Joanna Going Books

The country where you were born rarely stops being home. Especially if you lived there for very long. This book highlights a family from the United States whose parents come from Mexico. The parents still feel very strongly that Mexico is home though they are firmly planted in the US. The kids are very uncomfortable with the knowledge. They prefer to speak English and feel that the US is home. What is this place their parents call home? What if they want to stay there? How do their parents really about about home in the US which the kids consider home? It's a confusing dilemma for kids and parents have to have mixed feelings too.

Eve Bunting takes her readers on journey with a Mexican family going home for Christmas. The text she uses is elegantly written. Through the feelings expressed by Carlos and his family you get a real sense of the Mexican culture and the importance of family. David Diaz's illustrations lead you into the journey with Carlos and his family. With the use of collaged background and inset illustrations the pages come alive. The text of Bunting and the illustrations of Diaz give you the sense of being there. This is a book that a child of any age would enjoy.

This book is very touching...it sensitively portrays the sacrafices Mexican immigrants have to make to move to America for their children to have a better life. Very well done themes of parental love, long car trips, the sadness of leaving one's home country, sibling realtionships, husband and wife being romantic (tasteful and age-appropriate), and a child's growing understanding of the complexities of life. Buy and read it to every child (and adult) you know.

This story is well told, with a nice pace and sense of language. Diaz is up to his usual standards, creating a colorful world that you just want to hop right into. Judge this book by its cover - it's beautiful!

Eve Bunting's books have a wisdom that transcends their simple stories. As an ESL teacher and a teacher in classes with immigrant students, I have often shared this book with middle school students and adults. In a brief and poetic narrative, it tells the universal story of parents sacrificing so their children will have a better life, through the eyes of a child. The adults in my ESL classes love it and take it home to read to their children.

We live near the famous Carlsbad Caverns, so we like books that show the positive aspects of bats. This book does a good job of showing what the myths are and the refutations of those myths.
It's a great way to practice Spanish or to pick up some new vocabulary.
The illustrations are interesting, the storyline is fun, and the science is accurate.
I enjoy this book quite a bit and love that it's available in Spanish.

Melodramatics from Lady Windermere. Mrs. Erlynne and Lord Windermere meeting but incomprehensibly deaf to the rumors about them. Yes, this is not Oscar Wilde's best play but, oh, the zingers he does get in, namely through Cecil Graham. Example: "Well, there's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about." Read it for the pithy lines.

I have always enjoyed all of Oscar Wilde's works, but this is not very good compared with the others, but none the less still worth reading. The characters were sort of dull, but the plot intresting which made up for it. I'd reccomend this to fans of Oscar Wilde, but if you have just discovered Wilde, skip this and start with either, "The picture of dorian gray" or "the importance of being Earnest".

I just wanted to say that i really love this play and that i highly suggest that everyone should read this funny and witty masterpiece. Lady Windermere is so naive but i liked the bit when she threatens to slap Mrs Erlynne across the face. That's what i call Girl Power!!

Anyway, i wanted to know if there are any notes to accompany this play. I need some notes that focus on the language of the play, social context, characters, etc.

I would be eternally grateful if anyone could help.

Oscar Wilde entirely dedicates this play to the exploration of the way a woman can be saved from destruction in this society of appearances. A woman was the victim of an imbroglio in the past and abandoned her daughter. This woman comes back and the daughter ignores her relation to her. She is brought back into societry by the daughter's husband who knows the truth but does not want his wife to know it. But there is some kind of malediction that flies over the heads of these women. The daughter nearly does the same mistake as her mother but she is saved by her mother who accepts to be tainted in her daughter's place. Bus Oscar Wilde must think there is some kind of reward for a good deed and all is well that ends well, and this play has a happy ending. In spite of all the melodramatic sentimentalese atmosphere, Oscar Wilde definitely explores in this play the great disadvantage of a woman in society. Men can do nearly all they want. Women are extremely limited and have to walk a very straight and narrow line. Oscar Wilde seems to be ahead of his time as for the fate of women: he seems to aspire for real equality for them, though he shows in all possible ways that this is impossible in his society.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

My first experience reading Oscar Wilde... and certainly not my last.

Wilde's sardonic wit and ineffable satire had me enchanted from page one. Wilde writes with devastatingly appealing witticisms, and with a style and cleverness matched by few other authors. It is said that he is one of the more oft-quoted authors in the English language, and I now understand why.

In addition to axioms and aphorisms of pure genius, the plot both captivates and surprises the reader. Lady Windermere discovers that her husband has been cheating on her, and a folly of misunderstandings and poor advice then unfolds; all the while satirizing society.

It's beautifully illustrated however no particular theme within. It's more likely good for baby-preschooler.

There was a boy leading a gang of animals appeared one by one and going thru the book. Walking thru seasons, day & night, up and down till the end. I'd say, toddlers could learn many action verbs and names of those funny featured animals.

As our narrator tells us, "I love going through this book./Just watch me do it./No matter how long it takes,/I'm going all the way through it! And with an invitation like that, how can you resist turning the page and joining him and his animal friends. Our young guide teaches us that the pages of a book are like doors, each taking us somewhere new. We travel through a meadow, a forest and a cave. We play in autumn leaves, raft down a river in summer and play in the snow in winter. We see the starry sky, new people, places and things and when we're through and finished reading, we can catch our collective breaths and walk around to the front of the book and read it with him all over again..... Robert Burleigh has written a very creative and innovative introduction to the joys of reading as he demonstrates so cleverly that you can go anywhere, do anything and be anyone when you read a book. His light, simple joyful text, told in rhyme, is complemented by award winning artist, Dan Yaccarino's vibrant, imaginative, humorous illustrations. I Love Going Through This Book is perfect for early readers and a wonderful read aloud story youngsters 3-7 will want to hear again and again.

A fun book in the "Magic School Bus" series, this is a fact- and pun-filled account of Ms. Frizzle's students (and parents) going on a field trip to learn more about bats. Some of the kids are a little nervous at first: Ralphie believes that bats are really vampires! The field trip shows otherwise, as bat-facts are presented in a creative and interesting manner.

The famous bus does do some magic here: Turning into a "bat bus" to demonstrate echolocation, and then turning the children into bats (temporarily!) so they can learn about bat food, bat predators, bat flight speed, and general "hanging around (upside down from the branches of a tree)." Facts replace suspicion (Is Ms. Frizzle herself a vampire? Did she turn the parents into vampires?), and the story ends with yet another pun. (Be your own judge about whether this story might be too frightening for the very young). With bright, colorful (but not extraordinary) illustrations on each one of the story's 28 pages, and two pages with letters about bats and bat facts. Probably not as exciting as Batman, but fans of "The Magic School Bus" and nature facts should love it.

This guide book would be very useful for a first time visitor to this area of the battlefield. But for those wishing to spend more time in the Little Round Top/ Devil's Den area, or who wish for more complete and detailed guides, I recommend two other books: Little Round Top: A Detailed Tour Guide by Garry E. Adelman, and Devil's Den: A History and Guide by Garry Adelman & Timothy H. Smith