Daughter Anna (now 19 years old) loved this book. It was her favorite above all others. As we sorted through some old kid things for give-away purposes, we stumbled upon this old, well worn copy of "The Velveteen Rabbit." She insisted we keep the book for HER children.

This was her book that Mama (me!) had to read to her again and again and again. As soon as the last word was read on the last page, it was "Mama, please read it again!"

(how I miss those days, by the way!)

The book also has a powerful message about Love that children understand and cherish.

This is a wonderful book. No child should be without their own copy of "The Velveteen Rabbit."

It's a sweet story of a 'simple' stuffed rabbit amidst the more 'complex' modern toys in a boy's "toy collection". The rabbit starts to believe that in order to get the love of the boy, he needs to appear 'real', or be able to zoom about like the motorized toys...
(And I'm not going to tell you the end hahahahaha!!!)
It was great having that read to me, while I was hugging my stuffed animals in bed.
But -- in a way, at first glance it looks like a simple story, but it is actually a surprisingly complex story. Leave it on your child's bookshelf as he/she grows up and he/she will reread it again and again as he/she questions issues such as "who am I?", "what does it mean to be 'real'"?, "what is my role in this world?", and even "what is death"?

I seldom write reviews on children's books, although I love them with a passion. My children are now mothers and my grandchildren are past young childhood. However, I believe that somewhere deep inside each of us remains a small child that still loves fairy tales, cotton candy, and walking barefoot in the grass. This book was one of my children's favourites, along with "Charlotte's Web;" both were also my own personal favourites. When my children were six years old reading this book became a nighly adventure until I knew the words by heart. For the reviewer who rated the book with a one star due to a spelling error, my heart goes out to you; you have sadly missed something very important - the message. The book is not about spelling, editing or lack thereof; it is about encouragement and love.

The book tells the story of a toy, sawdust-filled rabbit who wishes with all his heart to become real. The message contained in this book is poignant, heart-warming and touching, and one that you will never foreget as long as you live. It is a story of beauty, wonder and love. Any child who misses out on "The Velveteen Rabbit" is missing out on one of life's greatest lessons. I cannot say enough good things about this wonderful, wonderful book and highly recommend it to children...and the grown-up child in all of us.

The book I read aloud to my 7 year old daughter is the 1956, 1957 Copyright with a yellow hardback cover with drawings of dogs on it. The illustrators are Janet and Anne Grahame-Johnstone.

This book is fun and exciting and is more enjoyable than the Disney cartoon version. You will be surprised by the Dalmation Perdita in this book. She is not what you expect. Also, you will not find out where the "101th Dalmation" comes from until the last two chapters unless you are very, very perceptive. I kept coming up with 100 total Dalmations until the very end.

This book is a must read for everyone; but, you will probably have to borrow it from your local library. This book needs to be rereleased.

We bought this audio book hoping to wean our young children (who enjoyed both movie versions of this book very much) off of movies and get them more interested in "real stories."

I have to tell you that this story far exceeded my expectations. Not only was it a fun story that my children enjoyed immensely, but one with subtleties, humor and bits of truth sprinkled throughout that had me listening and laughing right alongside them.

There are a lot of dog stories out there and I admit to being a dog-lover (well at least of big dogs), but this is a lot more than just a dog story. Certainly there's a great deal of humor, adventure and ... Dalmatians... but underneath all that you get many tidbits of truth that are applicable to life itself.

Martin Jarvis does a fabulous job in narrating this unabridged classic. Highly recommended!

101 Dalmations deserves ongoing mention as an excellent audio that will appeal to a wide age range. Martin Jarvis' smooth voice provides a clear, unabridged production bringing to life the classic story of a host of puppies who must escape the cruel Cruella de Vil in order to get back to their home. Cruella has a fur coat in mind - made of dalmations. The whole family will find this fun and a fine listen.

If I had read this book when I was younger, I would definately have rated it 5 stars.

One day, all the dogs in the world wake up to find that everyone is asleep except dogs (and later two cats and a young human boy, who where 'official' dogs). The dogs are not hungry, and they can open doors, fly, and really do anything they want. Pongo and Missis try to find out what happened. Cruella is back, but she is asleep (she sells 'clothes that clank' with her husband), and has nothing whatsoever to do with the mysterious sleeping.
Pongo and Perdita 'swoosh' (fly) over to london to meet with their daughter, Cadpig (the one that did almost not live at birth. Lucky had spots in the formation of a horseshoe, that's why he was named Lucky.), who belonged to the prime minister.

This book is a good sequel to the very well known "The 101 Dalmations." It's interesting that many have read the first book but not the second and that's a shame. What's new about this book is that it focuses on the supernatural when dogs can fly and all the people are asleep. It's not for everyone though as some might be put off by it's new age style. If you've read the first book this is worth a look.

This was an amazing book. When I first started reading it, I wondered about some changes in the story compared to Disney's Movie. I think it was not good for Disney to change the story, and love the Starlight Barking much better than Disney's sequel, 102 Dalmations. It was cool to see that dogs could fly, open doors, and talk long-distance (with out paying extra!) I love this fantisy, but I think that Sirus should have let them have one special day like this every year and get to visit them. I certanly wouldn't mind sleeping in so that dogs could have fun. Once I dreamed that there were 20 books in the series, and that me and my friend tried to buy them all. I wish there really were 20 books.

If you read Hard Times for the sole purpose of being entertained you will probably be highly disappointed. However, if you understand what was happening during this time period, you will realize that Hard Times is in reality, a long commentary. The Industrial Revolution was starting to show its down side. There was rampant poverty and disease, from the overcrowding of the cities. Children of the poor had to work long hours in unsafe factories rather than go to school. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots was very wide. The middle class was only beginning to be a distinct group.
This then was the backdrop of Hard Times. Dickens is making a social and political statement. This is a statement against the mechanizing of society. It starts with Dickens repeated use of the word fact. It is facts that have meaning. Human conventions like feeling, compassion or passion have no meaning or looked down upon as an inconvienent waste of time. If a situation cannot be put down on paper as in an accounting ledger it should not be considered.
This is where the conflict of the book comes in. Which helps humanity more compassion or fact. Is Bounderby a better person than Blackpool? Bounderby, who by his own admission was a self-made man. Untrue as this was he said it enough to make it his own reality. Or Blackpool, a weaver with an alcoholic wife, who was in love with another woman. Facts made Bounderby rich, compassion made Blackpool human.
Louisa presents another conflict. Louisa was educated only by fact. No wonder or inquisitiveness was ever allowed. She was the perfect robot. Doing what she was told when she was told. Just another piece of the machine, however, the piece broke, emotions came out, and they broke down the wall of fact that Mr. Gradgrind had so carefully constructed. Because the feelings have finally been acknowledged things really break down. She finds that not only has she married the wrong man but also the man she did marry is a buffoon whom she cannot respect nor live with.
The reader is left wondering if there is no one who will not be ruined by all the worship to fact. The whelp has certainly been ruined to the point he feels no responsibility to anyone but himself. If a situation can not be used to his advantage then he has no use for it, as a matter of course, he will run when he believes he will have to take responsibility for his own actions.
The gypsies have not been ruined by fact. But only because they live outside of society, they do not conform to the rules of society. These are the people who value character over social status. The gypsies do not value Bounderby and Bitzer with all their pomp and egomania. Rather they value Stephen Blackpool and Cecilia whom can show compassion and kindness no matter a person's station in life.
Hard Times can be used to look at today's society. Are we, as a society more worried about our computers, cell phones, faxes, and other gadgets than our neighbor's well being? Do we only get involved to help others when there is a personal benefit? Or, are we like the gypsies who can look into the character of the person and not worry about the socio-economic status? While Dickens' wrote Hard Times about 19th century England the moral can easily fit into 21st century America

Despite the explicit title, "Hard Times" is not so much an ode to poverty and misery as it is a commentary on the increasing impact of industrialization on the fragmentation of society and on the dehumanization of education. The result, as Dickens implies, leads to lives hollowed by the emptiness of work for work's sake and wealth for wealth's sake.

The setting is Coketown, a factory town befouled by industrial smog and populated by underpaid and undereducated laborers. The novel's most prominent character is one of the town's richest citizens, Josiah Bounderby, a pompous blowhard who owns a textile mill and a bank and whose conversation usually includes some boastful story about his impoverished childhood and the hard work that led to his present fortune.

Bounderby is the commercial projection of Thomas Gradgrind, a local schoolteacher and an extraordinarily pragmatic man who instills in his students and his own children the importance of memorizing facts and figures and the iniquity of indulging in entertaining activities. Gradgrind offers to Bounderby his son, Tom Jr., as an unwilling apprentice, and his daughter, Louisa, as an unwilling bride.

On the other end of the town's social scale is Stephen Blackpool, a simple, downcast man who works as a weaver at Bounderby's mill and slogs through life misunderstood and mistreated. When he refuses to join his fellow workers in a labor uprising, he is ostracized; when he criticizes the economic disparity between Bounderby and the workers, he is fired and forced to leave town; when Bounderby's bank is robbed one night, he is suspected as the thief. So halfway through the novel, Dickens grants his reader an interesting, albeit somewhat contrived, plot element to embellish the narrative.

If this novel contains a ray of sunshine, it is in Sissy Jupe, a girl abandoned by her father and adopted by Gradgrind, whose oppressive educational method nearly breaks her. However, she grows up with her own intuitive sense of propriety, which she uses as a tool to eject a dishonorable character from the novel. Her strong and independent spirit will allow her to do much better in life than Louisa, who withers away in an unhappy marriage, and Tom Jr., whose boredom renders him vulnerable to temptations.

Compared to his other novels, "Hard Times" is relatively short and straightforward and has few characters, as though Dickens felt that what he had to say was so important, it had to be said quickly and bluntly. He is less interested in realism than in making a point, and it's really the poetic power of his prose that enables him to get away with the overbearing sentimentality and often ridiculous caricatures that accompany his poignant human truths.

Dickens creates a novel that virtually revolutionizes literature of the 1800's. At a time where most writers wrote in a stuffy prose full of unrealities and a jaded outlook, Dickens dares to tell with honesty what he sees through his window.

Hard Times has yet a misleading title. It gives one ideas of harshness, depression, poverty, and social decline--although the actual reality of then-London, still not something you would choose to read. However, Hard Times has as much depression and poverty as any of Dickens' other works. It is just in this case that Dickens chooses to remind the world that in the deepest despair there is beauty yet to be seen.

Dickens was a strange author. In his supposedly inspiring books, you get an overdose of sadness, and in his depressing books, you find beauty. It is this case with Hard Times.

It is a poor, honest man's search for justice in a world where only the rich have merit. It is a girl's search for true love while battling the arranged marriage for money. And lastly, a woman's search for recognition against her favored, yet dishonest brother. It is these searches that at last come together and become fufilled. And, while at the same time telling a captivating story, it comments on the then--and still now--presence of greed and total dishonesty one has to go through for money.

The title of this review sums up Hard Times. Its beauty comes from the pure searches for truth, the sorrow comes from the evil the characters most overcome to get there, and the honesty is both the truth with which Dickens portrays life and the the overwhelming truth that these protaganists create.

Holly Burke, PhD.

Clinical Psychologist, Abnormal Psych. Professor

Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins Inst.