Delicate and detailed illustrations with old fashioned looking pictures this book is based on a traditional Shaker abc rhyme of animal names. The illustrations are playful and you can tell the artists had fun illustrating this book. The book introduces unusual animals names like xanthos, ocelot, angleworm and ichneumon. Fun book to share with your children.

I am 33 years old as of this writing and I remember this as by far my favorite fairy tale book as a child. My favorite story in the book was The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde - the ending was bittersweet and always made me cry but it was a beautiful testiment to friendship and the importance of kindness.

There is also a wonderfully "girl power" version of The Prince and The Goosegirl. The prince wanted to possess the beautiful goosegirl but she just wanted to be loved - not owned.

I searched out this book because my husband and I are planning to adopt and I could not imagine a better book for a child to learn the importance and magic of books.

This book tells a sad tale of "progress and civilization" overtaking a peaceful rural town.

The town originally began when two widows started selling plots of their vast land a half acre or so at a time, when they became unable to tend the fields themselves. The ladies "sold them cheap." Slowly but surely, the town grew bit by bit, with kindly rural folk moving in. Eventually, a smell rural town developed.

The people, most with little education, lived simply, and tended to strew their property about their yards: old iceboxes, wheel-less cars, assorted broken down farm vehicles. Soon the surrounding folks began to heckle the place. Still, the people of Shaker Lane were good, honest, decent folk. Multi-generation families lived there. They helped out anyone who needed it, and looked after one another. Everybody knew everybody. It was a peaceful place to live.

Inevitably, the Powers That Be decide to build a dam on the nearby pond, which will flood Shaker Lane. The people will have to move. One by one, they go. Sadly.

Once the dam is built, and the lands adapt, the new building begins. Concrete, stucco, and asphalt in place of wood and metal. Brand new modern homes, with manicured yards, backyard patios, basketball courts, and built-in swimming pools. "Single family homes" without the grandparents, cousins, uncles, etc the previous residents had. Lots of loud, new, fancy automobiles. Progress.

What had been an idyllic, peaceful town full of kindly neighbors who helped one other is now a "modern" semi-suburb lived in by an entirely different sort of people. The old (and elderly) residents have given way to the young. Seeing it now, "You wouldn't know the place," we are told.

**
A well-told story, not for younger children, even though it looks like a children's picture book. The story is quite sad, poignant because of the harsh reality of these situations, as they have been happening as "suburbs" creep farther out and out. Progress.

The illustrations are beautifully rendered in a soft way. The book is hard to classify, although recommended.

This has been a favorite book of ours for years and years and years. "The Year at Maple Hill Farm" is written and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provenson. It documents, from January through December, the hard tasks and simple pleasures inherent in life on a farm--everything from bird migrations to the foaling of the horses to lazy summer days spent doing nothing more important swatting flies.

Humans and animals co-exist peacefully here. The illustrations are simple and gently colored, with subtle detail sprinkled throughout. The animals are given a great deal of personality (see especially the cats, who are wonderfully quirky) and the story itself, while utterly basic and free of frills, has an undertow of narrative propulsion that makes each page seem a natural outgrowth of the previous page.

I can't recommend the book highly enough. If you live in the country, you will recognize so much of what is here. If you live in the city, you will welcome the peaceful rhythms of this charming book.

William Blake (whose poetry this book mirrors) runs an inn where we meet angels, rabbits, tigers, a host of interesting characters. It's a great introduction to poetry for the youngest of children. The illustrations are quaint and fit this book perfectly. I can see why it has won the awards it has.

A vsisit to William Blakes Inn is one of my favorite books ever. In a clever turn, nanct willard had turned the more famous characters from Blakes poetry into guest and attendents at his "Inn"" Angels make the bed, Dragons bake the bread,Tiger,tiger loses its strength,all adorned with gorgeous illustartions from alic and martin provensen. In the brief introduction,Ms willard explains how she became attracted to william Blake,then what led her to this book. My children even at a very young age have love this book. It's poetic scheme is simple yet elegant, which makes it also fun for the adult reading and challenging enough for a early grade reader.A wonderful, funfilled chidrens classic.And, Ms Willard is correct:poetry IS the best medicine.

When I was a child, I read A Visit to William Blake's Inn and it inspired the poet within myself. Now as an adult, I still find the imaginative poetry within this book to permeate my thoughts. The colorful imagery painted within its text matches perfectly to the book's charming illustrations. William Blake's Inn is a must for the collector of prized children's literature.

I checked this book out so many times from the school library when I was little, that the librarian asked my parents to buy me a copy so that other kids could have a chance to check it out. The cats , by far, were my favorite part, especially MAX! If you know a child that likes animals, this is the book to get them!! It's fun, has great pictures, great humor, and is just my all around favorite book of my childhood!

This is the most memorable book of my childhood and adult life. I read it countless times as a child, and kept it safe until I was able to share this wonderful creation with my niece, Phylicia, and nephew, Mark. As a child, living in the country, books were all I had, and this one kept me content for hours. In turn, Fee and Mark grew to love it as it covered every animal they had been exposed to in their short lives. It gave them insight into the animal's personalities, how to treat them, how to care for them. They got to imagine having these types of pets of their own, and it made for many creative days for the three of us, reading and learning together.

I received this book as a gift 20+ years ago, and still have it in relatively good condition (I was not kind to most of my books as a small child). "Our Animal Friends..." is a joy for anyone who has ever lived with animals, even city-dwellers. The authors give distinct personalities to their subjects without making them too human. It is a book about animals. They do not converse with each other and have tea parties; they ruin fences and leave chipmunk heads on the doorstep. They are not portrayed as eternal beings, but as a part of the cycle of temporary residents of their farm. I find this very refreshing as I have for the last two decades.

I like buck stop here becuse it talks about the presidents.
It is fun and cool.I been loving it since I was 7 years old.
You shoud read it!

This book is a great resource for teaching about the presidents, or for getting an overview of the sequence, order, and accomplishments of our 41 presidents who served in 42 administrations. The drawings are quite creative, with symbolic and labeled parts to indicated achievments and events throughout that president's administrations, and the text is written in poetic style, so it's a great read aloud for early adolescents. We just finished a presidential press conference research project in my class, and this book was passed around as a great tool, I liked it so much for this project, I am hoping to order a 15 more so that 2-3 students can each share a copy. This book is entertaining and informative, and helps anyone learn about our presidential history.

My grandmother gave me this book when I was 6 or 7. I can now recite all the presidents in order and it is honestly from associating their names with the pictures and jingles accompanying each executive. It's funny...I actually visualize in my head this book page-by-page when I'm trying to remember. It was one of my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, childhood book. If you want your kid to learn the presidents well, buy The Buck Stops Here by Alice Provensen.

This children's book is an account of the famous French aviation pioneer, Louis Bleriot (1872-1936) who was the first person to fly across the English Channel (on July 25, 1909). The book won the 1984 Caldecott Medal for best illustrations in a book for children. IT is an excellent book for use in a discussion of history, particularly the history of aviation.

Of course there were important aviation pioneers in between the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh, and "The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel With Louise Bleriot, July 25, 1909" tells about one of the more important ones. In 1901 Louis Bleriot had made a fortune off of his invention of an automobile searchlight. Out for a drive with his family he sees a great white airship over the city of Cambrai. From that day forward, Louis Bleriot had but one wish: to build a flying machine. This charming book by Alice and Martin Provensen follows this quest from the development of the "Bleriot I" (too small for anyone to sit in) to the "Bleriot II" glider until finally with the "Bleriot VII" Louis had an aeroplane that could really fly. Then the only thing left to do was to prove what an aeroplane can really do and win the prize for being the first man to fly across the England Channel.

The story being told is simple and straightforward, but it is the artwork that young readers will find so captivating because it conveys the sense of time and place so well. However, it would have been nice to see what some of these planes looked like before Louis cracked them up. Still, this is the simple lesson of perseverance and the courage of your convictions told in simple words and with memorable illustrations. It is also good that young readers learn that there were actually famous aviation pioneers who did not live in the United States.

Remember: It is only seven years until the 100th anniversary of Bleriot's flight. Bet you sometime rebuilds the "Bleriot XI" and tries to duplicate his feat.

Overall, this is an interesting book with "teasers" about various Americans designed to ignite young imaginations. However in several cases, the author shows a definite political bias by including "heroic" aspects while glossing over the ugly underside of some of these icons and vice versa. One example is Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who Provensen extolls as a champion of women's rights --- yet she fails to mention that Sanger was motivated by belief in race purification and repeatedly preached "more children for the fit (meaning rich white people) and less for the unfit (blacks and others she deemed inferior.)" Sanger's works were used extensively by the Nazis in their own efforts to "rid the world" of the "unwanted." And FBI legend J. Edgar Hoover is listed under "Villains and Rogues" and his tagline reads "Ruled through use of propaganda and fear...encouraged illegal snooping...misused federal funds...kept secret files to manipulate politicians." But there is nothing about his attempts to end organized crime, efforts to keep America safe from enemies, etc.
Kids receive a likewise lopsided view of many Americans included in this book, which includes "expatriates", "scoundrels and theives", as well as mainstream heroes. Parents might also want to watch out for the occassional term that they might not want their kids repeating (example: quote from Al Capone about being "one of those goddamn radicals".)
My recommendation is if you do get this book, go over it with your children, do some research, and show them the whole picture rather than simply accepting these tiny snippets as gospel. Point out to kids that authors bring their own preconcieved notions and personal agendas to their work, and a good reader investigates rather than absorbs such opinions.