The Mice and Sampson hitch a ride with the Vicar when he heads off for a seaside holiday. Of course this goes horribly wrong, and they find themselves stranded. (Interestingly, the holiday is set in Graham Oakley's home town of Lyme Regis, and the shops and seafront in the pictures are real.) As usual, the story is full of wry English humour and wonderfully detailed pictures.

Sadly, this could be the last of the church mice series as Mr Oakley has said he's thinking of letting them retire, but it's a good innings for mice that first appeared in print in 1972.

I became completely anamored of Oakley's Church Mice series when I was a child, and now as an adult I've tried to collect them all. I didn't read this one until a year ago, and it has quickly become my favorite of the whole lot! Humphrey, the perenially bad-tempered school mouse, sets off to document a year in the life of Sampson and the church mice. While not so plot-oriented as the other books, the character sketches and random happenings throughout the year had me in stitches. If you like the Church Mice books at all, you must check this one out.

Winner of a Special Citation in the Boston Globe-Horn Book awards for 1980, Magical Changes is a charming wordless split-page book with detailed pictures that Church Mouse fans will love. By mixing and matching the two halves of pictures, the reader finds increasingly weird scenes. Well worth it if you can find a copy.

There's been a board-book edition released in France under the title "512" - try www.amazon.ca. They also handle some of his reprinted Church Mice titles.

A great story for kids with witty drawings (that offer a slightly different angle of vision for adults) that everyone will love. The hero, who is an old fashioned and completely honest hero, wins the hand of the princess through innocent good deeds in tricky, post modern sitiations. One of my all time favorites!

Fans of the Church Mice series will love this book about a Hen Odyssey across the British countryside. Hetty (a birdbrain) is convinced by her slightly older and marginally more intelligent (but rather impractical) friend Harriet that life would be better somewhere other than the barnyard. This takes them to increasingly worse places, including a fox hole (so nice and cosy), the Michelangelo shopping precinct (which seems to be entirely made up of shops belonging to the Scroggins family), and the local Lost Property office (where they are sold off by the Scroggins & Scroggins auction house).

Fortunately they manage to excape the dastardly clutches of the Techno-Egg and Fowlfare organisations, and probably live happily ever after.

This is a definite must-read for anyone who likes droll English humour, although it's a bit hard to find.

In 1999 Mr Oakley finally broke the long drought and released another book about the Church Mice and Sampson. He fully recaptures the original feel of the series, full of wicked English humour and clever, detailed pictures which tell a *slightly* different story to the text...

In this story, Humphrey, one of the Church Mice's leaders, suddenly becomes fabulously wealthy. Being Humphrey, his greed knows no bounds and he soon heads for disaster. (Everything that he buys is wonderful, including a Ming vase-"product of Birmingham.")

Keep an eye out for "The Church Mice take a Break," which came out in England during 2000 (for sale through Amazon.co.uk).

As another reviewer has pointed out, this book really looks like a humor book at first glance, and I picked it up thinking that was the case. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's actually informative as well as entertaining.

The whimsically illustrated book discusses a brief history of cats and goes a bit into why commercially prepared cat foods are not a healthy staple for your cat. There is some information, for the most part based on observation, about how to tell if your cat is too fat. The correct ratios of protein to fat to carbohydrates are discussed, as well as some actual recipes to cook for your cat.

This book really convinced me that feeding dry kibble just doesn't cut it and may explain why my cat has always been overly plump and yet still (always!) clamoring for MORE FOOD. The only drawback is that it just didn't give me all the information I needed to make the switch. Aside from some recipes for vitamin and mineral supplements, there were no specific mixes for basic foods. While the recipes are cute and, I'm sure, tasty for cats, they seem too labor-intensive to prepare day after day. I would have liked to see a few basic recipes that would make a larger quantity which could be frozen in meal-size portions and used for daily meals.

Overall, I think the book was a good purchase, but it left me starving for more.

Is your cat too fat? is a straightforward diet and fitness book for cats, dispite its cover illustration, which might lead would-be readers to conclude that it is a humor book.

It begins by telling us some interesting cat history. For example, did you know that cats were persecuted during the Middle Ages? Next, the author explains what it is that cats really like to eat -- NOT BIRDS! Bird are way down on the cat's list of favorite things because the feathers must be plucked before eating. Yuck. Cats like mice of course, but according to a study the author cited, cats prefer canned or prepared food, if it's available. Also, cats can tell when food is beginning "to turn." They prefer it fresh.

The book contains ways to figure out if your cat is too fat, including a weight chart for different breeds. (Mine weighs 12 lbs which is okay for an American short-hair, but she feels fat to me.)

Then comes the part we all know will follow -- the inevitable diet suggestions which we've all heard before. Ta Da: diet and exercise. The author has included lots of clever ways to engage our cats in playful games designed to trim them down a little. And the exciting thing is that we ourselves must become the primary entertainer.

But the most interesting part of the book is the recipe section. Yes, indeed. How about whipping up a batch of chicken liver mousse for your kitten? Or scrambled eggs with haddock for a Sunday morning brunch (for the cat, of course). The recipe section is divided into categories: Sauces, Savories, Sandwiches, Eggs, Game, Meat, Poultry, Fish, and Pasta. (What, no dessert?)

The illustrations are charming, it's easy to read, and full of interesting facts, with a small dose of guilt designed to help us keep our cats healthy and happy. This book belongs on the bookshelf of every cat-lover.

I am a cat lover (currently between cats) and, while I intend to try the interesting recipes and naturopathic advice with my next cat, I have to admit to buying the book purely because I'm a fan of the illustrator. Readers of Graham Oakley's "Church Mice" series will recognise Sampson the ginger tomcat on the cover and endpapers - which show a before and after picture of him having a very good dinner. Almost every spread in the book features an apt (and usually funny) colour illustration of cat behaviour, and he captures cat expressions/body language beautifully.

I totally agree with the reviewer who says that Kidnapped has become his/her favorite book of all time and that (s)he still re-reads it several times a year. Not that I re-read it, but I agree when (s)he says that (s)he envies anyone who is about to read 'Kidnapped' for the first time. I am about the same age, and I well remember my first reading - how I smiled when Uncle Ebeneezer served his gruel (porridge) - how I held my breath when David nearly stepped into space on the broken stairs - how I cringed with the injustice of Ebeneezer tried to cheat David out of his inheritance by selling him into slavery in the American colonies.

Stevenson's 'Treasure Island' is reckoned to be his best book but, for sheer descriptive weight, superb characterization and sharp, sharp dialog, 'Kidnapped' is the one for me. In brief, 16-year-old orphan, David Balfour visits his uncle in order to claim the inheritance, left by his father. The uncle, having failed to kill him, arranges for David to be kidnapped by a ship of thugs and villains and taken to the Carolinas to be sold into slavery. While navigating the Scottish coast, the ship collides with another boat and the crew capture the lone survivor, a swashbuckling Highlander called Alan Breck Stewart. David and Alan become friends and escape their captors. On land again, Stewart is accused of murdering a rival clan member and he and David must now cross the Scottish mountains to reach safe haven and for David to reclaim his inheritance.

The descriptions of the Scottish countryside are truly marvelous and the sense of pace and adventure keeps the reader hooked right to the end. I notice that one reviewer likened this section to 'a tiresome episode of The Odd Couple'. Perhaps it's worth bearing in mind that The Odd Couple was written a few years AFTER Kidnapped ! (In any case, I doubt that a written version of the television series would stir anyone's emotions like Kidnapped can). To most readers the historic aspects, along with the fact that the couple are being hunted by British redcoats is enough to maintain interest, suspense and pace.

Read and enjoy !

Let me tell you now that 'Kidnapped' is my personal favourite, and I've already read it four times! You'll never get a moment to pause to take a yawn. R.L. Stevenson with his superb writing capabilities writes of a young man named David Balfour. When his father dies, he is told to go to his uncle's house. After several failed attempts to kill David the wicked uncle sells him off to a skipper of a ship. In the course of his stay on the ship David meets the Jacobite, Alan. I can't describe the novel in words you gotta read it to know what you are really in for! This is the greatest adventure novel I've ever read. If you have read Stevenson's 'Treasure Island' then you won't be disappionted with this one.

I was surprised to see some reviewers didn't like this wonderful book. If you have trouble with the Scottish accent, read it out loud, use your imagination, and if you still can't figure it out, skip a bit. (Do you insist on understanding every single word spoken in a movie?)

This is the story of a young man overcoming adversity to gain maturity and his birthright. It moves right along, in Stevenson's beautiful prose. Read, for example, this sentence from Chapter 12: "In those days, so close on the back of the great rebellion, it was needful a man should know what he was doing when he went upon the heather." Read it out loud; it rolls along, carrying the reader back to Scotland, even a reader like me, who doesn't know all that much about Scottish history. Kidnapped is by no means inferior, and in many ways superior to the more famous Treasure Island.

Only two points I would like to bring up: I bought the Penguin Popular Classics issue, and have sort of mixed feelings. Maybe some day I'll get the version illustrated by Wyeth. I'm not sure whether this book needs illustrations, though. Stevenson's vivid writing is full of pictures.

In Chapter 4, David makes a point of saying that he found a book given by his father to his uncle on Ebenezer's fifth birthday. So? Is this supposed to show how much Ebenezer aged due to his wickedness? If anybody could explain this to me, please do.