Lively black-and-white illustrations by Tony Ross perfectly showcase the spritely, fun, and iconoclastically spelled poetry of Ian Whybrow resulting in a little "kids only" book of charming and entertaining poetry that is sure to please any young reader. My Flying Adventure: I have a friend called Stubby Crow./Sumtimes he sits on wire,/And if he feels like it,/He can go up even higher.//Sum people fly in an air balloon/Or a blown-up rubber glove./But Stubbs just does a flippy flap,/And up he goes above.//I wunce flew off a lamp post,/But I could not get the trick/I found the air was a bit 2 thin,/And the ground was a bit 2 thick./Bonk.

This book is amazing for kids 5-105. Insightfully charming, and very humorous, it captures the reader's attention from page one. It may be a simple book, but it sure is charming. And it's great for people with high goals - 'cos if Michael can do it - you know that your dreams isn't necessarily that tough to achieve.

We have owned Midnight Feast for 4 years now (our
eldest child is 7), and we'll get quite a few more years use out of it. It's the story of a brother and sister (sister looks smaller, but is definetly in charge) who decide to pretend to be asleep so as to stay up for a midnight feast. The brother is sent to fetch all the necessaries (cookies and apples, aka pomegranites and lobsters, something to sit on etc.), while the sister waits for the princess to arrive. Girls will like it that they are in charge, boys will like the fantasies the little boy has whilst getting the supplies and mums will enjoy the ending (read it and see why).

A wonderful book that teaches the value of listning

My younger daughter brings this book home from kindergarten every single day. She and her sister pore over it at the breakfast table. There are so many clever things about this book, things that are spot on. I love the way the pictures are displayed as if they are in a museum, and the museum-goers are doing things that echo the contents of the pictures. The transparencies that turn Michelangelo into Adam are clever; I also love the 2 versions of De la Tour's *Cardsharp* where you have to figure out what's different about them. The Holbein anamorphosis is pretty clear to my 6-year-old. I have a PhD in art history and have published about some of these paintings, and frankly I am just thrilled to death that this book has somehow made them exciting to my children. I wish I could get the others in the series--they really should be in print.

This a terrific book for infants. The illustrations are well done and the text is very simple. My 8 month old loves it! The book is about an adorable little princess who wants a pet. Each page shows an animal and what sound the animal makes. My son loves when I make the animal noises. There are other books in the Little Princess Board Book series that are good as well. They each go over familiar themes, bedtime, animals and shapes but the illustrations give them a fresh perspective.

My daughter loves hearing about the girl who fears being so precious that she will someday marry a prince, be wrapped in cotton wool and come out only for glittering balls and to tell the servants what to do. It has a wonderful message to girls, especially the tomboy type.

In "Shakespeare and Macbeth," Stewart Ross takes us to London, 1605 as the Elizabethan era has come to an end and a new Scottish king sits on the throne of England. Knowing King James loved the theater and was fascinated by witchcraft, Shakespeare wrote a play to please the king. Ross tells how Shakespeare conceived and wrote "Macbeth," covering the playwright's sources (such as Holinshed's "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland") and telling about the actors who performed the play at the Globe theater, such as Richard Burbage. Ross talks specifically about how Shakespeare transformed the raw facts of history into his tragic drama, putting in things that would hopefully impress the new king from Scotland (when we see Banquo's heirs that will come to sit on the throne the last figure represented is, of course, King James himself). The artwork by Tony Karpinski and Victor Ambrus is based on careful research with regard to period clothing and the like. There is also a cut-away diagram of the Globe Theater and in the back of the book there are some excellent pencil drawings accompanying the synopsis of the actual play (I believe Karpinski did the paintings and Ambrus the drawings, but do not hold me to that conclusion). "Shakespeare and MacBeth: The Story Behind the Play," has a foreword from actor Kenneth Branagh, who praises it for conveying much of the excitement he felt when he was first introduced to "live" Shakespeare. The strength of this volume is that it does indeed give young readers an idea of how Shakespeare's plays were written and produced. True, it only scratches the surface of such things, but then the book is clearly intended as an introduction to the world of Shakespeare. As such, "Shakespeare and MacBeth" certainly succeeds in its goal, just as the Bard succeeded in having King James calling for a performance at court during the first state visit of King Christian of Denmark to England (when Ross has Shakespeare cut out a reference to a Scottish victory over the Danes during the performance you have to be impressed by his attention to to details).

Sloth's shoes is a fun and zany children's story about sloth's freinds throwing him a birthday party. The story is written in rythmic form and is fun to read for small children and parents. Small children will soon have it memorized and will be qouting the book all hours of the day! This one is one you want in your collection!

This is a classic fable. My father used to tell it to me when I was young, and I was delighted to see it in book form. In this version, there is a fairly standard fairy-tale baddie - the wolf. In the version I knew as a child, it was a tramp, tricking a cook in a kitchen to prepare him a nourishing meal. I am sure there are other versions out there!

This one is nicely illustrated with bright, lively pictures. Although not a "favourite" book, it has found its place in the bedtime story repertoire.