I purchased this book for my two sons ages 2 and 4. I am incredibly disappointed in this book. Jonathan London should be ashamed of this title. If you as a parent think it is funny for the text to teach your child "trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat; if you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear" then buy it. Otherwise, boycott this book for all the right reasons!!! Truly distasteful and offensive literature.

It's almost Halloween and Froggy still can't decide what costume to wear. Should he be super frog, ghost frog or vampire frog? How about a football player, cowboy or even a zombie. All week he gets ready for Halloween, carving pumpkins and hanging spider webs and ghosts. He's even practiced saying "Trick or treat, smell my feet./Give me something good to eat." Finally when the big day comes, Froggy decides to be the Frog Prince, complete with crown and sword. Now he's off for a scary evening of tricks, treats, surprises and fun..... No one captures the essence of a busy pre-schooler as well as Jonathan London and Frank Remkiewicz. Mr London's lively text is full of sound effects, energy and humor and complemented by Mr Remkiewicz's bold, bright and expressive artwork. Together they've authored a clever and entertaining story about an engaging character that your little "Froggy" will easily identify with. This is the perfect read aloud story to help everyone get into the Halloween spirit. Froggy's Halloween is part of a marvelous series that youngsters just can't get enough of. Read them all and enjoy!

This book is just as funny and charming as the other Froggy tales. I especially liked the Halloween costumes in the illustrations. Just as expected, Froggy has an embarrassing moment and of course he is "more red in the face than green"! This book is a wonderful addition to any personal or educational library!

I was so excited to read this new book to my 2 1/2 year old adopted son, but the farther I read, the more disappointed I became. I think the author's (Jonathan London) choice of words in explaining adoption were VERY poorly chosen. When Katie asks about her "real" mother, I just about lost it. Mr. London needs to understand that the adoptive parents ARE the REAL mom and dad. In relating this story to small children he could of at least used real and relevant words like "birth mother/birth parents."

Adopted children can be confused enough as it is, but using this misleading language is totally unnecessary.

My 3-yr old adopted daughter really likes this book. It is a good story and well written. The part where Katie becomes motherly toward the stuffed koala is very age appropriate for the 3-4 year olds.

Here's another of our son's adoption favorites. Like Katie, he wondered where babies come from, and why he came to his parents differently than most. He identifies strongly with Katie, whose trip to the zoo let him, early on, explore the adoption theme. He pulled this book from those I intended to review, explaiming, "OOOOOOO! I love this book!"

The zoo will find a new mother for a baby koala that suddenly lost its own. Katie's parents compare this to the way that an adoption agency found parents for her when her birth parents could not care for her. Katie's parents buy her a stuffed koala, which she adopts to act out her concerns.

This is simply a great book for any child who was adopted, as well as for his siblings. Alyssa A. Lappen

The book is really well written, and may fascinate some. But for me it was to jarring, reading a book with characters so very different and not-admirable. Moreover, I find it impossible to believe that a 28 year old, at least attractive woman, who is also a doctor (let alone all the other women who keep this business going), would pay for sex. And then, towards the end of the book, this woman who apparently was alienated enough to pay for sex decides that she needs to have a real relationship with the male prostitute. I just don't believe it. I also am not charmed by the male prostitute himself, who is supposed to be sympathetic despite his profession. Again, i don't believe it. Further, I agree with the reviewer that found the language virtually impenetrable; often i could not figure out what was happening. I stopped reading Lovejoy books because they became too desolate for me (couldn't Lovejoy be at least respectable enough to live a halfway normal life in a house?. This is far more so.

Gash has created a world in PREY DANCING (and the earlier book in the series DIFFERENT WOMEN DANCING) in which everything is tainted. The only two well-meaning characters, Bonn and Clare, must live in this world of darkness, sorrow, and violence. Bonn, the fallen seminarian turned male prostitute, is pulled along through a life filled daily with beatings, murder, and fear, a life empty of any genuine feelings of affection. Clare, a dedicated doctor, is sullied, too, by being tricked by her criminal husband into being a party to his deceit. Both of them are trapped, with no possibility of escape--ever. If you are easily depressed, this is NOT the series for you. It's also about as easy to follow at times as A Clockwork Orange or Faulkner's stream of consciousness writing. The overall effect is powerful, but with the modern lifestyle most of us are forced to follow and the bad news screaming from the headlines and evening television reports, I for one would prefer something more "up" to relax with at the end of a long day.

Gash continues the chronicle of Dr Clare Burtonall and Bonn the "goer" - a male prostitute in an un-named city in Northern England. Very different from the Lovejoy stories. There isn't much to laugh at here. Despite the almost impenetrable vernacular, Gash's quirky handling of dialogue carries conviction. (The dialogue is hard work - this reviewer was born and raised in that corner of England and, despite these credentials, struggled to keep up with the speech flow - has Gash invented a new slang, or has this reviewer been away too long?)

The characters of Clare and Bonn are developed - engaging the reader's sympathies further - as are their relationships with the other main players, although Clare's property developer husband steps back from the main action whilst posing a significant potential threat to Clare's future.

Gash has successfully created a new series, totally breaking away from Lovejoy and his band of lovable rogues. The crimes in the "Dancing" series are not capers - they are violent, vicious and nasty. Bonn and Clare's world is hard, grimy and dangerous. A good read - can't wait for the next one!

I'm a big fan of Jonathan Kellerman's mysteries (Alex Delaware, in particular) and looked forward to this anthology he'd put together, expecting quality which approached that of his own work. I was bitterly disappointed to go through this collection of mundane mysteries.

Aside from the first story, "Dream Lawyer," I enjoyed all of these short stories -- they're well-written and most of them have a nice twist in the plot. This collection is a fairly fast read, but a page turner!

This collection of short stories is about people that are not involved directly with law enforcement who try and help to solve crimes. Sometimes it is good to read a short story anthology to familiarize yourself with authors who might not be on the best seller list. Most of the stories are fairly average and do not really stick out.

The best story in the collection is John L. Breen's Four Views of Justice. The author takes a page from Faulkner and writes a story told by five separate characters all in the first person. Mr. Breen pulls it off brilliantly. Other short stories to watch out for are 'The Bad Boyz Klub' by Doug Allyn and 'The Oath' by Marilyn Wallace.

This book tells the extended story of the Israeli Air Force, famed but also perhaps a sometime victim of its own rep. From its humble beginnings of foreign volunteers and Piper Cubs to the supersonic age of super-aces in F-16s, the IAF always possessed the veneer of the heroic. Being the principal military branch for a young nation repeatedly beset by war, the IAF's story closely parallels the history of Israel - from the scrappy jury-rigged days of the war of independence, the disappointment of 1956, the near-miraculous triumphs of 1967, the tragic near reversal of 1973 and the painful realities of Lebanon. Though the IAF has come a long way since its humble beginnings, and its history covers half a century, the shift from a cobbled-together, volunteer-staffed air force to an elite-trained arm equipped with cutting edge aircraft was sudden - about the time the major European powers turned to Israel as a counter for the pan-arabism of Egypt's Nasser, leading up to the abortive Suez campaign. Most of the foreign volunteers had returned home by then, and the Spitifres that fought the Independence War put into storage. (Late model F-51 Mustangs, however, remained in service and flew missions against the Egyptians in 1956; though seeming contemporaries of the Spitfire, IAF's Mustang's are more identified with the '56 war, then the war of independence). Israeli pilots, traveling abroad (seemingly on vacation) were taught to fly unforgiving transonic jets like the French Mystere. The IAF had opened its own academy by then, and had already established its reputation for being unforgiving to its cadets.

Because it's almost impossible to separate the stories of Israel and her air force, the authors can't go that deep into the individual stories of the pilots or the various conflicts in which they serve. With so many stories, so many people and hardware, it's hard to become interested in any one of them. Sure, this wasn't meant to be an especially dramatic reading, but air combat, like drama, relies on perceptual powers of its participants. In short, we get the stories - all of them - but have no human dimension in which to frame them. We learn that the Avia S-99, a Czech copy of the famed Me-109 fighter of WWII, was about as dangerous to its pilots as its enemies, or that the supersonic Mirage III had a severe problem with its engine, one that would soon show reveal itself to its pilots. We learn that Avi Lehnir flew too close to the MiG-21 he destroyed, and returned home covered in soot. Because the book is only concerned with getting the facts right and utterly ignoring the impact of the events on those who lived them, it's hard to get a sense of what it must have been really like to fly one of those monsters, and, more importantly why the Israelis were much better at it than any of their enemies. In fact, the difference was lay in how the Israelis excelled in learning how to fly their aircraft in ways not envisaged by their designers - the drag of the big delta wing on the Mirage III made it unsuitable for flying low altitude, or in extended dogfights where it lost energy quickly; the F-4 Phantom was designed as an interceptor rather than a dogfighter. Nevertheless, the Israeli triumph in 1967 owed much to her pilots' ability to coax unknown agility out of the Mirage, and fly them well below Egyptian and Syrian radar; and, echoing the American experience in Vietnam, the Israelis discovered a master dogfighter in the F-4 as well. Missing is any sense of the people flying these planes or at least responsible for them. The enormous success of the IAF therefore remains a mystery, probably unintentional. By the end of the book, you've covered 50 explosive years of aviation history, and can't begin to explain a single thing you've read.

Any serious Israel Air Force buff should have at least three books on his shelf: Ehud Yonai's "No Margin for Error", Peter Mersky's "Israeli Fighter Aces", and Eliezer Cohen's "Israel's Best Defense". As a former fighter and helicopter pilot, Eliezer Cohen had first hand experience with, and access to the pilots and leaders who have made up the most respected air force of the jet age. His retelling of his own, and comrade's experiences in the face of war is riveting, and the scope of his IAF history takes him a full decade further into the story of this remarkable marriage of machines and men than does Ehud Yonai's own remarkable telling. Perhaps his one weakness in telling this story, is that Eliezer Cohen is a pilot by trade, and not a journalist, or novelist. Reading this book, you can see his skills as a story teller developing with each turn of the page. His finesse as an author starts out weak, but by the time that you reach his account of the Six Day War, Cohen's narrative becomes far too absorbing to pass this book by.

A squalid little book featuring characters almost entirely devoid of redeeming qualities; even the "heroine" is barely admirable. The story's other principal is a male prostitute and erstwhile trainee priest, though how the transformation in lifestyles is achieved is feebly (and implausibly) handled. Although a police officer at one point claims not to believe in coincidences, the plot hinges around several outrageous ones, for instance a shadowy European underworld "financier" just happens to be the cousin of the prostitute's minder. The alleged street language of northwest England is incomprehensible, and the inane device of starting each chapter with a definition of one of these terms - most of which have left the reader befuddled pages earlier - beggars belief. The tale peters out unsatisfactorily at the end, revealing an author who has run out of ideas

I didn't expect a "Lovejoy" type of new series from Gash; maybe something very different. But this book is a true oddity. It begins slow, becomes more interesting in the second half and then peters out; the momentum doesn't carry through. The dialogue is close to indecipherable and makes for very slow going. The concept of the relationship between the two major characters is interesting, which is why I gave it 3 and not 2 stars.

Different Women Dancing is certainly no Lovejoy novel. Lovejoy frequently finds himself involved in dark doings and the underside of life, but his attitude towards these things pulls them out of the realm of Dostoevsky. The character of Bonn and that of Dr. Burtonall are not only dark, but depressing. She's a professional woman with no will of her own and an unbelieveable sexual inexperience for a nineties professional woman. Bonn is too ascetic and murky for me to like him much as a human being. But, there is the intriuging part. As a reader one is drawn into this emotionally polluted environment by the writing. I agree with previous reviewers that the language was nearly unintelligible at times, and not because it was English slang; I believe most of it was made up slang. Now, Anthony Burgess created a more complicated language in A Clockwork Orange, but he was kind enough to include a glossary at the back of the book. I was tempted not to complete the novel, but I feel that that's cheating, so I read on to the end. In future, I will stick by Lovejoy and avoid Bonn and the good doctor.

Be careful - though this is an entertaining read, several historical anecdotes in this book are based on folklore rather than actual documented facts. I would recommend "A Road through the Wilderness" by William C. Davis for a factually accurate history of the Trace instead of this book, which at times reads like a dime novel.

For anyone who likes Southern history, particulary history of the Natchez Trace, this book is a must. The book is full of information about the use and /or settling of the land around the Natchez Trace. The book, however, is often hard to follow since it contains so much information and various names of settlers and infamous historical figures that used the Trace. Once you begin to read it, you become mesmerized and will find it hard to put down.

This is standard political economy, which the author acts like he himself discovered. As such, it heaps banality upon banality in the stuffiest and most pretentious pseudo-English intellectual style. I believe that this is the product of a truly mediocre mind, isolated from the academic mainstream to such an extent that he is unaware that he has NOTHING new to say. His main point is that institutions and politics influence the business environment. DUH. It would be funny if it weren't pathetic. In addition, his writing style is neither elegant nor fluid, but flat and dull. I would not have read this it if I didn't have to for a class.

If you want books on political economy and globalism, look elsewhere.

I found this book deeply insightful when I first read it, and I have since returned to its wisdom in the light of the current threat to world economic development posed by the terrorist attacks.

Story is an astute observer of our world, and perspective like this is a valuable commidity in times like these.

If you're wondering what the future holds for world markets, then look no further. Story says that "Politics drives the world economy, because history is made by humans" and observes that economic prosperity and political tranquillity do not always go hand in hand.

There's a great section in Frontiers of Fortune that introduces Story's concept of world and local time; something that helps explain the friction between the instantaneous, future-oriented global time and the inherited cultural and historic sphere of local in which most people live, with its own civilizations, mental landscapes and holy places.

So is our global village heading to a war of civilisations or to a boundariless world market? No definitive answers here, but all the insights to make us wiser decision-makers in the future.

Madonna, who now has read and written children books said it best when she said, "I read a lot of children books and really they're about nothing. They teach children to think little and be pretty, and they rarely teach a moral lesson." This book is in the former category. It's a candy coated treatment of the world, and quite unengaging and limited in both scope and content. Have your children read Grimm's fairytales or else Aesop's Fables. At least in those pages they will learn something of value. It certainly beats this brain dead literature.

If having your 5 year old request that you read a book again and again until he knows the story by heart is your definition of a good children's book, then this is the book for you. The story is simply about a father who buys an ice cream cone for his son and has to get home before it melts. There is a short-cut through the jungle. Along the bumpy path, the father has to protect the "simply delicious" ice cream from a number of animals. The play on words and the father's attempts to protect his precious cone are extremely funny. The pictures add to the enjoyment. My 5 year old son asked me to read the story so many times that he memorized it. A great book to enjoy with your children. The title says it all.

If your child is a horse lover, she is sure to enjoy the lovely illustrations found in this book: wild mustangs galloping through the canyon, Little Pinto being nuzzled by his mother, a fierce encounter between the herd's leader and an intruder stallion. The pictures have more action in them than the plot actually does. There isn't much of a story. What was nice, though, was the glossary of equestrian terms at the back of the book. The author uses "grown-up" words such as "roan" in the story, and the reader can flip to the back to look up the meaning of unfamiliar words. It's a good way for a child to become more educated about basic horse terms. Overall, I'd say this book is a pleasant book with wonderful pictures of the amazing creatures that wild horses are.