Stations Books

These are so much fun to do together, and it is a great time to elaborate on things your child doesn't know. WE LOVE BRAINQUEST!!!

I love all the Brain Quest! My kids love them and ask me to read them questions at bed time! Great way to conect with your kids. Recomend with way high up two thumbs!!
Caring Mom on the Coast

My daughter loves reading this on car rides. We keep her current and next grade level decks in the car, within her reach. They are great educational items that can stay in the car and provide a learning experience when they would otherwise be bored.

My son loved the Q&A format of these cards and we exchanged "high fives" every time he got a "genius point." The cards include a good mix of super easy questions to more challenging ones--all targeted for a specific age level. It would be a stretch to call this game "educational" but the back and forth interaction between quizzer and quizzee provides great family fun. This works very well as a game to pass time in the car or on the airplane.

We have been using Brain Quest cards since the 2 to 3 year old pack. They provide a great way to introduce information to your child such as the difference between urban and suburban. They are portable so you can bring them along with you and use them to pass the time. I find that they give us a chance for one on one that is education and at times very funny.

I have never heard of Brain Quest, but decided to buy as stocking stuffers, thanks to Amazon's suggestion and other user reviews. They are a real hit with the kids, who have a blast asking each other knowledge questions to test their skills!

Our boys love all the Brain Quest products. Parents will appreciate the design of this product - All question cards are attached at the bottom, so it is very easy to collect the cards and return them to the box. Anyone who has searched throughout a house or car for missing game pieces will understand the value of this "neat" game.

My kids read this in car and during weekends, and learn so much. I have a collection of Brain Quest.

I bought these for our oldest son who was starting 4th grade. He can't get enough of them. The cards are also great for the car. We recently took a 4 hr. trip and the kids loved being quizzed. My husband and I also participate, because there are a few things you forget over the years! They really are a wonderful way for kids to learn in a fun way. I previously bought the 2nd grade ones and now also bought the kindergarten cards for our 2nd son. I will definately be buying each set through the years!

My kids love Brain Quest and we have used it for each of them from K through 4 so far. There are 1500 questions and answers. The questions are age appropriate and are challenging but are no so difficult as to discourage children. My son will pick up "the deck" (this book is really a stack of cardboard quiz card bound at one corner) and quiz himself for fun. What he didn't know before he might now. I highly recommend this educational tool.

The voice of Ollie Ewing in Sudden Times is haunting, terrifying. With morbid curiosity and creeping anxiety,the reader follows Ollie's dark journey and witnesses his psychological disintegration.

This is not a novel that I would recommend because I "liked" it; it is a novel that is uniquely constructed and well deserving of recognition. Take a risk. Lock your door. Read Sudden Times....

Meet Ollie Ewin, the young Irish carpenter who narrates this book. Ollie is a troubled lad, who has hallucinations during the day and cannot sleep because of his nightmares. We first meet him as a lowly clerk in a supermarket and are made part of the terrifying past that haunts him. But the details are never spelled out and one can only guess at the outlines. Then Ollie goes to London and the whole story congeals and unfolds. Ollie blames himself for some of the terrible things that happened that time in London while he is unable to understand the others. He is caught in a swamp of vicious crime and it slowly drowns him. The story escalates until it ends in a nasty persiflage of justice.

First of all, the author shows courage in starting a book with events that make little sense, trusting that the reader will not give up on him. Secondly, he shows incredible imagination in placing us into the tortured soul of this young man and succeeding in making us feel it. And, in addition, the language is superb.

This is a must-read!

Dermot Healy is amazingly talented. I have now read three books by him - 'The Bend for Home', 'Sudden Times' and 'A Goats Song' (still my favorite of the three). Each time I read him, I am stunned by how, well - perfect - his writing is. His characters tend to have lost thier minds (madness, drink, drugs,or some combination), and the line between what's 'real' in the novel and what the character is hallucinating is never clear. Why do they go about things the way they do? Well, because people do... Like many of Angela Carter's creations, Healy's characters are appealing and attractive, yet at the same time annoying and almost repulsive... In the end, the reader is offered no explanation of what went on - if the character himself doesn't know, how can he explain it to US? He told it to us the best he knew how, anyway. The books have some very undefineable beauty to them. I don't understand why Dermot Healy is not more widely recognised than he is.

One of the best books I have read this year is Jeffrey Lent's "In the Fall". So when I read the appraisal of this Author's work not only by Mr. Jeffrey Lent, but Roddy Doyle, and others, I thought the chance I was taking on an Author new to me was minimal. The man who wrote this book, Mr. Dermot Healy, has produced a work that will be on any short list of favorites from 2000 I will have. This book is unique and unconventional it is extraordinary. Some of the commercial commentators felt the need to go beyond what the jacket provides, and into events in the book. That decision was unnecessary, but thankfully it in no way detracts from the book. There are no simple explanations for this work, and were the story line known to you, because of the way Mr. Healy delivers his tale, little would be lost. This is a book that can be read and read again.

The book is written in the first person and that is about the only conventional aspect of it. The book is laid out in an eclectic manner. Actually it is presented in a bewildering pattern less structure that initially left me lost. Going back and reading a passage again does not help, because the subject of the book is lost, and the Author puts to paper the thoughts of what a person in the various frames of mind this individual goes through, would look like were thoughts visible. Once you get in step with the Author and his character everything makes sense, what seemed random is not, what was seemingly fragmented becomes perfectly assembled. This book does not say what it is like to feel a certain emotion; it causes the reader to feel as though he or she was experiencing the events themselves. The feeling when the book is read goes beyond the vicarious to something more akin to immersion.

The Author then demonstrates how masterfully and with what range he can craft language, how versatile he is, when, toward the end he lays down courtroom conflict between defense counsel and witnesses that is as well done as any such exchanges I have read. The dialogue is sharp, terse, and delivered in a hyperactive exchange. The Author demonstrates with ease what so many crime story pretenders struggle to produce and generally fail.

The book is brilliant, the Author a writer of incredible range, and he offers a reading experience you will not forget, and one that you will be hard pressed to repeat.

Stunning in its raw power, this novel, unlike many other Irish novels, draws its power from its simplicity, rather than from lush description or the accumulation of details. Stripping language to the bare bones here, Dermot Healy draws the reader, without embellishment, directly into the confused mind of the main character, a carpenter named Ollie Ewing.

Ollie has just returned to Sligo, almost mute with shock from unspoken, terrible events which have befallen him while in London, where he has been working as a day laborer on construction sites. The narrative shifts back and forth in time and location, revealing Ollie's paranoia through flashbacks, brief scenes, and dialogue, which sometimes seem to have no context other than their revelation of his suffering. He is clearly trying to hang on to his sanity--and is only marginally successful--as he talks to the reader in quiet, almost confessional tones. Using unadorned, simple language, he describes things he sees that are not there and voices that no one else can hear. Never wasting a word, his earnest narrative forces the reader to share his thoughts while interpreting his state of mind.

Gradually, the reader learns of Ollie's almost paralyzing experiences in London, where he lived with a friend, Marty Kilgallon, in a trailer at an old construction site. Through Marty, Ollie learns firsthand about the protection rackets and extortion on construction sites, the common use of murder as a weapon of enforcement, and the unsympathetic judicial system. When his friend disappears and does not return for six weeks, Ollie gets caught in a whirlwind of violence and learns the true meaning of hell.

By the time he returns to Sligo, he has come to believe that there is a "glass sprinkler" machine, operating at night, which sprinkles glass over the streets of London, that the flecks in people's eyes are aliens, and that his own image in a mirror is someone imitating him. Though Healy's style is often difficult to follow, as the reader tries to piece together the events that are responsible for Ollie's current state of mind, Healy's use of detail is stunning. Casually inserted, bizarre observations about common aspects of life help create Ollie's inner life and illustrate his existential helplessness. The essential unfairness life, the power of chance, and Ollie's victimization catch the reader in a whirlwind of emotions, and his plaintive voice, crying out from all this, is unforgettable. Mary Whipple

Scathing, deeply poetic rant of obssessive love forced into obssessive hate. Deep and lasting, based on the author's actual experiences.

this book is my bible and comfort, its a shame it is so often overlooked

Simply breathtaking - a unique account in magical prose poetry of all consuming love, which you will return to again and again. Almost too painfully visceral at times, snapshots of sheer beauty leap out of the page as you ride the non-stop vertical drop on the rollercoaster of their relationship - not for the faint or hard hearted.

In this incredible piece of prosaic poetry, Smart tells the story of the greatest love affair of her life. This book literally rips you from the passionate highs of ecstatic love to the agonizing lows of a love that has ended. Born into the high society, this is Smart's account of her great love for the poet George Barker, and told as powerfully as any love story that I have ever read

This book is the source to all of your questions regarding Construction Management. This is a "must buy" all the way! The teachings of this book are valid and mandatory for all Builders, Sub Contractors, and General Contractors. If you want to do things right and boost your potential, than read this book.

I purchased this book for my son. He said it was very helpful and very informative. It tells you exactly what you need to know.

Upon graduation from Georgia Tech's building construction program in 1982, I went to work for Nick Ganaway. One of the many reasons I selected his company was his obvious knowledge of business. Even more, I appreciated the motivation he placed in us (and himself) to always become better as contractors and as businessmen. We met frequently to "log in" new discoveries, efficiencies, risks, and methods of profitability that he had wisely accumulated for us. As I "ventured out" into the world and developed my own business with very little experience, I quickly noticed that although I was a "great" project manager that running a construction company was an entirely different issue. For example, do you understand the unique requirements of the construction firm owner? Terms in the project owner's construction agreement that can unfairly shift major risk onto your plate and what to do about them? How to ensure that you get paid for change orders? What to do when hard times suddenly strike (and they will)? After 25 years of experience in operating a commercial construction company, Mr. Ganaway explains chapter-by-chapter these and every other risk area you must manage if you are going to survive in construction. I know these explanations well as they ring in my mind from discussions with Mr. Ganaway concerning my very first projects and through calling for help with running my own construction business. You will feel like you're having these same discussions with him as you read this book. Every contractor, project manager, and construction student should read it. Today I use this very text to teach our students at Georgia Tech's building construction program how to run a business, as well as consulting in the same area. His principles work!

An added bonus to this text is the final chapter, where Mr. Ganaway makes the case for specializing in chain store construction. To "outsiders" who have not reviewed this market segment, I think you will be surprised at the benefits. If you are not already specializing in a niche market, this chapter is sure to start you thinking about it.

This is the first straightforward, down-to-earth book on how to run a construction business that I have come across. A realistic account of what it takes to start an enterprise and what it's like to be a contractor. Anyone contemplating starting their own construction company should read this before attempting it and every contractor already working at it should study Nick's work to learn how to do it better and to realize that they are not alone when they discover just how challenging and difficult the struggle for success can be. Everyone associated with the construction industry should read this book to gain an understanding of how the business really works.



Thomas, C. Schleifer, Ph.D.

Visiting Eminent Scholar
Del E. Webb School of Construction
Arizona State University

Author, Construction Contractors' Survival Guide

If you are a person that is just starting out in the Construction industry, this book can help guide you in the right direction. Many mistakes that I have made in the past 10 years are covered in these pages. I wish I would have had this book back then. It would have made our company grow and prosper without the glitches. I highly recommend this book.

I got a good number of well received children craft ideas from this book for 4th through 6th grade kids, which were the level 3 crafts. The level 1 & 2 crafts are too simple for this age range of kids, but should be fine for K through 3rd grade kids. I also got several other very good craft ideas from Ms. Henry's other book, "Kids Art Works."

All that is needed are these three items, and you can make the cutest crafts! Because of the easy supply list, we use this book so much more often than other books that you might not have the needed supplies on hand for. This one we keep right in the kitchen and the children can make things whenever they like! we just got it for Christmas and have already made lots of the projects! and there is room to be creative - just using the ideas as examples and taking it from there.

For the last several years my summer school has included art every day for students whose ages range from 6-13. This book has an excellent selection of art projects that are appropriate for all these ages. Everything is made using construction paper, scissors and glue, which are readily available in the school supply room, are inexpensive and easy to work with. The projects turn out bright and colorful. My class has just completed a lively mural of a pond habitat after making fun frogs, fish, turtles and other aquatic creatures and plants, using ideas from the book.

I love the instructions and lay-out of the book. The steps and resulting project are clearly shown in large drawings with minimal text, so it just takes a few minutes to read through each project.

Some of the projects feature geometrical designs and patterns, which allow substantial room for creativity, some fold and curve paper to make them three dimensional. There is a good variety of themes including animals, seasons, nature, a still life, a robot, and a couple of cultural items. Although I haven't done it yet, the Panamanian mola looks like it will turn out stunning.

If I want to stick to using paper, glue and scissors for my art classes, this book will give us plenty of fun and attractive projects to do for several weeks. Parents will also find it a great source for young artists at home.

Cut-Paper Play is an excellent collection of over 80 kid-approved construction paper creations for children ages 4 to 10. The projects are grouped by 3 different skill and difficulty levels. A variety of techniques is shown. All you need is different kinds of paper or cardboard, scissors, glue, sometimes yarn or a stapler. So the crafts are inexpensive, but very amazing. Two- and three-dimensional projects, mobiles and seasonal projects are shown. We got inspiration for many more paper projects for the future!

This book provided hours of fun for my four-year-old. We were pleased that we always had simple household items and paper to complete the projects.This book can be used as ajumping off point to many other creative projects.

This is a nice book to help keep the kids busy over summertime.
So far it looks like it will do the trick for us.

This is a great resource for parents to help kids keep their knowledge and skills fresh over the summer between grades. Kids complete just 2 worksheets each day for 10 weeks -- it's just enough to keep them up to speed and doesn't take a lot of time for kids to do or parents to supervise.

I of course have not purchased this 4th to 5th grade as my daughter is going to the 5th Grade, but I have used the 3rd to 4th and it is wonderful. I had previously purchased for my local Boys & Girls Club other grade levels and they are just great! Many parents loved to have their children working on these while still having fun! Highly recommended!

The Daily Summer Activities books are fantastic! They are layed out so nice. There is a page each for Monday - Friday with a little bit of everything for each day (a little math, spelling, reading, thinking skills, ...). Just the right amount so kids don't forget what they've learned over the summer, but not too much - so its hard to complain about.

I have used the third to fourth grade and the fourth to fifth grade books with my girls. The pages are colorful and fun. The work is mostly simple review. Just enough to keep their brains working over the summer. My girls enjoyed doing the activities, too. All subjects are incorporated into these books. We think they are fabulous!

I love these books. It is really helping my toddler to understand what not to do.

My 28 month old loves the books in this series, and we have unfortunately needed them. He related to the pictures of the injured and offended, and it has really helped his behavior. This one focuses a lot more on what feet should do, more so than the Teeth Are Not For Biting does with the teeth, which is good and bad.

Great book if your toddler has been kicking lately. Teaches good behavior as well as phrases that you can use to stop bad behavior. Highly recommend this book.
Beth

Bought this for my one twin who likes to kick. I think he is getting the point :-)

We bought this book for our 19-month-old daughter when she hit and bit another child at school. At the time, she used to kick me when I changed her diaper, and her daycare had a copy of this book, so I bought it, along with "Hands Are Not For Hitting" and "Teeth are Not For Biting."

All three books are great. They are very simple, straightforward, with pictures and language toddlers can understand. The repetitive phrases like "Ouch, Kicking Hurts," and "Feet are not for kicking people," are phrases my daughter has remembered, and that we have adopted in our house in the event that she hits or kicks, as many kids this age tend to do from time-to-time.

Our daughter just turned two and still loves to read these books and has retained the lessons therein. It's a great series.

Side Note: The "Hands Are Not For Hitting" that we ordered here from Amazon is NOT a board book, and it's language is a little more advanced for a very young toddler, but you can "customize" the language and your little one will still love it!

For most presses, East European studies is a dying breed, consigned to the periphery by Europe's metamorphoses and other global challenges. However, Granville (history, Stanford Univ.) examines an event that retains stinging memories almost 50 years later--the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The author explored archives accessible only after the Cold War, and had extraordinary cooperation from archivists in Moscow, Budapest, and elsewhere. Kadar, Nagy, Rakosi, Tito, Khrushchev, Eisenhower, Dulles, and other personalities, as well as arcane communist and democratic bureaucracies, are revealed through countless archival fragments. Granville is at her best telling the interwoven story of 1956. Ultimately, Granville's analysis leads to a no-fault conclusion, suggesting that misperceptions and misconceptions among all actors led to the disastrous outcome. Recommended for graduate students and above.-- D.N. Nelson, University of New Haven

Johanna Granville is one of the most industrious and talented of the scholars who have seized upon new archival opportunities to deepen our understanding of the Cold War. For _The First Domino_, the author has scoured archives in Europe and the United States in an effort to find out how the principal actors arrived at decisions regarding the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Matters, as she writes, were not as simple as they once appeared. Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders bad difficulty, for example, deciding whether or not to suppress the uprising by force. In fact, they voted not to intervene one day (October 28)before they ordered decisive military action (October 31). Some of what she has uncovered is already known: that Imre Nagy denounced some of his countrymen during his years in Soviet Russia (1930-44) and that he did not invite the initial Soviet invasion of October 23-24. But thanks to Granville's linguistic abilities, she has shed new light on the seemingly inexplicable conduct of Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka and Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito. Moreover, she has helped to clarify Janos Kadar's decision to betray Nagy and the revolution. In a particularly compelling chapter, Granville examines the role the United States played before and during the revolution. She concludes that the Eisenhower Administration's talk of "rollback" and "liberation," when combined with U.S. intelligence operations and psychological warfare, may have led Soviet leaders to fear a U.S. intervention and, thus, to opt for a harder line. Above all, however, Granville reminds us of historical contingency. Those who have studied the revolution have sometimes taken the view that Hungarians and Soviets acted out of necessity. Granville herself thinks that given Hungarians' historic detestation of Russia and communism, revolution was bound to erupt; and Nagy's "trial and probably ... execution were inevitable." She should have written "were very likely," because elsewhere she observes that if the Soviets had removed Stalinist dictator Matyas Rakosi sooner, there might not have been a revolution; and that had there been no Polish crisis of October 19-20, Budapest's students might not have demonstrated on October 23. "No event," she wisely concludes, "is ever predestined; individuals can make rational choices to change the course of history at any given moment." ---Lee Congdon, Professor of History, James Madison University._History: Review of New Books_ (Summer 2004),v 32, i4: p 147.

Dr. Granville's book is without question a first-rate, well-researched monograph. She uses Hungarian documents that even Hungarians have not read, sometimes presenting them in dialogue form (Chapter 3). The books reads like a novel in some places. (...)

This long-awaited review of archival records dealing with the Hungarian uprising of 1956 is destined to appear on numerous Cold War historians' bibliographies. It is a meticulously researched study, a grand example of erudite scholarship in its truest sense. Dr. Granville's examination of declassified documents is exhaustively and exhaustingly thorough.

Johanna Granville's The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 (...), a pioneering work on East European Cold War history, confirms that when President Eisenhower had his chance to redeem the Republican campaign pledge to "roll back" the Soviet occupation of Hungary, he failed and thus perpetuated that occupation for three more decades.
This is a remarkable study of Cold War history because the author, at home in Russian and other languages, has availed herself of recently opened Soviet and other archives to describe how Hungary became the first "domino" in a process that "resulted ultimately in the Soviet Union's loss of hegemony over Eastern Europe in 1989."
The Hungarian revolt resulted in more than 2,000 deaths and the flight of over 200,000 refugees to the West. It is worth noting that a far smaller group of earlier Hungarian refugees, who fled to America from a Nazi-endangered Europe, helped build the first atomic bomb during World War II.
Chapter 6 of "The First Domino" is the most fascinating, since it explores U.S. psychological warfare and covert activities in Eastern Europe during the 1950s, including broadcasts by Radio Free Europe.---Washington Times, March 21, 2004 by Arnold Beichman, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Cord is an imperial marine in trouble. When you insult the wrong officer, you get assigned to Gehenna Station, a remote outpost on a barren mining planet. Lieutenant Cord's new "platoon," six marines and a droid, have a suicide assignment. They must battle the planet's raptor population. The fast-moving dinosaurs, introduced to the planet via pirated genetic material, kill marines. Assignment to the "Punishment Platoon" may well be a death sentence!

The bad news gets worse. The murderous Quog, an alien race that competes with humans for the resources of the universe, have plans for the planet. How can Cord's platoon stop the Quog when they can barely stay alive themselves?

J.R. Hume's science fiction tale is a fast-moving romp. Dinosaurs! Marines! Aliens! The pulp elements are great fun. But the author holds the story together with serious notions, weaving subtext and action seamlessly. At its heart, Gehenna Station is a story of men-at-arms. The characterizations go beyond the genre's clichés. The dialogue is funny and irreverent. The author's vivid sense of action punctuates the pages. And watch for the author's clever use of a card game ("Scrag Solitaire") to weave a sense of fate and theosophy into the narrative.

If you enjoy a good adventure with great characters you'll like Gehenna Station. Lots of fast paced action with great attention to detail. The evolution of the planet and it's resident life forms are very well done. I could identify with the characters and can imagine both pre-quels and especially sequels to this story. A great read.

A fun, action packed, story of mistreated Marines who nontheless uphold the traditions of the Corps. It was easy to identify with the characters and I found the raptor encounters very exciting. Hope to see more from this author!

For me (and I've read quite a few sci fi novels) this story was an exciting, edge-of-my-seat, page-turner. The whole story moves along at a brisk pace without any uncomfortable lulls.

Despite the rapid pace of the unfolding events, the author did a wonderful job of fleshing out the main characters and I became very fond of all of them. It therefore really bummed me out when some of them met unfortunate ends. Any author who can make you care about the characters has done his job in my book.

Something else the author did very well was get all the little details right--or at least make the sci-fi details believable. Whether it was the plant descriptions or animal behaviors; or the functioning of power modules and field generators in shuttle craft; or the situation-specific marine jargon, it all rang true to my ear. Too often, I'll be reading a sci-fi novel and be pulled out of the moment because the author fumbled a detail, but that never happened in this book.

I'm just sorry there isn't a follow-up to this novel since I really enjoy the characters and the hair-raising situations they get into. There certainly seems to be the potential for a long-running series of adventures with this now battle-hardened crew of outcasts.

I must admit that I am not a big Sci-fi fan. My interests lean towards WWII history. But after reading this book, I know I will be picking up more sci-fi! The storyline really keeps you motivated to keep on reading! I would recommend this book to anyone! Can't wait until JR Hume publishes more books!