I think that all kids should read this book: it tells of the horrors of slavery in a way that younger readers will relate to. The narrator is wonderfully voiced, Rosen has done a great job at animating the owner of this amazing story. This book helps kids wrestle with difficult issues like human cruelty and social injustice by being allowed to experience this unique and compelling tale.

Pompey Walker is a very old man. At the dedication of a school in his honor Pompey tells his unusual life's story of slavery, brutality, freedom and being sold back into slavery for the sake of building a school for African American children in Ohio. Pompey and his white friend Jeremiah, sold Pompey to unwitting slave onwers thirty-nine times. Based on the true story of Gussie West, Pompey's poignant tale illustates how small injustices are sometimes necessary to overcome a greater social ill. The simplicity of the primitive art accompanying the story provides a deeper understanding of the harshness of Pompey's life. A School For Pompey Walker won the Simon Wiesenthal Children's Book Award for it's themes of equality of people, social justice and human dignity. The originality of the story and illustrations provide a vehicle for children to explore the complex ideas of breaking a law for the loftier goal of trying to help correct a greater social injustice, in this instance, slavery. The book is highly recommended for children ages 6-10 and for students in middle school studying 19th century United States history.

Blaga Dimitrova is Bulgaria's greatest living poet, and perhaps, is one of the greatest poets writing in any language today. This translation aptly captures the beauty and force of her work, and a great deal of the sheer beauty of her verse. This book should be a must buy for anyone interested in Bulgarian literature and East European in general.

Brenda Jackson has done it again. You just have to love her. Felicia and Trask truly has a story that makes you sit up and take notice! This book was hot and very steamy. It is one of those books that has you talking to the characters saying: "why are you fighting the feeling, if only I was in your shoes" type stories. I am big fan of Mrs. Jackson. I've read all her books to date including "Secret Love." I had that one a couple of days after its release date and finished it in one day. So Brenda's a very talented woman, I recommend this and all of her books to put a smile on your face! After reading thing book, you will say, "God has blessed your with a gift. "All the other stories in Something to Celebrate were just lovely too!

What can you say about Brenda Jackson. She is one of my favorite writers. The story about Trask and Felicia had be laughing, crying and applauding. This would have even been better if it was longer.

I purchase the book for Brenda's story, but I did like the other stories as well. They both touched on some sensitive issues.

Good job ladies.

I am not a big romance reader, but this Holiday novella was the bomb. I read it three time this weekend. I just couldn't put it down. Brenda Jackson is a writer in a class all by herself. I just want to talk to her personally. I really really enjoyed all the stories, Ms Jackson just took my breath away. Ladies keep up the good work each story had a special highlight that truly deal with family, emotion, faith and issues of today.

After many years of friendship, I have discovered a side of my friend previously unknown to me, that of poetry writing. This is Brenda's first book and it was published through her efforts and the friends and family members who love her and the only reason I will give for not giving her a higher rating is because this is her innaugural effort and the hectic effort that it was. To me, reading her poetry is one thing, her reading it to you is quite another. The innate passion and conviction of her words and thoughts will sweep you along her path, though it is a path you too will find familiar, and you will see through her smiling eyes as though through your own and somewhere along the quiet and restful way you will feel what she feels, the pain, the love, the generosity. Read her words. Put her voice in place of yours, consider them through her heart, and you will savor them, giving witness to a talent that is world-class. Then give thanks.

when i first read it i couldn't put it down it reached into my soul and brought back memories of my childhood.great book for the soul.

peace

ps:proud to be your neph gary

Nina Cassian was born in Romania in 1924, published her first poems there in 1947, fled the Ceausescu regime in 1985 and since then has become well-known in the English-speaking world. For this selection of her poems Cassian worked closely with Brenda Walker on the translations / rewritings in English. This is recognisably modernist work: oblique, fragmentary, not always obvious. As modernist poetry, however, it is relatively accessible. Always latent in these pieces is a quality of humourous self-deprecation that can, at moments, crystallise in poems of amusing simplicity. Cassian gives us the voice of a poet who sometimes does not understand herself or what she is doing ('I am the Monkey Who is Sentenced to Write'), but who equally is sure that she is just a simple woman who does not mean to threaten or intimidate ('My tongue - forked like a snake's / but without deadly intentions: / just a bilingual hissing'). Cassian's world is a place of potential terror and confusion ('Huge agitated creatures / haunt my window') but she uses her poems to keep hold of a dry, humourous spirit that is both resigned and defiantly optimistic; she is particularly good at conjuring up the image of herself as battered and worn but nevertheless unapolagetically sensual ('my cigarette's ash falling on my naked thighs'). Cassian's poetry is very much the language of a survivor (and it always helps to remember the horrific circumstances of her life in Romania and enforced exile). If it has modernism's obscurity and perhaps a certain gaucheness more particular to her, it despite this is convincingly tough, hard-won and often daringly whimsical.