Mississippi Books

I reach for this cookbook again and again, as do my friends. I recently hosted a "new recipe" girls night. All of "the girls" were to bring a dish using a recipe they have never tried before, but wanted to. Out of 6 new recipes, four were from this cookbook and they were absolutely devine. I should mention that I made no mention of the cookbook when planning the dinner.

I have prepared many of the recipes, and have loved them all. While some are simple and great for my small family, others are more impressive and just right for entertaining. Truly, this is one of my favorite cookbooks.

In addition to the recipes, the sidebars offer wonderful tips.

This book has all the earmarks of a beautiful "coffee-table" book - it is interesting whether you are a Southerner or not. It is also quite easy to use. As an avid recipe reader, I can always find something here that I have not tried before. It has a "fish guide" in the back that let's you know what types of fish you can substitute in recipes - very helpful! It also gives a new twist on some traditionally great recipes in a style that invites the reader to open up his/her home to guests with ease.

I have tried many recipes in this book and haven't prepared one yet that wasn't delicious. The Tomato Tart, stuffed filet of beef, honey cashew greenbeens...the list goes on! YUMMMMM

I must own over 20 cookbooks and I always come back to this one. Every recipe from this book comes out great! I've given this book to 7 of my friends for Christmas only to find out that they already had one! My favorites include "Tomatoe Tart", "Grilled Asparagus", "Mustard Pork Tenderloin", "Champagne Shrimp", "Walnut Salad", etc... could go on and on. This is a must! Not only has great recipes but the paper and pictures are of the highest quality.

In 11 interviews from 1960 to 2003, Vidal talks about sex, religion, the movies, politics, literature--in short, everything that makes life interesting. Lots of gems scattered throughout. Vidal is America's greatest living man of letters. Not since Edmund Wilson have we had such a great critic, and the two of them along with H.L. Mencken comprise the three great public intellectuals of 20th-century America. Hear America's greatest public intellectual talk in this new volume. The only disappointment you'll feel is when the conversation runs out at the end.

Being more familiar with Vidal the personality than Gore the author, I was fascinated by this series of interviews that took place over decades. He is incredibly bright, witty and insightful. He is also very consistent in his stories from interview to interview. It was a pleasure to read.

As always, Gore Vidal is direct,honest and penetrating in his perceptions of the American and human cultural experience. Who do we have to fill this gap when he is gone?

Gore Vidal is one of America's wittiest and intelligent commentators (besides a first class novelist and essayist). This collection of interviews given between the years 1960 and 2003 are presented chronologically which allows the reader to watch how Vidal's views and opinions develop and shift. Being a collection of interviews many of the anecdotes get to be a bit repetitious. Other than that, the collection covers a wide range of subjects -- American history, the craft of writing, the state of literature, television, movies, and politics of all kinds. And all subjects, Gore Vidal gives a lot of food for thought.

The evolution of one of America's best writers in the last 20 years is on full display in this wonderful book. It is a series of interviews over the course of almost 20 years that give an amazing insight into the process Brown employed to write his stories. The over riding theme for his writing seems to be putting his characters through some extreme difficulties (or "sandbagging" them) and then seeing how they react. He does this , in my opinion , as well as or better than almost any writer working today. So, if you have read all that he wrote before he died, and want more Larry Brown, this book is well worth the read.

I suppose I'm a bit of a Larry Brown nut; I've read most everything he's penned, and this is a nice addition. It tells about how "it" all happened for him. A recommended "page-turner" for any up-and-coming writer.

This collection of interviews with the author throughout his lifetime is a candid look at the man and his methods. Each interview provides a unique look at the poor background Brown came from and how he taught himself to write over seven years. The origins of many of his novels and stort stories are discussed in his humble North Mississippi manner. He tells both stories of his early struggles and the later success and awards that he's received. I've read a lot of books for aspiring authors on the craft of writing and this was the best by far. He just tells it straight. If you're intrested in Larry, Southern Lit or just what it takes to make it as a writer this book is for you.

This collection of interviews was compiled after Larry Brown's untimely death, when he was only in his early 50's. Though Brown has left us with several books, Jay Watson wanted to honor the man behind the words by putting together some insightful interviews. The wonderful thing to read in these interviews is Brown's work ethic when it comes to writing. By his own estimates, when he was 29, Larry Brown decided that he wanted to become a writer and create books.

Rather than simply sit in classes and workshops and discuss writing, Brown, quite simply, wrote. By his estimates, he wrote close to 100 short stories and 5 novels before he wrote anything worth publishing (or, more accurately, before he could get objective enough about his own work to see that he was finally writing fiction that was worth the attention of others).

If you are looking for a collection of philosophy on writing, you aren't going to find it here like you might in Bledsoe's Getting Naked With Harry Crews, but that's because of how Larry Brown was as a writer--he saw the craft of being a writer as exactly that, a craft, and he worked at it regularly and didn't muse upon it for the benefit of wide-eyed newbies and hopefuls (as well as the benefit of his savings account). Brown wrote, and he took that, quite simply, as his livelihood, just the way he took being a fireman and a forklift operator in a stove factory as his livelihood. This book is mostly inspirational in reading about someone with a sound work ethic rather than a postulator on the art of writing.

Not that Brown is short of any gems. A true student of his craft, Brown is able to quote masters like Flannery O'Connor, but is also able to talk about the essence of tragedy and how his writing works out towards tragedy despite his best efforts, for his grandest search is to look for the truth of humans and his characters. A wonderful piece here is an excerpt from the documentary The Rough South of Larry Brown, an interview with Larry Brown and his wife. Here, we get to see another side of the soft-spoken Brown.

This is deifnitely a must-read for any aspiring writer. It may prove a little depressing to see how much Brown had to work before he could write publishable work, but a touch of reality just the same. Larry Brown will be missed.

This book is actually written by my aunt. This book is very good and I'm not just saying that because my aunt wrote it. If you want to know how life was in the south, you should read this book, its very factual and fun to read!!

if you like a book about the bygone years you will love this book. especially about the family. i enjoyed the book so well i hated to see it end.

I am from from MS - yet did not experience some of the details listed in Dancing With Granny. I never worked in or visited any cotton fields but, heard about tough times from some family members. I can relate to most of the language and upbringing that was a way of life for most blacks then. I am thankful to God that times have improved. It is a reminder of what our parents endured and for us to remember where God brough us from.

When I returned home from work Monday, I had a wonderful surprise. My pre-order of "Dancing with Granny" had arrived. I sat down and read it from cover to cover in about 3 hours. It made be cry, laugh, and get mad. The remembrances of the author's "granny" brought back wonderful memories of my Irish and German grandmothers. The picture painted of the author's Granny was very vivid. I,too, am from a large, very close bonded family. I come from the Midwest and so have not ever encountered any prejudice like that encountered by the author and her family in Mississippi, and even up North when the author went to college. It made me angry to believe that people would treat other people that way. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and anxiously await Frankye's next one.

Since the 60s, Earl Hooker has been a mythical figure for me. Over the years I've heard his brilliant slide guitar solos here and there, mostly as an accompanist and eventually on his Blue Thumb vinyl release in 1970. And of course I had read all the superlatives that his musical cohorts liberally expressed in the blues press. But reading Danchin's exhaustively researched tribute has given a whole new life to those recordings. The detailed stories and thorough personnel listings associated with each of Hooker's scant few recording sessions add immeasurably to the enjoyment of my Hooker collection. Danchin does a remarkable job recreating a life using only second-hand info gleaned in the main from dozens of interviews with all those bluesmen and friends who inhabited Hooker's hectic world. My hope is that Danchin will apply his skills to telling the story of another deserving (and still LIVING) blues legend: Little Milton Campbell!

The amazing part about this book is that the author was able to find out so much about Earl Hooker. The guy is a legendary guitar player. If you read interviews with his contemporaries like Buddy Guy or Otis Rush, they will attest to Hooker's greatness. Unfortunately Hooker died thirty years ago and is pretty obscure today. He didn't sing, so he survives on records largely as an accompanist to other people and on albums he recorded under his own name for a wide variety of mostly small and forgotten record labels. Many of his recordings are hard to find today. Surprisingly this author was able to find out about Earl Hooker's life and his world in great detail and in so doing rescue Earl Hooker from disappearing into history. In addition to being amazingly well researched this book is written by a fan of blues music. If you read this book you'll probably want to hear more of Earl Hooker, and that's probably the best compliment I could bestow on the author!

to come to the point--this is one of the best books ever written about a blues artist---it gives a great insight into what the life of this incredible guitarist was really like in the 1950's and 1960's...i laughed a whole lot---this book is very entertaining--earl was just about the greatest guitarist of his time and this book serves to remind those who love him of his greatness and to educate those who have no idea who he was-- if you never even heard of earl hooker, this is still a highly entertaining book about a very entertaining fellow-- the author did a great job of putting together dozens of interviews (done over a period of over 20 years)into a very nice book--its a big book too---lots of pages---some cool photos too- i plan on reading it many more times---two big thumbs up!!-

Earl Hooker was one of the most influential guitarists that ever lived; not just in the blues, but in many different musical styles. His mastery of slide guitar and the wah-wah pedal (many times combining BOTH, thus creating a truly hair-raising sound) are legendary. But sadly, Earl Hooker is all but obscure now, owing to his early death (he died in 1970 at age 39 from tuberculosis), his uneven recording career (he only made 3 "true" albums; he recorded many obscure 45 rpm sides and guest appearances), and even his famous name association (he is half-cousin to the late boogie king John Lee Hooker) didn't seem to help him achieve real stardom; one he so greatly deserved!

As all of the previous reviewers have pointed out, this is an extensively researched book, chock-full of interviews with many of the legends Hooker played with in his seemingly short career (Pinetop Perkins, Big Moose Walker, A.C. Reed, B.B. King), each one giving detailed accounts of Hooker's somewhat eccentric behavior, his lifelong battle with TB, but most of all and importantly, his undeniable guitar prowess. Unfortunately, by the time Hooker began to get noticed for his amazing natural talent and hard work, TB overtook him, causing his untimely death.

This is an excellent book, both for true Earl Hooker fans, and new ones alike. He had so much more to give the world of music, and had he lived, he most certainly would've attained the same success and legendary status as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy and Albert King, just to name a few. Essential reading!

A wonderful book. The author not only lists the values that are dear to his heart, he shares personal experiences that helped to embed those values even deeper into his life. He was closely surrounded by family and friends as a child and they took the opportunity to encourage him to be the best he could be. Thanks for a good book that will encourage the rest of us to be the best we can be also.

Eight Habits of the Heart by Clifton Taulbert is among the most honest books, I've read regarding building our lives. Each of the Habits ring true as I think about my life and the people who lived out these life lessons in front of me. The book is so very practical, Taulbert does not leave us with efforts we can't make happen, instead he points out the extreme value in our everyday acts of goodness and that we can build community wher- ever we are. I find it all the more valuable in that he discovered these truths during the period of legal segregation in our country. If his elders were able to use these Habits to build a community for their children, then I am convinced that we can do likewise. Taulbert does not give the individual an out. This book should be daily reading for people everywhere.

In a country where connectedness to community is becoming more difficult, this book is a gentle reminder of what is was we once had and what it is we should all be trying to build. This book may have been iinitially written to offer hope to other children of color, but cuts across all racial lines.

Clif you are so right "You don't seperate yourself from your faith" I just love your books. I truly like what I'v seen God do in your life through your writting. I'm a Sp.Ed. teacher in Maywood, Il. and I want you to know I've read your books to all of my English classes. Thanks for making a diffrence. Your old class mate.

I bought this book to send to Harry's daughter. I have just recently, for the first time, made contact with her. My husband and I built the house that Harry has occupied for the past 30 years. Harry is less mischievous than he used to be, but we still hear from him from time to time. My husband died recently and I am building a smaller house for myself. However, it is on the same property and I am hoping Harry will move into the new house with me. My daughter-in-law hopes so also as she and my son will be moving into the house I am presently living in. She is a little scared of Harry. However, I am very fond of him.

I know you want an rating of the entire book and not just about my story. For someone who does not really believe in ghosts, I would say that the entire book is very interesting, to say the least.

The key word in the title of this book is "Modern" for the haunts described in this book are all of an ongoing nature. This is not to say that some of these hauntings haven't been going on for quite some time because they have been, but these are not old legends that deal with purported events that no living person has witnessed. Each and every story in this book is backed up by eyewitness testimonials and all of these ghosts were still haunting their chosen haunt. In other words, this is what all ghost books should be like.

The author of this book is herself the owner of a haunted building and is one of those people who never believed in ghosts until she and her husband bought the building in question. Most of the people who appear in this book were just like her and didn't believe until events forced them to change their minds. Many of the witnesses in this book are the sweet little ladies who lead tours through old antebellum homes and are just not the type to make this kind of thing up. On the contrary, I would imagine that they made excuses for the disturbances for a long time before finally having to admit that they might have a ghost on their hands.

This author does an excellent job of giving the reader the history of the location and the haunt itself without going into such detail that she looses the reader's interest. Most of each story deals with recent activity and the eyewitness accounts of the activity. She makes a particularly insightful observation in noting that some phenomena such as phantom footsteps and lights that turn off and on by themselves are common to most haunts whereas the popular idea of rattling chains and weary moans are almost never present. Over many years of reading ghost books I've noticed the same thing.

The photographs taken by the author's husband add to the eerie feel of the book and the author has a very nice writing style. These stories aren't all that scary but they do give you a feel for the haunted location and it's spooks. This would be a terrific book for planning a nice October ghost tour of Mississippi and with this book in hand I may just do that someday.

This is an outstanding book. I was hooked on the first page and couldn't stop reading until I was finished. The photography is every bit as exceptional as the writing. I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever had even the slightest interest in ghosts. If you are from the south it is a must!

A wonderful book -- low key and well written. The stories speak for themselves without author intrusion or fictionalized "oo-wee-spooky" add-ins. The Hubbards obviously enjoyed this project, and it shows. If you want ectoplasm dripping from the walls and bloody apparitions, you won't find them here; but you will meet real ghosts and the people who live with them discussing the subtle, cumulatively unsettling experience of being haunted.

I own 300 or so nonfiction ghost collections, and wrote my own ("Mobile Ghosts, Alabama's Haunted Port City.")I've sent an awful lot of ghost books on to the library, but this is one I enjoy rereading, and have it on the "keeper" shelf. --Elizabeth Parker

Healing Katrina was a powerful look into the reality of volunteering. Timothy's musings and thoughts - not always full of smiles and laughter, but always with real emotions - positions the post-Katrina atmosphere in a new light. Anyone who plans on volunteering in the Delta, or who is thinking about volunteering and is filled with excitement, should read Healing Katrina. By the conclusion, you have a look into the ups and downs, the ebb and flow, of volunteering and of giving your best in a situation that at times has no best to show you. I continue to recommend this book to anyone who wants to volunteer in our post-Katrina world.

Alexis Dobbins

Tim Warneka in his book, Healing Katrina, shares his detailed, personal, and compassionate experience, as an American Red Cross Volunteer, in the after math of the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. Healing Katrina gives a very interesting and fresh look into the `behind the scenes' responsibilities of the volunteers and mental health care professionals assigned to the American Red Cross base in Mississippi.

Extremely insightful and very informative, Tim Warneka has written an excellent resource book. A must read for those who have a heart to help others in crises.

Marsha Johnson is the author of Emerald's Garden How to grieve, mourn, and recover from loss. [...]

With the Mississippi Coast reeling from the catastrophe destruction of Hurricane Katrina, Tim Warneka, a clinical counselor from Ohio, volunteers with the American Red Cross. Through his on-site journaling and afterthoughts, he gives emotional insight into his experiences while serving in that devastated area. Tim does not write through the eyes of the clinical counselor that he is, but as one human being to another. The unnamed faces of the Mississippi Gulf Coast become real people who lost everything and are struggling to come to grips with the upheavals of Katrina.
Tim openly shares how the emotional impact of the volunteering spills over into all aspects of the volunteer's life once the mission is completed. For Tim, he gains a new understanding in the post-traumatic symptoms of combat veterans.
This is not a book to be read for enjoyment. Use this book to gain insight into the emotional impact of volunteering during recovery and reconstruction after such natural disasters as hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, etc.

In "Healing Katrina" Tim Warneka records his first-hand experience as a volunteer mental health professional with the American Red Cross. Tim was deployed to Mississippi in the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The book is a compilation of Journal entries, blogs, photographs and commentary covering the two week period of Tim's assignment. Warneka is publishing this work in an effort to raise the awareness level of the American people to the extensive damage and devastation caused by these catastrophic storms.

In the final chapter of the book Tim makes this observation: "Words simply fail to describe the enormity of the destruction caused by the 2005 hurricane season...property damage suffered in the billions of dollars. The psychological, financial, emotional and physical scars will be with us for years to come."

Tim is a true motivator. I found myself wanting to start blogging, and to reestablish my journal writing. I also felt moved to explore the possibility of applying for training with the Red Cross in preparation for the next National or local emergency.

"Healing Katrina" is a book that should be on the reading list of our representatives in Washington, for community service organizations, and for concerned citizens. It is a wake up call to the importance of disaster preparedness and world relief.

Toward the end of his 1971 conversation with Richard Meryman, easily the best interview in this collection, Bergman says that "to make a film is to try to open up the roof--so we can breathe" (p. 112). This is as good a one-line characterization of Bergman's project as I know. Bergman's films defy easy analysis, sometimes because they're poorly conceived, as Bergman himself admits (he thinks, for example, that "Through a Glass Darkly" is a prime example), sometimes because even Bergman in retrospect isn't quite sure what he was trying to do, but sometimes because there's simply a great deal of depth to them. How, for example, to collapse the message of loneliness, despair, human nature, and hope conveyed in "The Silence" into a couple of sentences? But what Bergman at his best does succeed in doing is expanding us, opening up the roofs of our worldviews, inviting us--sometimes forcing us--to breathe in an atmosphere that's crisp and thin and heady.

Readers who pick up Raphael Shargel's collection of Bergman interviews in the hope that the master will explain what his films are about will be disappointed. Bergman tells us that he wants to elicit emotional experiences first and cerebral ones second in his films; that dreams have influenced his scripts and his director's eye; that he works best when his days are rigorously scheduled; that he thinks a film is "selected reality" (p. 106), which reminds me of Tarkovksy's beautiful characterization of film-making as "sculpting time"; that he thinks a certain "childishness"--a naivete, an openness to experience--is essential for good art. But what Bergman doesn't do, appropriately enough, is tell us how to interpret his films. So in many ways, his intervews are as mysterious as his artworks.

The interviews collected by Shargel vary in quality. As I've mentioned, Richard Meryman's is the best of the lot, closely followed by A. Alvarez's. The "Playboy" interview conducted by Cynthia Grenier is worse than worthless, and seems intent on focusing on little else than sex in "The Silence" (the interview was conducted shortly after the film's American debut). There are numerous typos in the text. "Feeling" is consistently spelled "felling," for example, and at one point Bergman is referred to as the "15 year old creator of 'The Silence'"! The only other book I've read by the University of Mississippi Press was also poorly proofed. Strange that an academic press is so careless in its copyediting.

Shargel's collection is a decent starting point for readers new to Bergman, but better ones include Bergman's memoirs, The Magic Lantern (2007) and Images (1995). Jesse Kalin's The Films of Ingmar Bergman (2003) is highly recommended for serious students.

This collection of interviews with Ingmar Bergman gives the reader almost a definitive view of not only the great director's vision, but of his constantly evolving artistry. As a teacher, I found the discussions of individual films invaluable.

No film critic could have approached Bergman with such passionate understanding and insight as Raphael Shargel. Following his film reviews in The New Leader for years, I am not surprised by his far reaching ability to grasp a life's work as he does his movies, always interested in their impact on society and us as individuals as well as the history that produced them in our time. When you get to it, your understanding of Bergman and appreciation for the value of interviews across a lifetime will be as rich as this book's index.

I'm a big fan of Bergman, and I was thrilled to see these interviews come back into print. They tell you so much about Bergman's life, films, and his personal opinions. Organized chronologically, this book reveals a development of Bergman both as an artist and as a person. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about Bergman's genius or film in general. The introduction offers terrific insight into the mind of an artist.

The first question that jumped into my mind on reading the title to this book was wondering just who Ott was and why I should care. This short book is the biography of Arthur C. Guyton. Don't know that name? Neither did I. However, the author is such a skilled writer that the book keeps the reader's interest despite reading the life story of someone they probably never heard of. Actually Arthur C. Guyton was quite a remarkable man and serves as an inspiration to all who would learn of him through this book. In some circles his is a common name as he invented the electric wheelchair, became known as the Father of Modern Cardiovascular Physiology, and fathered ten doctors. Written in short chapters and at a middle school level this would make an excellent book for school assignment or as an inspirational text. Inventing Ott is highly recommended as an interesting biographical text and a fine example of how biographical texts should be written.

Reviewed by Susan Pettrone Reader Views (8/06)

"Arthur C. Guyton never thought of himself as extraordinary. Maybe that's what made him so special". And so begins this book on the far from ordinary life, dreams and inventions of the man, known simply as Ott. Written by Jerusha Bosarge and published by Quail Ridge Press, within this book lays the story of a man who proved that great things can be accomplished by combining need with imagination.

At first glance this book seems pretty elementary; man accomplishes great things despite a handicap. Most would say that this is a story that has been told a hundred times over. And it has. But this book has something more. Perhaps it is the personal touch of the stories of Ott's childhood, or maybe it is the captivating pictures included within its pages. Whatever it might be, it transforms this book from what could easily be a "ho hum" biography, into a book that clearly illustrates just how one man overcame obstacles, not to help just himself, but others as well.

Throughout the reading of "Inventing Ott", I was reminded of "Character Education" curriculum widely taught in schools today, and how Ott's story provides great examples of traits in this program. "Inventing Ott" clearly illustrates traits such as: Trustworthiness: Ott proved himself to be invaluable and trustworthy while working as a lens refractor in his father's eye clinic. Responsibility: although Ott was burdened by his own physical limitations, he still felt a responsibility, by meeting "needs" with his inventions. Respect: Ott helped many to learn respect, not only for those who had physical limitations, but he helped those with the limitations to find self respect as well. Fairness and Caring: caring was why Ott invented devices to help others, and with regard to fairness, Ott refused to make money off the suffering of others, preferring instead only to meet the needs of others.

This book, written for young readers, would be an excellent addition to any classroom. In fact, with the problems many pre-teens and teens have today with self confidence and self esteem, "Inventing Ott" is a book that could easily pave the way for discussions on these subjects. The fact that physical limitations did little to stop Ott and his dreams of making life easier for others would make wonderful classroom material on the subject of perseverance, especially with an emphasis on "the only limitations we really have within our lives, are those which we put upon ourselves."

I was honestly impressed and humbled by this story of Ott. His character shone through from the first page through his death and beyond. He reminded me of my father, who despite all the `curve balls' his health has thrown him in the last few years, refuses to give up and stop living. Like Ott, he is an independent man who is always thinking of ways to help others and like Ott he serves others for the single purpose of "filling a need", with little or no fan fare for his accomplishments.

In my opinion, this book should be front and center of all Junior High classrooms, libraries, counselor's offices and homes. For within its pages, the reader finds not just the story of a man who overcame physical limitations, but the story of a man of great character and integrity as well. And great stories that touch the soul and teach at the same time are very rare indeed. Stories such as "Inventing Ott", inspire and encourage today's youth to follow a dream despite limitations that may seem insurmountable and provide hope to all who read them. And we all know how precious "hope" is in this today's uncertain world.

I've read many biographies in my lifetime, but I can't remember reading any more enjoyable than Inventing Ott. The book tells of a boy growing to manhood with a particular type of optimism. His optimism in the face of such trouble is awe inspiring. Dr. Guyton's life story will inspire young people to be all that he or she can be. The author has done her research. The science is correct and easy to understand. The individual personal stories are so much fun and add interest to the biography. I especially enjoyed the pictures. They helped pull the stories together and gave the man and his life more meaning. I bought several copies to give to both adults and children in my life. I recommend this book highly, and would like to read more by this author.

My daughter and I both loved this book! That's really saying something, because my 12-yr-old avoids reading unless required to... that is, she avoids reading fiction. Something she does like to read is magazine articles about real people, so, I wondered if she would enjoy biographies. I chose Inventing Ott because I love inspirational stories, those that highlight the role adversity plays in the success of many people, and because "Ott" accomplished most of his work from a wheelchair (my 12-yr-old is also confined to a chair). I am also interested in stories set in my home state of Mississippi. Well, turns out it was an excellent choice! Jerusha Bosarge writes in such a relaxed and fun style that you forget you are learning! Somehow, even the scientific content is readable and enjoyable. Ms. Bosarge does an excellent job of conveying information accurately to kids without "talking down" to them and without boring them to tears. I would be willing to buy anything written by this author. She really is unique in her ability to teach "painlessly".