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Shiloh |
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| Author: |
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor |
 Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0689835825 |
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Book Review
When 11-year-old Marty Preston chances upon a mistreated beagle pup in his hometown of Friendly, West Virginia, he is not prepared for the ethical questions he has to face. Should he return the dog to its owner, only to have the animal abused again? Should he tell his parents? Should he steal food to help the poor creature? Marty's efforts to cope with these questions provides the moral backbone for this story, which is presented in a language and manner that will be understood by third- and fourth-grade readers. The heart and beauty of this 1992 Newbery Medal winner lies in lessons children will take away with them.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
This 1992 Newbery Medal winner revolves around an 1 1 -year-old boy who finds an abused... |
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Sit, Truman! |
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| Author: |
Dan Harper |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0641695543 |
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Shiloh Season |
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| Author: |
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0689829310 |
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Book Review
In a follow-up to her Newbery Medal-winning story Shiloh, Phyllis Naylor brings Marty Preston and his beagle back in another tale sure to push the emotional buttons of her young audience. Marty doesn't want to lose the dog he struggled so hard to gain, but when he sees Shiloh's old owner, drunk and out hunting on Marty's property, he is afraid of losing Shiloh for good. Along with the moving story of boy loves dog, Naylor offers a sympathetic portrayal of life in West Virginia. Certain to please her many fans, this sequel likely marks a fuller series of stories of Marty and Shiloh. (Ages 8 to 12)
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
It should startle no one that the prolific Naylor (the Alice books) should continue the... |
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Inferno |
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| Author: |
Dante Alighieri |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Mass Market Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0553213393 |
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From Library Journal
If a recent spate of new translations is any evidence, Dante remains as popular as ever with the general reading public. Durling's new verse translation of the Inferno joins recent versions by Robert Pinsky (LJ 1/93) and Mark Musa (LJ 3/1/95). While Durling's translation (with Italian on the facing page) does not use Dante's rhyme or line divisions, it captures the metrical rhythm of the original. Similarly, his rendering of Dante's diction is literal and accurate, conveying the tone and feel while remaining accessible. Supplemented with an introduction, useful notes, and appendixes, this version, soon to be joined by Purgatorio and Paradiso, can be recommended to the general reader. In a new reader's guide to the Divine Comedy, Gallagher, a Catholic priest as well as a poet and scholar, presents the Comedy canto... |
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Is He Dead |
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| Author: |
Mark Twain |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0520239792 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Booklist
The theater was the acme of pop-cultural aspiration in the nineteenth century, and few writers pursued peak popularity more ardently than Twain did. Of his several plays, only the first, built around a character created for a novel, was a hit. His hopes were high for the last, however, loaded as it was with proven come-ons: a major man-in-drag character a la the era's biggest hit, Charley's Aunt; a setup--the debt-with-impossible-deadline owed an oily creditor--typical of boffo-BO melodramas of the time; idiotic musical interruptions a la the rising musical-theater mode, vaudeville; and as protagonist, the most famous artist of the century, Francois Millet, whose The Angelus was the first "million-dollar painting." Sound like a hodgepodge? It is. Yet, sparked by enough over-the-top humor, it is laugh-aloud... |
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What You Know First |
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| Author: |
Patricia MacLachlan |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0064434923 |
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From Publishers Weekly
Newbery Medalist MacLachlan's minimal, deeply resonant text centers on a girl whose parents have sold their farm on the prairie-clearly not by choice. As she anticipates all that she will miss and devises plots to avoid moving ("Or maybe/ I'll live in a tree./ The tall cottonwood that was small/ when Papa was small..."), the child pieces together the sights, sounds and tactile sensations of the only life she has ever known. Her parents' attempts to soften the blow don't appease the determined narrator: "Mama says there's an ocean/ In the new place./ And Papa says there are trees./ I don't need trees,/ Only the one./ I don't need an ocean/ I've got an ocean of grass." But there are words that do offer solace: "What you know first stays with you, my Papa says./ But just in case I forget/ I will take a twig of the... |
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Voices of Ancient Egypt |
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| Author: |
Kay Winters |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0792275608 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6-This book presents the voices of 13 individuals in various Old Kingdom occupations, ranging from scribe to herdsman. Winters uses first-person, free-verse poems to describe the workers' duties and places in society. Her verse is rich with informative detail: "I am a washer of clothes./Brother to the crocodile,/I spend my days in water./I soak the clothes, beat them with a wooden stave,/then wrap them around a stick/to wring out the wet." The author gives voice to the birdnetter and marshman, whom other authors neglect or lump together under headings such as "Peasants." Women are represented in the occupations of farmer, dancer, and weaver. Moser provides visual context for the selections with delicately textured watercolors. Clothing, tools, and landscapes are imagined with such faithful attention... |
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I Can Make a Difference: A Treasury to Inspire Our Children |
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| Author: |
Marian Wright Edelman |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060280514 |
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From Booklist
Gr. 2-4. Edelman takes that sturdy statement and breaks it down into 12 components, easily understandable by kids, and then decorates each with meaningful poems, stories, and memorable art. Ways to make a difference are stated in the personal affirmative: "I can make a difference by loving myself and others as God loves us and treating others respectfully and fairly"; "I can make a difference by being courageous." The section about making a difference by working with others begins with a Persian proverb about individual drops becoming a sea. A short tale from China shows how the same situation can be either heaven or hell, depending on whether people cooperate. There's also an except from Leo Lionni's Swimmy (1963), an Aesop's fable, and a saying from Sitting Bull. An oversize format allows Moser to mix full-size... |
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The Three Silly Billies |
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| Author: |
Margie Palatini |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0689858620 |
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From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3–The creators of Earthquack! (S & S, 2002) tackle The Three Billy Goats Gruff with gusto. On the way to the beach, the Three Silly Billies are stopped at a small wooden bridge by a rude troll sporting oversize boots and a hard hat marked Trollgate Plaza. The goats can't scrape together the toll so they pool their funds with those of the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, and a skateboarding Jack returning to his mother with some beans. Painted in cheery watercolors, Moser's figures are in contemporary dress and pop out from the white backgrounds. There is plenty of visual humor: the contents of Red's basket are a hoot (e.g., Wulfbanex cream, makeup, and a cell phone) and Baby Bear's T-shirt reads Jus Rite. In the end, a hungry green giant gives the troll his comeuppance and the... |
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Earthquack! |
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| Author: |
Margie Palatini |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
1416902600 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Book Review
Henny Penny's sky-is-falling tale has been retold often enough that few probably even remember its source material--but that doesn't stop another retread, this one surprisingly conservative in its story-telling liberties, by Margie Palatini (The Web Files) and dignified illustrator Barry Moser. Little Chucky Ducky was just drying off from a swim when he "heard the ground grumble. He felt the ground rumble. And then, with a stumble, Chucky Ducky went down in a tumble!" With that, Chucky Ducky takes off: "'Why, it's a quake!' he quacked. 'I have to warn my friends!'" So then Lucy Goosey, Brewster Rooster, Vickie, Nickie, and Rickie Chickie, et al., receive frantic and noisy warning. Eventually, a "wormy weasel"--a "sneaky," "very hungry," and "lying, conniving, wily" weasel--steps in to take advantage, cleverly... |
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Deaths and Transfigurations |
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| Author: |
Paul Mariani |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
1557254524 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Booklist
Mariani's first new collection in nine years takes as its major themes death in all its forms and the quest for new life. If the images here are simple, the emotions are not. "Wasn't It Us You Were Seeking?" addresses the refusal to mourn a mother 10 years dead, while "Solar Ice" describes the rituals of the Catholic Mass. Others are about memories of fleeting childhoods over sooner than one would have thought, of Saturday night first dates, of fathers worrying about keeping food on the table, of the unexpected suddenness of death sweeping down on a clear September day in 2001, and of patients who never appeared at hospital doors. Recalled, too, are early university teaching days, when, discussing death and dying in Hemingway, Mariani learned of President Kennedy's assassination. But renewal is celebrated, too, in the... |
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Just So Stories |
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| Author: |
Rudyard Kipling |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0688139574 |
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| Availability: |
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From School Library Journal
Grade 3-6 Of all of the many past illustrators of Kipling's stories, only Kipling himself, in the first edition (Doubleday, 1902; o.p.), captured the Oriental tone of these stories. This ``more-than-oriental-splendour'' comes through in Salter's attractive edition. She has done a full-color, full-page illustration for each of the 12 stories, along with decorations for each title page. The illustrations are bold and stylized with a strong use of color, all set within richly patterned borders. They have a strong sense of Indian folk art, particularly in the gold, browns, wines, blues, and blacks that she uses. These are the sort of illustrations that draw readers in to study each detail. They form the framework for an attractive, well-laid-out format. This newest Just So Stories should serve as a fine... |
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Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds |
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| Author: |
Cynthia Rylant |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
015201893X |
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| Availability: |
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From Publishers Weekly
Like a cherished photograph album, this portrait of Appalachia by two natives of the region is suffused with memories made golden by time. Beginning with the dogs that are "named Prince or King" and live in towns "with names like Coal City and Sally's Backbone," Rylant moves to the people, their houses and their activities. Neither story nor factual treatise, the text offers pure nostalgia--a skillfully structured essay that appears, deceptively, to meander like a dusty country lane and underscores the warmth, generosity of spirit and steadfastness of the inhabitants of the "shimmering painted mountains." Rylant is frequently effusive: "The men and women and children who live in Appalachia have no sourness about them," she says; and "The children love all the seasons." But when she focuses on particular details,... |
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The Call of the Wild |
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| Author: |
Jack London |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0027594556 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up?These two classics receive fresh and worthy treatment in this new series. Children raised on computer games and frenetic television images may find the writings of Kipling and London to be old-fashioned and unrelated to the worlds they know best. That's why these books are a welcome addition to most collections. Kipling's stories of Mowgli, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and Toomai of the elephants and London's story of the heroic dog Buck are superbly packaged. The original, unabridged texts are presented along with period maps and photographs, historical etchings and engravings, and newly created full-color illustrations that supply invaluable detail and background. Generous and colorfully presented details about the places, times, people, events, and natural life provide vital context. In The Jungle Book,... |
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I Am the Dog I Am the Cat |
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| Author: |
Donald Hall |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0803715048 |
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| Availability: |
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From Publishers Weekly
A rottweiler and a green-eyed cat are the stars as well as the narrators of this second work from Hall and Moser ( The Farm Summer 1942 ). Hall's evenhanded and whimsical poem/play analyzes the nature of each species: "DOG: I am the dog. / I like bones. / I like to bury bones. / As for eating, I can take it or leave it-- / but I like it when they feed me. CAT: I am the cat. / I won't care whether they feed me or not / as long as I get fed." Moser's paintings give each animal in the book a specific personality--the rottweiler shakes diamond beads of water from his coat or frightens "the burglar disguised as a UPS man"; the cat peers intently through a window at a finch or sits like a queen atop a purple cushion. The feline rather disdainfully describes dogs as "nervous and well-meaning"; the simultaneously... |
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What You Know First |
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| Author: |
Patricia MacLachlan |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060244135 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
Newbery Medalist MacLachlan's minimal, deeply resonant text centers on a girl whose parents have sold their farm on the prairie-clearly not by choice. As she anticipates all that she will miss and devises plots to avoid moving ("Or maybe/ I'll live in a tree./ The tall cottonwood that was small/ when Papa was small..."), the child pieces together the sights, sounds and tactile sensations of the only life she has ever known. Her parents' attempts to soften the blow don't appease the determined narrator: "Mama says there's an ocean/ In the new place./ And Papa says there are trees./ I don't need trees,/ Only the one./ I don't need an ocean/ I've got an ocean of grass." But there are words that do offer solace: "What you know first stays with you, my Papa says./ But just in case I forget/ I will take a twig of the... |
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