I am currently studying Nursing Informatics in a Master's Certification Course. I loved this book! It was user friendly and covered a variety of topics. It was very easy to read and understand. Since this is a new specialty in Nursing, most of us are starting at ground zero. This is a great place to start!

"Tanya and Emily in a Dance for Two" is a wonderful book that introduces children to the ballet, but also to the joys of making a new friend. Tanya is an unpolished, wiggly dancer, while Emily is a graceful, agile ballerina who seems to perform moves effortlessly. The one thing they share in common: both practice alone during ballet class instead of with the other girls. One day after practice, they walk the same way past the zoo. Immediately, Tanya imitates the "dance" of an ostrich and it is not long before they begin dancing the penguin, the giraffe, the leopard and other animals. They start practicing together, with Emily helping Tanya with her moves. Their teacher notices how close they have become and puts them together for a "pas de deux" in the winter recital. Patrica Lee Gauch's text is charming and Satomi Ichikawa simply yet beautifully captures the mood of the story as well as the different ballet steps and "dances". A highly recommended book for young girls.

This book is beautiful. It uses wonderful dance terminology and teaches good life lessons...for example: like yourself so others can like you too. As a treasury, it leaves me wanting, because there are only 3 of the Tanya books included. (And they aren't the best Tanya books.) But it is still lovely and bound beautifully. The young dancer in your life will enjoy reading them with you.

Read this to your children in the car as you drive into Gettysburg. It is a great intro to the battle. I read it to 7, 9 and 10 year olds and the adults enjoyed it, too. It's about the experience of an adolescent girl who leaves her home for the day to help babysit some neighbor children and gets inadvertently caught behind battle lines in the famous battle at Gettysburg.

Incidents, places and people in this short book (read it in 20 minutes) are easily found in the actual Gettysburg area - making the story come alive and giving the kids concrete concepts to "hang" the sights on: For example, the main character flees to the Weikert farm for safety - there is a Weikert tombstone in the cemetary just opposite the Visitor's Center; she meets a General Weed, and his photo is prominent on the Park Service's explanation at the auto pull-off for Big Round Top; she lives in a red house with two linden trees in the yard, and many Civil War era houses can be found in town, several with linden trees, and so on.

The prose is very well constructed, exceptionally so for a children's book - and it reads almost like poetry. It looks like a simple little children's chapter book, but it really is a treasure.

I purchased the book because I was interested in raising chickens and building a chicken tractor. The technical aspects of building the chicken tractor are not clearly outlined, but after many re-readings I was able to construct one. The authors also mention nesting boxes and pop door on the chicken tractor but show no pictures or diagrams. Much of the information was repetitive in spots, and I thought that many of the cartoons were in bad taste.

I will add my voice to the other reviewers because there seems to be a wide swing in opinion and maybe my thoughts will help others to decide whether or not to get this book. First of all, I know absolutely nothing about chicken-raising...starting from "scratch", as it were. I think the most serious flaw in "Chicken Tractor" is that the author barely mentions how to set up for laying hens and concentrates mainly on raising broilers and fryers; yet he always refers to slaughtering the chickens as "processing", a euphemism that is confusing at best. He refers to "processing plants", i.e. places that you take your live chickens and return to pick up "dressed", frozen chickens, but says that using this method is costly. He mentions home-slaughtering with the briefest of references to machines with horrifying names like "killing cone, thermostatically-controlled scalding vat and table-top plucking machine", but only says the machines are expensive and then leaves the reader totally in the dark (perhaps mercifully). I agree with the other reviewers that the author rambles and repeats himself endlessly, although when I realized that he would present the same information twice in a row, I just skipped the second go-round. I also agree that the cartoons are not very helpful in figuring out how you actually go about building the items needed. His instructions on building the chicken tractor could be followed, with some difficulty. But anyone trying to figure out how to build the perches and egg-laying boxes would have an almost impossible time trying to find that in this book. Also, he does a lot of cost calculations that date the book and are only minimally helpful. You will have no idea how to raise chicks or how to determine which rooster will be less noisy from reading this book. I gleaned only a fuzzy idea of how to protect my flock from predators or dogs.

The book's strengths lie in the explanation (albeit stated MANY times over) of the bio-ecological circle (he calls it "stacking) a small farmer strives for between the chicken manure enriching the soil, the soil producing more vegetables, scraps of which in turn feed the chickens, and so on. Another strength of the book is the list of suppliers and resources. The list of chicken breeds is quite long, but would have benefitted by adding more information about each variety. Bottomline, I think the book has some worthwhile information, but I definitely agree with the other reviewers who say that you will need other books in order to understand how to optimally raise chickens on a small farm. It might be better to start with another book.

amrdmr is worried about the wrong things. We don't raise chickens for pets. Why read this book if you have no plans to butcher you chickens some day. There aren't many old chicken homes.

The purpose of this book was to introduce you to the benefits of pastured poultry and give you a host of ideas. True, it didn't get specific enough when I wanted to implement one of the ideas. But then, the book would have been the size of an encyclopedia.

It was a great introduction book. There are very few that do as good a job.

This book which claims to be based on fact is just plain silly. It is melodrama and very bad romance novel at best. The characters are shallow. The story itself is self-serving with the author-hero bringing things to a predictable conclusion.

"Children of the Crystal Vision" is more than powerful fiction. It is based on a chilling, suspenseful true story. That is why it's so compelling. It really happened. Father Lee Kaylor, the book's author, was asked to help a teenager get out of a demonic cult. He had to fight the bad guys---the real bad guys. He didn't know how he'd find the strength to fight the unworldly evil tht seeps into our world. He didn't know that the bad guys in this scenario could muster up all the evil from all time.

Father Kaylor writes beautifully about the philosophic counterpoint of good and evil. "...as mankind had abandoned God, that wall of light and love had begun to crumble. The innocence of the young was among the first casualties. Salvation was God's work. But He did give human beings a role to play in the great conflict between good and evil. The good that people strove for and the evil that they did made a difference in time and eternity."

The vivid poetic descriptions hold the reader spellbound. The research into rituals is fascinating. The storytellng makes the reader want to know what's around the corner, however frightening. Faith. Hope. Love. It comes down to these three. Will the demonic Beast strike again? Will the Power be there to fight the evil? Faith. Hope. Love. It does come down to these three.

Based on a true story, this is a highly suspenseful and fast-moving story about Father Mark Ross's extraordinary experiences on the dark side of Carmel, CA. "Children of the Crystal Vision" is a thought-provoking account of the modern-day preoccupation with Satanism and witchcraft. "Harmless"experimentation with Oiji Boards and other fads brought to town by a New Age bookstore, leads teenagers into witches' covens and finally brings them face-to-face with Satanic possession. The book includes powerful descriptions of demonic rituals creeping into a world that refuses to believe in the reality of evil. It includes poetic descriptions of nature--from the beauty of sunsets and flowered landscapes to the ominous spectacles of thundering waves and wildfires. It includes profound insights into contemplative prayer and the constant contest between good and evil, where the victory is never decisive. Recommended reading for teenagers who think the dark arts are their ticket to popularity, power and love, and parents who want to believe that their kids are just "going through a phase".

I did not like the message implied in this book ...that it is ok for a small child (or indeed anyone in a family) to say "I don't like this, so I'll simply stop participating in family stuff - count me out". People in a family should work together to resolve their issues, not drop in or out as they feel like it. I should think that a small child being read this book would feel that Kristina's Mom did not love her very much.

Christina Katerina books are about a child who realizes the power she has over her own life and the consequences of weilding that power. All this is done in a gentle and low stress environment. Christina's mother let her realize the down side of being "on her own" while still being safe. She left the door open for Christina to re-enter the family and Christina finally learned that family is good too. Her mother did not desert her, she simply let the child find her own way back.

Satomi Ichikawa's illustrations are what I like best about "Presenting Tanya the Ugly Duckling." She uses strong but muted colors and realistic people, with very little extraneous detail in the pictures. The drawings really capture Tanya's metamorphosis from the shy, insecure girl who is puzzled to have been chosen to dance the lead role in "The Ugly Duckling" to the joyous, confident dancer she becomes during the dress rehearsal. In the beginning of the book, Tanya is drawn in awkward, frightened poses, but she is able to open up and dance freely by the end of the book. I think the illustrator just does a very nice job of visually presenting the central character.

How many times do we ask a child to read a book and to put himself or herself into the main character's shoes? This book allows the young reader to really step into Tanya's toe-shoes, the way I rememeber feeling like I was in Ellen Tebbitts's dance class when I was in the fifth grade. (Remember that book? It was great! It's a chapter-book and I'd recommend it for kids who read on a grade-level higher than those who would find "Presenting Tanya. . ." appropriate.)

As for the written narrative, "Presenting Tanya the Ugly Duckling" is a nice change of pace for a fairy tale. Like me, you probably remember the standard tale as always being told from the point of view of the duckling. In this book, a little girl is the duckling, and it makes it even easier for a young reader to identify with the feelings of the protagonist. All readers will be intrigued by Gauch's use of the French terms for the ballet steps danced by Tanya and her fellow dancers, just as my generation was intrigued by the ballet positions described and illustrated in "Ellen Tebbitts." Any young dancer would enjoy this modern rendition of "The Ugly Duckling."

As I read this book I had to laugh a lot! Actually I bought this book for my boyfriend who is a workaholic as a birthday present. I think it is very entertaining with some true phrases in it.

The title of this book is incredibly misleading. IT has NOTHING to do with body adornment. It is about the changing sociological perspective of the human body and the gender issues involved. I bought this book with the intention of doing a research paper on body adornment, but all 175 pages of this book were unusable. It was a complete waste of my money. The editors should SERIOUSLY consider changing the title so as to not TRICK the reading public.

This title came up in a search on the keyword "tattoo". The cover illustration has some tattoos, and the introduction talks a bit about body modification, but the rest of the book has *nothing* to do with this subject. Still, they are marketing the book towards this audience. In addition, it is largely written in postmodern gobbledygook. I found it to be virtually unreadable.