Rosemary Wells has created two great brother and sister characters in the Bunny books, as well as the Max board books. Ruby is the responsible, if slightly bossy, older sister, and Max is her younger brother intent on doing what he wants. Ruby is throwing a party where most of the guests are her dolls and toys, and Max wants to invite some of his toys, too!

There is a lot of counting, which may go over better with the four to eight year old recommendation, but this is still a fun book to read with a younger child. Ruby is a fun character to read aloud.

Max and Ruby are my new favorite book characters in books for younger children. My kindergarten students love the short text, colorful illustrations, and of course, mischievous little Max. After reading the Easter book "Max's Chocolate Chicken" all Fall and Winter, I'm finally getting them some more Max books!

In "Bunny Party", Max's older sister Ruby, throws a party for their Grandma. Ruby's guest list includes her "Rapunzel", "Mr. and Mrs. Quack" and the "Tooth Fairy", but leaves no room for Max's favorite toys. Sneaky Max finds his own way to crash the party with his "Jellyball Shooter Spider" and several other guests.

I love Ruby because she is such a girl in the toys that she owns and in the type of party that she plans for Grandma. I love Max because he is such a boy in the toys that he owns and in the way he wants to be included in his older sister's party plans. And I love Rosemary Wells for creating characters that children will want to see to over and over again in stories that adults can also appreciate and enjoy.

I am rating this a 5-star book from the kids point of view. Kids just love the story, memorizing the names of all the toys that attend the bunny party, etc... My kids (a 4 year old boy and a 1.5 year old girl) drag out stuffed toys and a teaset at least three times a week to have a bunny party of their own.

If you buy this book, you will have to read it a gazillion times. From the parent's viewpoint, it's not the greatest book that you'll ever read a gazillion times to your kids, but it's way better than one of the books that you dread when they say, "Can we read it again tonight?" And hey, it's not our opinion that counts anyway, right?

Emily is so excited to go to Kindergarten. Her teacher helps the children to count off the first 100 days of school, and every day has a number.

Each page has from 1 - 4 days of school illustrated on it. Each numbered day is significant, either on a historical, cultural or kindergarten level.

Future and current kindergartners and their parents will be charmed by this book.

My only reservation about it is that it is 58 pages long. This is not a book that you could read in one sitting with your average 5 or 6 year-old. My recommendation would be to do it in small chunks - once a week or once a month - throughout the beginning of the school year.

It has wonderful ideas of how to celebrate and enjoy the school year in small ways, including the traditions of many cultures. Not only is it a great way to count, but also a way to explore cultural diversity.

Any fan of Rosemary Wells will be well satisfied with this book.

If you are looking for a book that you can read in one sitting with your child, try Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day by Joseph Slate. This book is actually an alphabet book in which each student's name starts with a different letter, and there is a sentence telling what each is bringing to celebrate the 100th day.

In this very charming book, Emily starts school and her teacher, Miss Cribbage, has them write a number down in their number books for each of the first 100 days of school. The pages are bright and colorful and the numbers are easy for small children to read. Each number has a lesson to be learned from it. Ms. Wells' characters are as always cute and adoreable. My twin four year girls absolutely loved this book. It is an excellent book for teaching numbers from 1 to 100. I would recommend it to anyone.

This book is really special! Emily counts off the first 100 days of school by talking about each and every number and matching it up with something to do with that day--her sister Eloise learning to play Seventy Six Trombones, her class learning about the nine planets, the prizewinning pumpkin at the fair weighing 33 pounds, and so on! The book is oversized, and filled with great Wells pictures. In the short piece of info given with each number, we get to know Emily's family and the joys and sorrows of her first year of school. We've read this book over and over. It's great for a child just starting to get excited about numbers, as they can look up their favorite ones to see what that number has associated with it. It would also be a great book for a child starting school. If you love Rosemary Wells, as I do, you knew you would like this book, but even I was impressed with how special it is!

Doggone if Ruby doesn't try hard to help Max get to sleep, but nothing seems to work! Keep an eye out for the red rubber elephant in each picture.

Not my child's favorite Max book (he prefers "Max's New Suit"), but good to break up the routine once in a while.

Every child deserves to be read to from the moment his or her eyes can focus on a page. The problem is that most of the books that appeal to children under two, with simple, uncluttered pictures and only a few words per page ( and usually no story to speak of) are not exactly fun to read if you're any older than two. You read them because you feel obligated to, not because you want to.

Rosemary Wells' Max books are different. They have great appeal to small children (I had to buy two sets of the books for my two children, because my son wore his out by hugging them so much. They were in shreds by the time his sister came along.) But adults can read them over and over again and never get tired of them. The stories and the illustrations are hilarious, and priceless.

In this one, Max can't sleep without his red rubber elephant, so his older sister Ruby tries to give him substitutes, including a snake. The wide-eyed look on Max's face when he has a stuffed snake wrapped around him is, all by itself, worth the price of the book. In the end, Max finds his elephant, and tucks in Ruby, who has fallen asleep. The role reversal - the younger brother taking care of his older sister - is really sweet.

But mostly the book is just clever and funny and wonderful. If you have a new baby, you are going to have to read a lot of truly boring books in the next couple of years. Do yourself a favor and buy at least a few of the Max books. You might even make it through the terrible twos with your sanity intact.

My toddler and I love the Max books. Max's Bedtime is one of her favorites - at 18 months old she was able to find the missing "red rubber elephant" that Max cannot sleep without! Great for little kids, fun for grown-ups too.

This book is a must read for all preadolecent girls! It is a remarkably sweet and refreshing book that is perfect for bedtime reading!

this ia a very nice book i like it its my style
ghanagirlzzzzzz

My Mother read me this book about 47 years ago and I just loved it. I felt so bad for this poor little boy who was held captive. Then the world opened up for him as he rode on his magic carpet. His adventures were so realistic I felt like I was with him. I reread this book recently because I had always remembered liking it as a child.

Wells does a good job again with this book about cleaning up. Max's sister wants him to clean up his room, but Max keeps rescuing items that she is wanting to throw away.

It's funny, and it's just as good as the other Max books.

It also teaches a valuable lesson about cleaning up.

Good for ages 2-7.

Max's room is a mess and Ruby wants to clean it; but Max has special ideas about his room - can he preserve his beloved but funky treasures? This presents another delightful sibling encounter.

Max gets made over by Ruby and her friend Louise. When Ruby and Louise gets distracted, Max decides its his turn to have fun!

This book may be called "Ruby's Beauty Shop", but for me, the hero is always Max. If you're a Max and Ruby fan looking for another Max and Ruby book, you'll find this book to be a lot of fun. Rosemary Wells avoids falling into a formula with this new book showing Ruby playing pretend with a friend.

Ruby and her friend Louise have everything they need for their new beauty shop - except somebody to try it out on. Enter brother Max, who becomes the guinea pig in their experiments. True to Max form, however, he decides to play Beauty Shop his way - with revolutionary results.

It all started when Helen chased man in the woods.She lost her locket with her mother's picture in it.Helen got the locket a couple days after with her mother's eyes pocked with red paper behind the picture.She and her friend named Pinky worked together on this and found about Lorenzo Fairchild and his doughter Lucy.Lucy,in the civil war helped South win the war..., This book was great and I think I'll read it again

The book The Man In The Woods by Rosemary Wells is about a girl who witnesses a car wreck, and the person the police claims who did it turns out to be the wrong person and now her and her friend are out to find the person. The main character in this story is a girl named Helen who has just moved to a new town and witnesses a car wreck and saw the person that did it. The other main character is a boy named Pinky Levi who helps Helen try to find the person who caused the accident. The ending was really interesting because the guy who caused the wreck wrote letters to Helen trying to scare her and they found out that he wrote the letters on a typewriter that was called a "Thurber" and there was only one in the town and they found out who had the typewriter and they caught the person.

"He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake...oh you better watch out..." This is all Helen Curragh thought about when a man in the woods began to stalk her. Her mother had died when Helen was young, and all she had left of her mother was a locket with her picture in it. She lost it in the woods, but mysteriously, it got delivered to her home. Helen opened the locket and found her mother's picture defaced. Someone... The Man in The Woods, began to send her threats through the mail, and now, Helen was scared.

Then, a car "accident", or was it? On a quiet road in New Bedford. Usually it was a vacant road with deer crossing through it. A big rock had been thrown from nowhere, just missing Helen, and hitting a lost car's window. A pregnant mother and her 2 children were badly injured. Helen, angered with rage, ran across the trees and bushes, looking for the person who threw the rock ... The Man in the Woods.

This book will make your blood boil with excitement. For everyone who loves thrillers, this is a perfect book for you.

Although this title mostly follows Gaarder's style of beautiful writing, intertwined stories and happy ending, it's certainly written with the younger readers in mind. It is a mostly recommended read, both for kids and for adults, especially during Christmas time, which was when I read it.

It will make you integrate with Christmas ambiance and spirit, and really make you feel very... "christmassy"! At the same time, its quite entertaining and simplistic style makes it readable during any time of the day. If it grips you as it did me, you could read it overnight, although I preferred to read one chapter each day of December, as the book is designed.

Overall, if you're looking for a simple and yet clever Christmas story, for you or your kid(s), this is the one!

I bought a copy of this book several years ago for my son. We read it aloud each evening leading up to Christmas. Since then, it has become a tradtion in our family to read a chapter a night every evening, usually starting after Thanksgiving. This will be our 4th reading, and already the children are asking if it's time for our "advent book" reading to begin. Each year we enjoy it more, as it reminds us of the deeper meaning of the holiday we celebrate.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone, and am ordering copies for my sister's family this year.

This is a lovely book that I've given to children and adults the past 2 Christmases.

While not as intellectually rigorous as Sophie's World and not quite as captivating as The Solitaire Mystery (which you must, must read), The Christmas Mystery is more addictive than a bag of peanuts. Rarely have I found a book that appeals to children and adults alike -- but this one does.

Even if you have no background or real interest in Advent and Christmas, this book's fresh perspective will still delight.

This has a fairly nice selection of rhymes, and the pictures are bright, but the pictures seem rather unrelated to the rhymes -
and for a child just learning to speak it seems important that
the pictures and the rhymes match. I was given a copy but I do
not read it to my 2-year-old. I much prefer the Orchard Book of
Nursery Rhymes which i found at the local library. (Why three stars and not fewer? Because I saw at the library many nursery rhyme books that were worse.)

I just want to respond to the person who said that there was an error on what boys and girls are made of (p.26-27). This is a children's book of the 90s and the reversal was made intentionally to try to rid of stereotypes of boys and girls. This book has wonderful illistrations and large print, perfect for young children!

What a wonderful book! The text is classic and the illustrations are, of course, marvelous! To the disappointed reviewer who thought there was an error in the illustrations, you are incorrect! I just returned from a conference at which Ms. Wells spoke. The switch in the "what are little girls/boys made of" indeed was intentional on the part of the illustrator to stamp out those gender stereotypes! As Ms. Wells told us this weekend, "Mother Goose should be the Shakespeare of children's literature."! READ ON!

The beautiful illustrations can't make up for the bland, dumbed-down text of this rip-off. The title seems to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the buyer into thinking they are getting Eric Knight's wonderful story.

Not a chance. The story is re-written, badly.

If you think your children are not bright enough to understand Eric Knight's beautiful, evocative, direct and vivid prose, or if you are too busy to bother to take the time to read it to them, or if you want to enrich a company that tries to trick people into buying a book, then I guess you can.

More discerning parents and readers should take the trouble to search out Eric Knight's original. Mr Knight's depiction of the beautiful collie's travails on her long journey home will touch the stoniest heart.

For the ambitious reader, try to find a copy of the Saturday Review (1932?) with Knight's original short story. He expanded it into the novel, and it contains such scenes as some people walking down a country road who happen to notice a ragged collie sleeping "in a ditch, with her nose pointed south" -- toward, of course, home.

Readers and animal lovers deserve the real thing, not this cynical attempt at money-making.

I give this book five stars because it is very fun and it teaches me vocabulary. This book is fun because this dog has to travel far from his family and has many fun adventures. It teaches us vocabulary by using them in a sentence.

This is the true, gripping, and heartwarming story of Lassie, set in Yorkshire England and Scotland, not the Hollywood version. The sensitively rendered full color pictures of people, dog, and landscape would make the book a winner but this book also offers a wonderful story put carefully and artfully into words. As a book to read aloud to young children, I would commend it; its wording is rhythmic and exciting and holds the attention from chapter to chapter. The story, about poor people who have to sell their dog, is sad yet courageous and the ending is a very happy one!