Quality Street Books

This was my first Magic Tree house book and I was really impressed. The story was well-done, and the concept of the tree house time machine reminded me of when I was a kid with a tree house in the woods with books strewn across its floor. In a way, many of us did or do have a tree house time machine to carry us away on wings of imagination, and I guess that's one of the reasons why these books are so popular. Osborne is a skillful writer, and I liked that she was realistic about the medieval culture that the siblings visited while still remaining a children's fantasy. Many young adult books set in medieval times shy away from the fact that civilization smelled horrible in those days and life was lived unhygienically by today's standards. A modern person entering the culture would be shocked by the smell, and most time-travel books ignore this, even the adult ones. But it adds to the suspension of disbelief that in this story, Jack and Annie notice such things.
I also learned things about Shakespeare and his era from this book, even though I've taken classes on the Bard in both highschool and college. Osborne includes facts in an unpatronizing way that really supplements the story. The extra facts listed in the back of the book are a great added bonus, and I'd be willing to bet that most kids read and remember them as well as the story.
I'll be ordering more of these great books next time my kid brings home the old Scholastic form for sure!

J. Lyon Layden
The Other Side of Yore

Mary Pope Osborne has found a way to make it enjoyable for young people to read. There is a series of her books which will keep the student spell bound for the next chapter book.

Stage Fright on a Summer Night happened in England, which is where I live. Jack and Annie got to see Shakespeare, which I like alot. They did one of my favorite shows, which is Midsummer Night's Dream. I really liked this book alot because it was the 15th one I read this summer. Magic Tree House books are great because they teach you about all different places, people and things. They are great adventures!

My 1st grader hates to put it down, he would rather read Magic Tree House books, than play video games. He even reads them to his class and explains the story for show and tell. In his kindergarten class the teacher would also let him read the Magic Tree House books out loud, not to give her a break, but to promote reading out loud. Great books!

I could write the same review for every "Magic Tree House" book. We were introduced to the series when my oldest son was 5, and just starting to read. We got the #1 book (the Dinosaur one) on audio when he was learning to read independently. Then he started to read the book along with the audio. Now, at 7, he is bound and determined to read every book in the series, in order, of course. He just finished this one. The words are fairly simple, so the series is great for kids ready to tackle chapter books - they won't get frustrated by having too many words they cannot sound out. They are all ten chaper books, with a little larger type and good line/paragraph spacing, making it easy for kids to keep their place. They all tell a little slice of history in a very interesting way. Everyone in the family learns something everytime.

I can not say enough about this book. I absolutely loved it. I am a Geography teacher and I am ordering a class set for my classroom. I think my students will fall in love with this book the same way I did. You should buy this book without even thinking twice. You will laugh and learn so much about the world from first hand experience. Enjoy and BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!

I really liked this book, it's one of my favorite in the genre of travel writing, with some very funny stories from the author's travels. I do wish he took more of a postive approach though, it seems nine out of ten stories show the negative side of travel, though I guess it's good to tell it like it is. Highly reccomended for a good laugh!

I LOVE humorous travel books but they are far and few between. I bought this book on sale and was pleasantly surprised. I laughed my way through the whole book. I will be sure to pick up anything else from him now!

I bought this book at an airport bookstore before a fight from Miami to Paris. Unfortunately for the passengers seated near me, I laughed out loud all the way across the Atlantic. And my laughter is kind of obnoxious, or so my friends say. Some of the stories were so funny I almost wet my pants. Thanks, Hester, for making my flight more enjoyable.

Former flight attendent Elliott Hester takes a leave of absence after the events of 9-11 and opts to take his own journey around the world. We are taken along on the trip with him in an assortment of amusing and embarassing anecdotes. He starts in Miami going to Argentina, South Pacific, Australia, SE Asia, India, North Africa, and into the European countries before landing back home. He regals us with stories of topless Scrabble addicts, Dehli Belly, transvestite islanders, the dangers of driving in other countries, sauna in Finland, impersonating Samuel L Jackson in Czech, and other great stories. He runs continual risks of intenstinal problems and is not above humiliating himself. All in all, this is a splendid book showing you how you too can go across the globe on $60 a day. As with most travelogues, it loses a star because the book would have been benefitted by the inclusion of photos he took on the journey. Fast and easy read, I'll be picking up future books of his.

This book is a very unique and brilliant approach to the business world using poetry. It's an invaluable tool to teach choices about life in corporate America. I loved the book!

Corporate poetry is an excellent tool for use with groups in the workplace or for one's own development. The insights are mind-expanding and the choices challenging. Quite a thought-provoking work that is easily read. Will be enjoyed by most everyone. Great gift idea!

What a unique concept! The author's combination of prose and poetry to examine the value system of corporate America inspired self-reflection. This book is a great tool for any person, man or woman, trying to survive in corporate America today. I loved it!

This is a great collection of short puppet scripts that are perfect for children's ministry. I use these scripts with my church every other week and I've been a part of some amazing results. If you are thinking of starting a puppet ministry team, this collection of scripts is a good way to start teaching the Word of God to other people. I have also purchased "Seasonal Puppet Scripts" which is similar to this book and is by "One Way Street".

This book was well-written and has good-to-the-point information that is easy to read, follow and each topic is followed by a list of books to read further into the subject.

Finally, thank heaven, there is a practical management book that was written by people who clearly have real life, in-the-trenches, experiences at all levels of the corporate ladder. Absent from this book are the feel good, pie in the sky, out of touch recommendations so prevalent in contemporary management writings. Any recommendations to changing a business culture comes with clear instructions to orchestrating the change. Checklists are used effectively throughout the book facilitating execution and ensuring significant bottom-line benefits.

The diet metaphor is wonderfully used. The similarities between achieving sustainable results on a persoanl diet and achieving sustainable results in a business organization become so striking when you read this book that you'll never forget them.

Supply chain management concepts are masterfully reviewed. When, how, and to what degree outsourcing is appropriate is meticulously covered.

If everyone enrolled in an MBA program were to have a course dedicated to the concepts used in this book, productivity would improve world-wide. A GREAT BOOK!!

This is NOT a book I typically would have picked up. But I was sitting in a coffee shop/used book store and saw it sitting there. I picked it up, took a look at the first page, and before I knew it, it was 4 hours later and I was completely in love.

This is an incredibly amazing book. After reading the back, I was not sure I wanted to purchase the book, but decided to do so. From the moment I opened the book, I didn't want to put it down. Sheri Reynolds made this book and religious cult come to life in every page.

This is probably going to be one of my top 10 most favorite books. I loved every single part of the book. The ending was soooooo great!

I liked this book a lot. It was very easy to read, a lot of descriptions to give you a good picture in your head. The story was great.

Nina is a 14 year old girl living in a strict religious community headed up by her grandfather. Naive and innocent, her only experience of the outside world is through school. She is very confused by the meaning of holiness and the impact of her grandfather's religious rules and teachings. When she gets pregnant after getting close to her "prayer partner" whom she is to marry eventually, the whole community turns against her until the baby itself becomes the miracle to save the community.

I found the story interesting, engaging and definitely challenging. It is difficult to understand how people can be so blinded by twisted religion and accept incredible punishments for thing that aren't even wrong. This book will surprise and astonish you, and will definitely make you ask yourself a lot of questions.

I really enjoyed the first two books in this series But this one has a different reader (I have it on CD) The actress reading is terrible. Her voices pretty much sound the same especiall since she seems to think that all the men should have gravelly voices. They sound like a bad obscene phone call. Actually one of the women characters sounds that way too. Get another actress!!

All of Debbie Macomber Yarn stories are warm and compelling. She is a great author and aside from her way with words, she gives some great knitting tips. I can totally relate to her stories because I myself am a knitter and crocheter. I enjoy her reading immensely! May God bless her for becoming such a star!

I have always enjoyed reading Debbie Macomber's books and this book is wonderful, well written, and very enjoyable. She has a wonderful way of detailing people and places to make you feel you are there. If you enjoy reading Debbie Macomber's books, you will not be disappointed with this book.

Very cliche. There are way too many storylines and characters packed into one book. Then suddenly the last chapter seems to wrap up the lives of all the characters to bring it to an abrupt end. Very soap operish if you like that kind of thing. All with a sweet happy ending to everyone's lives.

Ever since she opened her yarn shop, Lydia Goetz has held knitting classes there. This time around three people are taking her class on knitting a prayer shawl: Alix Townsend, Susannah Nelson, and Colette Blake. Both Alix and Colette hope the class will help take their mind off of things - Alix is trying to keep her marriage plans under control and Colette is dealing with the loss of her husband and the consequences of a brief affair with her (ex) boss. Lydia has her own worries - her niece Julia was injured in a car jacking and Lydia's sister Margaret (Julia's mother) is not handling it well. They all have problems but the women on Blossom Street know they can rely on each other for support.

"Back on Blossom Street" is the third book in Debbie Macomber's delightful Blossom Street series (the first two are The Shop on Blossom Street (The Knitting Books #1) and A Good Yarn (The Knitting Books #2)). Macomber's books are like soap operas on paper (light, fluffy, but addicting) and "Back on Blossom Street" doesn't disappoint. The book alternates chapters focusing on three of the characters: Lydia (told in the first person) and Colette and Alix (both told in the third person). Of the three, I liked Lydia's story the best as she watches her family struggle to deal with the aftereffects of a brutal crime. Margaret's reaction is very real, as she wants revenge against the man that hurt her daughter. Lydia and Margaret's struggle to deal with their aging mother is all too real and heartbreaking. My next favorite story line was Alix's - her letting her good friend Jacqueline and soon to be mother-in-law Susan take over her wedding plans is a cliched plot line but fun to read just to see if Alix finally puts her foot down. I found Colette's plot line to be the least believable for a number of reasons I can't explain without ruining the plot (let's just say she's bad at communicating). Her reason for running away never really worked for me. I was hoping that the introduction of a possible suitor for Colette would open up a mystery plot, but that never happened. Colette's plot had some good points, but never really worked for me.

"Back on Blossom Street" brings back some old friends and introduces some new ones, making for a pleasant read. Well done.

This is a funny and charming book about the South and will appeal to all who cherish Southern tradition. Also recommened in the same genre Marching Through Georgia, My Walk Along Sherman's Route by Cherokee author Jerry Ellis. He WALKED the route of Sherman and recorded contemporary stories of those he met with insight, humor and soul. The book is also filled with historical nuggets that many were unaware of.

The Book `Mama Makes up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living' is a collection of memoirs of meaningful or funny times in the author, Bailey White's, life. Each mini-story inside this book is approximately 2-7 pages long. There are about 55 mini-stories in this book.
This story tells you about the adventures of Bailey White's exciting childhood. By the end of the book, I ended up wondering how that many interesting things can happen to one person in one lifetime. It is amazing how she describes her surroundings of the past so well.
What I disliked about this book is that as soon as you start to get into one of the stories, it ends. The stories are so short and they seem to be scattered rather randomly in the book. They also don't have much of a point to them, being true stories.
What I liked about this book is how well she tells the stories as if they happened just yesterday. In some of the stories, she can just take you to the place where the story is happening. In others, she cannot. Compared to many others, Bailey White had a very interesting life growing up.
Overall, I wouldn't rate his book very high on the scale. Unless you like short stories more than novels, when you go to the bookstore looking for books, I wouldn't even waste a second looking at this book.

The Book `Mama Makes up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living' is a collection of memoirs of meaningful or funny times in the author, Bailey White's, life. Each mini-story inside this book is approximately 2-7 pages long. There are about 55 mini-stories in this book.
This story tells you about the adventures of Bailey White's exciting childhood. By the end of the book, I ended up wondering how that many interesting things can happen to one person in one lifetime. It is amazing how she describes her surroundings of the past so well.
What I disliked about this book is that as soon as you start to get into one of the stories, it ends. The stories are so short and they seem to be scattered rather randomly in the book. They also don't have much of a point to them, being true stories.
What I liked about this book is how well she tells the stories as if they happened just yesterday. In some of the stories, she can just take you to the place where the story is happening. In others, she cannot. Compared to many others, Bailey White had a very interesting life growing up.
Overall, I wouldn't rate his book very high on the scale. Unless you like short stories more than novels, when you go to the bookstore looking for books, I wouldn't even waste a second looking at this book.

Whenever I (re)read stories from this book, I can hear Bailey White telling them as she used to on NPR. Quirky, yes, but she and her mama and their various cousins, siblings, aunts, uncles, ancestors, and neighbors are genuinely southern, from their never-ending tales that wander around among peoples' various marriages, children, inlaws, deaths, and relationships--sometimes getting to the point--to their calm acceptance of the eccentric and even the nearly unbelievable. My own mother came from a different part of the South (Mississippi), but there is something in that voice, be it Georgia-, North Carolina-, or Mississipi-accented (and they are all different) that sets it apart from other American storytellers and that rings true to those of us who grew up in the South or with southern parents.

The Book `Mama Makes up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living' is a collection of memoirs of meaningful or funny times in the author, Bailey White's, life. Each mini-story inside this book is approximately 2-7 pages long. There are about 55 mini-stories in this book.
This story tells you about the adventures of Bailey White's exciting childhood. By the end of the book, I ended up wondering how that many interesting things can happen to one person in one lifetime. It is amazing how she describes her surroundings of the past so well.
What I disliked about this book is that as soon as you start to get into one of the stories, it ends. The stories are so short and they seem to be scattered rather randomly in the book. They also don't have much of a point to them, being true stories.
What I liked about this book is how well she tells the stories as if they happened just yesterday. In some of the stories, she can just take you to the place where the story is happening. In others, she cannot. Compared to many others, Bailey White had a very interesting life growing up.
Overall, I wouldn't rate his book very high on the scale. Unless you like short stories more than novels, when you go to the bookstore looking for books, I wouldn't even waste a second looking at this book.

Bartleby is a quick entertaining read about the breakdown between employee/employer relationships.

Benito Cereno is a brilliant story of deception. It makes the reader relentlessly guessing what is really going on and what happened to the inmates of the shipwreck 'San Dominick'.
Unfortunately, it is a racist tale. Herman Melville accepts without discussion the 19th century belief in the superiority of the white man.
The black inmates are characterized as 'the docile arising from the unaspiring contentment of a limited mind ... undisputable inferiors.'
They are crushed by the good whites personified in Captain Delano, 'a person of a singularly undistrustful good nature ... a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception'.
More, the story exposes his author as a true calvinist, a fatalist: 'All is owing to Providence!', also the macabre message on the prow of the shipwreck 'follow your leader' (to be killed).

On the contrary, 'Bartleby' is a profoundly modern tale.
The strange behaviour of its main character 'Bartleby' can be described as 'perfectly harmless passivity' : 'I would prefer not to.'
The reason for this behaviour lays in the fact that Bartleby was suddenly removed out of the 'Dead Letter' office in Washington after a reorganization.
'Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? ... Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring ... a banknote ... he whom it would relieve nor eats nor hungers anymore ... on errands of life, these letters speed to death.'
Bartleby had hope. He had a job, albeit a 'catastrophic' one. But he himself became the victim of a catastrophe. He lost his job, his hope. He became a stoic.
Bartleby is the personification of humanity's lost hopes: 'Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!'

This review is of one of the long stories, or novellas that constitute this volume, 'Bartleby, the Scrivener' , and not of ' Benito Cereno'. 'Bartleby'is one of the great pieces of American and of Existensial Literature. It's hero, ' Who prefers not to' in some way compares with those other lonely nineteenth century city-dweller isolatos, Dostoevsky's Underground Man, and Gogol's Akakay Akakayevitch. He too has a cousin in much of Kafka's literature perhaps most especially in 'The Metamorphosis'.
The good- natured lawyer narrator, the employer of Bartleby who tells the story would seem to come from a world of ordinary pleasures, family and understanding. Thus his amazement at the worldless Bartleby who cannot say 'yes' to anything even kindness or human consideration.
Bartleby says ' no' and in saying ' no' he somewhow hangs on to, and affirms his own distinct identity and individuality. He is in one sense the anti- hero whose integrity is simply in refusing to follow and obey convention and the ordinary temptations of mankind.
At the same time he is obviously a no-body and a nothing, one who by saying 'no' also denies his own common humanity.
One of the paradoxes of this great story is the somewhat majestic , humorous and ironic tone of the narrator who so calmly presents a tale of isolation bordering on horror.
Close to one- hundred years later a writer far more popular in his time than Melville managed to be in his , J.D. Salinger would present in Holden Caulfield another example of the American naysayer to Society's demands, and hypocrisies. Old Holden however as opposed to Bartleby will be ' quite articulate'. When he prefers not to he will tell us all about it. Enigmatic Bartleby on the other hand charms us by his silence, and his one- track refusal to compromise. He seems to say to us , that even if we think we understand him, we cannot.
And this too is part of this work's special mystery and power.

Congratulations Herman Melville - you have a good vocabulary and know how to describe a setting.

Benito Cereno was a waste of my life. Yes, the story is interesting and political and provocative but it could have easily been condensed by 50 pages. The build up is completely unnecessary. if you are desparate to read this book, read only the first 15 and last 15 pages

Herman Melville's Benito Cereno is a story about a Spanish slave ship taken captive, and the unfortunate American whaling ship that discovers them. The American Captain, Amasa Delano, and his crew cross paths with the Spanish slave ship, the San Dominick in a bay off the coast of the island of Santa Maria. Captain Delano is immediately astonished at the disrepair of the San Dominick, and especially at the poor health and mental condition of her captain, Benito Cereno. Captain Delano's emotional reactions to what he witnesses while aboard the San Dominick; curiosity, anxiety, and suspicion are excellently described by Melville. Throughout his stay on the San Dominick, Delano is constantly worried that Cereno is planning to attack him, and the liberty the slaves seem to enjoy concerns him as well. The story of Benito Cereno will keep you guessing until the final pages when the mystery of the San Dominick's crew and cargo is unveiled. Despite difficult language, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a great adventure story.