I found this cookbook to be very helpful in finding recipes for health-minded individuals without being too extreme. It concentrates on whole foods, natural substitutes, good nutrition, etc. I have recommended it many of my friends.

Teachers College Press has just published a book from the QUASAR Project, intended to help people implement staff development. I've been reading it this week, and it's just about the most useful resource I can imagine in planning on-going staff development to help teachers implement mathematics programs designed around the NCTM standards. (At the high school level, this includes curricula like Core Plus and the Interactive Mathematics Project (IMP). At the Middle school level, this includes programs like Connected Mathematics. At the elementary school level, this includes programs like Investigations in Number, Data, and Space. Many of these curricula have been selected as "exemplary" by the Department of Education.)

The book is called "Implementing Standards-Based Mathematics Instruction: A Casebook for Professional Development". As the title indicates, it contains a number of "cases" for teachers to study and discuss, as they learn to implement high-level mathematics tasks successfully. The strength of the book is that it is organized around QUASAR's "Mathematical Tasks Framework". This framework trains teachers to analyze mathematics tasks as being at any of a number of levels: Doing Mathematics; Procedures With Connections; Procedures Without Connections; Unsystematic Exploration; Nonmathematical Activity.

QUASAR has found that tasks tend to degrade, i.e., they can be designed at a high level ("doing mathematics" or "procedures with connections") but migrate to a "lower" level either when the teacher initially sets up the lesson, or as the lesson procedes (the "implementation" phase). Their data (which I've seen in other studies, not this case-book) demonstrates that student achievement is enhanced when the task is designed, set up, and IMPLEMENTED at a high level. The case-book describes factors that cause a high-level task either to be implemented at a high level, or to degrade. Then, it provides cases (i.e., classroom teaching episodes described in great detail)in which one or the other happens, and helps teachers analyze why. Not only are the cases themselves very useful for learning: the process of analyzing the cases gives teachers the skills they need to analyze their OWN lessons.

Concise, grouped by medical, as well as nursing diagnoses, very pratical. Well worth the money spend for good care plans.

I love romantic fiction set within the context of Christmas and regencies are a particular favourite of mine. I always treat myself to the various Christmas anthologies because they make a particularly nice read at the holiday season when things get so frantic you begin to wish Christmas had never been invented! I recently obtained a few of the old Signet Regency Christmas anthologies now out of print and it was truly worth the effort.

If you never read another Christmas regency novella, may I recommend Mary Balogh's "The Porcelain Madonna". This exquisitely written (what else would you expect from Mary Balogh?), emotionally tender and moving story is the best I have ever read in the Christmas setting, either contemporary or historical. The painfully tragic story of the difficult, prickly but kind hearted Darcy Austin, the Earl of Kevern, and the gentle, sympathetic Julie Bevan, is full of healing, joy, compassion and love. Their personal "go between", the little boy from the slums, Charlie Cobban, is also a memorable character whose family, through the birth of yet another mouth to fill, brings real peace and healing to the bereaved Earl.

I simply cannot speak highly enough of this charming little story - it is the sort you will want to turn to again and again when you need a little inspiration and comfort.

The other stories are also good; I was quite surprised by Emma Lange's as I don't know her and she presented a well written study of a large family which is mindful of Georgette Heyer's "A Civil Contract". Marjorie Farrell is a favourite of mine; she writes very well and her contribution, "Christmas Rose" tells a poignant story of a couple who have drifted apart through the curse of infertility (told within the proper context of the times and painfully realistic). How a foundling child first brings them together, then drives a wedge between them and then ultimately brings them peace and joy is also a wonderfully heartwarming illustration of what Christmas really means.

I do recommend this collection. It's worth the effort to obtain an out of print copy. What a star is Mary Balogh!

Using vivid word portraits, the author blends scripture, tradition, and creative imagination into a fictional re-creation of the courtship of Mary and Joseph. This is the foundational piece of the trilogy... which continues with "Three From Galilee" and concludes with "The Messiah".

This is a great book for children. It teaches sharing and how to make friends. I like this book becuase Oliver learns about how to treat others. He doesn't know what life is like, becuase he has always lived by himself and never talks to any of the people in his town. He has one of everything in his house. He doesn't know that his house was only made for one person until he makes a friend and invites her to his home. Peggoty Small tells Oliver that his home was made for one person and she couldn't live with him.
My favorite character was Peggoty Small. I like her becuase she told Oliver Toliver what she tought. She wasn't afriad to tell him about her feelings, she just told him flat out what she thought. Even though she hurt Oliver's feelings, she old him anyways because she thought he should know the truth. This book teaches kids how to make friends, and how to share what you have with others.

I really love this sweet and charming story-- with 3 children that love books, I have become both a fan and avid collector of children's literature. My 5 year old son is particularly drawn to a rhyming story, and loves to listen to this one. We have read it so often in the last few weeks that he can recite many of the lines along with me. There is a particularly catchy cadence to the verse, and the story itself, promoting sharing and companionship, is priceless. I highly recommend this book to anyone with small children, and it would make a great Christmas gift for any child in your life.

After stumbling upon this book in the bookstore, I've found myself buying it for all the kids in my life. It is a fantastic, engaging story about sharing with vibrant illustrations. It is a MUST for all children. Kids ask to read it over and over again.

An engrossing and sensitive book in dialogue form between Marjorie Agosin, a Chilean woman living in the United States and teaching at Wellesley College and other educated Jewish women who have emigrated to the United States from Europe,Cuba, Chile and other countries. The joys and difficulties of adjusting to a new culture, the feeling of "otherness" both in their homeland and in their new homes are explored and described in a meaningful way. I felt the thoughtfulness and personality of each participant as they answered the questions asked by the interviewer.

UNCERTAIN TRAVELERS: Conversations with Jewish Women Immigrants to America by Marjorie Agosin 214 pages; University Press of New England

"I am certain that my early beginnings and the paths I traveled . . . have opened my heart to the misery and pain of others," says Katherine Scherzer Wenger in conversation with Marjorie Agosin in her book UNCERTAIN TRAVELERS. Wenger, born in Romania in 1950, arrived in New York in 1963 and is now a psychotherapist in Boston. Although her family survived World War II and she was born after the war was over, that struggle for survival still dominates her life. "Though not having directly gone through the Holocaust, I believe that the reverberations of that event resonate in our soul if not in our conscious mind," she says. "There is still a longing in me to find a meaningful way of living a Jewish life." It is this experience of exile and identity that Agosin explores in her mesmerizing account of her discussions with nine amazingly perceptive Jewish women immigrants to the United States. These women arrived in this country from Europe and Latin America between 1939 and the 1970s and each has become stellar in her chosen field despite daunting odds. Yet no matter how far they have traveled from their roots, their past colors their perceptions of the present. "I think the way many immigrants experience their lives is that they leave things behind. And once they leave the thing behind, it somehow disappears." says Susan Rubin Suleiman who was born in Budapest in 1939 and came to this country in 1950. "I think you have to be able to return and discover that those things don't disappear. People don't die just because you leave them." Suleiman is now a Professor of Romance and Comparative Literatures at Harvard and author of several books. Yet she is determined to preserve her memories. "We move on and yet maintain the connection to the past that we have now reestablished, or are trying to reestablish," she says. Agosin's own background makes her eminently suited to undertake the challenge of revealing the diverse experiences of exile. Although she was born in Maryland, her family returned to Chile before she was a year old and stayed there until they immigrated to Athens, Georgia in 1971. Agosin, a poet and writer who has published several previous books is now a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. "Uncertain Travelers is a book of conversations with women like myself," says Agosin. "Educated Jewish women with complex itineraries who have traveled much and landed at last in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century." The main theme of this book is the challenges in each woman's journey from one culture to another. They discuss food, friendship, work, language, writing, anti-Semitism and politics with penetrating wisdom and each interview reflects the very personal response of the traveler to her own distinct set of experiences. The initial discussion is with Zezette Larsen, who recalls hiding from the Nazi's in a Catholic convent in Belgium, her deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau and her eventual move to New York City in 1951. Despite barriers that would have defeated a lesser personality, Larsen managed to earn a masters degree in social work at Rutgers, spend time in Israel and then move to Massachusetts where she became the executive director of Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly in Newton. When she discusses her future now that she is in her late sixties she says, "I think there is a whole world out there that we have to take care of. And that, it really is so much easier not to, and to close your eyes. But that is so dangerous." The book launches the Brandies Series on Jewish women sponsored by the International Research Institute on Jewish Women. This series plans to illuminate the challenges and achievements of Jewish women throughout history. If Marjorie Agosin's book UNCERTAIN TRAVELERS is any indication of the quality of this project, it will be an invaluable contribution to the body of literature we have reflecting the contributions of Jewish women throughout history.

This book was suggested in a home-school catalog as a book to help my children understand the customs at the time of Jesus' birth. It is, plain and simple, a romance novel. Some of the more adult references were beyond my children, but I still found myself explaining things to my seven year old that I didn't want to explain to her until she was older. I enjoy a good love story, and so do my three pre-teen girls, but we were not interested in this love story as it was written.

My first introduction to this book was as it was being read on a Christian radio program about 20 years ago. I was captivated and had to read it for myself! That year, Christmas came alive as never before. Marjorie Holmes had to have been inspired and anointed of God to produce this magnificent work. It has been perhaps my all-time favorite novel for all these many years since and I can only recommend it most highly.

This book amazed me at how captivated I was with the story. It begins with the innocent love of Mary and Joseph, and for the first time it really struck me how much love they had for God and for each other. The book progressed into her pregnancy and from then on I couldn't put it down until the little Savior was born. The emotions she described were down-to-earth ones and I realized the reality as I read. Excellent piece of work!

"An Absence of Shadows," by Marjorie Agosin, is a significant volume by this important Chilean author. "Absence" contains the texts of two previously published volumes (1988's "Zones of Pain" and 1992's "Circles of Madness"), together with new work. The poems have been translated into English by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman, Cola Franzen, and Mary G. Berg. The book is presented in bilingual format, with the Spanish originals and English versions on facing pages.

In her preface, Agosin explains that this book commemorates the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Agosin notes in the preface that poets "have become the voices that ask for compassion for the voiceless victims. They see beauty amidst the horror and find the courage to speak against injustice." The poems in this book exemplify this mission.

Some of the most striking selections in this book include "The Obedient Girl," about a girl who encounters the general who tortured her family; "The President," a bitter satire of military dictatorship; "El Salvador," the story of a Jewish woman from that troubled nation; and "Anne Frank and Us," in which the speaker notes that the iconic title figure "visits me often." I recommend this book to those interested in women's studies, Latin American literature, Spanish language poetry, or human rights issues.

This book does indeed have a "meditation" for each day, accompanied by a religious referenece, reading or psalm. I was not aware when I ordered the book that it had such a religious foundation.

This book helped me to understand that Alan my son is growing up and I need to give him more space so his spiritual being may grow. He now realises his flower inside him can expand. Thankyou