Articles Books

This is a wonderful, very instructive book. If you write and are interested in writing for an audience, this book guides you through choosing your audience, and how to satisfy the audience you've chosen. It also helps you preserve your personal style, even enhance it. I loved the approach, Hiley Ward laid the book out like a magazine. The main "articles" consist of anecdotes and instructions, while "sidebars" offer additional, pertinent information. The exercises at the end of the chapters help you develop the skills discussed in each chapter. This book is an asset to writers.

This handbook is a must have for anyone who wants to break in to freelance magazine writing on a professional level. It provides up-to-date information, instructional guidance and concrete examples. Peterson and Turkel make sure it stands out from the crowd with the chapter organization and use of real examples.

Parts I - III all deal with marketing and sales. As a freelancer, I have found that you can write great material but if you don't have the motivation to put it in front of the right editor, you will never sell your work. The authors make that clear up front and emphasize to their reader that developing strength in those areas is a necessity.

Each point that the authors make in this book is illustrated and supported by an example. They use their own published articles, the pages of popular magazines and query letters to demonstrate the topics. From a readers perspective, this is a great help. As I went through the book there were some areas I felt comfortable with, I only skimmed those examples but when a topic was new to me, I could carefully read through the sample and get a clearer picture of the expectations of editors.

The information provided in this book is extremely valuable and the format makes it very understandable. After reading this guide, you will have the skills to become a professional.

The first step of making something better is to measure where it is. Unfortunately, many fail to realize that the process of gathering metrics can affect the system being monitored. "Making the metric" reviews how different metric gathering methods and measurements affect the system being measured.

I was writing down a research paper about music videos. This book is perfect, it's a guide for all those who are interested within music videos and communication.

My review on this book is that it is very a good example of how kids strat changing after moving around alot at this age and also what they go through.The boy Toby in this book is going through alot his mother calls herself running from her ex-boyfriend that keeps on finding her she's go rigth back to him like it ain't nothing. Rosemary moves her and her son from state to state and he gose from school to school. And people are telling her that her son is bad and she dosen't want to give him a whippen because she dosen't want to do him like her father did her. Rosemary family rich but she ran away when she meant Toby father which is her son. An she got pregnant with Toby then she left him and meant Roy who she is now trying to stay away from.

Two Steps Forward, One Back in Grief

In the preface of her newest book, A MONTH OF SUNDAYS: SEARCHING FOR THE SPIRIT AND MY SISTER, Albuquerque, New Mexico author, Julie Mars says: "For seven months, I took care of my sister, Shirley, who was dying of pancreatic cancer....I witness her intense spiritual turbulence and her return to Catholicism....I consider it an honor and a privilege to be with her every day as she considers the state of her soul....As my sister's faith forms its final shape and hardens, mine disappears....When I return home to Albuquerque, I feel a driving need...to go to church."
So Mars does, for 31 Sundays, the equivalent of a month, visiting Christian, Sort-of-Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Unitarian, and nonsectarian places of worship.
Each visit triggers thoughts, feelings and remembrances of Shirley, their siblings and parents; and Shirley's children. Using simple, direct language, Mars interweaves her family's relationships, Shirley's advance toward death, and her own spiritual search for something she can call God, into a microcosm of human experience.
A visit to the Church of the Latter Day Saints evokes this thought: "My father taught me, expected me, to be tough, to follow my own strong will, and not apologize for it. I did. But secretly, I locked myself in the closet and cried so hard I could not breathe. Waves of sadness washed over me, washing me away, and I was enormously bereft, lonely, scared of everything. That was when Shirley would whisper through the door that she wanted to come in. I would crawl into her lap and drink in her silence."
Describing this intimate moment, Mars states a universal truth. Independence can terrify. Everyone needs a safe person and a safe place. Everyone faces the moment when they must lose that security.
The combination of universal and personal experience in this and many other paragraphs in the book makes A MONTH OF SUNDAYS: SEARCHING FOR THE SPIRIT AND MY SISTER a compelling, tender, and moving read.
So do Mars' frank descriptions of caring for a dying person, right to the moment Shirley becomes so weak, she needs diapers, just before her "Final Dive," as Mars calls it, into delirium and coma. Mars' spiritual search and its climax, add a final touch on the last page of the story.
A MONTH OF SUNDAYS is a thoughtful and moving book for anyone, but especially for those facing illness, death, loss, spiritual crisis, and grief. The story is not for the airport or the beach, but for a time to sit down, and think, about life.

Plourde, Lynn, A Mountain of Mittens, illustrated by Mitch Vane, Charlesbridge, 2007

Perhaps only children who experience snow can fully appreciate this story about lost mittens, yet all can enjoy the humor expressed in text and illustrations and the rhyming refrain, "Mittens, Mittens. My, oh, my! A Mountain of mittens piled up high" that makes this a sure story time hit. Every day, Molly's parents remind her, "Don't forget your mittens at school" and everyday she and other children do. One day, Mrs. Folly the principal calls an emergency assembly when school classes end, and announces, "No one, I repeat no one, will be allowed to leave school today until you all reclaim your mittens from the lost-and-found pile." Due to all the inventive ways that parents had tried to secure mittens to their children, the pile of children become duct-taped to the pile of mittens; now the teachers swing into action, when Mrs. Folly says, "Holy mittens! ...We can't have our students stuck at school overnight." As you may already have guessed, they get stuck in the pile too. Molly's worried parents call 911, and soon police, firemen, and ambulance workers join some parents who are rushing to the school. The ending is maybe predictable but also highly amusing. The brightly colored humorous and expressive cartoon style illustrations are created using watercolor paints and dip pen and India ink on bright white watercolor paper and stand out clearly enough for a close-up audience. Don't miss this delightful book that will appeal to children in preschool through third grade.

This somewhat scholarly article focuses chiefly on the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and her mother, with a few side lights about other members of the family (Lydia, Mr. Bennet). The article is thoughful and makes a number of interesting suggestions. This is not for everyone, but I recommend it for Jane Austen fans and those interested in the mother-daughter relationship, in or out of literatuare.

You should know that this isn't a board book like the others in the series. It is very thin. The information pages are okay. A little much for small children, but I am glad to have this in our library. It's good to take along to church for sacrament meeting reading. It is nice to have the articles of faith in a book to help the kids memorize them.

This is a basic overview of the 13 Articles of Faith and what they mean to us as Latter Day Saints. Each Article of Faith is included plus illustrations and explanations of each concept, such as revelations like the Word of Wisdom, putting the 13th Article of Faith into simpler concepts like being kind, doing service, and being honest, as well as a short intro about the background of the Articles of Faith. All my children (ages 2 through 9) love this book as well as the other in the series. I plan on buying the others as we can.