Annie is tired of studying for the big spelling bee.She wishes she could just spell every word with out even trying.So,Kilmer's Great-uncle Nilrem casts a spell to make her wish come true!Now Annie is worried.She doesn't want to cheat.What's worse,Issy has overheard the whole thing-and she wants to report Great-uncle Nilrem to the police!

This is a cute story, appropriate for a first grader, or as the book says, 4-7 year-olds. This tale introduces you to Sue who just absolutely loves blue. Just about everything in Sue's life has to be blue! Her parents find a solution to this "blue-madness" of Sue's which is really cute. I won't give away the ending as you will have to read the book to find out what Sue does!

I found the illustrations to be quite charming. My second grader spent alot of time looking at each page and really getting into the illustrations, which I think, made the story complete!

This book will bring giggles from your child and as a Start to Read book, your first grader should not have any difficulty with the words, thus boosting their reading confidence!

If your child has a favorite color obsession, this book is perfect!

According to Fish, "Paradise Lost" operates according to a mechanism of rhetorical indirection that works on all rhetorical levels, from depiction of character to deployment of tropes. Milton wants to show us how our fallen state corrupts and distorts our responses to poetry and instruction; the poem is constructed as a series of interlocking traps for the reader, who is lured into reacting in tempting but "wrong" ways to tropes ("with serpent error wandering") and characters (the apparently admirable Satan and his cohorts, the apparently tyrannical and odious God). The chapter on the poetics of prelapsarian Eden ("In Wandering Mazes Lost," I think it's called) is a masterpiece. Fish backs this all up with plenty of solid research into the theological doctrines Milton was known to endorse or was likely to have been familiar with.

This approach to Milton was regarded as radical when the book first came out, rather oddly, since Milton's tactics of indirection had already been noted by several critics, though not foregrounded as here. What's new is the thoroughness and clarity of the treatment, and Fish's sheer intelligence as a reader. This is criticism at its best: lucid, engaging, responsible, illuminating.

John Heidenry's book is a rich portrayal of the man that became publisher of the best selling magazine in America. He also sets before the reader the rich history of our country.

My son (just six) has been crazy about dinosaurs for three years, and it has become increasingly difficult to find books with unfamiliar information that are also not too far beyond his comprehension. This book fills the bill beautifully, building on his existing knowledge and stretching him to see the dinosaurs in context. It combines the easy charm of a pop-up book with the sophistication of a geologic chart. We have also been thrilled with From Dinosaurs to Dodos by Lessem.

This book, edited by the great giant of early modern history, John Guy, provides an accessible collection of various essays by respected historians which have recently appeared in more obscure parts of the academic press.

These essays demonstrate the extent to which this period of history is still dominated by Geoffery Elton, who was tutor to two contributors, Guy and David Starkey, at Cambridge. Both historians' currnet writings are a reaction against the ideas of their former tutor, although both also acknowledge their great debt to and respect for him. Starkey is the more populist historian, with his stories about the activities of Henry VIII's bedchamber, but his, to say the least, unique insight is also valuable in that it makes one consider again the function of the early modern court. In his mind these historical figures are very real people, and this is communicated through his writing. John Guy, if less flamboyant, is also fascinating.

I found this ! ! book especially enlightening on the importance of Tudor iconography, especially Elizabeth's use of Yorkist symbols.

As an economic way of reading various opinions on various subjects, this is an invaluable resource for any serious student.

Incidentally, I was not paid or asked by anyone to write this-it is true!

This is an excellent book for anyone with an intermediate knowledge of Turkish and little or no idea of how to decipher newspaper prose styles. A series of short readings culled from real newspapers, each with a glossary, notes and a full translation in the back, plus an audio cassette with readings of all the selections. This book does an excellent job of filling a pretty specialized niche. If your goal is to learn to read Turkish newspapers, by all means get this book!

If John Jay Chapman is remembered at all these days, it is as an eccentric who once thrust his left hand into a coal fire in penance for mistakenly beating up a friend. This is as if Vincent Van Gogh were to be remembered only for cutting off one of his ears.Chapman was, in fact a brilliant and passionate writer in many genres, an unrelenting foe of social injustice,and a penetrating critic of American philstinism and materialism.The last anthology of Chapmans writings appeared in the late nineteen fifties , and was edited by Jacques Barzun, who has supplied a fine ,judicious introduction to the present collection.A welcome feature of the present volume is a selection of Chapmans unpublished letters--some of the finest everwritten. One of them includes one of the most brilliant and succinct analyses of Lincolns life and character that I have ever read. One can only hope that a Chapman revival will take place, and that someone will eventually get around to doiing similar anthologies for Sydney Smith or Albert Jay Nock.

This is a puzzle book like no other -- it's got something for everyone. The crosswords and other puzzles are very high quality (but not necessarily hard) and the quizzes are fun and funny, just like the Uncle John readers. We've been playing it together as a family and we've been consistently amazed and amused. Other puzzle books usually concentrate on one kind of puzzle, but this one has a great variety of fun stuff to do. We can't wait for the next one!

This 15th annual edition of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader is actually a combination of two previously published books: Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader & Uncle John's Ultimate Bathroom Reader. This allows the Bathroom Readers' Institute (BRI) to deliver 768 pages of little known facts, pop culture tidbits, weird news items, and intriguing origins of everyday things.

Articles in the text are not arranged in any particular order so an eight page Contents section at the front of the book is a great guide to your reading pleasure. Thirty three subject categories are used to group the articles which are then subdivided by length. Short articles are one page long. Medium ones are two pages. Long articles are either three or four pages, and Extended articles can run as long as eight pages. Two articles are so long they are broken into several Long parts. One on the history of Miss America is seven parts long, and the World's Tallest Buildings has eight parts.

Some of the articles in the book are brainteasers, puzzles, or quizzes. The answers to these are grouped together on the last eleven pages of the book.

There is a footnote on each page that contains an interesting fact. E.g.: On page 347 we are told that the shortest performance to win an Oscar was Anthony Quinn's 8 minutes as Gauguin in the movie Lust For Life. Every U.S. president with a beard was a Republican is on page 399. On page 605 the note states that King Louis XV bathed just three time sin his entire life.

The BRI claims to gather the most interesting and little-known facts from many sources and they encourage readers to suggest additions to future volumes. Perfect for the bathroom, this book would also go well on a nightstand, but is too heavy for your backpack. A joy to read.