This book has been one of my favorites in the Hardy BoysCasefiles series. I have the about 150 Hardy's books and this is thebest. The action is amazing and you never know who is behind all the horrible things when Frank and Joe go on a vacation to Callie's grumpy great uncle's maple syrup farm. Amazing action, and truly a great book. A must have for any and ALL Hardy Boys fans.

In Like Pure Gold Anne Breneman has done it again. Unlike so many children's books which have little or no moral content and which amount to so much mindless fluff, Breneman's books reflect a respect for children as sentient beings who have minds to be sharpened and souls to be nurtured. Her Violet and the Garden (1996) is a parable about the advantages to be enjoyed living in an ethnically diverse society, while her Baha'i Alphabet Book (1997) attaches positive images and moral values to each letter of the alphabet.

The illustrations of these books are at once colorful, reverent, and profoundly thought provoking. They reflect Breneman's informed concern for detail and her close, solicitous collaboration with her illustrators. Illustrator Barbara Casterline, in A Violet and the Garden and A Baha'i Alphabet Book, teaches children who are just learning to read what it looks like to care about and to treat others well. Without words Gregory Newson transports us to each setting in Like Pure Gold and gives us a front row seat from which to watch the action or get to know the real-life characters.

The illustrations of all the books contain much of interest to both children and adults and are lessons in themselves. They reflect the educational and spiritual interests of the author and illustrators. Anne Breneman chairs the Social Science Department at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, while Barbara Casterline is an American teaching English in Japan. Both are members of the Baha'i faith. Gregory Newson has recently returned to his passions of painting and illustrating after a twenty-year career in corporate advertising.

The current book, about Louis Gregory, an African American who became a Baha'i and a leader in the faith, promotes such virtues as forgiveness, discipline, sacrifice, and humility and celebrates the triumph that forbearance and love can gain over divisiveness. The unity among the races which Breneman and Baha'is in general advocate will elude us, I'm afraid, until the dispossessed harness their resources and use them creatively to take on a great deal more responsibility for ensuring their own well-being. Until such time as African Americans own viable industries and white men are taking African American wives at a rate approaching that at which African American men have traditionally been taking white wives, the admonition to unite is premature.

The other cultural and spiritual lessons in Like Pure Gold are really worth reading about and, as stated above, rare in children's books. This book is a nugget you will want to order for the children you know.

This new book from Anne Geddess is absolutely stunning. Anne strays from her "cutesy baby" formula and the result is truly beautiful artwork. PURE features both color and black & white photographs of the different stages of pregnancy and motherhood - from the first moments in the womb to photos of the tiniest newborns. PURE perfectly captures the natural essence of the creation of life. Beautiful!

WOW. I liked the "babies-in-flowerpots" Anne Geddes, so I picked up her new book Pure. It's stunning. The babies and the women are just breathtaking. This book seems to be a departure from her previous stuff. For one thing, besides babies, it also explores and celebrates pregnancy. (Anne Geddes even makes stretch marks look beautiful--one photo of a very pregnant tummy is taken from an angle that shows the pattern of the woman's stretch marks like the markings on a tiger or the stripes on a watermelon, or the whorl of hair on Geddes's birds-eye-view photos of the tops of babies' heads.) My favorites are the photos where images of babies are superimposed on images of women's bodies, showing how they fit inside. There are even a couple photos showing babies juxtaposed against images of pelvic bones and spinal columns. It's really illuminating. But mostly it's just beautiful.

I confess I was expecting more darling babies in flower pots--after all, Anne Geddes has built her name with "cute" baby photography.

PURE, however, is totally different, more powerful, and GREAT. Instead of photographing babies in a cute but posed way (baby as pumpkin, baby as flower, etc.), these photographs are all about photograping babies as BABIES. Some photos look as though they were taken in the womb (an illusion created with lighting and background). Others are delicate photos of the itsiest newborns. I love the photos with a man's strong hands and a delicate baby's head..it's a contrast of strength and vulnerability.

I saw her on 20/20 and they showed how some of these photographs were done. Unbelievable!

Check this one out.