Tempo Books

I loved this series in middle school and would highly recommend it as a fun leisure read for children in that age bracket.

The last book of the enchanted forest chronicles, it is as funny. It is a sequel to Calling on Dragons and the end of the story is a happily ever after for a lot of characters and a not so happy ending for others. It is a book that should not be missed.

My daughters often read the four books from the Enchanted Forest series by Patricia C. Wrede. They came across the books a couple years back. They seem to check out the books and audio tapes every couple months. Over the last year I have listened to bits and pieces of the series.

Talking to Dragons is was the first book published, but it is really the fourth in the series. The hero of the story is a 16 year old boy by the name of Daystar. For the first 16 years of his life he lived on the edge of the Enchanted Forest with his mother. Then one day his mother gives him a sword and sends him out into Enchanted Forest. His mother tells him he has a mission, but won't tell him what the mission is.

Fairly quickly Daystar bumps into a fire-witch. They are both in trouble with wizards, and decide to stick together. Daystar was taught to always be polite to dragons. They come across a young dragon. Daystar is very polite and the dragon joins the group. Near the end of the book Daystar finally figures out his mission and helps save the day.

This is a fun book. It moves along well. I stayed up till midnight to finish it. If your children like fantasy, you might have them try this book.

Talking To Dragons Jane Yolen Books,
Patricia C. Wrede ISBN 0-15-284247-0

Talking to Dragons is a great book about kings, princes, princesses, dragons, and wizards by Patricia C. Wrede. It takes place in Enchanted Forest. The narrator of the book is the main character, Daystar.
One day Daystar's mom tells him to go on a quest that he knows nothing about. He started out on a quest and meets new creatures and people, some of them become his companions and some his enemies.
His companions, a young fire witch named Shiara and a young dragon, become really good friends with him. They help him on his quest. After a while he started to figure out that the sword his mom gave him was important because everybody wanted it. People called it "The Sword of the Sleeping King." All he knew is that he needed to go through a cave to be where he was supposed to.
At the end he found the Sleeping King and everybody was reunited. I recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy and also a happy ending. I recommend reading the first three books Dealing With Dragons, Searching For Dragons and Calling for Dragons.

PR28

All the Enchanted Forest Chronicles are so much fun! Definitely at my top of Harry Potter fan recommendations. They're just such an amusing read; I even teach with them. Don't forget to read "The Frying Pan of Doom."

I first read this book when I was about 12. I loved it then and I still adore it now. It is considered YA, but is intelligent and endearing enough that adults should enjoy it as well. There is a very good reason that this book is a Newbery honor book! It transports you thoroughly into it's time and place with loving attention to detail. A wonderful read!

I didn't find this book all that special. The style seemed stilted and awkward. Characters seemed emotionally flat and I didn't buy the romance in the story. Not a bad read, but half way through I was ready for the book to end.

One of the things I like about this book is that it manages to retain an archaic feeling without sounding fake (you know, the type of dialogue that sounds like a bunch of college students roleplaying). Pope's choice of using modern language for the dialogue doesn't spoil the setting at all, whereas trying to force readers to jump back and forth between Elizabethan dialogue and modern narration could be annoying, e.g. Patricia Wrede's version of "Snow White and Rose Red".

Overall, Pope's characters are really well fleshed out, and she's also a master at describing atmosphere. The supernatural terror that Kate is subjected to in the underground halls kept me up at night for a while after both times I read this.

I didn't know the plot of "The Perilous Gard" was related to an actual legend till I stumbled across the name "Tam Lin" elsewhere on the Internet. Now I'm fascinated...

This book is beautiful. The proud elves! The historical drama! Probably the best theory for where elves/fairies came from, oh, and the answer will suprise you!
This books haunts you in that though there are mystical, magical elements in this story when you done reading you have to admit that it really COULD have happened. This book made me cry, I love it when books have the power to make you feel that much emotion. Do yourself a favour and read the book!

The Perilous Gard

The Sherwood Ring

The Perilous Gard is a book I still reread as an adult. The Sherwood Ring is good also. I just wish that Ms. Pope had written MORE.

The Perilous Gard is a wonderful rainy afternoon book. The characters seem real and the Elizabethan England that is described seems real and charming but none too easy to live in.

The best part of the story is the characterizations of the fairies themselves. Not the fluttery, glittery creatures beloved of Walt Disney, but a real, proud alien race at one with nature. The queen particularly is both admirable and cruel, pitiless and pitiable.

This book was a joy to read. My daughter read it to her 3 oldest daughter's, a chapter at a time. They could hardly wait for "reading time" and begged for more at the end of each chapter. The life lesson in this book is so valuable. I am pleased that I have my own personal copy.

I loved this book when I was a girl. Now, reading it to my four children, I get quite emotional when I realize how much I was impacted by this story. It really did partially make me into the mother and home-educator I am today. It amazes me how deeply the wisdom of this book sunk into me. Everyone who homeschools their children should read this - for themselves and for their children.

This is a wonderful story for girls. Read it aloud, savor it, laugh and even cry over it.Whatever you do, though, just get it! You'll be glad you did.

I had never heard of this book until it was listed in the AmblesideOnline curriculum. We checked it out and my girls fell in love with it. I finally bought them their own copy and they treasure it. We read it again, and now they argue over who owns it, and who gets to keep it for their own children.
Great read!

Understood Betsy" was one of my favorite books from childhood and I was happy to see that it was available from Amazon. Even though it was first published in 1917, it is very contemporary in it's message about the importance of gaining self-esteem through accomplishment. In this day and age when parents tend to hover and worry over every small concern, this book show how Betsy, when sent to a farm to live, became a very confident and happy child due to the adults in her life who let her stretch her wings. Many of the ways in which these adults gave her a new life are very subtle but moving. Highly recommended for mid-elementary girls.

This novel is great. I have loved it since I was a little boy. My father read it to me and my brothers every night for a few months. And when he finished, I read it again.
When I pick it up now I am filled with fond memories of those months. And I must say that this book is one of my favorites.

I, with all due respect, disagree with one of the other reviewers who reviewed this item and said it was not for kids. This is the perfect book for kids, and is perfect to read aloud. The drama is engrossing, but is not too intense for youngsters. It is the perfect dog book.
A dog-lover myself, I have read a great many dog books. And this tops the list. Never before or since has an author captured so poignantly the affection between a boy and his dog. And never before or since has an author tried that affection with so many difficulties and set-backs. But, as we all know, in the end Lassie is there to greet Joe by the school gate. It's in the best three endings I've ever read (the other two being TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and A TALE OF TWO CITIES).

This is a classic, and it's one of my favorites. I honestly cannot even begin to understand why a person would give this book anything but five stars. HIGHLY recommended.

Everything runs smoothly in the Carraclough household when Lassie, their wonderful Collie, is around. But when desperate times takes desperate measures... it minuses Lassie out of the family. While everything is going hay-wire in the Carraclough home, the Collie is on a thousand-mile trek to get back with her family again. Lassie will come across many unbearable situations and obstacles, but the calling to get home overrides anything she may run into.

I loved everything about this book! The dedication of the homebound dog, to the quaint villages of England and Scotland, and all the characters within... I savored every word! It is one of my all time favorite books, and I'd recommend it to any dog or book lover!

Other than the language being like in ancient times, "Thy, thee" this book was excellent and a good savory book. It is not a fast read though.

Still an interesting, emotion-provoking and relevant read for the 21st century's jaded youth. It's about the most basic kind of friendship and loyalty, where an animal exhibits more of both than do the humans. Some of the Depression-era references and rigid class distinctions probably aren't as relevant today, but the core of the book, the love of and for an animal, remains. Highly recommended.

Why has it taken me so long to read this excellent book! It is not just a "children's" book. One of the best books I have read in a long time!

I got a copy of this in a second-hand store when I was a kid and I've practically read the covers off. Absolutely magical. I have never read a better imagining of the Cinderella story.

you can not give this book enough stars. this book brings cinderella to the next level very tastefully. thank you to the author for this teenage level.

The book is very good story. The author has done a very good job of telling the story. I have readed this book since 6th grade and now I'm first year in college. I have enjoy this book every time I read it. I recommend it to every one.

I found it! Like one of the other reviewers, I read this book, and re-read it and re-read it, in Elementary school and loved it! The internet and places like Amazon.com have been a god-send for finding those treasures of childhood I thought I'd never see again. This remains to this day my very favorite version of the Cinderella story. Well worth the read no matter how old you are!

Like Robin Grunder's (New York, New York March 1999) review I just saw on this page, I had read this book (from my church library, no less!) when I was about 10-12 years old. I fell in love with it, and it left a marked impression upon me. Sort of "Cinderella at a whole 'nother level." But as a teenager I could not find the book anywhere. As a young adult, I would revert back to childhood books in times of stress (Madeleine L'Engle, Carolyne Keene) and looked for Eleanor's "Glass Slipper" many times to no avail. Then, in my late 30's, when Internet searching became all the rage, I one evening put the title in a search engine and VIOLA! There were several used (collectible) hardback copies available through Amazon.com! ... but I have my used 'library' copy and I'm ecstatic. I'll pass this on to my child's children, who will hopefully love reading as much as I do.

this book was made into a movie by stanley kubrick that won 4 academy awards. it relates the amazing adventures of the most dishonest man in history, redmond barry. it chronicles his unlikely rise to the top and subsequent comeuppance. he is fond of fighting, lying and ripping people off. despite his love of dishonesty and treachery, and his total lack of compassion for other people, he sees himself as a good person because he only hit his wife when he was drunk, at least for the first three years of their marriage.

Having seen the movie "Barry Lyndon" by Stanley Kubrick years ago, I was taken aback by this book which is so markedly different than the 1975 film. In the book, Lord Bullingdon is actually the hero, where Kubrick presented him merely as a cowardly cad. Redmond Barry (later as Barry Lyndon)deserves all the evils that befall him and his first person narrative is quite humorous especially when blaming everyone for his own shortcomings. Unfortunately, the ending leaves one a bit unsatisfied, quite like the dismal end of Mr. Lyndon himself. This novel is not on the level of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", but fun to read nonetheless.

When one is about to take the big plunge and give oneself the trouble of making what is always -in our age of lighter reading, of course - the strenuous effort of reading a XIXth. Century novelist, one - at least me - must make the following question: What was this author's particular attitude, as a man (or woman) of the most bourgeois of all centuries, towards his/her preceding century, the most aristocratic and un-bourgeois XVIIIth. Century? If s/he scorns the XVIIIth. Century, or is indifferent to it, it's quite likely that the author in question is a bourgeois philistine regarding Victorian times as the undisputed acme of human civilization. If s/he is an admirer, than s/he is obviously starting out of a clear sense of alienation from his/her own society, and one should expect at least for this XIXth. Century _avis rara_, genuine sense of humor. Thackeray was one of such Victorians who realized the philisteism of his own society;Eça de Queiroz, his Portuguese disciple (who seems to have learned a lot from reading him) was another. Therefore: Read this book, QED.

Having seen the movie "Barry Lyndon" by Stanley Kubrick years ago, I was taken aback by this book which is so markedly different than the 1975 film. In the book, Lord Bullingdon is actually the hero, where Kubrick presented him merely as a cowardly cad. Redmond Barry (later as Barry Lyndon)deserves all the evils that befall him and his first person narrative is quite humorous especially when blaming everyone for his own shortcomings. Unfortunately, the ending leaves one a bit unsatisfied, quite like the dismal end of Mr. Lyndon himself. This novel is not on the level of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", but fun to read nonetheless.

Here, in this relatively obscure work, Thackeray is at his ironic and satiric best. Modern critics lightly dismiss the book as a piece of journalistic hack work, but it is much more than that. Redmond Barry, later Barry Lyndon, chronicles in a fairly sophistocated and always lighthearted manner his rise from a poor Irish country boy to the astral heights of polite English society from 1750-1820. Mr. Barry is always Machievellian in his way, and is quick and efficient with his sword. He is Odysseus, Holden Caulfield, Don Juan, and Nabokov's Humbert Humbert merged. In a word, he is very, very entertaining and very, very good. The book's only glaring flaw is it's belabored and uninspired ending. But it is much worth reading to watch Redmond Barry when young

Friday's Tunnel was written by John Verney (1913-1993), an artist, author and former member of the SAS/SBS in WW2 and published in 1959. The book is set in the 1950's and despite being written as a children's book, it brings back the political atmosphere of the 1950s, when the arms race between the two great superpowers, America and the USSR, dominated a world in which Britain, losing face over Suez, Cyprus and its African colonies, could not believe it had lost its power in the world. It's a charming and now rather dated book in which children say things like, "You're in a proper pickle", "Gosh, what a spiv!" and "I think it's simply lousy!". All the grown-ups smoke cigarettes and you can spot an Old Harrovian in the station car park because of his scarf. Similar in some ways to the "world of yesteryear" charms of Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series of childrens books.

Similarly to Arthur Ransome' or bits and pieces of C.S Lewis' children's books in other ways, the book depicts a world where upper-class, bohemian English children live in large, rambling houses, and can find clues in Virgil and Who's Who. And although it is very definitely a post-Suez novel, even the Left-wing characters do not exactly contradict the view of the lead "evil" character, that "the British are the only race fit to wield absolute power". Which of course, used to be correct (hey, I like Rudyard Kipling too...). Kind of makes you wonder what happened to the education system over the last fifty years doesn't it. How many schoolkids today have even heard of Virgil, much less read him?

On to the book itself. The villain of Friday's Tunnel is a Tory (that's the British Conservative Party for you non-Brits) peer called Lord Sprockett. He was an MP, and during the war (WW2), he has made money out of many unscrupulous schemes. The narrator of the book, a 13-year-old girl, asks her liberal American mother why her Daddy, a Left-leaning journalist, so hates Lord Sprockett. She is told: "Daddy disapproves of people who go on and on making money just for the sake of the power it gives them. He thinks rich men should create something with their wealth like Lord Nuffield; or buy pictures and build wonderful houses like the Lord Querbury he once wrote a book about." In other words, Sprockett isn't really a gentleman. Indeed he isn't. The reader soon finds out that his grandmother was a domestic servant, and he descends from the gipsy-like folk who live in caravans on the Sussex Downs and who themselves descend from the brigands of a Mediterranean island called Capria.

The éminence grise from the Ministry of Defence who comes to help sort out the central mystery of the story remains convinced that for all his villainy, "Lord Sprockett" is basically a Tory. First, "in spite of fame and fortune and properties in Shropshire and Capria, and his yacht and his millions, he'd always longed some day to buy up the scene of those humiliating early struggles in the pantry". Second, he isn't "simply out to make an astronomic fortune\u2026 he believes passionately that the British are the only race fit to wield absolute power".

Spies discover that on the island of Capria there exists a substance called caprium, which makes the H-bomb seem mild. In order to get hold of it, the Americans start the rumour that there has been a dangerous coup on the island, which justifies their intervention. Gus Callender, the father of our narrator and the Lefty journalist (and former MP) who hates Lord Sprockett, is one of the few Englishmen who really knows the island. He writes an article to show that the Russians and Americans are escalating the crisis for their own ends. Meanwhile, someone - the wicked Lord Sprockett? - has been exporting the deadly explosive caprium and hiding it in empty packing-cases in a disused canal tunnel under the Sussex Downs.

It's a marvelous, if somewhat dated, book for children. The charming illustrations are by the author himself - he was an artist first and a writer second. As well as writing and illustrating his own books, he did drawings for the books of Gillian Avery and Anthony Buckeridge. During WW2, he was parachuted into Sardinia for the SAS (he was a member of the WW2 SAS's Special Boat Squadron) in 1943, and it was this experience which inspired both this story and his memoirs Going to the Wars (1955) and A Dinner of Herbs. He also wrote a number of other children's book. Sadly, Friday's Tunnel is probably too politically and socially incorrect to be reissued as a children's book today. However, it's very readable and a good read for all that. Probably a better read for kids than most of the "children's" books on the market today. For one thing, it assumes children are intelligent and have a good command of the English language, it's certainly not "dumbed down" like so many kids books are today.

I discovered Friday's Tunnel by accident in a charity shop, and loved it. I don't understand why John Verney's books haven't been reprinted - they're really imaginative without being patronizing to children. I am having a lot of difficulty getting hold of the others second hand, as the few copies I've found are very expensive, but they are DEFINITELY worth getting hold of, and treasuring for the rest of your life! Please get this book, so another person will be aware of the brilliance of this now little-known author! - I don't mean to sound so manic, but I really do love his books.

I just found this in a used book store and thought it was an excellent story. I lent it to my severely depressed brother and he enjoyed it too.

As a child I thrilled to the zany, fascinating, intelligent adventures of the Callendar family. The writing is witty and clever, the characters fabulous, the plotlines better than we can find for our kids today. Why on earth don't they come back into print?

This has been one of my favorite books for a quarter-century. I re-read it and its sequels (FEBRUARY'S ROAD, ISMO, SAMSON'S HOARD) regularly--they have complex, fascinating plots and interesting characters, plus delightful illustrations!I think FRIDAY'S TUNNEL is the best.

"Agent of Vega" isn't so much a single book as a series of short stories that are all loosely connected - a person mentioned in one story is featured in the next and so on. They all are about the Galactic Zone Agents of the Vegan Federation. These stories have not lost their freshness despite this book originally having been published 47 years ago. Fans of good, old-fashioned science fiction will love James Schmitz!

The previous reviewer is slightly off base. This not a series of "Tansy" (Telzey?) stories. It is a separate series about a classified military/police unit set in the same universe (more or less) as the Telzey Amberdeen stories. There are four excellent stories here, each about a different agent/situation. All four are worth your time. These stories are aimed at a slightly more sophisticated audience than the "Telzey" stories. I highly recommend this book.

The previous reviewer is slightly off base. This not a series of "Tansy" (Telzey?) stories. It is a separate series about a classified military/police unit set in the same universe (more or less) as the Telzey Amberdeen stories. There are four excellent stories here, each about a different agent/situation. All four are worth your time. These stories are aimed at a slightly more sophisticated audience than the "Telzey" stories. I highly recommend this book.

James Schmitz was in his best form for these exciting Tansy stories. He accurately predicted, 40 years ago, microchip devices and communications technology - but the settings are not the usual dry hacker-filled distopia so common these days, quite the reverse. Schmitz puts his beautiful heroine in settings with weird aliens, and strange planets. A really good read.

This one is an excelent book, makes itself clear on every repair and mainteinance task. It worths from cover to back cover.

the book is great, I bought the book,and left it on the table, when i got back, my wife had the car in pieces, and starting to put it back together, she fixed it, and I didnt have to get greasy,

...It's VERY worthwhile buying seeing that it tells you EVERYTHING about your car, and how to repair them inc. sensors, brakes, lights, replacing transmission gears, head gaskets ect...

It's the only book you need. I have one for my Sunbird, Topaz GS, Topaz L and my 2001 Malibu LS

The music just flows like an endless river and is useful for prayer time or for meditation. When I use it for these purposes, I feel myself lifted by the continuous flow of piano music. This has been one of the best recent investments I've made.

A feast for the spirit! A beautiful lullaby for the inner child in all of us. Certainly, a loving reminder that "...wherever we are,God IS... and all is well!" Thank you,Coco,for allowing yourself to be a co-creator with God!

Inner Time, Inner Temo is great for helping me wind down at bedtime. It allows me to get relaxed and prepared for a good night's sleep. I recommend it to anyone having trouble gearing down. It will do the trick.