Jiri Weil has here a masterpiece, a series of events involving a host of characters. Children hiding in a closet, German soldiers of high and low rank, elderly Jewish council members and scholars. What really chills me was my visit to the Holocaust museum days after finishing this book. The identification papers you draw upon entering that I received were for a man in the exact region of my Slovak grandparents. Before leaving much later that day, I viewed newsreels in the library. They provided actual background for the description of Reinhard Heydrich's assassination, told in detail in Weil's book. I highly recommend this excellent book.

In short vignettes, the author explores the difficult choices faced by the people of World War II Prague, from Reinhard Heydrich (never named by name) to individual soldiers, civil servants and Czechs and Jews of all stripes. Some episodes are absurd and full of humor, particularly the moment when the workers try to identify which statue on the roof is actually Mendelssohn's (they choose the one with the largest nose and are about to make the maximum possible error when they are stopped in the nick of time). Others are almost painful to read, such as the choices of a Jewish scholar hired to work on the museum built to illustrate the lives of his people; he realizes the purpose is to describe a people who are to be eliminated from the face of the earth.

Unlike many Holocaust novels, this book presents its points in a subtle and wonderful manner. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This book opens with a black humor scene: how to remove the statue of Mendelssohn from the Prague concert hall during the Nazi occupation? From there, it shifts to short portraits of the gestapo, guards, ghetto residents, children, etc., all living in Pragu and trying to succeed/survive. It has been a long time since I have read a book so moving as this, and I highly recommend it

Excellent. A must read for parents of kids of all ages.It is really well written and should make a responsible parent a believer. Kill the TV before it kills your kids brains or at least be very selective as to what they watch.

For a long time I have been discouraged in my efforts to establish two-way communication with children. I would bring books, toys, and games to social functions and share them with children. Once one activity was over, the children would stare at me, waiting for me to start another activity. Why won't they provide any input of their own? Am I overpowering them without realizing it?

This book explained everything: the children think I'm a television!

This book is about the effects of television on children and families.The use of television starts innocently enough.Too often TV is used as a child minder so that parents can get some peace and quiet: to prepare meals, so that Mom and Dad can sleep in at week-ends, etc.But dangers lurk in this innocent scenario.Before long, the kids are hooked on watching, and parents are hooked on a device for having the kids out of the way.Marie Winn aptly calls TV a drug.Many parents are aware of the dilemma, but often they are and the kids too hooked to break the habit.Winn explores the process of this addiction and the harm done to vibrant human living.For example, excessive TV viewing hampers the personal and social development of the child, so some mothers get a job to escape from their maladjusted kids!Winn offers helpful advice to families trying to cope with TV.She gives examples of the benefits families have experienced when they went without TV, such as increased family interaction, more creative and satisfying activities,doing various things that had been put of, and so on.Marie Winn gives many examples from family life which add great interest to this thoughtful and helpful book.

This wonderful book welcomes in its readers as surely as, for the several years it describes, the hawk watchers of Central Park welcomed in anyone who passed by, shared a pair of binoculars, and got instantly hooked on the amazing scene of a family of hawks growing on the ledge of a Gold Coast apartment building in Manhattan. Ms. Winn's precise, quick-reading prose will convert any reader to a greater, renewed, or first appreciation for wildlife in Central Park in particular, but, even more, for what nature will have going on anywhere. There are several stories here, all fascinating: the cycle of bird life in and migration through the Park; Pale Male and his families; and those humans, so normal in their individual quirkiness, who take up his cause through the years. Ms. Winn's particular and not easy skill is to let all these stories move themselves, and therefore sweep the reader along with all the quiet excitements, joy, and sadnesses they convey. A book to buy and keep always.

I've known Central Park all my life and yet I discovered a whole hidden life in the Park through this book.

"Red Tails in Love" is a complete delight!

This was one of the best books I have read this year. I'm not a bird watcher by any means, and, despite the drama that I'm obviously missing, do not intend to become one. Nevertheless, I was captivated and moved by the story of Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk who builds a nest in Central Park, and then builds another, and then builds yet another. I thought the writing and story-telling were superb. The way Winn intertwined the story of the hawks with the story of the people watching the hawks, complete with celebrity references (if you blink you'll miss Glenn Close), was excellent. (It did not occur to me until the acknowledgments that one of the reasons the story-telling was so good is that the author is married to a film-maker, who offered advice on how to keep the story moving.)

Perhaps because I'm just not into birds generally, I was less interested in those parts of the book that did not relate to the hawks. Of these sections, the more memorable birds were the saw-whet owls and the woodpeckers. But the prose about these birds is not as moving as the prose about the hawks. Or, perhaps the hawk story is just so well-done it makes the other birds seem, if I can resort to anthropomorphism, pedestrian.

The book is obviously a labor of love, and it was a pleasure to read.

My family has had this book since I was a child. I didn't appreciate it much until recently, when I began to look for children's songbooks for my own children. It has fewer common songs than most songbooks, such as Singing Bee; so it would be best for someone looking for hard-to-find songs or singing games. (It includes a section for singing games, with good descriptions of the actions for the children--mostly circle games, such as The Farmer In the Dell.)

The illustrations are very stylized. Most songs include a sentence or two describing their origins.

Some of its hard-to-find songs that I appreciate include: Frog Went A-Courtin', Aiken Drum, Michael Finnegan, If All the Raindrops, Ain't It Great to be Crazy?, The Animal Fair, and Kookaburra.

It's sections are:
Good Morning and Good Night (18)
Birds and Beasts (20)
Nursery Songs (21)
Silly Songs (20)
Singing Games and Rounds (26)

I eagerly dug into this book to learn more about the dangers of television but was utterly shocked at the poor level of research (especially given the glowing quotes from reviewers like The New York Times--goodness, doesn't anyone read footnotes?). Check out the footnotes and you'll see that speculations based on speculations is commonplace in this book. Research studies cited are often from 30 years ago but the author claims they're "just as valid today." Oh, really? They apply to interactive videogames, slow-cut educational videos with complex language such as Thomas the Tank Engine, etc.?
The part I was most interested in--information about the visual stimulation and how it might affect children with vision problems--was all based on a long out of print pamphlet that the author couldn't track down to verify. We're told that TV makes some kids hyper and some kids calmer...so it's bad for both groups...but why?
Moreover, recent research as reported in Time magazine shows that children do not watch TV like zombies as a rule--there is a lot of looking away from the television and engaging in other activities.
I'll keep searching for accurate, up to date information that will help me make sound decisions about my toddler's viewing of educational videos. Disappointed, to say the least.

I must start by saying I grew up in a TV-free household (thank you, Mom and Dad), so I already knew firsthand how unnecessary television is. I certainly never felt deprived. This book still gave me a whole new perspective on the medium.

It explained a lot of things I had observed in my classmates' and cousins' behaviors which I had never been able to articulate (like why one of my childhood playmates disappeared into her house--never to be seen again--after she got a TV for her room). This is an important book and even if you don't agree with it, it might give you a new perspective-- not just on television, but on the importance of how you spend your time.

My one complaint with the book is that Ms. Winn lapses sometimes into a near-religious zeal in her arguments against TV. Don't let that keep you from seriously considering what she has to say.

... This is an excellent book that is well written and makes for compelling reading, especially for parents. As a parent myself, I see that many kids these days simply don't play and interact with other people much these days--these kids just spend too much time in front of the computer, TV and video game screens to have much of a childhood.

The book explains why that's a problem and why we parents need to make the effort to limit (and possibly eliminate) our kids' screen time. The content of the screens may be irrelevant--all or most screen time may be just wasted time. I recommend this book highly to anyone curious about these issues.