Move over Disney, Douglas Fir is takin' over! This is a wonderful book, complete with its very own music of top quality. Congratualtions to the authors - I think they started a saga here.

I am an assistant in a kindergarten class. As I shared the book with my kindergarten students, they were in awe. They have never sat so attentive while listening to a story. The songs and music throughout the story made it even more enjoyable. Once the story was completed there were many questions about the story that I was able to answer from the information given in the story. The story will be wonderful to share during earth day in all schools. Mr. Reitz had a book signing at our school. Do your childrens' school a favor and request that he visit their school!

The story of Chief Joseph is one of the most important and disturbing chapters in American history. In this book, Bill McAuliffe provides an excellent introduction to Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce, and the amazing story of their flight to escape the American Army. The book contains some excellent photographs and a time line of events. It concludes with words from Chief Joseph, "The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it." This is a man and a subject that we all should know more about. This book is an excellent begining.

A book that details what Bill Honig, the former California State Superintendent of Education, took as a given in the hearts and minds of administrators in California when he initially suggested incorporating the "Whole Language Literature-Based" approach to reading instruction. The outline above gives you an overview of the areas that mid-level administrators chose to throw out in "implementing" what were meant to be the supplemental suggestions of Whole Language.

In addition to spelling out the basics for a generation of teachers who missed (or were forbidden to use) them, this book details the horror that Mr. Honig felt after seeing ideas meant to improve an already existing and workable system egregiously misapplied by the buzzword harpies of the midlevels of the educational establishment fluttering from one new idea to another without a sense of continuity or connection, in a rush to appear intellectually modish and to appear to bring their districts "into compliance with" state educational standards, but who had gotten their information not from the source, but from diluted summaries, memos, and seminars. Under what Whole Language came to be after this trickling down of misinformation, we saw principals entering classrooms and seizing the old grade-level spellers that teachers hid like contraband in the bottoms of their desk drawers. Hopefully this book will bring awareness of the balance between phonics and contextual cues that make up reading skills by warning those who read it of the dangers of shrieking "Out with the old! In with the new!" and do something to now help retain the good that is to be found in Whole Language while reinstituting the basic skills that precede the ability to make guesses about the text, which then precedes the ability to draw meaning from and make inferences about the text.

The question remaining is: Are there now enough people out there with the ability to read and understand the book

Well, what title should I give for a book on Egyptian hieroglyphs?

Actually, the information blurb from the Library Journal linked to the book's entry here states: 'Reference collections desiring more complete coverage will want Alan Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar (1957. 3d ed.) despite some obsolescence in the treatment of the verbal system.'

I actually learned hieroglyphs using that text at the University of London in the 1980s. But I have assembled a collection of more accessible books on how to learn hieroglyphs as refreshers and for sharing. I have four texts, and this was the first of the lot.

If you are truly interested in learning Egyptian hieroglyphs for an upcoming trip to Egypt or to visit a museum with a collection (I amazed a friend once by being able to read an inscription at the museum; I confessed that of the hundreds of 'paragraphs' of hieroglyphs in the collection, that that was one of only two I could decipher without my notebook), Collier and Manley's 'How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs' is a good choice for learning.

It begins with a basic description of the way in which hieroglyphs are used (some signs are words, but actually very few, and others are sound-meaning symbols). Collier and Manley introduce a transliteration system to ease your way into pronunciation (and pronunciation is very sketchy, given the fact there are no recordings from ancient Egypt). Symbols can vary occasionally for sound, meaning, and determinative value.

The pattern of hieroglyphs is also variable. Generally, you always want to 'read into the face', i.e., the picto-glyphs will be facing the direction from which to start -- more often right to left than left to right, and columns go top to bottom. There are no punctuation marks and no word breaks -- this can make meanings hard to decipher.

Consider the example:

IAMNOWHERE
which could be broken into
I AM NOW HERE
or
I AM NOWHERE
and in this case, context might not help provide which meaning is the true one. Or perhaps the author is poetical and sees the trouble of distinction and means that trouble to be present.

No wonder hieroglyphs are hard!

Collier and Manley's book is excellent in basic vocabulary building and basic grammar. And, if you're like me and will make flash cards, you'll become a better draw-er too.

There are exercises, and pictures of inscriptions to practice on, and a key to the exercises in the back of the book.

This book is an easy and fun way of learning to read Egyptian Hieroglyphs. It includes step-by-step lessons and practice exercises for you to do each time you learn something new. You will encounter texts, including ones that have been taken from monuments from the British Museum. Plus Mark Collier and Bill Manley,the authors,are proffesional teachers who have been teaching Ancient Hieroglyph courses since 1992 to several groups and institutions. This book was designed for people who have never had exierence in reading hieroglyphs before or for people who just want to improve or fill in the gaps of previous studying.

This book fills the gaping hole between the large reference grammars such as Gardiner's, the popular introductions that don't really teach any of the language, and the out-of-date material by Budge.

Written at the British Museum, this is a textbook for learning to read hieroglyphs such as you find on the walls of a museum. It is not a complete grammar and won't teach you how to read complex literture, but will give you a complete enough command of the language to read most common material.

The book is well-printed and nicely bound, and is small enough to take to the museum with you! It contains a wealth of material, a glossary, king lists, and information about Egyptian gods.

Many of the exercises are drawings or pictures of wall paintings or carvings, making the book fun to use. Answers to exercises are given at the back.

If you don't know which hieroglyphic book to pick, this is the one!

The story set the pace right from the first page. It was one adventure after another. The bright illustrations set the tone for each adventure. This was the first book my son said he couldn't wait to get to the next chapter ( it's set up in only 4 chapters), because he had to know what happened to Bill Cody.

I used this book with my preschool class. I brought in a toy spider to go along with it. I sang the song as I read it with the children in a circle. Then I put the spider on the children and the part of the body the spider was on. This was a fun book to do.