This academic tome is the best introduction to the many delights of the famed Cloisters Museum in upper Mahattan.

Thoughtful and scholarly articles by leading authorities on medieval art make for wonderful reading for the medieval art scholar or serious enthusiast.

The book I just read is the best! When I read a Pooh book it was awesome! Really, first I though it would be a babyish book,but it's not. My favourite chracter is Pooh. He is always thinking of hunny, and funny po ems and songs. I also like the words that A.A.MILNE invented I though those words came from another planet. I hope to read all of A.A.milne's books soon. If you don't read it you don't know what you are missing. I have only read The House At Pooh Corner and, I am now reading Winnie-The-Pooh.

Attention: all cranky four year olds, five year olds, eight year olds and thirty-five year olds on long car trips.

Attention all parents burned out by reading The Pokey Little Puppy over and over again.

Attention cynics whose primary memory of Winnie-the-Pooh is the Dorothy Parker quote (from her "Constant Reader" column in the New Yorker) "Tontant Weader frowed-up".

This book is a treasure for all who hear it. There is gentleness and not a little wit in these stories. Contray to the book description above, the book is read by the late Charles Kuralt. His inflection adds much to the story. One senses that he is amused; but he is never condesending. Now I will always prefer Kuralt's version to my own bedtime efforts with my children. Charles Kuralt must have loved Winne-the-Pooh mightily. How lucky we are that he left this delightful gift behind.

This book is a really good and funny book. My fav is Piglet because he is so shy and just goes along with what ever Pooh does. I think I read this book because Pooh and all his friends are coming back in now, to prove I love pooh I have a Pooh and FriendsPencil case.

than "The Cuckoo Clock" to an imaginative child of the proper age! While its tales-within-tales were lovely, what really caught me were the evocative details of the little heroine's surroundings. I realize my love for potpourri, nodding "Mandarin" porcelains, and yes, even cuckoo clocks were formed as I read this book.

This is one of the most magical & imaginative children's books I have ever read, I first read it as a child and have never forgotten it! Buy it for your children....

Katie Nana has left the Bank family in need of a new nanny. But before they know it, a woman blows in on the East Wind. Literally. She takes the position of caring for the four children, Jane, Michael, and the twins John and Barbara. But with her extremely prim and proper attitude comes magical adventures. A day in the park, having tea, running errands, and even Christmas shopping can turn into an adventure when Mary's around. And the kids love it.

This most decidedly is not the Disney Mary Poppins. Disney toned her down significantly for his movie, making her heart easier to see. Still, it's there if you look closely in the book. I had forgotten just how hard it is to see at times behind Mary's outward appearance and actions. Still, the kids come to love her because they know where they really stand.

As with all books in the series, this one is a series of adventures. Each chapter tells it's own story, each story it's own fun, magical adventure.

Those looking for Disney's Mary will be greatly disappointed. But anyone looking for a fun series of adventures will find a woman who does care for those around her, even if it's not always super obvious.

P.L. Travers' original deptiction of Mary Poppins is NOT anything like Julie Andrews' cheerful, smiling character in the classic Disney movie. Instead, this nanny is very proper, stern and strict, a model of British efficiency, complete with a stiff upper lip. Only on rare occasions does her steely exterior give way and we get a glimpse of her heart of gold.

Yet, this gruffed up version of magical, mysterious Mary Poppins is practically perfect in every way. You won't need a spoonful of sugar to get kids to read this classic. Harry Potter can't compete with Mary's timeless appeal or her supercalifragilisticexpialadocious (did I spell it right?) magic powers; she's every bit as wonderous as you remember from years ago. Mary Poppins flies in on her parrot-head umbrella, straight into your heart.

The brilliance of P. L. Traver's Poppins books is that the character of Mary Poppins is a study in contrast. Like an old-fashioned nanny, on the surface she is severe, critical and exacting. After all, she is entrusted with the serious job of raising British children. Underneath the self-satisfied, and even annoyingly "practically perfect" exterior is a magical soul, who befriends an odd lot of misfits and manages to charm everyone, including some lonely and neglected middle-class British kids of the very early 20th Century. And who can explain jumping into chalk pictures, laughter that sends you floating and many other odd occurrences that Mary takes as matter-of-fact.

The value of reading the Poppins series is that the books don't match the fun but more saccharine movie. The subtleties of a main character who is both lovable and cranky all at the same time make for fun family discussions and learning how to love people for their individual quirks, despite their more annoying characteristics. Every child should have the opportunity to enjoy this quirky, unique classic.

This book is an exciting book, but you have to get into it before it becomes exciting. The book is very long and the chapers are about 25 pages each. This book should be for good readers (in 5th grade). P.L. Travers made a very good book though. Mary Poppins will always be my favorite character.

This is (to my knowledge) the third Mary Poppins book. It would have been 5 stars,but Travers doesn't seem to think of any new plots,just twists on the same ones. Still, it has very good story lines. There is the usual relitive of Mary, an old woman selling some magic item in the park. The object makes the 5 children and Mary fly home after getting Mrs.Banks some supplies. There is thev outing at bedtime where Mary has gone out - andis a geust of honor along with Jane and Michael. This does not have a bad day, but it has Mary coming and going in unusual ways. Mary Poppins is a bit more strict than in the movie,but still enjoyable. P.L. Travers seems to haver written this as the last book, but there are more after this. Ther5e are five children, not two. You should read the books in the order they were written to get an idea about these books. This is in the top ten on my must-read list. It is fantastic!

Marry poppins brings me to a totally different and fantastic world that I can never imagine

This scholarly work, dedicated to the memory of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal homophobic killing mobilized a nation to cry out in anger and shame, is an important contributor to the understanding of the basis of crimes of violence against minority groups targeted by a shameful segment of the majority. As a research project with multiple contributors, the legal definition of a hate crime is provided as the basis of explaining the reasons that acts of violence against minorities qualify as hate crimes, the origins of various prejudices that fuel and "justify" acts of violence and how many states have failed or ignored the cry to enhance the legal sanctions for acts of violence based solely on prejudice, racism, homophobia and other dynamics that figure into the equation. In addition to addressing prejudice as it applies to the individual, the research here also addresses the prejudice that is inherent in society and some of its institutions and how their discrimination against certain minorities constitute a form of violence (societal vs. individual). It is somewhat disgraceful how many are the states which have not even acknowledged the existence of institutional hate crimes much less provided equal redress. One cannot help but be moved by either anger or shame at the violence perpetrated on people solely on the basis of their sexual orientation, religion, gender, race and national origin, among others. But as other public figures through U.S. history turned their anger and shame into action for equality, this project issues a call to action that empowers the targets of hate crimes with judicial and societal equality. That action alone may well be the optimal expression to the memory of a young, young man whose ultimate death began tied to a fence on a cold, wind-swept Wyoming prairie.

I am a grad student in psychology doing a thesis on gay/lesbian hate crimes. This volume is moving and insightful. I wish the editors had included info from Gregory Herek, who is a leader in the field. All in all a good read with good info.

My daughter and I love this book. She is learning her alphabet and understanding the sounds that go with the letters! Each letter of the alphabet has a clever story involving PL Travers delightful characters. It is verbose if your child doesn't love to listen to stories and be challenged by vocabulary, this is not for you. But if yours is like mine...you will both enjoy it!

When adults forget their childhood pals, daydreamers make foolish wishes and the wind blows unusually strong, it always leads to something quite out of the ordinary -- that is, whenever Mary Poppins is around.

In this, the final Mary Poppins book that P.L. Travers gave us before her death at age 90, we share the five Banks' childrens' adventures. Besides Jane and Michael, who were in the classic Disney movie, there are also toddler twins John and Barbara and infant Annabel.

A big departure from the Disney flick is Mary Poppins herself. Here, she is not the smiling, syrupy sweet nanny that young Julie Andrews portrayed; rather, the book's title character is strict, stern, often sarcastic and very taken with herself. Her strong personality makes her a unique storybook character and readers will find this Mary Poppins more of an enigma. Which, frankly, makes for better stories.

Everything in this book is G-rated but not preachy. Travers gives her young readers many fascinating, but never frightening, fantasy situations. Or are they real? Jane and Michael can never quite tell. The lines between what's real and what's not always blur around Mary Poppins.

This book is a series of unrelated chapters, self-contained stories, all dealing with the same main characters. Nothing is ever as it seems in the nursery of No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane -- or in the nearby park.

On a hot summer's day, Mary Poppins tells the children a tale of a hobo who was an angel in disguise, shedding his rags and growing wings as he flies away.

In another chapter, Michael, upset that he's caught a cold, finds that some days when everything seems to be going all right, it's actually going all wrong. He's taught a valuable lesson on a planet full of cats.

Later in the book, the children find messages on falling leaves. And witness a delightful, but not frightening, Halloween shadow dance in the park.

The nanny's magical cousin, Mr. Mo, is introduced. Jane finds the little toy figures she's created and destroyed do have lives of their own.

Around Mary Poppins, adults -- including favorites such as Admiral Boom, Miss Lark and her two dogs Andrew and Willoughby, the Bird Woman and Bert -- are caught off balance. Zookeepers, policemen and taxi drivers react to a flurry of frenzied events. Characters pop out of storybooks, out of Jane's mind, and off ceramic bookends. Lions and unicorns and even Indian chiefs prance through the park.

We are taken to worlds that exist between the blades of grass in the lawn, and up in the sky, to where felines and children disappear. There are traffic snarls, wedding breakfasts and birthday parties. And through it all, stalks Mary Poppins, with not a hair out of place. In very short order, characters get what they deserve, if not what they expect, and things are set right.

How does she do it? No one knows. Mary Poppins, you see, never, ever explains. But, she always entertains. Have some fun in the park with this magical nanny.