As is usual with Ms. Berger's books, the illustrations are stunning. I am haunted by the forget-me-nots that frame these pages. The story is also told in an original, moving way...one that will not soon be forgotten.

I recommend "The Donkey's Dream" most highly. It would make a wonderful gift (especially at Christmas time) for any Christ-follower.

Gwinna is, in my opinion, Berger's masterpiece. At just over a hundred pages, it is a longer work. While Grandfather Twilight, A Lot of Otters, and the Donkey's Dream are great books for children, I would have to recommend Gwinna to children who are a little older or more mature.

Gwinna, at its heart, is a story of many things: it is a story about needing others, it is a story about giving, a story of love and faith and being true. It was a difficult story for me. I often suffer from knowing all too well were a plot is going to go before it gets there...to my delight, Gwinna kept me guessing.

The highest recommendation I can give, I give to Gwinna. It is a fine thing to read a story where the character grows in wondrous and moving ways within the imagination. The reader (unless they miss the story completely) must grow in turn. Gwinna is such a story...get it today.

Lynne Remick, Reviewer

Even those who have lived difficult lives and find themselves temporarily trapped in the "Shadow Realm" are constantly assisted to get themselves out, and into the limitless Realms of Light!

This is a fabulous, wonderful book which should be in everyone's library!

There are upwards of a 100 fairly good books on managing volunteers, and of those I selected four based on the information provided by Amazon and its readers, who now represent a critical mass of useful guidance. Of the four books, this is the best. If you buy only one, this is the one. (The other three were Vineyard & McCurley's "Best Practices for Volunteer Programs", Lee & Catagnus, "Supervising Volunteers", and what may be one of the originals (from 1994), Susan J. Ellis' "The Volunteer Recruitment and Membership Development Book." These latter three are reviewed in their own spaces.)

This book by Helen Little, as good as it is, would normally lose one star because it fails to provide an index or a guide to other readings (including web sites) in niche areas of volunteer management. However, it does provide excellent forms for each step of the volunteer management process and these are all downloadable from a given web address, so we'll call it even.

By way of larger context, this book, and books on volunteer management in general, are valuable not only for organizations that use volunteers as a resource, but for those who would manage citizen activism, as well as teen-agers with chips on their shoulders and a reluctance to bear down on chores.

While others have outlined volunteer "needs" and how to address them, Helen Little does it best. The 12 basic needs--applicable to neighborhood mobilization, regional political campaigns, and teen-ager "work for respect" programs--are very well and concisely listed: 1) specific manageable task; 2) task that matches motivation; 3) good reason for doing the task; 4) written instructions; 5) reasonable deadline; 6) freedom to complete the task; 7) everything necessary to complete the task; 8) adequate training; 9) safe, comfortable, friendly environment; 10) follow-up; 11) opportunity (for the volunteer) to provide feed-back; and 12) appreciation, recognition, and rewards.

As I read this thoughtful book, comparing what volunteers need at each step of the way--and the more advanced comments by the author on how to plan for succession at every level of the organization from neighborhood to national, I kept thinking to myself: "traditional political parties are dead." Both the Democratic and Republican parties are violating every single tenet of this excellent work on how to attract, motivate, and activate citizen-voters. It remains to be seen if our neighborhoods might yet self-organize. This would be a good book for anyone thinking about organizing any endeavor of free spirits, at any level of play.

The Assignment has enlightened my understanding on unseen spirits, on the reason why I have and do react a certain way, on the pitfalls that await me when I try to do right. With this understanding I now have a key to deliverance. A key I did not know existed.

I thank Pastor Swift for being obedient to God by writing the painful truths she has described in The Assignment. You see the family she has saved by being obedient, is mine and I know your family will be blessed also. I encourage everyone to read this book as well as her second book titled," One More River to Cross" May God bless her for her obedience.

It doesn't waste words but it doesn't omit a lot of topics, either. For example, a memo writer is reminded to "write as you speak--if you speak clearly." Thousands, no, millions, of words have been devoted to this topic. This one sentence sums it up nicely.

Some may quibble with minor points in the book. For example, it advises readers not to capitalize the "The" in newspaper names because some papers use a "the" and some don't. To my way of thinking (and training), that's a question easily resolved by finding out what the newspaper uses. But this is a tiny point.

I much prefer the authors' valuable and wide-ranging bits of information:

khan: lowercase this term, which is a title for a ruler, an official or an important person in India and some central Asian countries.

c.o.d.: Use c.o.d. with periods for all references. It stands for cash on delivery. Without periods, it could be confused with the word cod, as in fish.
saccharin/saccharine: Often misspelled. The first is a sugar substitute; the second means overly sweet.

And so on, touching on topics from A to Z, as billed. I highly recommend this book.

I'm still on project #1 (no time!) but I've looked through it again and again and plan to work my way through it.