Alan Dingwall is a real kid: he's worried about bullies, wonders if his parents care about him now that they're divorced, and envies his overweight friend's apparently happy family. Alan struggles at math, and dreads the school bell that means the school population has to find a way out of the school without running afoul of the "Cougars" - the school bullies.

Life is tough - and real - for Alan, and Scrimger pulls no punches.

Then an alien, Norbert, takes up residence in Alan's nose, and things go quickly awry in Alan's balanced (if somewhat sad) world. Norbert is quickly mistaken for "Squeaky" - Alan's new nickname as the school's suddenly gifted ventriloquist. As Squeaky starts tossing bon-mots aplenty around the school, Alan finds himself unwittingly insulting the bullies, telling girls how he really feels, and being - just this once - the life of the classroom.

What's heartening about this tale is not really the antics of the alien in Alan's nose - though certainly the humour is a blast and it's enjoyable to the extreme. What got my real vote was the true-to-life child frustration that Scrimger wove into the plot. Alan worries that his father doesn't care about him anymore, and that his mother is just too busy to really pay attention. He's a witty kid, and very smart (in non-math ways), and I doubt anyone would have any trouble empathising with Alan's world.

The balance of humour and real-life in this book is nothing short of artful, and kids will appreciate not being spoken down to in this tale. Snap it up, and be prepared for an eventually triumphant novel that will touch on some real emotionality.

'Nathan

The "Nose from Jupiter" was really a fantastic book and I loved it! It was really funny and the author had some funny sentences that just made me laugh. I liked the conversations between Norbert and Alan, and this book was funny and also sad. I recommend this book to everybody!

I read this book to my daugther (9.5 yrs) during a long car trip this summer. We both loved it. It was very funny (Norbert, from Jupiter, has quite a sense of humour) but it was also sad as it addressed issues of kids suffering through a divorce, parents too busy for their kids, schoolyard bullies, confidence and self-esteem. We laughed at Norbert, cried, and then rejoiced for Alan when he learned how to deal with his problems. It is a wonderful book. I think that both kids and parents should read it.

I stumbled across this book while looking for one of Scrimger's children's titles and picked it up after the initial glance suggested this guy was really funny.

Well I wasn't disappointed. It is the first book in years that I have read that has me laughing out loud and chortling every few minutes. His description of life with four kids under the age of six is so accurate and heart felt that you just want to go over to his place and pay a visit (although the floor is sure to be sticky, the furniture toppled over and the noise level at high volume).

He covers a full year in the life of his brood, dissecting birthday parties, Hallowe'en, school concerts and less-than mundane visits to laundromats, jewelry stores and doctors' offices. Although I thought that I was happy that my own kids have graduated to their teens, I get slightly melancholy reading about this young family's everyday adventures. But it is so wonderfully written and entertainingly told, there isn't room for sadness.

There is also not a wasted word in the book. It is tightly written and even his stream-of-consciousness word play with his toddler is efficient and sharp. But most of all I love his observations about the nature of kids... his and the rest of ours.

"... Ed is a perfect conductor (of sticky and messy materials). Ever wonder how the honey or Magic Marker is conveyed to the rug and the furniture? I tell you, it's through the kids. Ed is amazing, he's like copper wire, he can reach for a jam-filled donut with his right hand and instantly discover jam on the tablecloth under his left hand. I myself have seen this."

Dave Barry would retire if he knew that Richard Scrimger was entering the field. This has got to be the funniest dad alive.

"A Nose for Adventure" brings back Alan Dingwall and the alien from Jupiter who likes to live in noses. This time, Norbert is residing in the nose of a scruffy dog named Sally, and Alan is visiting his father in New York.

However, his father doesn't show up at the airport, and Alan finds himself lost and alone with the wheelchair-bound Frieda, a sarcastic and somewhat angry girl a year older than himself. The two end up smack dab in the middle of quite the adventure: thieves are smuggling in Egyptian artifacts on the very flight the two kids took, and it seems that Frieda - whose parents also neglected to show up - might hold the key to solving the mystery.

The strength of Richard Scrimger's writing is in his characters. Alan, the narrative voice of the book, is a completely realistic young man (or at least, as realistic a young man as one could be when caught up in an illegal Egyptian artifact smuggling right with a wheelchair-bound cranky girl and a dog with an alien in its nose). Reactions of both adult and child alike are done intelligently, and presented with a realistic emotional overtone: When Alan's father doesn't show at the airport, for example, Alan has a mental replay of his divorced parents fighting about his father's lack of responsibility. Put simply, Scrimger doesn't pull punches, and it's a pleasant surprise - it's also a nice reminder of just how young kids tend to think - and what they think - about the world around them.

A good tale for reading aloud, "A Nose for Adventure" will likely promote some intelligent questions from the child that reads it. The chapters are just the right length for bitesized nightly reading sessions before bed, and I, for one, can't wait to read the book again - this time with my nephew.

First, though, I think I'll go grab a copy of "Nose from Jupiter," the first book in the series. "A Nose for Adventure" didn't suffer for my lack of reading the first book, but I imagine it will flourish with the other half of the tale. From what I hear, there's a sequel, "Noses are Red" due out sometime this year...

Fabulous. Scrimger not only has a nose for great plots and plot twists, his use of language is musical and his humor is magical. Great for kids but an enjoyable read for adults who want to share the experience with their children.

Just finished prepping for the NT Server 4.0 Exam using this book as the main study guide. Very well laid out with good use of text/colors, very typical of the New Riders Next Generation Study guides. Exam covers a VERY broad range of info and the book does a good job of covering it all. The author is very knowledgable and brings his practical experience to the book. My only complaint is the low number of study questions in each chapter. Recommend adding the Exam Cram book for those study questions. Also would not recommend the MS Press study kits, they are not worth the $$$ (unless you need the 30 day eval. software) and it helps to have a non-Microsoft point of view...

Overall this is not an excellent book to use as your main study guide, but I would also suggest using another source of information. The Enterprise exam that I took had several indepth questions relating to the IIS 3 as well as other topics that were gone over only briefly in the book.

Overall a good purchase, as long as it's not your only source and not expensive to own.

This book is well written, making it easy to read and understand. The content layout is also well done, making it easy to see exactly what is required to know for each exam objective. There is some small detailed information missing but I found that the practice tests identified this information to you anyway, so overall the content is adequate (the Sybex books I'm using, also have information missing). I did notice questions in the real exam relating to previous exams, so I would recommend doing the subjects in the following order: Networking Essentials, NT Workstation4, NT Server4, NT Server4:Enterprise. I found the practice exams to be an invaluable aid for studying for the exam and they are similar to the real exam. I used the Sybex books for my elective subjects, and found them to be very poorly written. The Sybex books were not easy to read and understand and the content was layed out in a poor way, making them hard to identify information for each exam objective.

This book, "Way to Schenectady" was a great book. The jokes were quite funny, like the things Jane thought her grandmother was saying, when her grandmother was using bad language. I couldn't put this book down when I started it, and it was a good read. I became involved in the story, hoping that the homeless man wouldn't get caught, and the ending fit the story perfectly. It was great, and I believe that this book could appeal to anyone.