My 5 year old son loves the stories in this book. We borrowed it from the library twice and even brought it on our 2 week holiday recently where he actually took the book out several times to read it amid all the excitement of the holiday! We finally bought one to read over and over again.

It consists of 15 short stories some of which are King-Smith's funny animal versions of familiar fairy tales like "Hogsel & Gruntel", "Little Red Riding Pig", "Goldipig & The Three Bears", etc. Sure winner with young ones, just like the rest of his books. Many of the stories appear in individual books, but this beautiful hard cover collection with colour illustrations is great value for money.

Whether your knowledge of birds is recognizing the vibrant reds of the male cardinal or recognizing the endangered Bali Mynah, this book is for you. It is a book for all ages - there is no age limit in learning about nature and how it should be revered. I'm always impressed when an author can make me laugh and cry when reading his words. The energy that is in these words is undeniable. I was captured, pulled into the pages, and experienced the travels right along side the author. Too often we either are oblivious or choose to ignore the indecencies from around our beautiful and sometimes not so beautiful globe. This book will not let you do that. It is in your face insight to the worlds the author has experienced. You'll be amazed at the restraint he had in certain situations. Restraint I don't think I could have displayed. No matter what level of your awareness, you will walk away after reading this book knowing you've experienced something good. I was moved, and for that I thank the author.

Leonard Michaels has, in the last six months, become one of my literary heroes. "I Would Have Saved Them If I Could" features his talent at writing extremely short stories as well as more fleshed out pieces. It's a shame this book is out of print, try finding it at your local libraries. "Murderers" is perhaps one of the best short stories by an American writer I have ever read. Do yourself a favor, read this book.

As always, Lafferty is unique -- you're going to like some, hate some, and go away baffled from some.

The book is beautifully written and at the time Ruffner
was President of Washington College now Washington and
Lee University. The book was considered to be one of the
first publications to deal with antisemitism. Ruffners
other writings on religion are profound.

Dombrovsky reveals how far-reaching the purges of the late 1930's affected the lives of ordinary people even as far from Moscow as Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan. Noone and nothing is safe from the tentacles of the State including the past which is represented by the State Museum of Alma-Ata which is where the Keeper works. The petty bureaucratic struggles which affect the Keeper lead to more suspicion and Dombrovsky cleverly manipulates this to create a damning enditement on the Soviet System which promulgates lies, treachery and deceit where everything is subject to propaganda.

My Family is part of the Kapel, Kosnick Family, so I would call it "My Family" as my Aunt Betty Burgess and my Grandma Anne Olave used to be Kapel's.

Like the anthology before it, 'Tapestries', this one again offers a buffet of wonderful fantasy stories. One need not even know what Magic The Gathering is to appreciate the collective works within. The stories are all wildy imaginative, and transport the reader into a multi-verse where magic is as real as the ground beneath your feet.

A personal favorite of mine is "Chef's Surprise", which explains the flavor text on the granite gargoyle card.

The title and cover of this book suggest a book about men and their struggles; however, my favorite short stories by Michael White in this collection are the ones told from a woman's perspective - and there are quite a few of them. Michael White's men are all one and interchangable. Perhaps, a male himself, he is better able to detatch himself from the female characters. They are real: unsteady, afraid, human, and a must-read. I have read his novels and find that this carries over; the female voices in A Brother's Blood and The Blind Side of the Heart are captivating - the narrator in A Dream of Wolves pales in comparison.

Every now and then some well-meaning person decapitates the statue of the little mermaid in Denmark. There is no need for them to bother.

What worries people about Hans Anderson's story of the little mermaid is the image of a woman who is so desperate for love that she'll give up the use of her voice and will walk on feet that hurt as if knives were going through them. Having found the man she loves, she'll step aside and evaporate rather than harm her beloved. Its' an image of self-sacrifice that many women find repugnant.

However I don't think the story is really about women being self-sacrificing at all. Instead it's about how much Hans Anderson himself wanted to be loved.

Anderson was ugly - comically ugly and clumsy. This, combined with his poverty, meant that for much of his early life, he was an outsider who, rather like another of his creations, the little matchgirl, was always looking in at the happy, comfortable scenes of the lives of others but feeling only the cold winds of his own solitude.

Convinced that he was meant to do something great - he even considered being a ballet dancer! - he hung around famous people trying to find encouragement, direction and patronage. They amused themselves at his expense but failed to notice that he was almost starving and had clothes that were too small and in rags. Possibly the image of the knives in the feet of the mermaid arose from his experience of wearing ill-fitting shoes during the frozen Danish winters.

Eventually, after returning to school to learn to read and write properly, he found his voice and wrote his stories. However, he didn't have the courage to pursue the woman that he loved and, though she may well have responded to him, he lost her to another. Tormented by loneliness, he lived without the love he craved.

I believe that the image of the little mermaid represents his emotions. Perhaps he felt at times as if he would gladly trade in his own hard-won powers of self-expression (just as the mermaid traded in her voice) if only he could be loved. And perhaps, when Anderson's beloved married another, he felt as if his soul had drifted away into the ether, as the little mermaid's does at the end of the story.

Each of us has a deep, secret yearning to see our own image reflected in the affectionate eyes of another. His story is not meant to be a prescription for how women should behave but is really a series of poetic images that express how strong within us all the desire for love can be.

Children may enjoy a biography of Anderson written by Ruth Saunders but there are many others written for adults about this complex, courageous and sad man.