ABC Books

Part of the Global Studies: Latin America & The Caribbean series, Costa Rica: A Global Studies Handbook is a solid educational text written for students, travelers, businesspeople, and anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of this beautiful nation. Costa Rica: A Global Studies Handbook is divided into a narrative section (which relates the history of the land along with information about its politics, institutions, society, and culture) and a reference section (which has a timeline of key events in Costa Rican history, a listing of significant Costa Rican organizations, and entries of key Costa Rican historical figures, places, and events). An annotated bibliography and an index round out this down-to-earth, highly readable primer.

A well researched and comprehensive book. At first, I was a bit concerned about the information being categorized alphabetically, versus topically, but it is a good system for this type of information. I find myself sitting and reading through a letter of the alphabet at a time. Fun to read, quite interesting, and on double checking the information from other sources, historically accurate.

Compiled, edited, and with an informative introduction by mythologist Karl Kroeber (Mellen Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University) Creation Myths Of Primitive America is part of the outstanding "ABC-CLIO Classic Folk and Fairy Tales" series. An absolutely fascinating anthology of creation Native American myths and legends focusing on how the world, plants, animals, and humans came into existence and interact with each other. These ancient stories are accurately and entertainingly retold, offering contemporary readers with a veritable treasure trove of insights into how the various Native American peoples perceived and interpreted the greater world around themselves. Creation Myths Of Primitive America is an essential and highly recommended resource for academic and community library Native American Studies and Mythology/Folklore collections.

The set THE CRUSADES is a 4-volume work of art highly recommended for both high school and college-level libraries as a basic introductory reference. 1,000 A-Z entries and translated texts on individual crusades and crusaders reflect the contributions of over a hundred researchers from over twenty countries, and are accompanied by maps, bibliographic references, and black and white illustrations. It's the only work to embrace the entire crusade movement from the 11th century through modern times - and all throughout Europe into the Middle East, and represents the latest scholarship, organized by a UK lecturer in medieval studies. A highly recommended, basic reference for any school where Crusades history is studied.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Loved it! Just what I was looking for to add more to my lessons.

I am a schoolteacher. This is a perfect model to use for showing students how to produce a product using information they obtain doing research. As an example for a research product it lends itself to any topic---seals, states, people, etc. It's an ABC book with one-word descriptions. Ex: D is for dive. The pictures are gorgeous scenes of the underwater life and experience of the dolphin. At the end of the book is a 2 to 3 sentence explanation for each word used in the ABC pages---for instance a description of dolphins and diving for the letter D. Absolutely wonderful way to teach young authors the beautiful simplicity, yet poignant magnitude of writing.

I bought this book for my 5 year-old who is now in Kindergarten. I was very impressed with the various ways in which it encourages young ones to practice their writing. It contains guides for each letter, rhymes, pictures to color geared to the letters, and best of all, pull-out cards to use to review the process. Well worth the price for your beginning writer.

This book is funny. Mathew is my favorite character. (Characters are Laura, Annie, Sam, Mathew. [other two I named Rebecca and Grant I believe) Anyway, I liked the part when Mathew's britches fell down all the time!

Twenty Six children & their teachers get ready and go to their day care. Each child's and or teacher's name begins with a letter of the alphabet.

This would be a cute and helpful book for children who are about to begin day care or who are already in day care.

The book features multi-cultural children which is always nice for your child to see another child who looks like them. On the last page it tells you other words on each page that has also been added to the page so the book is also a book where your child can also find other words that start with the same letter.

This would also be good for parents with children who are named in the book. Here are the children's & teachers names: Adam, Brenda, Corey, Daniel, Ms.Edwards, Franky, Gloria, Heather, Irene, Joshua, Kimberly, Luis, Meryl, Mr. Nash, Oliver, Paula, Quentin, Rosalba, Sam (boy), Talia, Umeko, Vincent, William, Xavier, Yolanda and Zoe.

I am a social studies teacher at a high school in Scotsdale, AZ. I was amazed at the reception of the AP class to this book. I studied cultural anthropology and the work we did this summer inspired my best student to think about an anthropology major specializing in religious rituals and ideas surrounding the afterlife.

A fellow teacher told me the author had left a Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley and is now working in business--a Wall Street firm, she said. Pity because if this book is a good testament to his talent, it would be nice if he were still publishing.