Hand-shaped Art inspires, and, that is its incredible attribute. Looking at one idea, I was pleasantly bombarded with possibilities, especially, creative, interactive bulletin board ideas and writing assignments. Too many teachers fill bulletin boards with glossy posters. This book lets the children participate.

Layout and art are superb, simple, ready to use, and that, my friend, saves time. You will be glad you spent the money on this book for it is full of ideas you can't see until your imagination takes over.

Take, for example, one hand makes a ship's sail, but what a journey it will be when you include travel plans in creative writing, science of the stars and the ocean, attendance count, lunch count, classroom managment, and scary creatures bordering the bulletin board. I saw a sail made from one hand and then...See what I mean? Keep a pen handy for all the ideas that will flood your landscape. You'll never go back to glossy, boring posters again.

As a pre-school teacher I found the book most usefull specialy the holidays and weather art works

Renard has a PH.D in Islamic studies from Harvard University, and previously wrote Responses to Questions on Islam and Hinduism. He knows what he's talking about!!! The book opens with 101 specific questions that are divided into 9 interest areas: Beginnings, Development, Doctrines, Law and Ethics,Spirituality, the Humanities, Relationships to Other Traditions, Women and Family and Buddhism Now. A chart of major Buddhist lineages, as well as a select glossary of Buddhist technical terms, are both helpful. A detailed Index will enable the reader to find specific information quickly. Renard has written a scholarly and useful book. If you have questions about Buddhism, this is the book for you!

Responses To 101 Questions On Buddhism is a concise introduction to Buddhism that covers its major historical, cultural, spiritual and theological facets. Arranged in brief, "reader friendly" and thematically arranged segments, Responses To 101 Questions On Buddhism covers the origins and early sources of Buddhism, Buddhist doctrines, cultural and intellectual contributions, Buddhism's relationship to other religions, women and family in the Buddhist tradition, and much more. John Renard's informative and engaging text is enhanced with helpful charts, graphs, and illustrations. Responses To 101 Questions On Buddhism is highly recommended for the western reader seeking an informative and reliable overview of Buddhism in terms of its history, philosophy, and contemporary practices.

A great resource for those looking to obtain a general overview of Hinduism. This book covers the fundamental essence of the faith and community.

The book tried to tell the story of muslim civilization, culture, practices and belief through out the muslim world from the point of view of notable Muslims. It does it wonderfully. The reader gets a little taste of different aspects of muslim achievements which leaves hin intrigued. This is a great getaway book that should send the reader out to learn more about islam. I enjoyed it very much.

I just finished reading this new book by Gary Renard and have to admit I'm astounded by its clarity in describing the essential theme of "A Course in Miracles," which is forgiveness. Although I have been a student of the Course since 1985, there were some concepts that have been so misinterpreted by my various studies that only by reading the clear discussion here did I finally "get" it.

Although the Course language is beautiful beyond comprehension, the straight-forward, direct language of "the disappearance of the universe," is very helpful in clearing up questions. This book is not a substitute for "A Course in Miracles," but it is a wonderful refresher course in reminding us over and over again that the key to waking up is to forgive continuously. It would also be very helpful to those who are contemplating the Course as their spiritual path.

"A Course in Miracles" is far from mainstream, but as "disappearance" states, "it is actually spreading at a much faster pace than Christianity did." Also, "a hundred years from now, a significant percentage of the world's population will accept that the Course is really Jesus speaking the Word of God." The book clarifies many common misconceptions about what the Bible says and explains how the teachings of Jesus were misinterpreted many years ago, and again now, His Words in the Course are frequently misinterpreted.

"God is" is the absolute truth that never changes, but "disappearance" states, "To accept it however, requires the kind of mind training the Course gives you...as J asks you in his Course, Would God have left the meaning of the world to your interpretation?" (Text 640)

I highly recommend "disappearance of the universe" to anyone who is open to the spiritual path of the Course. As the introduction to "A Course in Miracles" says, "It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary."

"The Disappearance of the Universe" is an amazing and startling book. The author, who as far as I can see is just a regular guy with no academic background, has managed to do what the other popular books about "A Course in Miracles" definitely did not do: make it truly understandable! Not only that, but this book does it in a way that's fun to read. Not that it isn't challenging; on the contrary, this book is substantial, formidable and if one wants to follow this path - demanding. But if you're ready for it (and not everybody is) this book actually tells you how to apply advanced spiritual teachings to your everyday life in a practical way. Oh by the way, it also manages to completely explain the universe at the same time in a way that I've never seen done before. Because of these many facts, I certainly have to give the author the benefit of the doubt when he says that these in-the-flesh appearances and conversations with two ascended masters (Saint Thomas and Saint Thaddaeus) actually took place. Indeed, who can judge that they didn't if they weren't there? The conversations in the book are so realistic, the timeline they follow so authentic, and the author so unlikely to write this book that I now believe him when he says at the beginning in his Author's Note: "...I can vouch for the extreme unlikeliness of this book being written by an uneducated layman such as myself without inspiration by these masters." Personally, I think Gary Renard has given the world a book that succeeds on so many levels it is perfectly appropriate to describe it as amazing and startling. It deserves both success and appreciation.

Anyone interested in spiritual study, particularly during these times of violent projections, will want to consider Gary Renard's new book, The Disappearance of the Universe. Perhaps the best word for describing it is "brilliant." Being a student of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) for over 20 years, and having read his book, it is difficult not having a sense of awe about Renard's success in communicating ACIM principles with the guidance of two ascended masters. The fact that D. Patrick Miller, for whom I have the greatest respect, is publishing this work, and has written the introduction, is additional positive evidence of the book's brilliance. I think that it will become a spiritual "classic" and folks will be reading it for hundreds of years. Anyone attempting to comprehend, and forgive, the present insanity of war will also find some sobering comfort in these pages. It is indeed an extraordinary work - a masterpiece.

I found this book to be very informative about the land and extream weather of Alaska but it ran a little dry quickly. This is a journal of around 9 months of Rockwell kents life while in Alaska. I have read other books that were written from journals and Kents does fair better then most. I can understand that a journal in Alsaka can run out of new and interesting things to write about and this book seemed to try to fill in the gaps with Kents thoughts and many philosophies. All in all I do recomend this book to anyone who really want a real veiw of what Alaska is actually like.

You can pick this book off your library shelf any time, open it to any page, start at any paragraph and begin to feel a mantle of peace settle over your jangled nerves. "Wilderness" is the record of artist Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son spending a winter in Alaska on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay, near Seward, with only one elderly Swede as a neighbor. This "journal of quiet adventure" nonetheless is exciting in the relationships between father and son and old Olson and between the Kents and the harsh winter weather. Beautifuly and profusely illustrated by Rockwell and Rockwell, Jr.

Of the many wilderness adventures that flood our view on the television or in movies, with dramatic, life-risking events, we can become weary of the slick presentations. Rockwell Kent tells of us of another type of adventure, the day to day living on remote Fox Island off Seward, in Alaska. The small pleasures, the difficult trips in an open boat to get supplies, the child's sweetness in his friendship with a magpie, all these and more stories are told in a daily journal. And illustrated as Kent always does, with insight and style. Kent as a writer is equal to Kent as an artist, intellectual and candid in his telling a story and sharing impressions. If this is your first reading of a Kent book, you have a long list of other books ahead for this was his first book done as a "first person" storyteller. His desire for remote and wild landscapes to paint took him, and then takes us, through his work, to many other places over many decades. But none are any more delightful and majestic than this trip to Alaska. To check out the validity of this remote place, I took a trip to Fox Island several years ago, and though I didn't see it in the winter as Rockwell and his son did, it was dramatic, beautiful and matched the feeling I'd gotten when I first read the book years ago. The nice touch of this edition is that the editor, Doug Capra, has a very fine introduction to the book and Capra knows his subject. He has been researching Kent for years, but more than that, he has something to say and says it well. Few Kent editors do. But the book--it makes a wonderful Christmas gift because it has a really fine description of what a meaningful Christmas celebration can be in a remote place, shared with a hermit on the island, the father and little boy. There are some delightful details in this story: the food taken for the trip; the books for father and son; the rigerous baths when the bay freezes and the ice cold waters no longer are available. Kent is no ordinary artist, writer or father. And this is no ordinary adventure. It makes you wish, even yearn, for that place, that time, those people. I knew Rockwell Kent in the final few years of his life and he still carried that energtic view of life, that love of beauty and nature that comes alive in this small work. And three cheers to Doug Capra for bringing this new edition to life for it is of the quality for which Kent was famous in his published books. (A wretched edition of this treasure of a story was published a few years before and this edition puts to rest a Kent lover's dispair about having a bad edition of a Kent work on the shelves, any shelves. I almost never throw books away but this earlier paperback with bad design from cover to cover merits polluting a garbage pail.) So, invest in some good reading, some laughs and some wistful thoughts about what a wilderness adventure could be. And for those who have courage, still can be.

The book told the story of a poor boy in early 20th century France who had a terrible family life. His mother was a distant character and the boys father was complex and distracted by his politics. The story shocked me due to the raw nature of his family and the depression that a boy at his age could endure. It was definately and inspired reading for those intrested in French culture.

Poil de Carotte is very well written, though most Americans may not understand the thoughts of Renard!

Here is a newer author who has demonstrated his voice is one that will be discernible in the overpopulated choir of modern writers. I just hope I get some clue as to what he is attempting to convey. I read the book slowly and carefully, very slowly and very carefully. I made copious use of the genealogical chart... as if I had a choice. Similarity in names among members of the extended family impeded my progress at several junctures. I tried to defer a final opinion until I had taken the time to re-evaluate, however the end result remained unchanged, confusion, with frustration a photo-finish second.

Without question, Jefrey Renard Allen is an up and coming wordsmith. He has the capability to evoke imagery of crystal clarity yet I found myself in a state of flux as to why I had been suddenly transported to a new time, place or generation. As far as I could tell and believe me, I read page by page, RAILS UNDER MY BACK is at its core the story of the interdependencies, aspirations, and failures of two doubly-bound families (brothers married to sisters) in a large northern city, some contrived amalgam of New York and Chicago. In all things relevant the rail system which I saw as a metaphor of family ties, was the instrument of definitive influence. The train/subway/elevated are equally a method of escape and the locus of security.

The book, set primarily in the 1970s, flows seamlessly from city to city, generation to generation, reality to surreal, and that in fact is one of the problems. Give me at a subtle clue we are moving on. I am not infering the transitions were haphazard in placement but they were not effectively introduced nor conducive to the reader's enjoyment.

RAILS is not oppressively long but it is a challenge to read. Regrettably, the end of the trip does not justify the rigors of the journey.

...Jeffery Renard Allen's first novel presents the interwoven narratives of two extended families whose histories go back past the Great Migration to the middle of the nineteenth century. "Rails Under My Back" is partly autobiographical, but it is blessedly free of the personal grievances so typical of confessional writing. And though the subject of race figures naturally in the book, it differs from protest novels like Richard Wright's and from celebrations of African American life like Zora Neale Hurston's, in that it is driven by no particular racial agenda. Allen's themes are the ordinary mysteries of human beings anywhere: the fitful dynamics between generations, the various effects of minor events on different members of the same family, and the uniqueness of every human life, unfolding with its particular and unpredictable logic.

Twenty years ago the McShan sisters married the Jones brothers, conjoining two long-lived clans and establishing their homes in a Midwestern city rather like modern Chicago. Their teenaged children - - Hatch, the son of Sheila and Lucifer, and Jesus, son of Gracie and John - - were inseparable while growing up, but now they've drifted apart. Hatch, a voracious reader, wants a career in music; Jesus, smoldering with rages he doesn't wholly understand, gravitates toward gang life in the inner-city projects. As the narrative opens, 17-year-old Jesus is coming home only rarely, intimidating his relatives (including Hatch) with his iron eyes, bulletlike shaved head, and surly silences.

How did two boys so close in age, blood, and background turn out so differently? In Allen's book this question, explicitly the center of John Edgar Wideman's fine "Brothers and Keepers," is merely implied. But it offers a plot that's taut as well as subtle, in vectors of simultaneous construction and destruction. By acts of violence Jesus seeks to tear the family apart, even as Hatch and his sister Porsha, a successful model who has fallen in love with an inner-city hoodlum, try to connect their lives with family history. At times the characters experience personal bonds as bondage, and separation from loved ones feels a lot like freedom. Will Jesus break every tie of kinship and affection? Will Hatch follow Jesus into an urban wilderness?

Social criticism is implied in scenes from the city projects--the rust-bucket elevators, urinous halls, disintegrating families, paralyzing oscillations between random violence and inertia--and in the baffled, dead-end fates of Black men who helped fight their nation's wars. But no rancors lie behind these themes. There's no piousness, either, in the book's focus on people who daily, endlessly do menial jobs in order to maintain decent lives. Allen's characters have simply inherited a remarkable capacity for work from ancestors like Pappa Simmons, who said, "Labor is the deck. All else is the sea."

"Rails" is a long book. Though its recurrent railway journeys create a poetic coherence, they can be so dizzy we lose any sense of direction. Events sometimes merge confusingly, and a few plot threads are left dangling. Occasionally the prose reads like fragments shored against someone's ruin - - scraps of nursery rhyme, rap song, and jump-rope chant are juxtaposed with marginalia in family albums, an FBI clipping, an NAACP notice safety-pinned into a book, a funeral program. Maybe the unsigned letter found in a family Bible speaks for this novel's author: "It should be easy to follow the thread of my story' The seams show." But even fans of postmodern pastiche will sometimes need to ask of Allen's book (as Porsha asks of the letter), "How am I sposed to read this?"

Still, Allen's characters, including his remarkable women, are uniquely imagined. His portrayals of married life are fresh and intelligent: the helpless love between Lucifer and Sheila gives neither a window on the other's surprising inner world, while Gracie, strangely tormented by the ghosts of babies, struggles to accept John's bad case of the walking blues. Porsha's work in photography studios is fascinating. Young men in the projects talk amazing trash, part horrifying menace and part comic bluster. Cityscapes unfold like prose-poems, flashbacks to stories of Whole Daddy and Pappa Simmons are marvelous, and the book has intriguing religio-mythic dimensions - - the names of Jesus and Lucifer are no accident.

Readers who love the works of Ellison, Morrison, and Faulkner will welcome Allen's book. In an era when marketability reigns, we should thank his publishers, too, for backing a first novel this challenging, ambitious, and seriously literary.

Haven't read anything better since John Wideman's The Cattle Killing. It is simply outstanding. So full of life, so surprising, so beautifully written.

As the name of the book says, author explains Islam in 101 questions, first 50-60 about history and fundementals and remainig more contemporary issues and politics such as Israel, growth of Islamic population, etc. Best part is that Author provides paralell or comperable concepts from other religions. About more contemporary issues answers are more from current state policies rather than directly from Islam. In other words it sounds like author claiming that the policy of an Islamic Country seems to be Islam's answer to the current issues which may not be correct all the time. I found the last third of the book not as satisfactory as or reliably information source. A quick comperative source book that makes everybody happy in what they believe.

Very good and very fair. I would recommend you to buy this book

John Renard answers 101 questions concerning the often misunderstood religion of Islam. It is oriented for Christians (in particular, Catholics), from a Christian perspective. Being a Muslim myself, I am happy to know that there people out there like Renard, who try to teach the truth about Islam.