Language Arts Books

I liked this book because it provides great examples of common mistakes. The layout of the book is really user friendly. When teaching High School students the easiest explanation is the best. Overall, this is a great tool.

Finally, a clear,concise guide to good grammar that anyone can use. Amusingly written and filled with insight, 'Grammar Traps' is an authoritative guide for the professional writer, the student, and the lay person who just wants to be able to write clearly. Whatever your level, this book will help. I keep it by my desk all the time, and it is used!

Finally, a grammar guide that doesn't put readers to sleep. Stephen Dolainski's "Grammar Traps" is an invaluable reference and fun to read. I gave a copy to a friend in China who wants to improve his English, and he is thrilled with how fast he is learning.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Mr. Stephen Dolainski, for making grammar simple. I don't know how I finished school (including college) taking only one grammar class. I knew the "their, there and they're" routine...but lay and lie were beyond my comprehension. Now I know, and it's so simple (and I'll admit I've been using it wrong all these years.) This book should be a "must read" for those students still attending high school, and a definite "must buy" for those parents sending their kids off to college, especially if they want to see "A's" on their children's term papers.

As an avowed grammar junkie, I love Grammar Traps by Stephen Dolainski. The book is not only chock full of helpful tips, but it is written simply and clearly so that those who aren't so fond of grammar can find what they need without fuss. Examples are plentiful and to the point. I would recommend this title to anyone who would like to be sure of themselves when they write, as well as anyone needing a general brush-up on grammar. I think business people would find the no-nonsense approach particularly appealing. Thanks, Mr. Dolainski, for making what can be a very confusing subject eminently understandable.

In today's world of text communication and the internet, good grammar is a sign of education and intelligence. "Grammar Wars: 179 Games and Improvs for Learning Language Arts" is a book of games and activities that will entertain children as well as educate them about the rules and eccentricities of grammar, alongside other essential language arts skills. "Grammar Wars: 179 and Improvs for Learning Language Arts" is highly recommended for community library education collections and educators everywhere.

I belive this bok did lot=s for me and I recomend it to everyune.
I cn now achive a job at brger king,"thnk u graamer warz".

Today I am going to review this book about its own awe in glory. No book existed that could come close to its power and influence. Until reading these Uphorik words my life was but a desolate waste land of iltersy. I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to enjoy a life of gladness because they can speek gooder.

PS God hates (...)

Tom Ready helped my a lot. He showed me how to use grammar in sentences and let me tell you it is FUN!!! Let me give you some exciting sentences that you use grammar in. GRAMMAR is fun. You can have fun with GRAMMAR. You will have fun with GRAMMAR. You can't have fun without GRAMMAR. You can't do anything that is more fun than GRAMMAR. GRAMMAR is the only thing to do with your time. You can't live without GRAMMAR. You will die if you don't use GRAMMAR in every part of your life. See, this book showed me everything I need in life and that is grammar. I don't think I could live if I didn't have this book. Now there is another Grammar Wars book and let me tell it is even better. Well I want to thank Tom Ready for giving me something to live for and die for.........PRAISE GRAMMAR!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been a student of Mr. Tom Ready for the last three and a half years now and I think that he has an amazing talent and skill for teaching students in English and Drama. I've learned many things from him and really enjoy his classes. He has the ability to bring out the best in many unlikely students. This book, which contains many games written by some of his students, is an absolute geniously entertaining way to learn the parts of speech and the English language. Our class is presently traveling to teach Grammar Wars and it has been completely successful. I'd like to thank Mr. Ready for his time and effort in teaching all of us students in his classes at Lassen High School.

Simply put, essential to any well rounded library reference section. It is so much more than the quick snippets one finds in the average "book of quotations". Mr Adler and company have made a volume that offers the reader and researcher deeper and longer passages, within which are nested many of those quotable nuggets we are so familiar with. But this book gives them to us in context.

For the historian it is a wonderful timeline of the evolution of thought on many subjects. For the reader, it is a well crafted look into the quintessential ideas that have shaped western society and our literature, both fiction and non-fiction, and a window into the times in which books were written, when concepts such as war or death, or love were rather different then the 21st century mind sees them. For the writer the book is a must for understanding the zeitgeist of different ages and writing believable fiction.

This is a wonderful book for anyone interested in ideas and prepared to distil the essence of what has been thought on major topics. There are thousands of entries. (The index alone is some 350 pages.) It's far more than a book of quotations although that too. Few books contain such extensive extracts running to several pages of normal print -- the type face is fairly small (My eyesight is poor but I had no trouble.) The content has been brilliantly categorized by theme and what I found invaluable was to sweep through history and notice the changing views of philosophers, essayists, and major poets over time.(There are relatively few female writers) Virtually all the major western thinkers are featured. If you are interested in finding out what major thinkers thought, this could be your starting point. It'll take you three months to read through if you tackle the whole thing at a go as I did. Excellent value for money.

The Great Treasury is based on the syntopicon of the Britannica Great Books of the Western world; the syntopicon is an index of basic, central terms in the great books (the so-called "great ideas"), arranged in alphabetical order from Angel to World. In the syntopicon, each central term is assigned its own chapter, which begins with an introductory essay on the meaning of the term and its various interpretations in the great books, followed by an outline of topics falling under the great idea of the chapter; specific references to passages by the great authors in the series relevant to each topic follow. The Great Treasury mirrors the syntopicon's format, but includes a selection of topics, together with the text of the relevant passages from the great books. The Great Treasury is more than a book of quotations: it serves as a practical guide to the wisdom of the Western world, of particular use to anyone interested in philosophy not merely as a professional academic discipline, but as the ancients viewed it: as a way of life.

This is one of the best single volume books that my family owns. It is not the average "book of quotations," the quotations are organized according to the idea being represented. The ideas are extensive as well the quotations for each. They authors represented are everyone from Plato to Bertrand Russell. Highly recommended.

The Great Treasury is, without a doubt, the most useful and interesting book I have in my possession (it is my father's, but I "acquire" it from time to time). Brimming with insight into just about everything, this compendium is essential to any scholar or "backyard philosopher" you know. It contains insight from almost every major philosopher, encapsulating many topics (however, there are very, very few female writers). It is also brilliantly indexed, and flipping to your topic of choice is simple and easy. I believe that it is an essential part of everyone's library, and if its presence is missing, then it should be bought.

Greek to Me: Learning Biblical Greek through Memory Visualization by J.Lyle Story and Cullen I.K. Story was a wonderful way to learn Koine Greek. When in seminary, I studied Koine Greek in the acedemic year 1990-91. A great many of the memory aids have stuck with me to this day. Visualizing the cartoon drawings of both the individual vocabulary words (available in a separate set of memory cards which contains the 600 vocabulary words used 25 or more times in the Greek New Testament) and for all the endings in the language of never-ending endings made the actual rote memorization so much simpler. Even now, when I have a question as to the case of a noun or the declension of a verb, I simply turn to the appropriate diagram in the book and I have my answer right away. I strongly recommend this text for anyone interested in either learning or teaching Koine Greek.

It has been about a year since I read it and I can still remember every single cartoon and thus each of the 21 different endings and most all the tenses. It seems to me that this book is conducive to very high retention. I would like to see it brought back to print as well.

I have studied greek twice. The first time was unbearibly hard for me. I have dyslexia, and learning a langauge with so many strange and confusable endings was very difficult to me. I quickly forgot much of what I crammed into my head. The second time was with this wonderful book. I did not have to memorize the strange endings by looking at them. Story's helpful cartoon gave me the pegs I needed to hang the language on. Wonderful, wonderful book. The publishers must bring this book back into print!

This text is a must for the visual learner! Memory visualization--because it works on the familiar--helps eliminate the usual dread associated with learning ancient languages. They should do one for Hebrew.

I used this text in 1st year Greek at seminary. Phenomenal method that simply works. I can still picture the "absurd" (author's words) diagrams and that's the reason this was a fantastic tool for learning a difficult language. Now in my Greek studies, I keep having "Greek to Me" flashbacks of the diagrams.
My only concern - I'm almost embarassed to show my friends what I used to study Greek because it looks like a text for Mrs. Johnson's 2nd graders.
Ah well, it works.

The fact that this book explicitly details the components of a mini lesson is wonderful. Too many emergent reader books contain lesson plans but the reader is not able to glean just how one is composed. The authors of this book do a great job in detailing the lesson plan by explaining the parts of a mini lesson and how to implement it. As an adjunct, I recommend this book for graduate level emergent literacy coursework.

Collaboratively developed and compiled by Connie Campbell Dierking and Sherra Ann Jones, Growing Up Writing: Mini-lessons For Emergent And Beginning Writers presents fifty-nine abbreviated lessons especially designed and intended for the kindergarten classroom. From teaching young folks to write their first journal, to audience and conference etiquette, to print awareness, learning how to make a brainstorm list, using transition words, describing feelings with all five senses, and more, Growing Up Writing is a superbly organized and idea-packed resource which is very highly recommended for classroom teachers, and ideal for use by home schoolers in developing writing skills with young children.

This book is jam-packed with strategic mini-lessons that teachers have been desperately searching for!. Connie and Sherra have done an outstanding job of bringing simplicity to focused instruction.

The research is clear concerning writing workshops: They are the most effective way to teach the craft and process of writing. This being the case, they should not, contend the authors, be reserved for the upper grades. Rather, all writers-including kindergartners and older emergent writers-should have the opportunity to experience the writer's workshop.

If you are interested in incorporating a writing workshop into your kindergarten or first grade curriculum, this book will serve as an excellent starting point and guide. In addition to answering your questions, it provides nearly sixty mini-lessons as well as a year-long calendar which can serve as your framework.

In their introduction, Dierking and Jones write that "kindergartners-and emergent writers of any age-should be treated like genuine authors and taught in a manner that respects their abilities while empowering their advancements." This is not merely a flowery sentiment. The entire book flows from this belief.

In Section 1, the authors discuss in detail their framework for teaching a workshop. The three parts are: the mini-lesson (5-10 minutes), independent practice with conferencing (20-30 minutes), and sharing (5-10 minutes). Also included is a chapter on "Connecting to Parents." Here the reader will find sample parent letters, information about homework, and a discussion of student journals.

The "meat" of the book is found in Sections 2-5. Section 2 comprises operational mini-lessons. That is, direct instruction of skills related to the "management of classroom process, materials, and spaces." Section 3 concerns print awareness mini-lessons. Here readers are provided with lessons that address the mechanics of writing: punctuation, capital letters, temporary spelling, and such. In Section 4 the authors include twelve foundational mini-lessons: setting, character development, choosing a topic, etc. Section 5 is devoted to craft mini-lessons. Here the lessons focus on using transition words, active verbs, color words, compare and contrast, word choice, elaboration and so forth.

Appended are a literature list and a bibliography. The literature list contains the titles of children's books and suggestions as to which mini-lesson the book is good for modeling. would be good for modeling. The bibliography is a list of recommended professional literature. The choices are excellent and will provide the reader with a firm foundation concerning the workshop process.

Highly Recommended.

Reviewed by the Education Oasis Staff

Excellent, excellent book for your reading and writing program. DO NOT teach without it!!!

I did a TON of research on my own to attempt to find an agent. I picked up this book, hoping to add to my knowledge and list of available agents. I discovered I had wasted some of my precious writing time. Some of the agents I wrote are not accepting queries in 2001. This book would have saved me time, money and efforts had I bought it first.

I am writing a mainstream novel and a young adult historical fiction novel and I'd like get published as soon as I polish them up. I think this book will be a lot of help.

This book offers supreme quality listings and a complete guide to every single agent in the U.S whether fee charging or not. It's a MUST HAVE to any develpoing writer.

It may seem strange to say that you love a big listing literary agents but I do. I've been writing my whole life. Just recently I decided to look into getting an agent for a book I wrote. I bought this book, sent out six queries, and already have an agent requesting to read my book. This book is indispensable. Read it if you are even thinking about looking for an agent.

I am planning way ahead. So far I only won a few poetry contests. However I have half of several novels, pieces of screenplays, and other odds and ends. If I ever do something real I want to have an agent (even if I do not need one.) This is part of the fun in writing.

This book is well organized with the types of agents and what they require. You can read the front cover and see that there are new listings and even e-mail addresses.

Contents at a glance:

Articles About Working with Literary Agents

Before You Start

Narrowing Your List

Contacting Agents

Before You Sigh

Literary Agents Listings

Articles About Working with Script Agents

Script Agents Listings

Writer's Conferences

Resources

Agents Index

Listings Index

Under the front cover is a Key to Symbols and Abbreviations used in the book.

More a personal vision of writing itself than a manual, Boswell's book connects probing discussions of technique with the larger sense of writing as an engagement with the wonder and challenge of being alive. With disarming self-deprecation and lively anecdotes, Boswell explores writing as a moral act.

Writing fiction requires a combination of expertise, talent, experience, and imagination. In "The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction", Robert Boswell (the published author of five novels and an instructor in creative writing at the New Mexico State University, the University of Houston, and in the Warren Wilson MFA program) draws upon his more than twenty years of personal experience and earned expertise to compile nine compelling informed and informative essays on the craft issues facing every literary writer and author. Comprising this extraordinary compendium of observation, insights and advice are Process and Paradigm; Narrative Spandrels; On Omniscience; Urban Legends, Pornography, and Literary Fiction; The Alternate Universe; Politics and Art in the Novel; Private eye Point of View; You Must Change Your Life; and the title piece, The Half-Known World. Enhanced with a two and a half page listing of referenced works at the end, "The Half-Known World" will prove to be a fascinating and educative read for anyone who aspires to literary success as a writer of deftly crafted fiction.

I was fortunate to work with with Robert Boswell as a graduate student and know, first-hand, what a brilliant teacher he is. I've read or heard portions of a few of these lectures over the years and have been eagerly awaiting the publication of this book. I devoured it as soon as it came out, immediately began re-reading it, and will certainly include it as a text in the undergraduate and graduate fiction writing courses I teach. These essays--frequently funny, always provocative--deftly combine first-rate and lively analysis of classic and contemporary fiction with a master storyteller's understanding of craft and an artist's understanding of process. These essays fall squarely in the tradition of books by brilliant writers--Henry James, E. M. Forster, Flannery O'Connor, Charles Baxter come to mind--who know how to excavate and articulate the mysteries of the art of fiction in a way that is enlightening, witty, and, quite frankly, deeply moving. If you're a serious reader of fiction or a writer of it, buy this book. It might very well, as the title of the last essay suggests, change your life.

Unlike some of the other Amazon customers who have reviewed The Half-Known World, I have never been fortunate enough to be Robert Boswell's student, nor have I ever met him. But after reading the book, I understand some of the reasons for their praise and loyalty. These essays are not only well-written and therefore quite entertaining in their own right; they are also very useful.

To give one example, I was very taken with "On Omniscience," an essay about the uses of the omniscient point of view. Here is the provocation the essay wraps itself around: "Omniscience and half-knowledge would seem to be adversarial terms, but it turns out they're not." Boswell follows up with a list of "twelve planks in my platform on omniscience," which clearly and, so far as I can tell, for the first time in literary history clearly identify the parameters and possibilities of the omniscient point of view as clearly as they have been many times (in many ways, by many writers) been articulated for points of view limited to the consciousness of a single character.

For the reader of fiction, this is an interesting thing to think about, and it certainly enriches the process of reading stories rooted in omniscient strategies. But for the writer of fiction, this is a hugely useful analytic tool that can help the writer find the right form, the right voice, the right distance, and the right balance of characters in order to create organically a container and working method suitable for the story and thematic concerns of his or her project.

The only other contemporary writer I know who has grappled so helpfully with omniscience is Richard Russo, in an uncollected essay I can't find anywhere. But Boswell has done Russo one better, and I am grateful for what he has given his readers in "On Omniscience."

There are nine other essays in the book, all of them quite good, all of them deserving more space than an Amazon review allows. What I mean to do here, anyway, isn't to tell you everything about the book, but rather to whet your appetite a little, to do a little bit of consumer advocacy on behalf of The Half-Known World, which is worth your time and money, and then some.

This book is a fresh narrative from one of the best writers in America today. His fiction is spot-on and breathtaking. Boswell teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Writing Program, and he does a fine job of taking you with him to explore what makes for great writing. It is almost like you are in class with him and you are listening to his views on writing. His book resonates with all writers, beginning or otherwise. This is a great "go-to" book for reference when the writer in you gets bogged down and is trudging through the mush and needs a fresh perspective. Boswell eliminates the "techno-jargon," and gets in your face with ways to create fiction that works. Each chapter discusses in essay format many present and past works, referencing such diverse writers as Chekov and Tolstoy, Jean Thompson and Peter Taylor, and many others. In my view, the first essay and title of the book, "The Half-Known World," has a section in it that tells readers about five categories of failure, and this is worth the price of the book alone. Many times, writers get stuck in these categories, and Boswell offers a way out of the sludge pile to better writing, lively characters and imaginative settings. Highly recommended and a great book to have around when you write your next novel or short story.

While I am not done with this one it is only because of my level of skill so far it is very helpful in explaning forms, introducing new words, and kanji. This is a masterpiece, but make two precautions. 1 Get a supplementing workbook. Actually put forth the effort to make your own sentences and there will be a vast increase in your language abilities and flow. I agree with all the other writers in the amazon.com book reviews that praised this book alongside with me. This books should help fragment any other textbook that seems cloudy. Caution: Not for total beginners. A learner of Japanese needs a fairly wide vocabulary to understand the sentence stuctures.

First of all, I'd like to reiterate all the praise from previous reviewers: this book is a tremendous resource about the many mutant forms of Japanese adjectives and provides excellent explanations and practice exercises; the examples are given in kanji/kana as well as romaji. The adverbs are categorized by useful categories such as degree, circumstance, certainty, and so on, and the list of onamatopoeia is a wonder to behold.

However, I have one nagging nitpick, which is that the book lacks a comprehensive index. It seems to've been conceived as two entirely separate books, leaving the reference section at the end still awkwardly split in half: the adjective exercise answers are followed by (unindexed) Japanese/English and English/Japanese adjective glossaries ; after that, the adverb exercise answers are followed by a categorized list organized by (indexed) order of introduction in the text rather than by alphabet/kana for the actual words in English or Japanese, and then by another unindexed pair of Japanese/English and English/Japanese glossaries for the adverbs.

I suggest adding several bookmarks or post-its to mark the different reference sections in the back, and (to the publishers) page-indexing the glossaries in future editions to make it easier to look up usage examples. Other than that, this really is a very good book-- I just realized that the appendices also contain a list of sentence-pattern templates for adjective forms-- so buy it, but be prepared for some initial frustration until you get used to the way it's organized.

Before describing the book, a word or two has to be mentioned regarding the publisher, Kodansha International. I don't know if it's because of the policy within Kodansha, or the Japanese culture in general, but you can feel the tidiness, accuracy, and meticulous nature of each author, and the effort expended in order to convey information to the reader the best possible way.

When first starting to learn Japanese on my own, I had tried grammar texts and dictionaries from two other publishers. I found out after a couple of months, that they only cause the reader great confusion, lack a lot of important concepts, the print is often ineligible, and the sentences are in Romaji and not in the native alphabet (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji), which is so necessary in order to learn the language properly. Other Kodansha publications which I found useful for learning Japanese are Kodanshas Essential Kanji Dictionary (Japanese for Busy People)The Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary (Japanese for Busy People)Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary: Japanese-English English-JapaneseAll About Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words (Power Japanese Series) (Kodansha's Children's Classics)Japanese Verbs at a Glance (Power Japanese Series) (Kodansha's Children's Classics)

Part 1 is the backbone of the Japanese adjectives, which is presented in table format, for the i adjectives and na adjectives. Part 2 discusses different modifiers which conjugate with adjectives. For example, "daro" (probably) added to "tsumetai" (cold), means "it is probably cold". Each case is presented in a block in English and Japanese, and its meaning is given to the right. Then it follows with an example of the conjugate for each type of adjective, explanation of that conjugate, and three sentences each in Romaji, Japanese, and English, where that conjugate is used. The conjugate is highlighted in bold, in the Romaji and Japanese sentence, which makes it easier to pinpoint. Part 3 introduces a long list of adverbs and the way they modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and nouns. Each section ends with 8 or 9 exercises for which answers are given at the back.

The index has to be praised in particular, because each subject includes its own index. Each of i adjectives and na adjectives are organized in two different lists in Romaji (together with Japanese to the right), and another list is given in English for both types, with Japanese to the right). The adverbs are divided into sections in Romaji, for example, those expressing time, those expressing quantity, etc. Again a comprehensive list of adverbs is given in English.

In short, I recommend it for every English speaking Japanese student learning on his or her own, or even as supplementary material at college.

I've been studying japanese for quite some time, and I wasn't even aware of how the japanese adjectives can conjugate just like verbs. I thought that the only conjugation's that adjectives possessed were the Plain/ Polite Past/Present, and negative/affirmative, as well as the -ba, -tari, -tara, and the -sa form. But turn's out that this is just part of the basic's. Just like with verbs the basics would be the -te form, the -ba form etc. to which you can add diffrent ending's to, to give diffrent meaning's to the verb, you can do the same with the Adjectives. This book is great for studying japanese adjectives. Now for the adverbs, the adverbs section is really good, they give you a bundle of words all sectioned off into categories according to time, quantity, degree, circumstance, onomatopoeic words (A MUST READ), adverbs used with negatives, adverbs with diffrent meaning's with positive and negative expressions, interrogative adverbs, adverbs used with conditionals, adverbs expressing desire, conjecture, or resemblence. As you can see, the list is long, and very helpfull, the most helpfull part of the adverbs section (to me) were the onomatopoeic words, and adverbs with diffrent meanings ith positive and negative sentences. If you buy this book, it will save you ATLEAST a good 10 hours of tedious looking up definition's for words, research, and so on.. because this book does it all, and not only that. Every few lessons or so, this book provides a pratice to see how well you have mastered what you have learned. Over all I give this book a perfect 5 out of 5, for it's great layout and great approach to learning japanese adjectives and adverbs. (I also recommend you buy "The handbook of japanese verbs" 'it's sister book', and "Jpanaese verbs at a glance" these two books give the most information you can learn about the conjugation of japanese verbs) Well, I hope this was a helpfull review, thanks for reading it. Bye.

I like this book a lot. It's easy to follow, well organized and filled with examples and concise explanations. It also contains Kana and Kanji version which is helpful as I just started to learn the writing. I am still a beginner and I think this book is very helpful. It has helped me understand grammar and how to use the words in a sentence.

Hands-On English definitely belongs in every home library. It has been a quick reference for me and a tremendous help in putting together the text for my historical atlas.

This book is wonderful, positively jam-packed with practical information for all ages. But if you are a homeschooler don't forget to order the accompanying Activity Book, unfotunately not available from Amazon, but from the publisher.

Now in a newley updated and expanded second edition, Hands-On English by Fran Hamilton draws upon her more than 35 years of experience and expertise as a classroom teacher, a writer, and an editor to present the basics of English grammar in clear and concise terms. In addition to the rules of punctuation, proper form in letters, outlines, bibliographies, and footnotes, tips on the writing process, and more, the second edition features new material on decoding unrecognized words, finding the main idea, writing smooth paragraphs and compositions, and improving conciseness in communication. A direct self-study resource highly recommended for aspiring writers, students and lay people looking to improve and polish their composition skills.

Hands-On English is a well-organized, carefully thought out introduction to how the English language works and how it can be used to help one communicate more effectively. The author discusses the basics of grammar, usage, writing mechanics, and the writing process in straightforward language anyone can understand. At the same time, she has developed a set of illustrations that effectively demonstrate how the parts of speech or parts of a sentence interrelate and that wonderfully enhance this book's value as a learning tool.

This book could help anyone who wants to know how to communicate more effectively-especially anyone who missed, or has long since forgotten, the grammar taught in school. I have recommended Hands-On English to my graduate communications students at a local university, and the ones who have used it have found it beneficial. This book is particularly appealing when one compares it to the many lame and carelessly written "how to" writing books currently on the market. Even though it is apparently aimed at junior high school students, Hands-On English is still an excellent tool for businesspeople, engineers, or anyone else who would like to write more effectively

For decades Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" rallied us to write our best English, no more and no less. Each of its sentences demonstrated to the listening ear that good writing was a matter--not of Baroque gilding, Gothic loftiness, or Romantic breathlessness--but of Yankee economy, craft, and precision.

Now the lessons that Strunk & White made clear to anyone with ears to hear have been given a visual and tactile dimension by Fran Santoro in "Hands-On English." This is an important enhancement for those of us whose best appendage for learning is not the ear but the eye or the hand--I mean you, joy-sticking Webmaster, and you, number-crunching Engineer, and even you, paint-spattered Marketer . . . Step up and feel with your own hands the difference between the lumpen cube of a noun and the coiled spring of a verb! Admire the tongue-and-groove snugness of a well fitted sentence. For a mind-blowing effect, line up a series of verbs and watch them spring forth like so many slinkies tumbling down the stairs.

See an adjective--with one daub of its paintbrush tip--transform that noun-cube before your very eyes! And then marvel at the transformation of that adjectival paintbrush, in its turn, by one dusting from an adverbial magic wand! Let your fingers grope beneath the noun-cube for the hooks from which you can, if you have need, suspend one!--two!--three!--prepositional magnets, each securely supporting a corresponding object of the preposition.

In short, Fran Santoro succeeds where many others have failed: laying bare the mechanics of "grammar" so that that dread word will shake off forever its Dali-esque surreality. For this we all owe her "Hands-On English" a Siskel-and-Ebert-style two thumbs up!

If you are a parent, a teacher, an employed person of any kind, buy a copy of "Hands-On English": you know someone in desperate need of this book. And if you mastered all this years ago--even if you spent your down time as a kid diagramming sentences!--buy this book for the wicked pleasure its stick-in-the-eye precision of language will bring you. It's a new-and-improved Strunk and White in Furby clothing.

I found this book very easy to read, and very encouraging. I have been inspired to look more for God's will in my every day living and to go out and spread God's love and joy to others, through the stories in this book. It is very easy to relate the author's anecdotes to my life, and I think the author speaks truth from the heart. This is a bold book and the theme flows well throughout the book. It makes me want to get out and be the hands and feet of God! You will be blessed!

This is one of those books you can't put down after you start...not because it keeps you in suspense, - it doesn't, but because its amusing and ispiring at the same time. The author helps the reader to relate to god by giving him/her simple, real life examples of god's plan at work. Plain, everyday incidents that no-one would ever really stop and think about all of a sudden make perfect sense as they fit into god's overall plan. The reader is drawn in and invited to sketch his own parallels. God is portrayed as a good, forgiving, and understanding god, giving hope to people, who like myself, stray off the right path from time to time. The book is encouraging and helps the reader to understand that perfection in life, while noble in concept, is unrealistic in the real world. We are all sinners. But some of us strife to follow god's word, and some of us don't. The books message is simple: God loves all of us; but to feel the love we have to open our eyes to see and welcome god into our lives. I highly recomment this book to anybody who's ever wanted to read about god but found the thousands of pages of the King James Bible difficult to parse and confusing. Because it is written in plain and easy to understand english, this book is not only a joy to read for adults but also makes a fantastic gift for a child . I have read the book twice, and will probably read it again soon.

This book, "Lord Help Me, I Can't Write A Book" was practical, inspring, encouraging, humorous, and spiritually uplifting. I took a journey with Trey in this book and I saw alot of my own self during the trials in my own life. I give this book five stars. - Evangelist Lorraine Diab, North Carolina, USA

I find this book down to earth, and inspiring to the point that we can see that miracles are still being performed. The revelation of the character's spiritual transformation is quite motivating. The book should be a "must read" for those who are incarcerated and who claim to experience the Spirit of God. The supporting Scripture references are also beneficial when using the book for teenage reading groups or any spiritually motivating group discussions.

God's perfect, unconditional, and never-ending love is brought to light as this semi-autobiographical story of a man who didn't graduate from high school or college is revealed. Mr. T. R. Cosby's unique approach to delivering the promises of God will have you feeling uplifted, laughing hysterically, and wanting to attack life in a way that will hardly let you put this book down!!! His refreshing style will lure and captivate the reader through the entire book. Designed to reach the "blue collar" society, along with America's misguided youth, Help Me Lord! I Can't Write a Book is an inspirational masterpiece that will be enjoyed by people from all walks of life. Whether you are a teen-ager, a young adult, or a man or woman in your 40's, 50's, or even 60's, this book will cause your spirit to soar. Victory will be shared by many as this inspiring tale unfolds!!!