Audio Books

My toddler son is attending a French pre-school and we plan to enroll him in a French primary school as well. We don't know French at all and speak English in the home. We got this CD around his 2nd birthday and it has been a valuable tool. The songs and rhymes that are on the CD are the same songs and rhymes that he sings at school. I think this CD has helped him to learn faster and be able to "fit in" at school, when we, his parents, could not offer him any thing in this subject area!
The songs are very pleasant and not torture to parental ears, and the accents are authentic. This is 100% French language with no spoken English. However the CD does come with a booklet with the lyrics in both French and English, so if you don't now any French at all, you can read it and get some idea about what your little one is singing!

I love this CD. It is fun, very nice songs and rhymes. Very easy to follow. My kids listen to it every day in the car and in a month they are singing and counting in french.

The method is so wonderful that I just ordered the one for Chinese.

My 9mo. old loves this CD as much as I do. I studied French for 4 yrs and learned more from the songs on this CD! I like it because I don't get sick of it and find myself humming the songs when the CD is not on! I haven't bothered with the books yet but hopefully will get to them before baby finishes high school.

I just got this item yesterday and have not had a chance yet to go through the book but my first reaction is a little bit of disappointment.
I may not have read the exact description of the product but I was expecting a board baby book with lyrics and pictures and not a guide for parents that I am sure is nonetheless very interesting. We have another CD with a board book and it is truly amazing; The book is colourful and some of the songs are interpreted by children which is the second thing I was expecting from this product. It is so much fun to listen to those cute little voices instead of those quite boring adult voices.
The only thing I like about this CD is that it has a lot of songs and rhymes that I grew up with and I am glad that my son will be able to learn them because for most of them I had forgotten the lyrics.

This CD is wonderful! I find a lot of products for children 2 and older but this product is geared specifically towards children ages 2 and younger who are learning another language. My degree is in French, so I understand the CD, and I think that the things that it teaches are excellent! It exposes children to sounds specific to french, like the double l which is pronounced y, the ever-problematic french "r", as well as idiomatic things like "Trois" as the number three as well as "toi" used as the informal you. Best of all it is all done in a fun way through songs, rhymes, etc. I put this CD on every night when my daughter goes to bed and we both really enjoy it!! I think I'm going to buy the Spanish and Italian ones too!

This book was a favorite of my children 38 years ago and now I'm buying it for my grandchildren --- and they love it too. It helps teach words of place: over, around, between, down, out, up. Plus it is a gentle "scary book."

This book is so magical when you're a kid. The illustrations are wonderful and just scary enough. I love the last page where the kids are all snug back in bed. Kids can read this book because of the repetition. It's a great way to learn to read!

We had this book when our children were small. Our youngest boy had it memorized in short order and would correct his father if he left anything out while reading. Now our daughter asked for it for her new little boy. We bought it for him for Christmas. He has already listened to it several times (he is 9 1/2 mos old). We love the book.

My kids (girl 8,boy 7) love the Berenstain Bears. I grew up with these books and now my kids are, too.
We all enjoy reading these stories and In the dark is a keeper.

This was my second copy of the book. My kids wanted to give a copy to their teacher.

This book is fantastic!! I have had it for many years and never tire of it. It is a great feel good at Chritmas story!!

I have this book and love it! I saw a movie on TV about 10 years ago about this book. I have not been able to find the movie on DVD or VHS. I would love to have a copy of the DVD if anyone knows where I can obtain one.

Do you like adventure? If so, read Julie Salamon's The Christmas Tree.
In this book Julie puts a man in charge of finding the perfect tree for Rockefeller Center. This book is an adventure book because the main character has to find the perfect tree before Christmas.
The main character's name is Jesse. Jesse leaves Rockefeller Center a few days before Christmas to find the perfect Christmas tree that everyone at Rockefeller Center would enjoy. On the way to upstate New York. Jesse saw the perfect tree, but this tree wasn't an ordinary tree because it belonged to a nun named Sister Anthony, known as Anna.
Jesse talked to Anna about the tree. This tree was the only friend that Anna had while growing up in the convent. Anna told Jesse a story about her and the tree. Jesse told Anna about why he needed the tree and Anna said that he could take the tree for Rockefeller Center.
The Christmas tree is a symbol enjoyed by all the people at Rockefeller Center, by the crowd, Jesse, and Anna. Anna was glad to see that everyone was enjoying tree.
If you like Christmas, or you just need some time to rest from working, or you just need to read something around a fire on a cold winter's night, this is the right book for you. This book is about sharing and caring at the same time. You should read this book because it is exciting and you can feel what is happening in this story.

In my opinion, this book is akin to "The Giving Tree". It is a beautiful story that my husband and I read together over the holidays. It is beautifully written and is a must own! Only a true SCROOGE will not be touched by this book!

I saw the 2006 Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and felt compelled to read this little book that packs a huge punch. As a New Yorker, I delighted in the setting. The author writes with such visual details, personifying nature, amd the scenes came vividly alive in my mind as I was reading along. And this lovely story provides a gentle reminder of the lessons life has to offer and of the little joys we miss seeing or listening to thoughout the pressures and fast pace of our daily lives.

A wonderful book that sends you on a mystery filled christmas wish. The book will keep you reading for hours. I read this book every Christmas to remind me of virtues such as love, forgiving, and living a Christ-like life. I also love the movie by Debbie Reynolds and Neal Patick Harris on DVD.

This was surely one of the best Christmas family oriented book I've ever read! It had morals and values to each and every page. This story tells of a young man around his early 30's who gave up his Wall Street life to help take over the family real estate business due to his grandfather's sudden death. His sense of determination to find out who the mysterious "Lillian" is keeps the reader itching to turn the page. You will find that the ending will surprise you! I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a little uplifting to their holiday spirit.

I recommend this book, it kept me curious to find out what would happen at the end and the end was I would want it to be.

This is a wonderful book. A very touching story. I highly recommend it.

I love reading small Christmas books in December, just to put me in the "Christmas" frame of mind. I usually read classics (A Christmas Carol, The Christmas Box) but each year, I also buy a few new Christmas books. This year, I read The Christmas Wish, a very nice, very touching and very entertaining story of love, forgiving and self-discovery.

Will comes home after his grandfather's death to take control of the family business. While there, he discovers something awful; his grandfather was probably having an affair with a woman named Lillian. For Christmas, his grandmother asks Will to find this Lillian so that they can make things straight and discover the truth. Will goes on a quest to find the mystery woman, but the quest also turns into a discovery of himself as he will learn how to enjoy life and how to really love again.

The book has some very touching moments and the story is quite engaging; it still was able to surprise me in the end. This is the perfect book to read around Christmas time; it will lift your spirits and put you in the mood for the most wonderful time of the year... Guaranteed!

I never wanted to 'get into' dancing or acting as a child, but this book makes the
world of a child theatrical performer (70 years ago) come alive. I read this so many times. It was just so entertaining. Great book!

"Ballet Shoes" is probably the most popular book in the "Shoes" series, but "Dancing Shoes" is also very good. It tells the story of two girls, Hilary and Rachel, who are training to become dancers on the stage. It is similar to "Ballet Shoes," but for anyone who enjoyed any of the other of the "Shoes" books it is worth reading.

I've been wanting these books for years now. I'm glad I finally got 2 of them. They came very fast and I love them. Thanks.

I received this book when I was about 8 years old. I took one look at it and thought, "I am NOT going to read this. It's a BABY book!" I never touched the book again until 3 years later, when I was 11 years old, and decided just to try out the book. OMG! Was I wrong! This was not a baby book! The story of Rachel and Hilary Lennox and their lovable (in a villainy way)conceited cousin, Dulcie Wintle, is a charming book that every one (and I mean EVERYONE) will love.

Rachel and Hilary come to live with their Aunt Cora, who runs a dancing (ballet, acrobatics, musical comedy, etc.) school, when their mother dies. Aunt Cora is set on making them both "little wonders" but Rachel finds that she disdains it, having no talent for those types of things. Hilary, however, finds that she loves it, and has a real talent for it, too! But Rachel doesn't want Hilary to be a "little wonder," let alone love it! Hilary was going to go to the Royal Ballet School of Dancing before their mother died, and Rachel is set on making her go after her mother's last words for her were to make sure Hilary went on with her dancing.
Misunderstandings will get in the way, as Hilary grows more and more with the "bad" type of dancing, becomes competition with Dulcie, and Rachel comes to find that dancing may not be her thing, but that doesn't mean that stage is not...

Dancing Shoes is a similar formula compared to Streatfeild's other books. After Rachel and Hilary's father dies, they are sent to live with their Aunt Cora, who owns a talent school and troupe. While Hilary is a very talented dancer, she wants nothing more than to have fun. Her sister, Rachel wants nothing to do with dancing, but she does want Hilary to go to the Royal Ballet School to study proper ballet, as her family and old dance teacher wished for, even though Hilary doesn't want to. So everyone, including their mean and selfish Aunt Cora, believe that Rachel is jealous of Hilary. Meanwhile, Aunt Cora's talented, and conceited, daughter now has competition with Hilary.

The book is full of the same charm as her others. While not as endearing as Ballet Shoes and Theater Shoes, maybe only due to the nastiness of Aunt Cora and how mean she is to Rachel, it is still a wonderful read. Any fans of Streatfeild's other books will surely love this book as well.

Robin Jarvis's Dark portal is an exiting, action filled thriller.Some might say it is a weird and an odd topic,but the characters being mice and rats gives the story an extra push, rather than cats and dogs.Everybody reads about cats and dogs.I like this book mainly for 2 reasons:1.there is lots of violence and action. & 2.when you read certain parts where she refers to other events it kind of makes you reread the event she is talking about so you can completly get understand what is going on.
Children 10 and younger probably shouldn't read this book because of the major violence and gore(fighting and blood).

I really enjoyed reading this book and found it nearly immposible to put it down and I would think about it during the time I wasn't reading it. I don't generally enjoy books about animals, but this one was fantastic. The society of mice and bats and rats were fantasticily conciveed by Jarvis, who clearly delivered all aspects of the story. I plan to purchase the second one as soon as possible!

it is the first book in the trilogy and is a great book. the end leaves you thinking that there isn't anymore, but just wait till you read the Crystal Prison. anyway, this is one of the best book having talking mice and other animals. way better than what i have read of the Red Wall series.

The Dark Portal by Robin Jarvis is 5 stars for excitement and survival.
Albert's life is on the line and his daughter Audrey would risk her life to save him. Albert is very kind hearted and is near death in the scariest place that any mouse would want to go! Will Audrey be able to save her father or will they be eaten by those horrific rats?
I life this book because it shows us that mice have a life that is just like ours.
This book is recommended for all kids that love excitement and really dark places.

I just don't like rats. They are vile and digusting creatures. I don't like planet Jupiter either. It is a dumb name.

This is an exciting autobiography, which I have read and reread over the years. Of particular interest is the author's introduction into the SAS.

This book will become a permanent fixture in your library.

Pre WWII, Maclean finagled trips through parts of the USSR where no westerner had previously been, even crossing into Afghanistan from the north at one point. He spent much of WWI aiding Marshal Tito's effort to drive the Germans out of the Balkans. Fascinating stuff, this, eloquently written and he's a damn good storyteller.

This book is of great historical value. The narration is witty and elegant. I would recomant it to everybody interested in European history.

Great entertaining read, although it is said to have inspired Ian Fleming to write James Bond, this story is worth a place on the silver screen.

This is a truly unique book and comparable only with Churchill's 'My Early Life' as an adventure history. Some people write adventure books, some people have adventures but Fitzroy McLean, like Churchill, or TE Lawrence, is able to do both. A rare treat and very easy to read.

EXPECT THE SUNRISE is the third book in the TEAM HOPE series by Susan May Warren. Each book follows the lives of search and rescue members that make up Team Hope. EXPECT THE SUNRISE takes place in the Alaskan wilderness after the plane piloted by Andee MacLoad, a mountain rescuer, crash lands during a storm. Sterling "Mac" MacLeod, an FBI agent, is one of seven survivors and immediately suspects there is a saboteur on the flight, with the Alaskan Pipeline as its target. Andee and Mac clash when decisions have to be made regarding the safety of the passengers. With Andee's best friend injured, she decides to hike out on her own in search of help. Mac fears she is the saboteur and insists they stay together, not wanting her to get the opportunity to accomplish her plan for disaster. What results is an intriguing story as Andee and Mac struggle with trust, survival, and secrets that could shatter their growing interest in each other.

I thoroughly enjoyed the TEAM HOPE series. With adventurous stories set in the great outdoors, Susan May Warren captivates her audience with deep characters, rich plots, and enough suspense to keep you guessing.

A terrorist is going to blow up the Alaska pipeline. Mac and his partner are there to stop the violence. But Mac's partner is critically wounded in the fire-fight. Mac frantically tries to save him, waving maniacally to a helicopter flying overhead. He attributes his partner's death to the fact that the pilot didn't stop.

Mac is living with a chip on his shoulder after the death of his partner, still blaming the helicopter pilot for his loss. Andee, a member of Jim Micah's SAR team, is spending her summer flying in Alaska. She meets Mac on one of her flights. They share a Scottish heritage, but as they grow closer they learn that they share so much more. Can they overcome the past? Or will they miss out on what promises to be a beautiful future?

Susan May Warren is a master of romantic suspense storytelling! Her characters are authentic role models of Christian behavior in extreme circumstances. The way she records their thought processes makes me sit back and examine my own reactions to less stressful experiences. Not only have her novels afforded me many hours of wonderful entertainment, but they have also helped me to deepen my relationship with God and others.

In Expect the Sunrise, the third book in the series Team Hope, Susan May Warren delivers. The book opens with the heartbreaking scene where FBI agent Stirling "Mac" McRae's brother is dying in his arms, and he believe's it's his fault. All of a sudden a bush plane passes overhead and he signals that he's got an emergency, but the plane ignores him. He vows to find out who the pilot was who left his brother to die. After healing some from his brother's death, he must take a plane trip in a small craft. Andee MacLeod is the bush pilot and this is her last flight before winter sets in, as she tries to climb above a storm front, the plane crashes. Some of the passengers are injured, including Andee's best friend. To make matters worse, Mac discovers there is a terrorist in the group, but he doesn't know who. In fact, he suspects Andee. The same group of terrorists have also taken Andee's father captive, a bush pilot to taught his daughter to fly and a former star FBI agent. Throughout the book, the author demonstrates God's love, forgiveness, and grace. This is an exciting read and is well written.

Susan May Warren is a terrific author. This is her best series yet, and this book may be the best in the series as well. I love how her characters always seem so real. I had trouble putting this book down. I'm still eagerly awaiting the fourth book in this series!

This is the third book in the Team Hope series and hopefully not the last! This was another wonderful addition to this series. The characters are such a joy to get to know.

Mac and Andee end up stranded in the Alaskan mountains after Andee's plane crash with several other passengers. The tale of their harrowing journey out is definitely worth the read. Add in terrorists and you have a great suspense novel.

This is a fascinating medical 'thriller', only it's real! it was nearly impossible to stop listening to it and i think anyone who likes medical thrillers or anything related to the medical field, would love this.
The book focuses on prions and their role in disease, especially 'mad cow disease'.

This is a very scary book. The Family that Couldn't Sleep by D. T. Maxd was a very thought provoking study of some of the neurodegenerative diseases that have eluded our understanding. Most of those that the author mentions are truly horrific to the individual who suffers them and to their families. I started my nursing practice on a neurology ward where I encountered many of the maladies the author describes. What was particularly disturbing to me was that years later many of these insidious diseases are as little understood as they were when I first encountered them. The sufferer of ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease" after the baseball player who died from it--still finds medical science unable to offer much more than they did when it was first described. Huntington's Disease still devastates families that carry the genetic misprint. While the treatment of myasthenia gravis has progressed to some degree, that of Alzheimer's disease (the old organic brain syndrome or pre-senile dementia) and Creutzfeld-Jacab Disease (formerly referred to as Jacob-Creutzfeld's) are still in their infancy. The similarity between the latter disorder and Kuru has been known for years, but understanding and treatment elude us. According to the author, even the prion concept has its detractors. If nothing else the author was certainly able to capture the devastation that such disorders cause their sufferers and their families. In my early practice I met a man who came in with mild neurological symptoms; he received a diagnosis of Huntington's, and within months he became a changed person because of the unrelenting course of his disease. He ultimately ended up in a nursing home, more or less "insane." Worse yet was the fact that both of his children had a 50-50 chance of having the disorder or of passing the disposition on to their own children. The heartbreak of his wife in witnessing his decline and than recognizing the symptoms anew in her son was awful.

By bringing these disorders and the agonies of the sufferers to public attention Max may well spur more intensive research into these many disorders. And it's about time.

The author's lively and even-handed treatment of Stanley Prusiner's research into prions, and Carleton Gajdusek's (Docta America's) field research into a New Guinea tribe's fatal brain ailment is compelling reading. Dr. Prusiner was accused of inflating his own research into neurodegenerative diseases and not giving credit to the scientists, such as Gajdusek, who came before him. An anonymous limerick starts out:

"There was a young turk named Stan/ Who embarked on a devious plan./ `If I simply rename it, I'm sure I can claim it,'/ Said Stan as he pondered his scam..."

Of course the thing he was accused of renaming rather than discovering is the prion (pronounced `pree-on' by Prusiner and `pry-on' by many British scientists). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prions "are proteinaceous infectious particles that lack nucleic acids." The neurodegenerative conditions they cause include Kuru (a fatal condition found in the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea, that was Gajdusek's area of specialty), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), and Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease (GSS) in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or `mad cow disease') in cattle, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in American deer and elk, and scrapie in sheep.

All of these diseases have long incubation periods but progress rapidly once clinical symptoms begin. They are uniformly fatal. According to the author, two of the reasons that the cause for these diseases was so difficult to discover were (1) their long incubation period; (2) the prion's lack of nucleic acid, i.e. DNA or RNA.

How can something reproduce in our bodies and cause disease if it has no RNA or DNA?

D. T. Max attempts to answer this question with a gripping medical detective story, where the history of prion research is entwined with the fate of an Italian family infected with Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI).

"The Family That Couldn't Sleep" deserves a place on your bookshelf right next to Paul de Kruif's "Microbe Hunters" and Berton Rouche's "Medical Detectives."

This book does a lot to clear up the story of prions, what they are, what they do, how their threat is real. The Italian family who gives the story its title is but one instance of prions affecting human and animal life. The research is impeccable, and particularly interesting is the process by which medical and veterinary sciences came together to begin unraveling the prion mystery. Because, to be accurate, documentation on how livestock has been affected by prion disease had been, until recently, far more complete and detailed than human prion disease.

The author tells the story unemotionally, which is good, but the reading is far from arid or too technical. The human factor -- how scientists competed for the credit, sometimes damaging other professionals' reputations and careers -- makes it even more interesting. All this makes "The Family That Couldn't Sleep" a fundamental work for anyone who wants to understand these proteins better, and also for people curious about the inner workings of scientific research.

You may find yourself staying up all night to finish this fascinating book. Just be glad you don't share the wrong genes with the family of the title.

This account of prion-based spongiform encephelopathic diseases covers a lot of ground: the Italian family of the title suffering from FFI (fatal familial insomnia), the mysterious epidemic of kuru among the Fore tribe of New Guinea, eventually linked to the practice of eating their dead ancestors' brains, the rare genetically transmitted Creuzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), various animal spongiform encephelopathies, from scrapie in sheep to mad cow disease to chronic wasting disease in deer. All of these diseases share a common feature - they are transmitted by an infectious agent of a kind thought until recently by scientists to be impossible, and the incubation time from infection to manifestation of disease symptoms is remarkably long. The culprits are *prions*, which are a type of rogue protein. The idea that a protein could act as an infectious agent flew completely in the face of scientific received wisdom to date when first introduced and the science underlying this class of degenerative brain diseases is both complex and controversial.

The author's exposition is clear, but ultimately I think he does not do complete justice to the material (which is really fascinating). It may be that his scope is too ambitious - with so much ground to cover, the exposition occasionally lapses into sketchiness. To be fair, there can be no single "right" level of detail that would suit all readers, and D.T. Max generally shows good judgement about what to include to keep the exposition intelligible while moving his story along.

That said, the material related to kuru, cannibalism among the Fore, and the linkage to scrapie, CJD, and mad cow disease has already been presented in the 1998 book by Richard Rhodes, "Deadly Feasts: Tracking The Secrets Of A Terrifying New Plague". I preferred the Rhodes account - his exposition of the science was clearer, and I thought he told a better, tighter story.

However, there's not that much to choose between the two, and Max's book does have the extra material about FFI, which is interesting in its own right. Max does make one misjudgement, in my opinion, which is to include an account of his own illness (he has been diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease which, although it is a neurodegenerative muscular disorder, is neither prion-related nor an amyloid plaque disease). Inclusion of this essentially irrelevant material is a distraction, which just muddies the exposition.

One final criticism is that Max includes an unquestioning discussion of putative geographical "clusters" of CJD cases, based solely on their identification by patients' family members, whom he refers to as "Creutzfeldt Jakobins" (a hideous, tin-ear coinage, which he seems to think is clever). These so-called clusters are almost certainly spurious, based on an incorrect application of the relevant probability models and Max's failure to identify the error detracts from his objectivity as a science writer and contributes to a presentation of disease spread scenarios which are unduly alarmist. The discussion of possible treatment options in the final chapter also struck me as weak, an over-interpretation of what are essentially just anecdotal data. One sees this kind of over-interpretation all the time in the popular press, but I would have expected better from a science writer as experienced as D.T. Max.

However, these are minor criticisms of this well-written account of a fascinating subject.

Very clever book of poems. My two daughters (6 and 9) giggled at the funny vocabulary. The illustrations are are cool and inventive. Every movie monster must be in there somewhere. We liked the son of Dracula drawn as Charlie Brown. Adults will like this one too.

Frankenstein Makes A Sandwich is a funny, upbeat, down-to-earth wonderful book about monsters, food, and day to day issues like hunger, hygiene, being respectful to others (the Open Letter to Wolfman from his dog is HILARIOUS!!), and everyday stuff like fear of the dentist. The poetry is easy and unforced, funny and a wonderful experience. I hope Rex Adams writes and illustrates more and more and more. I'll be waiting!! 5 stars!!

I love this book. For the past two years, I've read it aloud to my elementary school library classes prior to Halloween. They beg for it. The poetry is so well syncopated, and the rhyming is near perfect. The humor is mature, so I have to explain many of the poems, but a lot of it the kids understand without explanation. They can really identify with the torment of having a song stuck in your mind that keeps going on and on, as happens to the poor Phantom of the Opera when he gets "It's a Small World After All" stuck in his head. And they understand why offering a toothpick to Count Dracula to pick his teeth makes him nervous because it resembles a sharp stake. I love this book so much that I bought it this year for my 54-year old brother for his birthday. Unlike the song "It's a Small World After All," the sophistication of these poems will keep them fresh for many, many, many Halloweens to come. If you're a poetry buff who appreciates a humorous twist on the classic scary characters, do NOT pass this book by.

Nice prose, but the illustrations, other than Frankenstein's, are rather frightening for young children. I bought this book for my grandchildren, ages 4 and 6, after having only seen the Frankenstein illustration and was disappointed when I opened the book to see the other very dark and frightening pictures throughout the book. I don't recommend this book for children under the age of 8.

Adam Rex is a man after my own heart. He's funny, intelligent, witty, talented, and most of all he likes sharing these qualities with the rest of us. He may be my favorite author for children in years, and this from an arts librarian in the public schools. I've even given to my friends' kids to make sure that they get to have access to it, too. This book is too good to pass by; get copies for everyone you know! Kids will love it and adults won't be bored; win-win for everyone.
And the bit about the Phantom of the Opera having "The Girl from Ipanema" stuck in his head? Priceless, absolutely priceless. I love you, Adam Rex.