This book is extremely powerful, i just by chanced stumbled upon the story in a literature book today and it was an experience i will probably remember for the rest of my life. The simple, spare way that Thurber presents his point jars the reader to the bone and makes him tremble with fear, yet inspires him to create art and laugh and sing. This is probably one of the greatest works humanity has every created, a true treasure for child and adult.

This treasure of humanity was practically a Bible and also a constant "coffee table" book in our household when I was growing up in the late 50's and 60's. This is one of those rarest of books that will simultaneously break your heart and make your spirit soar. It only offers (see Thurber's dedication to his daughter) "a wistful hope" - but it will inspire you to nurture every ounce of genuine hopefulness you can muster.

This book had the most impact on my 1940s and '50s childhood. I grew up with it, looked at it time after time, pondered it, felt it. Who said "A picture speaks a thousand words"? James Thurber had a wonderful silent way of reaching the heart. I recommend this book to all parents with children, and to all grown-ups. Of everything I have ever read or seen, this is my #1 book of all time! Please have it out on your table always!

Pirates come to plunder a small island. When the spokesman tells them they have no treasure "except the blue of the water and the pink of our maidens' cheeks and lips, and the green of our fields," the pirates don't believe them and search high and low.

Meanwhile, the captain of the ship, who hates the letter O, issues an edict. "I'll get rid of the letter O, in upper case and lower...All words in books or signs with an O in them shall have the O erased or painted out. We'll print new books and paint new signs without an O in them." Thus objects and words with Os are banished from the land forever.

Disaster! Imagine the impact on community life! No houses, cottages or bungalows -- only huts, shacks, sheds, shanties and cabins without logs. No dough for the baker, no gold for the goldsmith, no forge for the blacksmith, no cloth for the tailor, no chocolate for the candymaker. (NOW you've gone too far!) No poetry without Os.

Thurber writes, "A man named Otto Ott, when asked his name, could only stutter. Ophelia Oliver repeated hers, and vanished from the haunts of men."

"We can't tell shot from shoot or hot from hoot," the blacksmith pointed out in a meeting with other townsfolk. "Oft becomes the same as foot, and odd the same as dodo. Something must be done at once or we shall never know what we are saying."

The islanders decide that there are four words with an O that must not be lost. Hope, love and valor are three of them and the fourth is the point of the story.

This is a beautifully written, rhythmic tale. THE WONDERFUL O will appeal to everyone who loves language. The story is a challenge to the imagination of the reader.

I read The Wonderful O years ago as a young adult and find myself recommending the book to others. But, alas, the book is out of stock; I mean, the bk is ut f stck. Please, Mr/Ms Publisher, put this wnderful bk back n the bkshelves. As yu can see, we can't live fully withut the letter, r withut this wnderful bk.

If there is any way to get this back in to print, I would buy copies for most children I care about.

read one of the short pieces in this anthology. They are also incredibly uplifting too. A brilliant bedside companion for any dog lover.

Although each of the pieces in this book was inspired by the loss of a much beloved dog, this is really a book about vibrant, fully-alive dogs: family pets, fellow hunters, soul mates, and best friends. And while none of the dogs remembered so fondly here still lives, Old Dogs affirms the remarkably special place in the heart we reserve for our dogs. My own dog is sturdy in her middle-age, but reading the eulogies and odes in this moving anthology has made me appreciate more all the quirky habits I take for granted, like how she can't resist running off with one of my Reeboks when I'm shoeing up for our evening walk--the little prance she performs when I tell her, "Bring the shoe back!" Not a sad read but a celebratory one, required for every dog owner!

This is a remarkable anthology of stories and poems by outstanding authors of the past, as well as more recent times. Although these moving remembrances are only of beloved dogs, the lovers of any species of pet will find identical sentiments for their own losses. Whatever kind of companion animal you had, you will find your own bereavement and healing tears reflected here, as well.

Care was taken to avoid over-sentimentality, in this assortment of loving reflections of dogs, celebrated here. These accounts are full of love, and are sometimes even funny - and we are thrust into the realization that perhaps that is the most wonderful kind of living memorials we can have for a beloved pet. Too often, we lose this perspective, while trying to keep from drowning in our own bereavement and sorrows.

Rather than being a collection of sad literary memorials Old Dogs Remembered is a joyful celebration of life with pets. This inspires healthy new points of view and adjustments to moving on into our new lives, without them.

Here we are treated to many different outlooks on how they permanently enriched the lives of their owners. Reading these heartwarming pages will broaden the understanding of each reader, concerning his/her own personal bereavement. Here, we are offered the collective wisdom of others, who reminisce on their honored pets. There is much to be shared and learned here, as well as enjoyed.

With so many different authors, one must appreciate that references and styles have changed drastically, through the ages. As an example of this, some might find the essay by the dramatist John Galsworthy to be interesting, but a bit troublesome to read. And, as with any anthology, there may be some accounts not everyone would appreciate. But all pet lovers will readily identify with the overall shared remembrances, here. This is a heartwarming collection, which can be enjoyed comfortably, in several installments.

There will be many an uplifting tear shed in its reading, and we suggest it for your reading pleasure.

The Battle For Congress: Consultants, Candidates, And Voters was published to specifically to help readers understand modern campaigns for seats in Congress, as well as the workings of America's representative democracy. It contains in-depth examinations of six political campaigns from the heated House election year of 1998: specifically, the House contests in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Kansas, Washington, and Wisconsin. With case studies that closely evaluate professional political consultants, The Battle For Congress is a "must-read" for anyone wanting to learn more about the electoral process that determines America's future.

Thurber got into trouble with his friend and co-New Yorker stalwart E.B. White for writing this portrait of their boss and benefactor. Between them the three wrote most of "The New Yorker" in its crucial first decades. These chapters, first written as a series of articles for "The Atlantic", are a model of the rich, primary source biography. Thurber pulls no punches. His Ross is not "a monument" as he puts it, but a man, worth looking at in all his strange glory. I would rate this book alongside Herndon's Life of Lincoln as one of the best accounts of a man by his contemporary, without the veneer of legend and without an undercurrent of envy. Thurber shared an office with Ross for who knows how many years, learned a lot about writing from him (some examples of his razor fine editing are here to learn from), and did a great deal of his best writing in the man's employ. One of Thurber's best books, and that makes it one of the best books there is. You could do worse than read this book before trying to write a life of anyone who's still living. You could do worse than reading this book before trying to write even one article about the life of somebody alive and real.

James Thurber was in his 60s when he wrote THE YEARS WITH ROSS. Harold Ross was the first editor of The New Yorker. He was a homely man, awkward in manner and speech. Ross couldn't write, but he was a fine editor. He lacked a good education and was sadly unaware of most social graces so he was often uncouth, but he created one of the USA's outstanding magazines. The New Yorker is a stalwart of literary sophistication.

Thurber's study is not only an intriguing look at a real character of an editor but the story of how a magnificent magazine grew under the guidance of one of the truly talented editors of all time.

This biography (which I am very pleased to see has become a classic!) is wonderful - a fine personal memoir of the New Yorker founder and editor, Harold Ross. It talks about his life at work and otherwise, from the point of view of one of the pillars of that magazine's early life, James Thurber. The writing is funny (of course), vivid and immediate. Together with Letters From the Editor and Genius in Disguise, it will bring you as close as it is possible to get to Ross, who was, in my humble opinion, one hell of a guy. A must-read for all editors, would-be or otherwise.

It was an excellent book for someone who enjoys day dreaming. Good for both kids and teens. Adults might even possibly enjoy it.

Anyone you buy it for will absolutly love it. Children, teenagers, and even adults should read this book. It makes you want to jump in to one of Walter's day dreams the moment you read it. Thurber really out did him self. I have to say it is one of the funniest books i have ever read.

This book, with whom I share a long and one-sided love-affair, is a perfect gem. I have read it during my life again and again, and I never have escaped without laughing--hard--out loud at all the Thurber family goings-on. Thurber has the rare gift of constructing a symphony of a story with the sparest but most meaningful instruments. His other books, The Thurber Carnival and the Thurber Album are also worth reading.

Unlike most autobiographies, My Life and Hard Times is short and extremely sweet. Despite its length, however, you can pick it up again and again and always be delighted by it. As Thurber says, he talks "largely about small matters and smally about great affairs." And the great affairs he talks about are quite meaningful, adding yet another dimension to the book. After reading it, I had the feeling James Thurber was somewhat depressed because of the limits of life. He only hints at this at the beginning and end of the book in his "Preface to a Life" and "A Note at the End," but it is there, and it is powerful. As for the nine anecdotes that make up the bulk of the book, there is simply no equal: they are very funny, displaying the occasional and humorous insanity of people. This is a book to be read again and again, and to be treasured.

This has got to be the funniest book I have ever read and read and read. Simple stories of Thurber's early years will get you laughing out loud.

I first heard this enchantingly wonderful book on cassette tape when i was at art lessons. I would wait impatiently till the next week so I could hear more~ more about the Golux (who resembles only half the things he says he doesn't!) and about Princess Saralinda and the Prince whose name begins with X... and doesn't! This book is full of whimsical wonderful wordplay and contains almost all of my favorite quotes of all time. It isn't very long, but every sentence is filled with some little quips or verbal oddities that, quite literally, made me smile and laugh while reading (a funny sight XD). This book is without question one of my favorites of all time~ a truly wonderful tale that can be read over and over again without ever growing old. Truly classique. I mean, the book that's given me my tagline HAS to be great: "We all have flaws and mine is being evil."

A tremendous piece of literature I was lucky enough to read at age 8. I'm still re-reading it today as an adult and continue to find it imaginitive, without being syrupy or preachy. Our protagonist, the minstral-turned-Prince, must save the Princess Saralinda before the coniving Duke forces her to marry him. The Duke sets out an impossible task for the Prince, hoping that he will perish before he weds Saralinda on her 21st Birthday.

What is so amazing about this story is that each character has so much more dimension than the average fairy tale character. At times the Duke is almost likable and the Prince can be frustratingly unheroic. Even Saralinda escapes from the cotton candy persona of most heroines. Sure, she's beautiful, but she has an assumed cleverness that is presented as normal rather than over-emphasized in a Disney-like way.

I would highly recommend this book to children and adults alike. A note to eight-year-olds: Look up the hard words. It's worth the time. Trust me

...the writing is so lyrical, the characters so funny, and characteristic of thurber, frought with human flaws while still being heroes, and each adventure solved, in the end, by wit and ingenuity. the prose is beautifully tight. it is written, like E.B. White, for the inner ear -- sonorous, and full of Thurber mischief. "I am the Golux, the one and only Golux -- and not a mere device." My eight-year old loves the rhythm. My 11 year old loves the humor, and I love thurber's wink to me about literary devices...for us, this book is always at hand for the sheer joy of reading it aloud.

"The Thurber Carnival" was a beloved companion of my early youth; I laughed out loud again and again at the stories of "My Life and Hard Times," the hilarious "Fables for Our Time," "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and other classics. What was really important to me about Thurber was that he came from the same part of Ohio that I did, and actually had had relatives and attended family reunions in Sugar Grove, Ohio, where I grew up. That meant all the world to me, because it showed me that someone who had ties to Sugar Grove could be a famous writer. Now, I love Thurber's work more than ever; as an adult, I can better appreciate the nuances of a story like "The Catbird Seat." Thurber's work is a precise, funny, yet deeply serious portrait of an America which had just recently completed the transition from a frontier to an urban society. Women, having just won the right to vote, were flexing new-found muscles; men, divorced from the need to wrest a living from the soil, felt suddenly unmoored and emasculated; a new breed of self-help authors arose to make a quick buck from the newly uncertain populace; and oceans of alcohol fueled the newly stirred resentments between the sexes.Thurber recorded it all, in a prose style as elegant and lucid as any in the history of American literature. "The Catbird Seat," "Fables for Our Time" and the self-help parodies of "Let Your Mind Alone!" are every bit as fresh and pertinent as when Thurber wrote them 60-odd years ago. Unfortunately, some aspects of his work--most glaringly his portrayal of African-Americans--have not stood up so well. But one can only say of Thurber what the Duc de Saint-Simon said of Louis XIV: "His virtues were his own, his faults were his times'." The best of James Thurber ranks with the best of Mark Twain, Ring Lardner, Woody Allen and any other American humorist you can name.

James Thurber is undoubtably one of America's greatest writers ever. "The Thurber Carnival" is an brilliant collection of his works.

I was introduced to Thurber's works two years ago,by a short story of his that was included in my English textbook. I was instantly charmed by his writing. Ever since, I have read everything of Thurber's that I can get my hands on. Through my readings, I have discovered several key things:

1. James Thurber was NOT just a humorist/satirist. Of course, I have stayed up late reading his stories laughing out loud, yet there is more to the stories. Thurber not only chronicled people of his time, but people of all times. His works show that the little eccentricities most people possess are the very things that make them interesting. Take this excerpt from the story "Recollections of the Gas Buggy", included in "The Thurber Carnival":

'Years ago, an aunt of my father's came to visit us one winter in Columbus, Ohio. She enjoyed the hallucination, among others, that she was able to drive a car. I was riding with her one December day when I discovered, to my horror, that she thought the red and green lights on the traffic signals had been put up by the municipality as a gay and expansive manifestation of the Yuletide spirit. Although we finally reached home safely, I never completely recovered from the adventure, and could not be induced, after that day, to ride in a car on holidays.'

2. That excerpt brings me to my next discovery: James Thurber had quite a way with words, which to my knowledge, no author since has been able to near. Thurber's words transport you to another world, an amazing world, where everyone even slightly insane is portrayed with kindly satire. The character Briggs Beall, from the story "The Night the Bed Fell," is a perfect example of Thurber's wit.

3. An additional point I discovered is that Thurber's works need to be shared. I treasure this book so much that I brought it with me as traveled to Nebraska to visit my friend, just so I could read parts of it aloud to her. Whether it is a driving adventure with a Russian boat specialist("A Ride With Olympy"), an amusing maid("What Do You Mean It Was Brillig?"), or the light bulb smashing Elliot Vereker("Something to Say"), Thurber's stories need to be shared.

For these reasons, as well as others, "The Thurber Carnival" is a most wonderful book. James Thurber's writing is nearly magical, as well as his characters. This is a great book to pick up again and again, if only to read one of its great stories.

I grew up with this book. First published in the mid-40s, it lived in the center of a built-in bookcase over my father's desk in the family room, and I was drawn to it time and time again during my childhood.

At first, I was convulsed by Thurber's uniquely hilarious cartoons. His dogs and his women are priceless...drawn in a style that nobody has ever been able to duplicate or capture.

It was only later, as I grew older, that I could appreciate Thurber's written humor. The "Thurber Carnival" (and it is) is a compilation of essays and excerpts from "My World--and Welcome to It," "The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze," and others. These were Thurber's earlier works that were very much a product of their times, but oh, so funny! Thurber was one of the great commentators on the vagaries of everyday life. Along with Robert Benchly et al., he set the tone for an entire generation. I still have this book, and I absolutely cherish it. It's hard to do Thurber justice in a review. All I can say is--buy this book and wallow in it. You'll be glad you did.

This book was a good book for children to read and enjoy. It was not to long and was easy for me to understand. In the story, a Princess named Lenore was sick. Her dad told her that anything she wanted, he would get her. She told him that if she could have the moon, she would be better. Her dad, the King, told his wise men what she wanted. They didn't know how to get it or even if they could get it for him. If you read this story, you will find out exactly what happened.
Brandon M.

This delightful Caldecott Medal winner is classic James Thurber and as such is filled with sweet humorous prose with a witty little message. Louis Slobodkin's simple yet evocative ink and water color illustrations help bring the story to life. When a little princess is ill her father, the king, is worried and is willing to get her anything her heart desires if only she will get well. When the princess decides she wants the moon she sets off a chain reaction of worries for the wisemen of the court as well as for the king. All of the best minds of the kingdom are dismayed when they cannot come up with a way to get the moon for the princess. Their final analysis: IMPOSSIBLE! The court Jester gets to the heart of the problem and with the help of the princess and the wisdom of childhood, not only presents the princess with her heart's desire but can explain why the moon still appears up in the sky. Don't miss this lovely book. It's a great tucker-inner and is as fun to read aloud as it is to hear it read.

The story with a surfeit of delectable images and colorful characters is every child's delight. What adds to the reading pleasure is the curiosity generated by the improbable demand of the young Princess. The young reader is captivated with mounting anticipation as the Court Jester works out the solutions to the problems-twice in the story, while the wise men of the court eat humble pie.

While amusing the grown-ups for the same reasons the story also throws up many interesting points for them to mull over. Here are some of them:

To start with, young children will always come up with unattainable demands, and the parents-doting or otherwise-would do well not to dismiss them offhand. The King chased the impossible dream of his ailing daughter and came out successful.

Next, the story shows that people in power are often prisoners of their own rigid patterns of thinking and doing things. If they must come anything near to solving problems they have to break the shackles of convention. The Lord High Chamberlain was trapped in the web of his bureaucratic achievements and the Royal Mathematician could not think beyond his complex rules of calculation. They, unlike the Jester, did not leave any space in their minds for new ideas to sneak in.

The story tells us to use the perspective of a child, at times, for a change. Innocent and uncluttered minds may throw up fresh ideas, which are often blocked by our mindsets and in-depth knowledge. Only when the Jester decided to look at the problem with the eyes of the Princess did he find that the answers lay in the child herself. Creativity must be nurtured in a mind that is a fresh green pasture. This story has a very good lesson in divergent thinking and would make great reading in the creativity and problem solving courses.

It has a great stress-busting lesson too. We worry most of the time for causes, which do not exist. The King fretted about the unpleasant consequences when the Princess would look at the sky, but did the real moon bother the Princess at all?