This is a great series that was used in my youth group when I was a teenager in the late 80's. I am using it now as I teach a 9th-10th grade Sunday School class. It's really good and my kids are really learning alot about a personal and real relationship with God.

By TT reviewer Patricia McGrew

At Darkbrook, a special school for gifted children to learn the magical arts, a young wizard by name of Ash is put under a spell by Clara, a chambermaid with a burning desire to be a wizard. Clara transfers Ash's magical powers to herself, then she makes him jump out of a tower window.

A hundred years later, ten-year-old Jacob Lane is awaken in the middle of the night by her best friend Emma (a ghost). Jacob's life is dramatically changed. Her parents have mysteriously disappear, her house roof is ripped off, and her home is filled with strange relatives. Jacob is having a hard time adjusting to her parent's funeral and new relatives that visit during the night and rest during the day. Uncles and aunts decide that Jacob should be sent to Darkbrook, where the family's gifted members go for education. Fortunately, her friend Emma gets to come with her.

But Darkbrook holds many dark and scary mysteries. When Jacob gets lost in the tower, she encounters a ghost named Ash. Jacob finds that Clara has killed a student every ten years or so, taking their powers. Ash warns Jacob that she might be the next victim.

Together with her new friends, Ophellia (a vampire), Emma and Ash, she has to deal with a missing Dragon Queen, the queen's young son, and nine other ghosts. Jacob must keep Clara from finding out that the young wizard she is looking for is really a girl.

Can Jacob and her friends stop the witch from killing any more students? Will she find her parent's murderers? Can Jacob save the Dragon Queen in time?

This intriguing tale of mayhem and magic will keep you in suspense till the end. You won't want to put this down. You will close this book at the end with a smile on your face. A must read for all ages! If you like the Harry Potter books, you will enjoy this novel. I kept finding parts to read to my grandchildren. I will keep this book to read again and again.

This book examines the practical uses of music as a therapeutic intervention for older adults having health care needs and disabilities, and to promote wellness for the healthy older person. It is a very accessible guide for the professional clinician, caregiver and layman. The described music applications and approaches are easy to read and comprehend. These include using music for wellness, using music with people with dementia of the Alzheimer's type, Parkinson's disease, stroke and cardiac disease, using music to manage problem behaviors, using music for stress management, relaxation, pain control, physical exercise, physical rehabilitation and spirituality, and using music with caregivers. I personally use this book many times over. It is an excellent resource tool. When giving a workshop about the uses of music for persons with dementia, I refer to sections of the book to illustrate specific clinical examples. The book is also very useful to describe theoretical concepts as a way of teaching music therapy practicum and internship students about successful clinical treatment protocols. When I have the opportunity to teach a music therapy class about music therapy and gerontology, I refer to the book for lecture ideas. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about how music improves the quality of life of the older adult.

this is definitely a terrific piece of work. if anyone has any of the galloping detective series, and wants to sell them, please e-mail me at perdey_eventer@hotmail.com! thanks! i rate this book as incredibly great! fun to follow along with lucy and try to figure out exactly who did the crimes!

Charming and delightful are the words that come to mind when I remember the experience of reading White Mountain Blues. This novel is based on a script Hal Zina Bennett wrote for the TV series Northern Exposure. His wife, Susan Sparrow, loved the story so much that she urged him to convert it into a novel when Northern Exposure was cancelled before the script could be produced. The transformation from script to novel was quite effective -- the result is very enjoyable on its own merits, while retaining the quirky humor of the TV show. (Now and then, the author receives a letter from a Northern Exposure fan who has read his book and discovered the link.)

White Mountain Blues "celebrates the spirit that connects us to each other and to the natural world, where eagles fly." In fact, one of the characters in this book IS an eagle whose name is Sun.

In his prologue, the author warns that "the tale is pretty sparse on impertinent sex scenes, kinky emotional abuse and colorful violence. Even more out of fashion, there's a mostly happy ending." Venture into White Mountain Blues -- you'll have a great time.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most clever and entertaining books yet written. The author's use of language is extremely appealing to the younger readers. These young readers are attracted to this book because of the author's use of many songs. For instance the lullaby sung by the duchess to her child. The Mock Turtle also sang to Alice and the Gryphon a song about the Lobster Quadrille. The author also uses poems that are entertaining and fun to listen to. "You are Old Father William" is one of the many poems. Not only does the author use poems but she also uses commonly known poems and changes the words to fit the character saying them. For instance the Mad-Hatter sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in different words saying "Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky." If this isn't a unique way of writing I dont know what is. Another style of her writingthat is appealing is when she creates a picture, using words in a poem, about the poem. Yhis is used on page 37. The words in the book are nbot hard so the book can be enjoyable when it is being read, not stressful. The author brings animals to life which is an interesting style of writing. This is Lewis Carroll's style of writing. The main character in this book is a little girl with blonde hair named Alice. This child is full of fantasies and dreams, which is what the book is about. Alice is very curious and likes to know every little detail. She thinks she is very smart. For example, when Alice is listening to the Dormouse's story she asks questions like "What did they live on," and makes smart comments such as "They could'nt have done that you know, they'd have been ill." She is also a little bit bratty, especially to the Dormouse when she says: "Nobody asked your opinion." These characteristics pull together to make an interesting main character and to create a fabulous story. The theme of the story is sometimes you need to take a break out of every day life and dream of fantasize. This makes your life more interesting even if you dream about things that will never come true. Alice does this when she dreams about changing sizes and listening to talking animals. Dreaming doesn't hurt anyone except the people who don't do it. If nobody ever had dreams life would be extremely stressful and boring. The plot of the story is all about Alice trying to find the white rabbit, which of course is in her dream. Following the white rabbit takes ALice to interesting places, such as the Courtroom filled with animals, and the Duchess' house, along with meeting interestingpeople such as the Cheshire-Cat and the Queen. This amazing cat hes the ability to disappear whenever it wants to and it always smiles. In the end Alice finds the white rabbit and then wakes up from her dream. This is the plot of the story. The story is effective to the reader. This is so because after listening to such acreative dream and fantasy, it inspires people to take a little time out of the day and be creative and dream once in a while. All the parts of this five star story; the writer's style, the main character, the theme, and the plot; come together to create the overall effectiveness of the story. This is why I rated this book five stars.

I really like Alice in Wonderland and its sequel because it is so whimsical. The way Dodgson made fun of Alice so much makes one laugh until tears come pouring down. He based the character Alice, on his friend; a real life Alice. Throughout the book, he constantly makes references to her, or something related to her. For example, when a character asks her the exact day Alice replies May 4th. May 4th is the real life Alice's birthday. Alice walks through Wonderland, and she sees many strange things, but thinks otherwise. If you like poems, you will certainly like Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, for both books contain numerous poems. However, in the book Carroll takes the original poems and creates a parody out of them. Something interesting to know is that all the poems relate to the chapters. These are all minor details, but something to muse over. On the surface, Alice in Wonderland is a book where she meets weird creatures and walks away from them always feeling humiliated, as she thinks she is smarter than she really is. That is most of Alice in Wonderland.

Alice through the Looking Glass is similar to the prequel, yet glaringly different. The whole book revolves around a chess game, and so the character's actions correspond to moves on the chessboard. Alice joins in the game, starts out as a white pawn, and proceeds to move until she becomes a queen. At each square, she meets a new character, but in one chapter, characters from the previous book are in this one too. An important thing to know in this famous classic is that everything is backwards. It makes sense since Alice is on the other side of a mirror, yet she encounters difficulty sometimes in understanding this. But in the end, she manages to become a queen and to checkmate the red king. Both books are very enjoyable, and I strongly advocate both children and adults to read it. Enjoy!! Cheers!!!!! : )

When I was assigned Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to read for my Victorian Literature class, I was excited. Even though I had heard Alice's Adventures in Wonderland referred to countless times throughout my youth, I had never read the story or seen the movie. I had never heard of Through the Looking Glass, but while reading, I realized that many people who think they are talking about AAIW are actually referring to TTLG. The two texts seem to be conflated in a way that makes them indistinguishable from each other. It is for this reason that I enjoyed reading this edition of the texts. There is only a page separating the two stories, which allows the reader to easily make the transition between them. This small separation also allows the reader to recognize the undeniable connection between the texts and to understand why many people combine them in their minds.
AAIW is about a young girl named Alice whose boring day with her sister is interrupted when a white rabbit runs by her saying, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Alice's curiosity is aroused, but surprisingly not to a great degree. This is the first hint to the reader that Alice is not an average child, as she seems to believe that a talking rabbit is quite normal. She does become intrigued, though, when the rabbit produces a clock from his pocket, so she follows it down its hole and enters a world of wonder. I loved the story from this point on. It is filled with such unbelievable creatures and situations, but Carroll's writing style made me want to believe in a world that could be filled with so much magic and splendor. There was never a dull moment in the story, and each page was filled with more excitement. I will offer a warning, though. This story is not for those who like a neatly packaged plotline. It is written in a somewhat discontinuous nature and seems to follow some sort of dream logic where there are no rules. However, I enjoyed the nonsensical pattern. Without it, a dimension of the story would be lost. It offers some insight into the mind of a young, adventurous, fearless girl, and Carroll seems to be challenging his readers to be more like Alice.
The second text in this book, TTLG, is again a story about Alice. In this adventure, Alice travels through a wondrous world on the other side of her looking glass. As in AAIW, Alice again encounters absurd creatures, such as live chess pieces and talking flowers. The land she travels through is an oversized chessboard, which gives this story a more structured plot than AAIW. The chess theme provides Alice with sense of what she must accomplish in the looking- glass world, and it provides the reader with a sense of direction throughout the story. Alice's goal is to become a chess queen, so the reader knows that when she becomes queen, the story will be over. However, just because the story has some structure does not mean that it is not just as wild and marvelous as its predecessor. I enjoyed all of the characters. They seem to have an endless supply of advice that people in the 21st century can still learn from. My favorite example is when the Red Queen says, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Maybe what Carroll is suggesting is that if we read more nonsensical, unbelievable stories like his, we won't be so afraid to be adventurous and fearless like Alice; so that the next time a white rabbit runs by us, we might just see where it leads us.

Just an outstanding account of real life in Rio de Janeiro. Carolina is a true heroine in her own right. She goes against the social standards and works to support her children by herself. It is a great book about the trials of the human heart-and Carolina certainly triumphs over them.

the daily diary of the Carolina De Jesus describes a daily hard life of a woman, who picked up paper and metal everyday just to get enough money to feed her children. Also, in her diary she describes the horrible realatioship of the government to the people of the lower class.. The hunger and poorness of these people clearly illustrates in this book. The contest of these book clearly reflevt it's title, "Child of The Dark."

This book is both an uplifting and depressing work. For anyone who has ever visited the third world, and especially for those that never have; this book is a must read. It is uplifting and inspiring in showing the heroine's sheer strength of character that gets her through a life that would most certainly kill most of us. Written without pretense, it is a brutal indictment of the negative forces that constantly try the human spirtit. Here the enemy is not one person, or an army or even the poverty that wreaks havoc on the lives of these people, but rather the world's tolerance and acceptance of the pain, hunger suffering and injustices that are created by a world where the the rich can justify their greed by demoninzing their own creation: the conditons that make people live in utter desperation. Poverty and ignorance are not romantized here but instead like in Buñuel's film Los Olvidados, Child of the Dark shows us that hunger and loss of dignity brings out the worst in people. It is depressing because we all know that places like this exist not only in Brazil, but in almost all countries on earth, and that we all share in the guilt of allowing such horror to exist.

October, a name she gave herself after her mother's death, falls in love with a man and ends up pregnant. Her problem, though, is that he's a married man and he wants nothing more to do with her or the baby. After delivering the baby, she decides that she's not fit to be a mother and she gives away her baby to her sister, Vergie, who's unable to have a child of her own.

This story, set in the 1950's, was one of my favorites of 2002. The writing was lyrical and vivid and the story was unforgettable. Maxine Clair has a style of her own and she tells the kind of story that's, quite frankly, missing in most of the other books currently out on the market. If you're looking for an excellent and different book to read, look no further than October Suite.

They call October Suite a literary novel. All I know is that I enjoyed this story. It was written so vividly descriptive and lyrically that I felt as if I could see the scenes unfolding in front of me.

Imagine you are a "colored" teacher in the 1950's in Kansas. You are held to a high standard and your every move is being scrutinzed. Then, imagine you meet a man only to find out he's married. He gives you the line of leaving his wife. Then imagine you find yourself pregnant and alone. You have to return to Ohio to your family to have a baby. You can't not bond with him and you give him to your sister. Imagine, a little later you decide you want him back, but you made a promise. What do you do? Once you pick up October Suite, you will see how Ms October Brown copes with her decisions. You will also find how events of her life early on effects her life later.

I found this book to be a interesting story in a time period that has always interested me. It's a slow read, but one you will want to savor because the story is so good.

I read "Rattlebone" in 1995 and have been waiting for six years for Maxine Clair's next novel. "October Suite" was well worth the wait. It is not hyperbole to for me to say that this is the best novel I have read in years. Since I started armature writing myself, I have had problems entering a book in any emotional sense. "October Suite" changed this. The story does not really fill in a blank part of Irene's (the main character from "Rattlebone") life. Rather it takes one robust but minor character and tangentially tells the story of her life and struggles. This struggle is partially revealed in "Rattlebone" but takes on a full life in "October Suite".

This is in many ways a modern epic. It has a tragic hero in October Brown, fighting to regain her life from a youthful indiscretion that cost more than she could have foreseen. It has villains. James is the archetype of evil married men who destroy the lives of young women to satisfy his needs. Vergie, perhaps the character in any book that I have hated the most, is driven by a Nixonian paranoia to keep the hero in misery but finds redemption at the end. In all, the characters become the family down the street that always seems to have a new challenge. We do not know everything about them--just enough to feel for them.

The book only has two weaknesses as I see it. First there is a major contradiction with "Rattlebone". Second, some parts of the book do not really make sense outside of context of Dr. Clair's previous book. This is not to discourage those who have not read that book yet, since after reading "October Suite" they undoubtedly will want to read it.

I thought this was a wonderful book revolving around the life of African Americans in the Midwest during the 1950's. I enjoyed the format of intertwining stories as seen through the eyes of the differant citizens of Rattlebone. I think my interest was peaked since I was born and raised in Kansas City (MO) where the fictional town of Rattlebone was and where Maxine Clair, the author, is also from. I am anxious to read other books by this author.

Rattlebone, Kansas. Circa 1950. A group of related short stories paints a picture of the town of Rattlebone, Kansas and its inhabitants. Driven by strong characterizations, Maxine Clair's Rattlebone introduces us to Irene, a young girl living there as she grows, experiences, and blooms. Other notable characters include the Red Quanders, a group of people living together in a kinship environment, reminiscent of Igbo and other West African traditionalists, October Brown, Irene's grade school teacher, and Nick, Irene's introduction to love and all things pre-pubescent.

In essence, the tales tell two sides to every story, first relaying how a character is perceived by others and also how a character perceives himself or herself. The stories and characters all tie together if they do not pronounce themselves with novel-like fluency. Clair even continues a character's (October Brown) story in her second fiction title, October Suite. Each of these stories has its own moral, its own personality, its own undercurrent of emotion and is, thus, worthy of any reader's attention.

Reviewed by CandaceK

Rattlebone is great book to read, not for just African-Americans, but for the many people who have encountered a moment of being different. Maxine Clair used many different interviews she had to come up with the different chapters she had in this novel. In doing so, she opened my eyes to another world that I had yet to discover. Her stories made me realize that society today, has way more than what it had in the past. We need to stop blaming one another for the past, and make what we have now, so much better so that we don't have to live the lives of the characters in Rattlebone.

The key set-piece of this book is the mid-1990's story by San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb (author of Dark Alliance), of the Nicaraguan Contra connection with the sale of crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles. The drug war between the "colors", the Bloods and the Crips, complete with at least one drive-by shooting of a middle-class Angeleno, was, in Webb's view the direct result of officially allowing Nicaraguan refugee bigwigs to operate Californian drug labs in order to raise funds for weapons. The obstacle to arming the contras, as one may remember from Iran Contra hearings, and Colonel North's testimony, was the Bolland amendment. Black Los Angeles reacted to the story with restraint. A town meeting was assembled to question then-CIA director Deutch, who took them seriously until he returned to Langley. He had to admit that the CIA would have to investigate itself. If you have any sense of history, Webb's story was plausible, and should have been thoroughly investigated by Congress, as Maxine Waters, L.A. Representative tried to do. The Establishment press,for their part, took their cues from buddies in government on the East Coast, far from the scene of the crime, cravenly seeking to defuse a dangerous situation (riots? "national security" breaches?) by asserting that the Nicaraguan drug magnates were just self-serving rogues, with no common interests with U.S. foreign policy, even though their money did not just line their own pockets, but went directly to arming the contras. At the very least, since our people were doing it too, secretly, the comaraderie was there. For that insight, no smoking gun is required. It's a case based on good circumstantial evidence. The book is weighted down by its authors' perceived necessity to come up with a grand scheme of oppression, to show that interdiction of drugs and draconian prosecution of users, as well as the use of drugs to raise slush funds for secret government purposes, are all about keeping down the underclass. But to accept this is to accept that people who take drugs are not responsible for their own actions, a very hard pill for the naive public to swallow. Nor is class struggle a big item on the agenda these days. These are complacent times, with more and more going on behind closed doors. We bowl alone, and we watch t.v. Contrary to what Jack Nicholson said in "A Few Good Men" - we CAN take the truth. The book has extensive footnotes and bibiliography, and it worth the price of a few SDS-style rants. The alternative to understanding official complicity in drug-cartel operations is to lose all say in government at the most basic community level. We should hold more town meetings with the South Centrals and finally listen. We should do what Deutch tried to do but ultimately failed at.Face our fears at the most basic level and make common cause with - dare I say it? - the oppressed.

Whiteout expertly puts together a lot of the stories you may be vaguely familiar with and condenses them all down into one mesmerizing book. Ranging from Lucky Luciano and his vicious control of the New York City dockworkers to Barry Seal (the portly narcotics pilot who ended up being gunned down in the late 1980's when it appeared he was going to implicate CIA and upper federal government conspirators in cocaine smuggling) and "Freeway" Ricky Ross, Whiteout succinctly organizes and presents all the stories pertaining to U.S. intelligence and national security state operatives cultivating and often dealing in heroin and cocaine trafficking. Cockburn and St. Claire throw an array of sleazy characters into the mix which makes it read in parts like good fiction as opposed to actual American history, of course much of it hidden history.
The finest and most astounding chapter deals with the mainstream press and their treatment of Gary Webb -- the heroic journalist who broke the initial story of CIA complicity in introducing crack cocaine into the California underworld in the early 1980's -- and their reaction and damage control attempts towards his explosive story. So called "black paranoia" is also touched on in this section, specifically the way in which the corporate owned media labeled angry blacks as being irrationally paranoid for rightly being up in arms over Webb's startling tale.
All of this is presented in more of structural analysis and academic style, as opposed to a conspiratorial spin, with a myriad of sources to back up and document every assertion. For those naive enough to believe organized crime doesn't exist anymore, all they need to do is read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout to realize it's thriving and sometimes reaches into the highest areas of the executive branch. Truly frightening stuff. You'll leave the book hoping retribution eventually catches up with all those involved in profitting from the decimation of once vibrant communities.

In Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, authors Alex Cockburn and Jeff St Clair have synthesized a vast amount of information into an easy to read, cogent history of the CIA's involvement in the illicit trafficking of narcotics.

This unforgettable and very important book proves several things. First, that the CIA has been the world's biggest drug trafficker for the past 50 years. Second, that the major newspapers and TV networks have always known about it, but have chosen not to report it, under the aegis of national security. Third, that the end result of CIA drug dealing and the attendant media "whiteout" is the pacification of minority communities in America. And last but not least, Whiteout proves that when independent journalists like Gary Webb report the truth, they are inevitably smeared by the same powerful forces that put this unjust system into motion.

Whiteout is a volatile book and is sure to arouse the wrath of both Big Media and Big Brother. But it has been meticuously researched, and it is so well written that the case it makes is beyond any reasonable doubt. Authors Cockburn and St Clair are to be commended for their courage in providing such a valuable public service. Five stars for covering all the bases.