Language Arts Books

Great book for learning how to get around in Italy. I am currently using this book in a nightschool I am currently going to, and it is helping out greatly!!!!!

This book is a very good reference book for all travelers. It has everything for a traveler plus a little bit of grammar for someone studying Italian . We are using this book in a night school class I am currently taking. Si,I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a good solid backround in Italian for when they go to Italy. Buona fortuna!

I bought this book in conjunction with a very very primary Italian language course, and ended up getting more from the book than I did from the course. The book is well laid out in the sense that every chapter is the logical followup to the previous one, and you get a great sense of confidence because it's such a great teacher, and makes it so easy to get to love the language. By halfway through the book, I was able to hold conversations with native Italians. I must find out if there's a similar book on Spanish!!!

I would recommend this book to anyone just starting to learn Italian because the book gives a great summary along with lists of eveyday vocabulary with timely quizzes to test yoour memory of the material. Although I speak Molise Dialect this book really helped and is helping me on my formal Italian. My father Henry DiOrio who was born in Italy and speaks Italian, Swahili, Hebrew,and English fluently says this is a great book to use if you are someone who wants to start learning Italian. I am using this book in a night school class I am currently enrolled with my friends Sandro DiFrangia and Tony Rinella,two other Italophiles who also share a high opinion of this great book. Buona Fortuna e Arrivederla

It is a great pocket C++ reference book, easy to read and understand, and straight to the point. Common flaws, some of the declared functions are not defined. However, if you define all the required functions, the sample code will compile and run. Enjoy!

Ideal for beginners and proficient programmers alike. It answers the sort of questions beginners need to know which K & R fails to do, such as an excellent explanation of complex pointer declarations.

It is a great pocket C++ reference book, easy to read and understand, and straight to the point. Common flaws, some of the declared functions are not defined. However, if you define all the required functions, the sample code will compile and run. Enjoy!

This is hands down the best reference I have ever seen for C++. I have spent years trying to find a concise guide that would answer my questions about he C++ language without lots of 'fluff' text surrounding it. Mr. Sexton hits all of the important concepts right on the head.

If you are the type of programmer that can understand new material when given a good concise explanation, I would highly reccomend this book. It is on a par with books released by O'Reilly.

This is a very handy reference book. I use it far more often than I thought I would.

This book is an excellent resource for people who are researching for a book/article about California or just curious why places were named as they were.

Erwin Gudde is actually a direct ancestor of mine, so I accquired this book so that my son may pass it on through the ages as a claim to fame if you will. The book was nicely done, and very informative.

Great book to keep in your car or backpack. Fun to read while on trips. Answers many WHY questions on the road. Good times!

A Caribbean Journey from A to Y (Read and Discover What Happened to the Z) is an ABC picturebook that leads the reader through the Caribbean islands as well as through the alphabet. From Aruba to Trinidad and alligator to yam, A Caribbean Journey from A to Y is filled with fun facts about life, cuisine, fun, and culture in island nations! "What words begin with Z? Zoo begins with Z, but we'd rather use it for zebra. We don't have zebras in the Caribbean (except at the zoo), but that doesn't matter. We will take our Z to Africa, where zebras are really from, and where they still run free." Simple, color illustrations in the style of a child's drawing enliven this wonderfully educational picturebook.

This is an alphabet book for children like no other. The words, carefully chosen, educate children in a way that is not just fun, but entertaining as well. The illustrations jump off the page and makes this book a journey like no other. Surprising, as you can tell from the title, is how Z is used at the end. This book is filled with suspense, history, knowledge and fun. This is a great book to read aloud, in a classroom, on the plane, etc. As a father, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for more than an alphabet book, but a book that will leave the reader wanting to learn more about the caribbean islands and a better understanding about how the caribbean came to be.

This is a wonderful book filled with bright and beautiful illustrations and provides great information about the caribbean islands and their abundance of unique flora and fauna. The story is entertaining and easy to read, with a great discovery in what happened to the Z. I read this book to my son even though he is only 2 and he loves trying to find all the items listed on the page, provides fun and education. A rare find! A one of a kind ABC book!!

Mario Picayo's A Caribbean Journey from A to Y creates a sincere, helpful template for readers as they navigate the Caribbean Islands using the alphabet as their guide from letters A to Y (leaving the reader in suspense wondering where the Z has gone to). Each letter serves as a looking glass into Caribbean culture by representing its rich vegetation, diverse array of animals, and, most importantly the great people that inhabit these islands. While the alphabet guides the reader, Earleen Griswold's illustrations supplement the text with their lush, vivid colors that are diverse as the Caribbean itself. Bright hues of vibrant blues skies, colorful fish, and hot orange suns catch the eyes as well as the imagination. The story supplies the reader with factual and historical insight in addition to instilling a sense of great pride by uniting the Caribbean Islands by way of highlighting their origins to their African roots. I highly recommend this book especially for reading to children. The striking illustrations and enriching text are perfect for showing the little ones. A great read for children and grown-ups alike.

Within the pages of this book, A Chance to Fly, there lies a separate universe, a world apart. The reader is allowed to tiptoe through the realm of the adolescent girl, without changing, disturbing, criticizing or rearranging a single thing. And what a rare privilege this is.

Starlings Volleyball Clubs USA is a national non-profit organization that provides opportunities from coast-to-coast to girls of every socio-economic stratum to play
club volleyball regardless of their zip code. Starlings celebrates its 10th anniversary with the publication of this book of poems, essays and art by the Starlings girls
themselves, deftly edited by Byron Shewman, a co-founder of the Starlings in 1996.

You will be deeply moved as you read page after page of the innermost thoughts of girls as irridescent and seemingly fragile as the small birds for which they were named but as resilient as the stars in the firmament. There are stories here that will break your heart, such as that of the only girl child of Vietnamese refugees, a victim of life-long verbal abuse from her family, who found volleyball and the
Starlings, which quite literally saved her life.

There are stories and poems from the Navajo reservations of Arizona, such as the one from Sherry Hudson of Tuba City, AZ, which begins poetically, with a recitation
of her ancient Navajo lineage, ". . . Bitterwater . . . Edgewater . . . Black Streak People . . . Towering House People . . . ."

There is the gritty, flashy poetry in the urban cadences and vernacular of Oakland, Philadelphia and New York. There are the memories of long-time coaches and club
directors, volunteers all, in the most magnanimous way.

In the beginning, the Starlings girls whose work is featured in this remarkable collection may have walked into a gym to try out for a volleyball team. What they found, in addition to their sport, was much the same as what Dorothy found on the yellow brick road to Oz, companions like themselves who have heart, courage and brains and friends who have become like family even when home sometimes seems
so very far away.

Support the Starlings. Buy this book.

I found this book to be very insperational. I highly recommend this book for readers young and old. It will lift any spirit.

This book is an excellent read for anyone who coaches, plays, or is a fan of volleyball.

great book. would recommend it to anyone with a heart. the book has so much to offer. makes you want to help. 2 thumbs up.

This is a superbly executed book on the famous Chartres cathedral, a gothic masterpiece which sits some 50 miles to the south west of Paris. Its reputation and geographic proximity to Paris assure its place as a frequent "day trip" for visitors and tourists to Paris who wish to see one of the apogees of gothic development. If you have the opportunity to visit Chartres, you most certainly will find Miller's text right in Chartres' own bookstore, as the book is truly a work worthy to be sold "on site." That fact alone speaks to the quality of this volume.

Miller's text provides a short introduction to the gothic movement, as well as the background of Chartres cathedral itself. But the focus on this book is the stained glass found in the cathedral, with a window-by-window detail of the glass, its date, and the allusions each window makes to the outside world. As such, this makes the book a valuable reference work, because one can follow the story from window to window in a way that would be difficult on-site without many days of time to do so (and using binoculars to help out!). The choice of focusing on the stained glass, rather than other features present in gothic cathedrals is justified: Chartres has some of the oldest and most-intact original stained glass of any cathedral in France, and is perhaps the single item among many others for which the structure is famous. Chartres is what is called a "dark cathedral," meaning that the available light inside the edifice is relatively low, making the interior a difficult place to see the architectural elements. But in such a setting, the stained glass takes on a "glowing" characteristic that is visually dramatic. To have a book so carefully lay out the windows for review is quite an achievement.

This is a paperback book done on large-size paper, but the covers and individual pages are of extremely high quality, durable, and glossy finish. The photographic reproductions are first-rate, and the graphic artwork used to present the material is also professionally developed. One flip through the volume and you'll be glad you added it to your library.

No one in the world (and I state that with full confidence) knows more about Chartres Cathedral than Malcolm Miller. What more needs to be said?

No visit to Chartres is complete without taking the tour of the Cathedral's walking encyclopedia Malcolm Miller. Miller's books are fantastic and give a tremendous insight into the history of Chartres and its Cathedral.

Malcolm Miller is the foremost English authority on the cathedral of Chartres. He divides his time between the town of Chartres, where he personally conducts tours, and the rest of the world where he lectures and makes films and videos of the subject. He opens his tours and lectures by commenting that the cathedral is like a library--and we don't just say, "We're going to go to the library today and read all the books". Each tour or lecture consists of a general introduction and focuses on a small part of the stained glass and statuary. The core of the book is a review of the iconography of a selection of the windows and sculpture. In this manner, you learn how to "read the books" in the cathedral, and gain an understanding of the world that produced them. Once you have toured Chartres, either in person or through that other medieval miracle, printing, you will want to return again and again.

As the parent of a grade eight home-schooler, I wish that I could give this book more than five stars. Any book capable of stimulating a student's interest in Shakespeare should be in every teacher's book collection. My son eagerly looks forward to doing this grammar activity just to see what the characters are doing each day! After finishing the first collection of activites in this book, my son asked to read the original Much Ado about Nothing. Simply amazing!

I discovered (and bought) Jane's first two Caught'ya books at the national Differentiated Education conference last summer. I have used the high school level stories successfully in the two semesters since then. I wanted more stories so that I could keep my students on track throughout the year, so I ordered The Chortling Bard.

What a resource! There are three fully-completed stories based on some of Shakespeare's most entertaining plays. Not only do my students get practice adn instruction in grammar, but they get exposure to Shakespeare without slogging through it all at once. They can experience the stories and enjoy the plots, since they're not doing the incomprehensible everybody-read-a-part-even-if-you-don't-know-what-you're-saying thing. They may not read the original Shakespeare, but they are involved in the story, which generates discussions, and by the end, they get it!

If you want to continue "caught'ya" fun in high school then this is for you. I have used the "Romeo and Juliet" story from Jane's first book for my ninth graders, and I wanted to continue the "caught'ya" method with my sophomores. "The Chortling Bard" fits the bill nicely. My students loved the story "A Midsummer's Nightmare," and I loved my students' improvement in writing conventions and sentence variety. Put those grammar tomes back on the shelf and "chortle" with the Bard!

I really like using this technique in my classroom. I'm a bit of a ham and love doing the sentences out loud. Some of my student teachers/subs haven't been so comfortable, though. (You really have to get into the act.) I like the fact that every student can get 100% on the assignment no matter what they're level. Because of the repetitive nature of the assignment, students really do remember what you're teaching them.

I was looking for something I could use as an SLP. I didn't realize that buying this as a package with the other Clear Speech book was redundant, since they are different volumes for the same book.

If you have some problem of English pronounciation,
You should use it.
Because it is really useful for them, and
it is really helpful.
So, you should use it if you have some problems.

Now, I've seen some pretty innovative approaches to illustrating pronunciation. But this takes the prize so far.

From the author's letter to teachers:

"For years, teachers have been asking me to write a version of my intermediate level book, Clear Speech, that would be usable for beginners. They said that it would make more sense to help students with pronunciation early, rather than wait until they have developed habits that are hard to overcome. Also, teachers often found that their beginning students became discouraged when people didn't understand what they were saying, and of course, a discouraged student is harder to teach. Teachers who were trying to help their beginning students with pronunciation expressed frustration with the limited results they were getting from traditional methods of drilling minimal pair (e.g., ship/sheep) or asking students to "sound out" the letters in print. [ e.g. "Do you want to go to the store? / Doo yoo wahnt too goh too thuh stor?" ] They were asking for a more effective approach.

All of this made sense to me. But the problems was that I just couldn't think of an approach that would work. For one thing, beginners simply don't have enough vocabulary to understand explanations. And with so much else to learn, there isn't much class time for pronunciation. One thing was clear to me: A really useful book had to be radically different from any other in the field, including my own intermediate level book."

The author has succeeded beyond everyone's expectations.

Conventional wisdom in the ESL/EFL world holds that pronunciation should not be taught at the beginning level. It's just too technical, requiring complicated descriptions and explanations for which beginning students don't have the vocabulary.

But if there were a way to make the material accessible? Even beginners need to communicate clearly -- intelligible speech fosters successful academic, work, and social interactions, and that's got to be encouraging for the student! Judy Gilbert's well-planned approach makes clear pronunciation truly accessible to beginners. The book -- rightly so -- limits the pronunciation points to those that are most urgently needed for intelligibility. The principle areas covered are: (1) the alphabet: using letters to spell out loud for clarification, (2) decoding spelling/reading words: using simple spelling rules to predict the pronunciation of a word, (3) syllable number: developing awareness of the number of syllables in words and phrases, being sure not to add unnecessary syllables or to omit necessary ones, (4) syllable stress: lengthening stressed vowels and reducing unstressed ones, (5) word connections: linking words together (this improves both listening comprehension and the smoothness of the student's speech), (6) the music of English: the pitch contours and rhythm of the language, and (7) articulation: t/d, s/z, l/r/n, and th.

There are some very cool things in this book for pronunciation teachers and learners. For example, there are tongue shape drawings looking from the back of the tongue to the front and out the mouth. Can't picture it? You'll have to see it to believe it! Along with the traditional front and side views, this new perspective really helps you visualize what's going on inside your mouth to produce a specific sound. I only wish there were drawings for all the American English vowels and consonants!! (But then it wouldn't be a beginning textbook, would it?)

I also like the vowel pronunciation rules. Example: the letters 'ai' are pronounced like the first letter [a] in the combination. Think: straight, complaint. Then, in the appendix, a percentage is given for how often the rule works, in this case, 95% of the time. This will give the student the confidence to guess how a new word is pronounced, take 'restraint', for example, but not stress out when the rule doesn't work, as in 'plaid'.

There are many helpful graphics in the book. Two of my favorites are the extra-wide bolded letters for stressed vowels (I think you can visualize that) and the diminishing letters for continuant sounds (Thatsssokay. The storezzznearrrMain [the second and third s's, z's, and r's have decreasing font sizes]).

I've been looking for a book like this for a long time. Mostly, I do corporate accent and pronunciation training and executive speech coaching with foreign-born clients who have a high intermediate to advanced command of English. But occasionally, I am asked to train employees who have a lower level of English. This is definitely the book I'll choose for them! Trainees can apply the basic concepts they learn to company-specific vocabulary and technical terms.

I only wish all learners of North American English could start out with this book...

My daughter understood patterns completely from this book!!! Thank you!!!

My daughter is very visual. She loves most of the games, and sets them up herself.

Spend some time making pieces right. I attached the velcro and laminated pieces. I did not laminated boards. When I tried making her play without the velcro/lamintation, she was not interested.

These make excellent centers as well as individual seat work ideas in my classroom. They are full color and easy to cut out.

This is a really good resource to add to language arts and math centers. All the activities are colored and ready to laminate. Although I would rather it be for reproducing for future use to replace worn ones.

This is a great tool for teachers. I am a special education teacher and I teach gardes kindergarten through second grade. I have used this book to help me create many different file folder games that my students enjoy. It is a great product.

This book is like a mental gym for comedy writers. If you are serious about comedy writing and you are ready to make efforts, this book is a must!

This book is called Comedy Writing Workbook and that it's excatly what it is: A workbook. I would almost guarantee that you find at least one exercise per section that makes sense to you. Doing these exercises will improve your skills. You will write better and think faster. You may even become funnier, one never knows. This is the right book for people who think comedy is a craft.

Without a doubt, this book made all the difference in the world in my standup comedy career. After using the book, I went from unpaid open mic comic to a full-time comedy professional. The best way to describe the book is that it teaches you to write "fast 'n' funny," which are crucial to the standup comedy game. If I had to give away all the books I own about comedy except one, this is the one I would keep, hands down.

These are some of the hardest writting assignments you will ever come across, but if you can persevere and continue you will see progress. Going out to open mike nights is essential to charting your growth. The only way to see if you are funny is to go out and make other people laugh. To the would be humorist, screw up your courage and sharpen your pencil and have a ball exporing the world written and performance humor!!!