice rhymed lesson that there is a place for everyone in a chorus, after the cheesy Moustro gets convinced. Horace and Morris sing well, Boris and Chloris listen fine, but Dolores, well Dolores is another story.