This book really tells a lot about Saturn and its relationships with the rest to astronomy. Saturn, being my favorite celestial body/planet, is so interesting to read about. Also, this book is fairly new, so it has good information. I learned many new things about Saturn from this book and I hope you will too.

This book is a wonderful read for those of us who are a bit short in height, but big in heart. Highly recommended. I'm Rob D.

For young kids (Grades 2-4) who wnat to know what is up with the green decorations, green clothes, and green food being served on March 17th each year, Elaine Landau explains about St. Patrick's day for the Finding Out About Holidays series. We learn all about the story of Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland (who was not Irish and not named Patrick), along with the traditions behind the parades, four-leaf clovers, and legends about magical pots of gold at the end of the rainbow put there and jealously guarded by the wee folk. Kids will learn not only why St. Patrick's day is important to the Irish people but how everybody can be Irish for one day a year just by wearing a wee bit o' the green. "St. Patrick's Day: Parades, Shamrocks, and Leprechauns" is illustrated with full-color pictures and has a craft project for making a Leprechaun's Pot of Gold. This book is a nice little combination of history and tradition that will hopefully help kids make the connection between the two.

The Babylonians was a big improvement over the other two books written by Elaine Landau in this series, Cradles of Civilization. The other books are The Sumerians and The Assyrians. There was much more detail and the work flowed better in The Babylonians. It kept the children's attention better.

There are 14 illustrations including one map, photos of artifacts, photos of present day sites related to the Babylonians, and several colored drawings. Considering this is written for 9-12 year olds, there are not many illustrations.

There is other information about their way of life that is interesting. Topics covered include Hammurabi and his rule plus his legal code, Kassite rule, the Elamite and Assyrian plundering of Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar II's rise to power (spelled Nebuchadrezzar II in the book?).

The type is slightly larger with large space between lines and wide margins. It is easy on the eyes for children to read.

The text on the first five pages in the three Landau books is virtually the same. The only major difference is the map is changed for whichever topic--Sumerians, Assyrians, or Babylonians--is being covered. The map is well done, however, not all locations are shown. While the Kassites and Elamites are discussed, their place of origin is not shown on the map. Neither are the Zagros Mountains labeled.

Paging starts on page 11, text through page 50, timeline text of Important Dates pp. 51-52 (not facing pages), Notes p. 53 (bibliography?), Glossary pp. 55-56 (no pronunciation information though), Further Reading p. 57, and Index pp. 59-61 (nice touch). So for a 64-page book there is only 39 pp. of text, and the format is smaller than usual, too.

This book, with fewer pages, actually seemed more coherent than the other two books in the series. Because the cultures do interact with each other, I think it might have been better to publish a combined text.

Overall, this book was much better written. This isn't just my opinion either--my 9 and 11 yr olds said the same thing when I asked their opinion of all three books. I still would vote for combining some of The Assyrians and The Sumerians into the main text of this book!

"Death Everyone's Heritage" is a very controversial book where the author discuss many interesting point related to death. The author started his book with a simple question what is death? We could try to define absolute death technically as the end of all cell activity. But such definition of total body death would be impractical. If it... In this book the author talk about death in many aspects. First, the author discusses the medical life-support where machine and medication can keep the patient with hopelessly damaged brain for long periods of time with respirators that keep their hearts and lungs pumping, sometimes autopsies have revealed that the patients' brain had even liquefied. The author question is if is fine for the patient being kept alive or prolong the process of his death - even hide the fact that the patient is already dead. The crucial question is when a person is considered medically and legally dead? The next idea addressed by the author in this book is euthanasia another very controversial subject. When illustrating he points the author give to us, some real history. Family member submit their loved to euthanasia. In most of the case the patient's family take this decision when the patient is terminally ill, is in extreme pain or in a vegetative state that mean surviving only because they are plugged to life-sustaining equipment. Although euthanasia is technically against the law, many people do not view it as a crime. This may account for the large number of people brought to trial for mercy killing who are acquitted. The next point the author discuss is when the individual is facing the death and what a dying person experiences during the process of dying. According to the author they will usually feel a mixture of fear, sorrow, anger, despair, resentment, and resignation. And the normal pattern of adjustment to dying involves several phases: a period of denial, a time of anger and Rage and then a time of final acceptance. Very well and mention many examples and describe many case about terminally ill patient. How the family behavior and how they fell, the cost of extensive care, how the patients deal with their emotion and anxiety, and how the patient's family cope with losing a loved on. Suicide is another topic where the author again bring to us many interesting cases and talk about suicide in different stage of life, circumstance, and why people have committed suicide. Funeral and cemetery, in those topic the author talked about he custom and style, funeral transaction, arrangements, funeral details, cemetery, land's price. "Death Everyone's Heritage", as mentioned at the beginning, is a very controversial book because of its contents, and the way the author support each topic using for each one many resource such as statistics, testimonies and research. In certain topics we can find special request form, as an example of living will. The organization of the book was pretty well organized and illustrated showing that the author as well prepared in the subject. In any moment the book became boring and tiresome. It was very easy to read and interesting because the subject is of vital interest to us death is unavoidable eventually for everyone. There are no biases in the author positioning, he describes the topics using examples and let the reader gets his/her own conclusion. This book is not considered a scientific book because the topic is related to the real life and part of out day by day. It is rare to find an individual of any age who has not been touched by death in some way.

This book was very informative yet not detailed far enogh to get all the info yet it is very good and very true

As an adult reading this book I was disturbed by the subject matter-- but I think maybe children would be less upset by the stories of air plane crashes and disasters than I was. The book is somewhat sensationalized. It tells stories about individual victims and survivors of air crashes and then also includes some scientific explanations about why the crashes occured. Stories about the Hindenburg, the Christmas Crash of 1960, United Airlines Flight 232, and TWA Flight 800 are included.

Landau does a good job of covering the basics of blindness, but because this is a book for young people, I had hoped she would address the types of questions they have about what it's like to be blind. She did not.It's missing the personal stuff that makes a topic like this meaningful to kids.

The introduction is well written and gives a good overview and history of interracial dating. I wonder why the author chose the people she interviewed; few of them them seemed to have had interracial dating experiences themselves. I was looking for more information about how couples adjust and make successful marriages despite racial differences.