I have found Judy Lawrence's The Budget Kit so helpful that I bought copies for two of my friends who were struggling with ways to keep track of their money. It is all about making choices and the need for the information to make those choices. This book is the key to keeping that critical information up-to-date and available. Not knowing where you money is coming from or going is like driving with your eyes closed. Lawrence makes the process so positive and simple , it becomes enjoyable and empowering.

I highly recommend this book to anyone. Buy it as a wedding present, as a graduation gift, as an anniversary gift for you and your spouse.

Love this book. Esp like that the pages are perforated so you can tear them out and put them in a notebook. Fantastic book -- well worth the price!

IF YOU ARE A SCATTERBRAIN, THIS IS THE SETUP YOU NEED
IT HELPS NAIL DOWN EVERY PENNY AND YOU WILL BE SHOCKED WHEN YOU SEE WHERE SOME OF YOUR MONEY HAS GONE! THIS WILL HELP YOU RE CREATE YOUR FINANCIAL SELF!

This is a great book for people who are just starting out with an exercise regimen as well as for people who are already active. I used this book to help me train for the Avon 3-Day Walk (60 miles in 3 days) and am proud to say that after doing the stretches in this book (even at the beginner level), I could walk 15-20 miles in a day and never have even shin splints. This is a great way to make exercise (relatively) painless.

This book was wonderful and detailed. Not only is it a great book but it has great pictures of the stretches. I recomend this book to anyone who needs to be more informed on stretching properly. I am a person who works out consistantly but felt like I always did the same stretches and never felt like I was getting all of my muscles. Now I know a lot more and feel I am compitant enough to work every muscle group.

I own this and have given it as a gift many times. I challenge you to learn and do the series of stretches "For All Active People" every day for a week, and see how much more un-tense and flexible you feel! You may not even be aware of just how tight and tense your muscles habitually are from your everyday living, until you release them with these stretches.

There are also other stretch series included, some examples being for Dancers and Professional Athletes, or People Who Sit a Lot. Alter lists stretches which benefit every part of the body from head to toe, and gives easy to follow instructions on how to do each one, with troubleshooting text on how not to do them as well, and clear line drawings.

I have found that the best time to do these stretches is at night after exercise, then take a hot shower and go to sleep. I wake in the morning feeling utterly relaxed, with my leg muscles twitching as though they'd LIKE to tense up as usual, but can't :-D Unfortunately I am a morning person with a fairly physically stressful job, and am almost always way too tired to do this... it takes me a good 45 minutes to work through the "For All Active People" series. So I usually end up doing them in the morning before work, since that is when I have the most energy. If I'm on the Nordic Track by 5:15 I have time to stretch and shower before running out the door to work :-D

This book taught me the SIMPLE WISDOM of my OWN BODY. To trust what my body tells me. This is something that we are ALL BORN with but it gets beaten out of us as we grow by all of the adults in our lives saying, "this will make you fat", "that will make you fat" etc etc.

This book has helped me win my weight battle and helped me to be a better mom by allowing my kids to trust their own bodies!

Thin Within: How to Eat and Live Like a Thin Person is the first and only book on the subject of weight control which worked for me. The book outlines a philosophy and program for living which does not separate the "overweight" person from the "thin" people. For the first time in my life, I have been able to consider myself to be someone who is healthy and attractively slim as a natural state of being, rather than as a result of putting forth extraordinary effort just to have the body that "normal" people have.

I am grateful to have this book to refer to on a regular basis. It has given me a kind of freedom with regard to weight control issues that I never thought would be possible. I very highly recommend it.

When I first came across this unique book about 10 years ago, I was quiet desperate. I had read probably 70+ books on the topic of weight loss and was ready to give up. As I read through the pages of Thin Within I knew I had finally found the true answer to permanent weight loss. It is so simple to follow because there is no diet! It's been over 10 years now and this no-nonsense approach to losing weight and keeping it off for good has never failed me. Buy it, you won't be sorry!

This is book is wonderful, no doubt and is a good book, that is, if you can find the orchid you are looking for in the book. This book has wonderful pictures and information, but only for those that are in the book. I find that this book is limited in the number of species, but it is great in that it actually has pictures and descriptions of certain hybrids. I have a Lycaste Aquila 'Detente' because of this book. The picture and the description inspired me to get this plant. The growing tips are great, but again, only for the orchids that are written about in the book.

This nearly 400-page guide to orchids is one of the best resources I have ever read and used. It is also extremely handy as it is a nice compact size. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful with excellent description(s) alongside. It covers the entire spectre of orchid growing & care, along with many helpful suggestions not normally found in orchid books, such as natural pest control. Even "species nuts" will find Taylor's Guide to be quite useful. In summation, I would just say that this is the best all-round orchid book I have ever read and still use regularly. Thank you, Judy White.

I love this little book and use it all the time. It has so much information packed into it's compact format. The color photos are beautiful and show great detail. The basic orchid growing information is helpful without being too technical and the specifics about each orchid are very useful in deciding if that orchid you just have to have will really stand a chance in your own growing situation.

As Orchids host at BellaOnline.com, I highly recommend this book to all orchid lovers at any level of experience.

I purchased the CD because of the good reviews on the book. My seven year old loved the CD and I was surprised to find myself singing along. He's been learning about penguins at school - this is definitely a good way to reinforce what he has learned while having lots of fun in the process.

An adult friend recommended this book to me (also an adult), figuring that I'd enjoy anything containing a poem titled "Regurgitate." She was right, and I found the rest of the book well-written and well-crafted, full of similar humor and the kind of realism-in-viewpoint that is sometimes (too often) lacking in books that feature animals. The illustrations are also excellent. I'm told that children do enjoy this book, but it's also captivated many of my adult friends ... including one woman to whom I presented a copy for her 55th birthday. Quality shines through any good work, and that's definitely true of "Antarctic Antics."

The book was very entertaining for my five year old granddaughter, making her laugh as well as learn about penguins.

The art work was as well done as the writing. I recommend it to anyone who is sly enough to teach through laughter and rhyme.

This book is great. I collect Mary-Kate and Ashley books and I have 15 of their Two of a Kind and I think I liked this one the best! It is a great book. Even though i'm 13 years old, I love reading and they are awesome books! If you have never read their books before, I recommend you do so now!!

That is like my favorite book. I read it over and over again. Even though I am only 8 I hope some day I own it. I also hope you like it too!!!

I have read almost all their books and this one was really great! I loved how it was in the form of their diaries while they're away at White Oaks Boarding School for Girls.

The new school year brings standardized testing to Miss Malarkey's classroom as she, her students, and even the parents are preparing for The Instructional Performance Through Understanding Test. The school is in an uproar with the gym instructor teaching stress-reducing yoga instead of sports, parents giving pop quizzes on bedtime stories at night, the cafeteria serving "brain food" for lunch -- the kids are beginning to think that maybe the test is more important than they suspect! Aptly illustrated by Kevin O'Malley, Testing Miss Malarkey is an hilarious and original picturebook story by Judy Finchler that pokes fun at the commotion surrounding standardized testing, a fixed feature of today's school systems and of increasing importance for teachers and parents as well as for the kids!

Okay, this book is not for kids, it's for teachers, principals, school board members, and others involved in that dreaded springtime ritual we like to call "Standardized Testing" (or as Judy Finchler calls it, the "IPTU Test"). The humor is there, it's just aimed at adults. Kids young enough to enjoy picture book won't get the scarcasm about the stress teachers and administrators go through each year but adults will howl with laughter!

As a teacher, I can honestly say NOTHING in this book is exaggerated...it's all true. The author must be or know a teacher, to understand how agonizing the standardized testing procedure is, and what a meaningless mystery it is to kids. Continuing in the same vein as Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10, with a child's-eye-view of teachers, this one also has minimal text and outstanding illustrations. Forget the kids; give this book to a teacher-to-be, or put it in the teacher's lounge during testing week. It will be a sure hit and give them something to chuckle about before they go back to the classroom to say, "Make sure you bubble in the entire circle; make no other marks on the page, do not fold, spindle, or mutilate your answer sheet....."

Any teacher who has taught even a year recently well understands the horrors of testing, and days when there are more teachers than students in the nurse's office.

Testing Miss Malarkey deals with the testmania which is being inflicted on our children in a humorous, yet unfortunately accurate way. Schools may not be teaching how to color in circles in art class-but there are many which have eliminated art to make room for test prep.

I would also suggest Susan Ohanian's
"What happened to recess and why are our children struggling in kindergarten"-the adult side of the story, but the same, sad tale.

Don't judge a book by it's cover doesn't apply in this case because not only is the cover of West Wind Review a work of art, but so it the writing. I love the prose poems/sudden fictions in this book. Please keep up the good work.

Not a dull page in the entire anthology. My only regret is that is could include a few more writers.

I recommend this anthology to anyone wanting a break from trendy genre novels, boring non-fiction, me-me-me poetry and nonsensical language poetry. Writers in West Wind Review are superb at mixing humor with pathos on their quests to find the meaning of life. You know how most writers seem to be trying too hard and sound fake deep? Not this group. Check it out.

Read SINGING LESSONS by Judy Collins . . . this is a very
touching memoir of her life, her son's suicide and companion's
serious illness, and how she managed to survive these
events.

Judy Collins has always been one of my favorite performers . . . I also enjoyed reading about how her career evolved, as well as how she played with such other favorites of mine as Tom Paxton, Leonard Cohen, Joni, Mitchell, and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Best of all, the book came with a four-song CD (much to my
surprise) . . . what a treat to be reading her words at the
same time I was listening to her sing!

There were many memorable passages; ...P>[Andrew Weil confirms what I have learned through trial and
error about depression.] "The best single treatment (for
depression) is vigorous, regular aerobic exercise, at least
thirty minutes a day, five days a week." Most of the time, after I spend a half hour or more exercising, any cloud of depression lifts so completely that I feel a small miracle has been accomplished.

The writting style is stunnigly beautiful and impressive,just as authour's music always had a certain healing power.Many singers/actors are not capable to remember anything more than their LP's and awards - celebrities memoirs are too often simply boasting about their career - but Collins have a perfect ballanced view on her past and she writtes about her inner life much more than her career,which is mentioned basically briefly. Portraits of her father and mentor Anthonia are described with affection and of course the book never stops reflecting on her son.This is a clear picture of Judy Collins life from her point of view - no celebrity gossip,no recording dates,what really matters here are feelings and precious memories she shares with reader.At times I thought her story about son sounds a bit obsessive - until it made me realise that I think about my mother every day and she died 12 years ago,so I guess we never really let go.Not only that second half of the book brings very helpful observations how to cope with depression,Collins also have sharp witt and she saved certain original sense of humour which must be life-saving quality (on her knees in the bathroom of the White House,she laughs at herself),the whole book is a warm,affectionate celebration of spirit still shining bright after tragedy and life downfalls.

While listening to the current recordings of this remarkable performer, humanitarian, and personality, one is immediately struck by the warmth of her voice and its enduring stamina and honesty, the same can be said about, "Singing Lessons, A Memoir of Love, Loss, Hope, and Healing. If anyone wonders if it is possible to survive unbearable tragedy, and thrive, they only have to read this book. If anyone wonders about physical, spiritual, and emmotional vibrancy, beyond the age of 40, they have only to read this book! It has been said that to survive any great tragedy, you have to go through it and experience it honestly. For those of us who have gone through far less than the loss of an only child, this book is a triumphant road-map on how to grow and survive any of lifes unfathomable, unexpected, and unreal experiences. Judy Collins is a shinning example, not only for those trying to cope with an enormous tragedy, but many of the new comers in todays music and entertainment industry who could well learn a "lesson" from her tremendous example on how to be a "good" star, someone who is truly grateful for the position they have achieved, and seeks to give back to the world, a true sense of caring, a steady sense of responsibility, and most of all, an enduring sense of the "real" kind of love, that makes this book "sing," and the journey possible and worth the effort to continue.

This was the best book I have seen for premature babies. When our twin boys were born at 29 weeks, the hospital gave us a book that we could refer to. Everytime you would look at the book it scared you to death. I found this book and I kept it with me at all times. When ever anything came up I would refer to it. The book is very realistic but also very positive. I still refer to it even though our boys are 2. The book is very helpful. I would recomend this book to everyone. It really helped us out through this difficult time.

Your Premature Baby and Child provides parents of premature children with much-needed information--and, equally important, it does so in a welcoming and accessible way. The language is straightforward, descriptions of medical and other issues are concise and to the point, and sidebars, bullets, checklists, testimony from other preemie parents, and other features make the book inviting for browsing, fact-finding, and more. As a preemie parent myself, I hope doctors and nurses recommend this great resource to everyone confronting the prospect of becoming a Mom or Dad to a premature child. Not only does it help explain the NICU experience, but it devotes considerable attention to providing the information parents need once their children come home. -- William H. Woodwell, Jr., author, Coming to Term: A Father's Story of Birth, Loss, and Survival (University Press of Mississippi, 2001).

I purchased this book after the premature birth of our son. He was considered a "micro preemie" being born at 1 lb 14 oz. We were told in the NICU that many preemies have challenges that were unlike "typical" children, and we thought it would be helpful to refer to this book and to educate ourselves so that we could help identify problems that many pediatricians overlook in preemies.

This book is an absolute must-have for any parent of a preemie. I know that weight is always a concern, and the book included boy and girl weight charts and seperated it even further to their birth weight (born less than/greater than 1500 grams.) We still use the weight chart today (our son is 2 1/2 years old)
and it can be used up to age 3.