Felix is a frog in a large frog family who loses his prized hat. After a futile search and a period of mourning, he adopts a replacement hat and is happy with it. I like the story because Felix has a large, supportive family who helped him look for his hat, lifted him when he was down, and provided a replacement. Also, the fact the Felix could not find the original hat is a good lesson for youngsters. The illustrations are terrific, too.

This book has a great plot, adorable illustrations, and loveable characters. It's perfect for all kids (and adults too!). You feel like you know the characters, and even though they are frogs, they seem very real. It is very imaginative. I've read it to every kid I've babysat for, and they have all loved it!!! (The youngest to understand it was three, and the oldest to go crazy about how great it was was my grandmother.)

This is a book for those interested in the practical philosophy of landscape architecture. It is not only the discussion by the author, but also the author's illustrations which reinforce her extremely valuable insights into form and complexity. I use the book as an exercise for sketching. She is right, sketching is perception. I highly recommend this book

This book is a great visual and morphological resource of elements within the landscape. It is a great tool for both the design student and practitioner. The layout of the book alongside the graphic content gives a great visual reference to the terms discussed in the book. This layout helps the designer to make a connection and create a visual and spatial narrative of the elements that creates the landscape. The book is divided into seven chapters: 1-Landscape Fabric 2-Spaces 3-Paths 4-Edges 5-Foci 6-Thresholds 7-Detail. Each of the chapters starts with a detail definition of the heading and explains all the related terms that are in association with the chapter heading. With the great visual layout and description of the terms this book not only can be used as a source to be used into understanding the different elements within the landscape it also could be used as a source to build the necessary vocabulary for the design student. I recommend this book since it serves as a great visual and spatial source of information for the design student especially students in landscape architecture field. The organization of the chapters is in a way that helps the student build the spatial and visual elements of the landscape and enables them to build and integrate these elements into their work.

Mary Catherine Bateson has written another account of her experiences as teacher and learner. Her earlier work with Johnnetta Cole led to a seminar at Spelman of intergenerational women. Although the age, background and socioeconomic status of the participants were vastly different, it comes as little surprise if you know Bateson, that the common themes of self-actualization, faith and truthfulness to self shone through. What is most remarkable is the trust Bateson establishes which enables both students and elders to share so much of their lives so candidly. Interspersed with reflections on their lives, are their thoughts on women from the course readings. If you can't get to George Mason and take a seminar with Bateson, this might just be the next best thing!

This book is an excellent read. Very accessible and full of insight. It is subtle in its observations and friendly in its tone. The people you meet and their stories are fascinating and the generational dialogue is worthwhile - anyone who seeks to understand how relationships and lives are changing will enjoy this. Bravo to Ms. Bateson!

I just attended a talk by a Peace Corps volunteer who spoke about how children in Ghana were resourceful about creating toys to play with. This book illlustrates that point. I hope that my students from Africa will enjoy this book.

Galimoto provides a unique opportunity for teachers to link reading, cultural understanding and visual art. Young students enjoy trying to discover the meaning of "galimoto" while they hear the story as it is read aloud. The illustrations help them to see the similarities in the everyday lives of children and people everywhere. All people make art! Young children can use pipe cleaners to make their own "galimotos" after they learn the meaning from the story. The story and illustrations held the interest of my students and encouraged them toward future learning through reading and making art.

You'll be so suprised at this one . Catherine cookson
books are great .I love everything she writes !

The Garment tells of a young woman (Grace), recently married to Donald Rouse, a parson whom she adores. Over the first two years of their marriage, Grace's eyes are opened to the real man behind the facade, as she experiences the frustrations and feelings of rejection of an unconsummated marriage. Grace suffocates under this oppression, until she finds love, passion and more elsewhere. The Garment shows how vital it is for a woman to find love and fulfillment in her life, even when it comes at great sacrifice.

Slinky Jane is the story of an innocent but very private woman who stops over in a small town, only to turn the town upside down. Her behavior raises the suspicions of the town's women, who believe she threatens their marriages. It is also about finding love when and where one least expects it, and how that love can be strong enough to face life full of uncertainies.

Stage-Shakers! Ghana's Concert Party Theatre
by Kwame Braun

A lively video documentary that brings Ghana's concert party theatre to life.

Indiana University Press

For the first time, Western audiences have access to the power and intensity of Ghana's remarkable concert party theatre through Kwame Braun's 100-minute documentary video. Stage-Shakers! brings its festive atmosphere to life by showing backstage preparation - touring, making-up, and practicing - as well as live performance footage. Interviews with key performers, both pioneers and current practitioners, reveal the concert party as a dynamic form of entertainment that is in step with popular fashion, music, song, dance, and social issues. Researched and filmed in collaboration with Catherine M. Cole, this video companion is an important extension of her book, Ghana's Concert Party Theatre.

Cole's study of concert party, a traveling musical theater in Ghana, is nothing short of superb. Not only does she manage to show the history of these itinerant performers and the world they made and remade with every performance, but she uses her analysis of concert party as a way to talk about and problematize the theories and obsessions of our time that sometimes have overdetermined analyses of things African. That concert party performers imitated women, or wore blackface, all complicate our own academic ideas about the performance of gender, or of race, and how those might be different in Africa than in the US or Latin America. Cole's manuscript gives us a history of an African musical form in more detail than anything we have had before, and in so doing she gives us a history of class and culture in Ghana that I think will make a strong impact on African history. But it also challenges scholars to think anew about how to understand and interpret African cultural forms, and shows how limiting it is­for Africans and for academics­ to pidgeon-hole those cultural expressions into examples of buzz words and jargon. This is a book that doesn't just interrogate culture and pronounce it complicated. This is a book that looks the complications firmly in the eye and encourages them to stare right back­. Cole animates the complexities and contradictions of popular African culture to make us think more seriously, more carefully, about how race and gender take on meanings and shed connotations in societies increasingly aware of their place in the world.

Peace, to you and to the Palestinian people, whom this book helps by giving it's readers a glimpse into the suffering those people have had to endure, under the merciless hands of the Israeli Army that seams to get away with all it's terror.

That's all, not surprisingly this book is currently out of stock, although, it shouldn't be, since it's the best so far regarding Middle Eastern phsychology. I own a copy, i just logged on to write this review! Toni is a brave man, too bad he wasn't rewarded well for his honest reporting that has not been affected by mainstream anti Palestinian racist rhetoric.

Peace.

As the author states in the book, official evil lives in the Middle East and this is the story of those who fought it back. This shocking book reveals the pure, unadultered terror the State of Israel inflicted on this sad land. Both the pictures and the prose hit home the brutality of what Israel did (and is doing) to the Palestinian people. Some of the conclusions, written in 1982/83, hauntingly resonate today with a clarity that only those which have withstood the test of time can. Clifton, an award-winning journalist with Newsweek and photographer Cathrine Leroy (also winner of numerous prestigious prizes) have put together more than a documentary account of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent seige of Beirut and the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. With unquestionable evidence they have produced a scathing commentary on Israel's brutal war of terror waged against an innocent people. After reading this book (which I have done more than 5 times) you can only support the creation of an independent Palestinian state and hope that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (then Defense Minister and architect of the war) finally gets his due in court in Belgium or elsewhere.

This book traces the history of the California Gold Rush from 1848 to 1859. It is an exciting tale of fortunes won and lost, of thousands of men and women catching "Gold Fever" --the promise of easy riches. Some of it is quite humorous "...Get our California Gold Grease! Only 10$ a box. Rub on your body, roll down a hill. Gold, and only gold [in italics] will stick to your skin!"

The book also is realistic, telling of the dangers facing people who came over land or by sea around South America to the Isthmus of Panama. Both during the gold rush and after its height a gold-based service economy arose to meet the needs (at highy inflated prices) of the miners.

The book describes how gold was mined, and the properties of gold that make it valuable "A piece of gold the size of a pea can be stretched into a wire that is two miles long. ...Gold is eight times heavier than stones and sand. Gold is sturdy, yet soft." Surprisingly informative and always interesting, with Michael Eagle's portraits and exciting scenes illustrating the already exuberrant text. An excllent book for elementary school readers in grades 2 through 5 (or so), "Gold Fever" makes history fun!

Gold Fever is an outstanding book! I ordered this book to use with American students ages 7-9 learning about the American West. We read the book aloud and discussed its content as we went. The content was perfect for this age group and the illustrations were wonderful. My students were enthralled and begged for more time (we read it over two days). They asked great questions and wanted to learn more. This book has great basic information about gold, the Gold Rush, and its impact on California/the West. Overall--good, solid content and thought-provoking illustrations.

I HIGHLY recommend this book!

This is an absolutely outstanding book which gives in depth insight into the mind set of an anorexic, how they became so and how they can be treated. I am a 25 yr old female and 9 months ago suffered a horribly severe relapse of anorexia. A literally starving skeleton I ended up in therapy. I had no idea WHY I was this and my therapist suggested a long reading list. An avid reader I began devouring these books and it was "The Golden Cage" that had my soul reeling in agony. My husband of 8 yrs. read it, as well as his parents. This book was about me. Word for word, I was a text book case. Hilde Bruch unveils the truths behind the eating disorder in an easy to read as well as sensitive manner. A little out-dated in some respects (such as insinuating that any girl who exercises for fun must have something wrong with her!) as it was written I believe in the 70's, it is still valid as to the How's and Why's behind the disorder. Believe me, in order for a beautifull, healthy young woman to put herself through starvation, obsess with food every second of the day and become a neurotic, hyper-sensitive beast, there must be something deep inside that went severly wrong. This book tells us why, as well as how we / they can be helped. If you are a parent, PLEASE, read this with an open mind and heart and above all, DO NOT BECOME ANGRY!! Most importantly, seek help not only for your child, but for yourself as well. The road to recovery is tough for everyone.

A remarkable description of the basic personality and family mechanisms involved in teenage mental disorders and their anorectic expression.

Emily Ratcliffe's ill-fated affair with the charming jerk Paul Steerman ends with her frightening, unexpected rape by him, and subsequent pregnancy and delivery of twins. Loyal friend and would-be lover Dr. Steve Montane marries her and lovingly raises the boy and girl as his own.

But of course the past comes back to haunt Emily and her loyal lady's maid, Alice. The character of Alice is fascinating: at first she's the humble, grateful young maid to Emily, but as her loyalty to her mistress grows, she changes to the point where her thoughts are not her own; she literally lives for her mistress. When the older Emily's past misdeeds more or less catch up to her, Alice becomes angry with anyone who dares oppose or accuse her mistress, citing "You don't know what she's been through!" as excuse for Emily's actions or unreasonable behavior.

Predictably Emily's daughter meets and falls in love with her half-brother, and must overcome obstacles of time and scandal to realize her heart's dream, while Emily herself becomes the antagonist in her own novel, along with stubborn, faithful Alice.

A tale about courage, fidelity, and mostly, fate.

The Golden Straw is a thick meaty saga which has it all. From love to rape to hardship and secrets; it really is vintage Catherine Cookson. The novel features Emily who having worked for milliner Mabel Arkwright decides to take a holiday in the South Of France, recommended by Mabel herself. There she meets a charming yet married man, Paul and soon she embarks on a torrid affair. However, when Emily decides to stop the affair, Paul gets drunk and he rapes her. And the effects of that night effect both her children and grand-children. In true Cookson tradition, you'll be spellbound and you're bound to keep turning the pages. There are many romance writers, but there is only one Catherine Cookson.