Brooks Books

Katie is traveling west to find her only living relative, her uncle. The trip is long and hard, but as long as Katie has the Mustang, it seems as though she will be fine in the end.
The treacherous trip started when she heard her caretaker, Mr. Stevens, and his wife were going west without her and the Mustang. Katie was going to be left in the hands of another caretaker and Mr. Stevens left the orders for the Mustang to be shot.
I loved this book. Any horse crazy girl would. The book is the second in the trilogy. It is suspenseful and even though Katie is a mere character, it seems as though you were traveling west with Katie and her Mustang.
Kathleen Duey has written many other horse stories and all the ones I have read are awesome. She comes highly recommended on my list.

-Gracie Eakin

I ordered this book and received it promptly and in excellent condition.

Young Katie, orphaned in an epidemic, is taken in by Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, a childless couple. But then she learned that they planned to kill the mustang horse she had befriended and take her to an orphanage in St. Louis. With the help of Hiram, the farmhand, Katie is able to escape the Stevenses and take the mustang with her. Hiram, who has no family of his own, feels he must protect Katie and offers to take her on the long journey west so she can live with her relatives in Oregon. But just the journey to Independence, Missouri -- the starting-off point for the Oregon Trail -- is difficult and dangerous, and the mustang still doesn't trust Katie fully.

Young readers who enjoy historical fiction will be sure to enjoy this series for its setting, and fans of horse stories will love Katie's bond with the mustang. A sweet story that I highly recommend to young readers.

I finished this book in one day, and found it to be incredibly engrossing and educational. It reminded me a lot of The American Girl Books, which showcase real girls in a historical setting. That is the same purpose with the Hoofbeats series. Set on an Iowa farm is the laste 1800's, the book paints a very vivid picture of life for Katie, a 9 year old girl recently orphaned. I would recommend this book strongly to anyone with a daughter who loves horses, history, and reading altogether. This made for a very enjoyable afternoon!

The year is 1847, and nine-year-old orphan Katie Rose is ecstatic when Mr. Stevens brings home a wild Mustang, for it's the first bit of happiness she's felt since an epidemic wiped out her family three years ago, causing her to be forced to live with the evil Mr. and Mrs. Stevens. Katie finds herself drawn to the Mustang, and realizes that he trusts her to a certain extent, and even lets her work with him. Soon, Katie and the Mustang have a strong bond with each other. Then comes the news. Mr. Stevens plans on following the Oregon trail, which is perfect for Katie, for she will be able to find her Uncle. But then she finds out that Mr. Stevens plans on sending her to an orphanage and killing the Mustang before they leave. Now Katie and the Mustang, with the help of a ranch hand named Hiram, have decided to runaway, and escape their terrible fate before it's too late.

Kathleen Duey has created an extremely enjoyable new series for fans of historical fiction, and horse lovers. Her characters are kind, and intriguing, and paint a wonderful picture of what growing up in the year 1847 was like. Katie is a sweet character, whom readers will feel an instant bond with, and readers will feel the same way towards the Mustang. Filled with wonderful descriptions and adventures, this is a book that cannot be missed.

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

This unique booklet reminds me of the "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" story, that is, you can read it in an hour, and decide it is trite, or, you can reread it, and allow its images to provoke you to thought.

The digits one through seven take on new meanings when you read this special little story. For example, the title, "The Voice, the Mind and the Traveler," and the digit three -- Voice, Mind and Spirit -- both resonate for me, and echo a Roman Catholic background with the beauty of the trinity. Although this is not a religious book, it is very spiritual, and will lead you to self inspection, by the numbers!

"The Voice, The Mind and The Traveler" is a feel good story that is easy for all ages to read. It guides the reader to challenge the depths of life events and delve into ways of dealing with situations as they arise. It is simply a charming story which gives relief to our complicated lives.

This book will awaken your senses with simple, yet profound wisdom. As he writes straight from the heart in a stream of consciousness, Chopra provides the reader with line after line of indispensable wisdom that will help you achieve peace and happiness in your everyday life. "The Voice, the Mind, and the Traveler" is an intimate, down-to-earth book that gives a refreshing perspective on our purpose as human beings on this planet.

"The Voice, the Mind and the Traveler," is an innovative look at how to confront the obstacles in your life and achieve happiness. Based off the metaphor of the brook, you will feel like you are traveling alongside Ann in her quest for knowledge and fulfillment. Chopra has included bits of advice and wisdom he has learned in his own journey to help others in their quest for happiness.
After reading the book, you will feel ready to face your own obstacles that life throws at you, employing the seven tactics to achieve happiness. They really work! And the secrets apply to all aspects of your life. Unveil your desires and get ready to embark on your own quest for happiness, beginning with this book.

"The Voice, the Mind and the Traveler" is an enchanting story which teaches as well as entertains you. Chopra shows you the secrets to true happiness which you can implement into everyday life. You will learn something new everytime you read this book (and you will want to read it many times!)

Hi! I am also one of Andrew Fraknoi's former students and we used this book in our class. It's awesome! It is very well written and he makes it very easy to understand everything about the planets and the Universe. He is also an awesome teacher so if you have the opportunity to take one of his ASTRO classes at Foothill College-you should take it!

I'm one of Andrew Fraknoi's student at Foothill and this book is as excellent as his lectures there. It's simply, however, in-depth written book with several new fantastic pictures. It should be a part of every home library

Simple, yet fairly in-depth, and has lots of good pictures to help illustrate the concepts. Easy enough reading for the budding astronomer to use, but also provides detailed information useful for more complicated research. Everthing from focal length to electron emission!

This book is great if you want to get a feel for all the different astronomical objects, what they are and how it all fits together.  I like the way the authors start with the Earth and then move on to the other planets, the stars, galaxies, clusters and eventually to Relativity and the Big Bang, without digging too much into the details.  It's a thought-provoking book and I recommend it to anyone who is eager to get into the field.

If you have any interest in Astronomy, this is a must have book for an introduction to the subject. It is a non-mathematical introduction to the subject and is extremely well written. The book was intended for a non-major science subject in college, but even if you are not attending a class on the subject, this is still a great book to learn from.

I personally don't have the hard cover edition but I have the paper back edition. I plan to purchase the hard cover edition when I have the money for it. I can expand a little on the subject matter of the paperback edition, which I'm sure is simply a stripped down version of the hard cover book. It covers the history of astronomy to the latest theories in the field. Such topics as gravity, planets, the Sun, stars, thermo-nuclear fusion, black holes and quasars are explained in a easy to digest manner. I found the topic of how thermo-nuclear fusion especially facinating as I always wondered how stars (like our sun) generated it's energy, I knew it was fusion but did not understand how it functioned, all was made clear to me.

There are also plenty of visual aides and pictures in book. A large majority of images are directly from Hubble Space Telescope that will leave you breathless at the beauty and vastness of space. The book also directs you to websites that will expand on the material covered in the book. Great stuff!

Fraknoi, Morrison and Wolff have done a tremendous job in writing this book. Kudos to the authors for taking to the time to do it right.

A cool, clever and thoughtful book that will have your kids insisting they find all the letters to make a word about emotions. Now how cool is that? Not a typical supermarket checkout line concept book. The sophisticated artwork manages to avoid the usual forced cliches of making faces with letters. And by having the reader focus on words and spelling and emotions there is so much that can be gotton out of this seemingly simple work. I disagree with some reviews claiming it has no repeat value. On the contrary. If your kid is bored with this book after one go, get him to watch less TV.

Walter was worried, alright, he had all 7 letters of the word "worried" pasted on his face! Well, that's not quite right either. Actually, walter grew worried "when the sky grew dark," and imaginative illustrator, Laura Seeger, uses the letters in his and others' emotions make facial features. Take Shirley, for example, who was "SHOCKED when lightning lit the sky." A sideways "C" and "D" are her eyes, within which we see her pupils: A capital "e" and "i." That big "O" in "shocked makes up her very shocked-looking mouth, and the remaining S and K are writ small upon her forehead as raised eyebrows.

The format consists of the person's name and emotion (including Priscilla who was puzzled, and Frederick who was frightened), and a facing page (pun intended) showing the letters of the emotion upon the person's face. Following this is a two-page spread illustrating the storm event that elicited the child's reaction. The faces are drawn fairly flat to emphasize the location of the letters, and the drawings of nature are dramatic compositions (gouache and cut-outs, perhaps) with lots of texture, and combination of bold primary colors, with seeping, slightly psychedelic background tints.

You have to give Seeger credit for managing to write a credible and interesting story around these phoneme faces. Happy children replace the frightened ones as the storm passes. For example, there's Delilah. She's the girl with the L-shaped nose who was "DELIGHTED when the rain turned to snow."
Turn the page, and you see big cut-out snowflakes against a marbleized background of blues, greens, and purples. There's also Henry, who's "HOPEFUL when the sky began to clear." Here, a somewhat more conventional picture shows 3 black birds flying against a milky-clouded sky. Still, the main story here is the pictures. Seeger's narrative, although making a nice cycle from storm to clear, is (not surprising) fairly simple. The faces and letter placement seem perfect for classroom art/reading projects. The book may inspire similar work at home, especially on a stormy, emotion-packed day.

Now this is a cool book... Not like any picture book I have ever seen before... A mixture of beautiful fine art, great graphic design, and kid-friendly story. Children will love the "search and find" aspect of this book and, what I love the most, is that it has done something so very rare in kid's books... It has encouraged children to talk about their feelings.. (My kids, at least)...
Totally recommended...

I am in sixth grade and we were studying picture books in my class because we are studying which books we think are most educational for younger kids. Each student brought in their favorite book from home and one of my friends brought in this one. We were all told to list the reasons why we thought each book was good or bad and this one was the favorite of every one in my class because it can be used in so many ways. you can learn your letters and search and find them and you can talk about your feelings too. Then I was surprised because my art teacher decided that we should all make our own pictures like the ones in this book so it became a great art project too. I am a big fan of this book. I love the artwork the most.

The artwork in this book is fun and interesting (described well by others on this page) but my children (almost 4 and 6) didn't really enjoy it very much the third time we read it through.

I think the problem is that while it was fun to see how the letters were used in drawing the faces, there just wasn't anything like a story to engage them.

Three Stars. Worth taking a look at the library, but there was no long term holding power (at least for my children) because of the lack of story.

Text follows so you can judge reading/read aloud potential for yourself.

Walter was worried when
the sky grew dark.
Priscilla was puzzled when
the fog rolled in.

Thanks for the book. It was in great shape, and at a good price.

This book offers practical stratagies to getting started and staying focused. I would definetly resommend it for beginners!

A surprisingly enjoyable and easy read for anyone starting a thesis or dissertation! Given the subject, it is really fun.

This book is an oustanding resource for graduate students working on their dissertations or theses as well as for faculty who supervise research. My students have told me repeatedly that this book has greatly helped them in the research process. It is well-written, concepts are clearly explained, and the examples are invaluable. As a Professor, I have recommended this book to almost every doctoral student I meet and have actually given it as a gift to all my students in their first year of graduate school. I most highly recommend it to faculty and students alike. I think it would be especially useful and relevant for a graduate research course.

My dissertation chair recommended this book because it was written by authors highly involved in APA and gives examples relevant to psych students, who inevitably have to figure out how to deal with all those articles they read and review. I found the book comprehensive and extremely helpful. It breaks down each section of the dissertation and walks you through it, then gives a "quiz" at the end of each chapter that will be very helpful when revising that first draft. I would also recommend "Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day" as a moral support companion text. It isn't specifically for psych, but it's great if you're scared to write or angry about having to write. Best of luck to my fellow ABD's!

"Airball: My Life in Briefs," is about Kirby Nickel, a 7th grader who lives with his grandmother and has never seen his mom or dad. Kirby is the Captain of his 7th grade basketball team, and the book tells the story about Kirby and his team as they go through their season with the hope of visiting their hero Brent McGrew. Kirby wants to meet Brent because he thinks that Brent is his dad.
The book starts out at basketball practice and the coach announces that if they have a good season that he will take them to see Brent McGrew when he gets his jersey retired at the University of Kansas. Brent is a famous NBA basketball player who played in Kirby's town when he was younger. Everyone is excited about possibly seeing Brent McGrew, but they are not sure if they will be able to because the team has not been good since Brent McGrew played there. Kirby's coach also was not sure that they would be able to win, so he came up with a plan to have them practice in their underwear.
That week the coach orders uniforms, but he doesn't give it to the team. Instead he makes them practice in their underwear until they get better at basketball and they become a team. They start to play better so for their first game, the coach gives them really nice uniforms. Kirby and his team like the uniforms, but they don't play very well. At halftime, Kirby said that they don't deserve to wear the uniforms so they take their uniforms off and play in their underwear for the second half. In the second half, they come back and win the game so they decide to wear underwear as their uniform for the rest of the season and they win all of their games without their uniforms.
During the season, Kirby finds some clues that Brent McGrew may be his Dad. In Kirby's attic, he found a Brent McGrew jersey, a medal, and a picture of his mom and Brent dancing. He also realized that he and Brent had the same birth mark. So, at the end of the season, when they meet Brent McGrew, Kirby gives him an envelope with all of the clues showing that Brent might be his dad. Brent said that he wasn't the guy in the picture, but the coach took a look at the pictures and said that they were pictures of him. He then realized that he was Kirby's dad. They were happy after that and the book ended with Kirby and his team scrimmaging again Brent McGrew.
I recommend this book to other kids my age because I like basketball and it was funny.

This book was great it kept me wondering what was going to happen next, and If you like basketball you will love the book Air Ball my life's in briefs.

The book Air ball my life's in briefs is about a boy named Kirby Nickel, who grew up in a basketball loving city, but the thing is he didn't really like it. Kirby thinks that the Kansas City star Brett McGrew is his father. Kirby and his friend Bragger find evidence to prove it. They go through so much trouble trying to find out the truth. Kirby had to try out for the basketball team, and his friend Bragger voted him for team captain, and Kirby couldn't turn it down. But the only way he could meet Brett McGrew was he had to be the leader of the team. Kirby didn't want to be captain for the fact that he didn't know one thing about basketball, and he didn't want to deal with the coach. At the end of the book you will never guess who his dad is.

This book is hilarious! I laughed so hard I thought I was going to wake the entire house. And, every time I stopped, I turned the page and laughed again.

Poor Kirby! Kirby loves basketball as much as everyone in his basketball-crazy Kansas town. The problem? He isn't very good. But, he must make the team and have a winning season if he wants a chance to go to Allen Fieldhouse to participate when KU retires the jersey of Stuckey's own future-NBA-Hall-of-Famer, Brett McGrew.

Kirby thinks McGrew is his dad and it's Kirby's and only chance to meet him. But, first--he and the rest of the seventh grade team must live through the coach's extreme coaching tactics: Stealth Uniforms. Yes, they're playing in their undies!

If you've ever experienced life in a small town that revolves around youth or college sports--a town where the youth sport IS their "professional" team, you'll appreciate this book. Mix in the coach's new uniforms (Emperor's New Clothes-style), a boy who risk just about anything (including the humiliation of playing basketball in his underwear) to meet his long-lost father, a trouble-making cousin who helps Kirby become captain of the team, the thrill of victory and some harmless nosing around to find proof that McGrew is his dad and you have a recipe for a great afternoon of rural basketball reading fun!

A clean, fun book for anyone who can read at the middle grade level or higher. No profanity or sexual content that I recall--just boys parading around in their briefs! A great fall, back-to-school read!

This book is delightful. I chuckled, grinned, laughed out loud, and empathized with each character in turn. Kirby Nickel is a seventh grader who lives in Stuckey Kansas, population 334, a basketball crazy town. Kirby is clumsy and nerdy, shunned by jocks, terrified of his P.E. coach, an orphan raised by his grandmother. He's the self-described worst basketball player ever. Stuckey is the hometown of Kansas
University hero and NBA icon Brett McGrew. Stuckey has not had a winning season since McGrew was in school and Coach Mike Armstrong is determined this year will end that losing streak. Most boys in Stuckey dream of basketball scholarships, playing for Kansas University, then heading off to the NBA like their hero, McGrew. Kirby dreams of riding the bench with cool confidence, of injuries to keep him off the team, and of locating a father who disappeared before he was born. He believes Brett McGrew is his father. But will McGrew
reject him? Kirby knows too well that sometimes the thing you want the most in the world doesn't want you back.

K.U. is retiring McGrew's jersey and invites the 7th grade team from Stuckey to participate. Kirby's team members are seriously bad players. To boost their confidence and enhance
team spirit, Coach Armstrong presents the boys with invisible "stealth uniforms". In other words, they practice in their underwear. To Kirby's surprise, he's elected team captain, a position he takes seriously. The boys improve dramatically while practicing in their underwear. They learn to function as a team, thanks to Kirby's influence and the stealth uniforms.

The characters in Airball are perfection, presented with humor and compassion as each learns the value of teamwork, friendship, equality, and hope while playing skivvy basketball. Kirby is an appealing character. Coach Armstrong is a strong role model who sympathizes with the team because he has his own secret dreams and disappointments. And Kirby's teammates are typical boys longing for acceptance and striving to excel. Airball is perfection and highly recommended.

A well written book for children with illustrations of expressive cats.

Author of "Hobo Finds A Home"

All Around Cats is a short book filled with illustrations of cats engaged in common cat activities. Whether stalking, jumping, prowling, sneaking, or napping they are just all around cats. The illustrations point out the wide variety of features among cats including various colors, tail shapes, and fur types. All Around Cats is a good choice for children learning to read, and especially so if they love cats.

Whether they're fat, or thin, black or white, there are cats all around. Spying through windows, bothering dogs, playing with toys, and more. Dolly Viscardi's wonderful rhyming prose will capture everyone's attention, and the glorious illustrations by David Brooks accompanying each rhyme couldn't be more darling. Whether you're a cat lover or not, you MUST have this book!

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

What a charming book! The text and illustrations perfectly complement each other.

Reeview of Almost Unseen by George Elliott Clarke in The Halifax Herald, Sunday, January 28, 2001.

Swede is a haiku sculptor . . . honing in on only what he needs to report. . . . a splendid voyeurism of the natural. . . . moments of profound silence . . . . His lyrics are fine, delicate, dextrous, distilled breaths of being.

An anonymous review of Almost Unseen in Frogpond (Journal of the Haiku Society of America), 2001, Volume XXIV, Number 1, p. 78.

A major collection of the haiku of one of our most significant poets. You'll find all the poems you expect here, and some less expected as well.

A review of Almost Unseen by Robert Spiess in Modern Haiku, Fall 2000, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, pp. 102-103.

George Swede of Canada is a worldwide household name for persons who are involved with haiku. . . . A "you can't go wrong with this one" book.

A review of Almost Unseen by Caroline Gourlay in Blithe Spirit: Journal of the British Haiku Society, December 2000, Volume 10, No. 4, pp. 54-55.

Of the better known haiku poets. George Swede is probably the one whose haiku are most instantly recognisable. He has made the study of human behaviour his own territory, exploring its complexities and contradictions with subtlety and sensitivity in some truly memorable poems. . . . George Swede is never dull. Why is he so compelling and entertaining? Partly, no doubt, because his haiku tell us about ourselves (and we're all interested in how we tick) but mainly because he does it with a skill that gets to the heart of the matter without superfluous words.

The book was band new just like the seller said and arrived in a timely manner. I would buy from this seller again.

I used this book in my introductory level computer science course. I found this book to be an essential tool in my early undersanding of how computer works in general and more importantly how to develop working algorithms. This book is well designed and easy to read and easy to understand. This book comes with a CD ROM. I believe this is the key feature to this book. On the CD ROM there are emulators of various computer operations. (eg. Compiler tree breakdown, and many other emulators. An Excellent book!

Deckers gives you a concise tour of computer science. Not enough to turn you into a programmer, given the space limitations of the book. But he covers many key ideas in the field. Including Usenet, email, virtual communities [think Second Life], and the World Wide Web. Naturally, he has to explain HTML, as the graphical language of the Web. HTML is so simple that he essentially explains all its important points. Including the crucial hyperlink tag.

The book then segues naturally from HTML to XML. Where you can now write your own tags. Immensely flexible and popular.

It is only after this, that the book goes into the traditional topics of computer science. The explanations of what makes a programming language. He uses JavaScript as one example of such a language. So you learn about constructs like for loops, if-else and while statements.

The book is really dominated by the Web. The pedagogy stresses this.

This book is one of the two texts in FSU's COP 3502: "Introduction to Computer Science" course (a required course in their Computer Science degree). As the authors state in the preface, they "wanted to design a 'CS 0' course that was a true survey course." They did an excellent job. Basically, they start with the assumption that the reader has never turned on a computer in his life and take him through its history, how to use it, what programming is about, and how the hardware works. They even teach a bit of HTML and JavaScript. There's very little I can say that is bad about the book. It comes down to some typgraphical errors, an incorrect web address for the online portion of the book (easily figured out from the page their web address takes you to), and my belief that they took out too many steps in describing computer switches, gates, and circuits. Frankly, I'm amazed that they reasonably went from a neophyte level to a fully-grounded level in one book. I rate it as 5 stars out of 5.

I remember reading this book when I was a kid (I got it from a book club) and laughing out loud hysterically. I still remember it as one of the best books I read as a child, and something made me think of it and look it up more than 30 years later. I think I may buy it again for another go-round!

I loved this book when I was twelve (the same age as Andrew). It is chock full of verisimilitude and I loved the style, which is conversational without being hackneyed.

When in my twenties, I read Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye." A few pages into it, I said "HEY!" Holden Caulfield's voice is almost exactly the same as Andrew Kellogg's. Barbara Brooks Wallace cannot convince me she was not inspired by Salinger.

Barbra Brooks Wallace has written a book for youth that brings home what it is like to grow up unappreciated and lonely in a new community. Andrew, the book's hero, moves with his family to Washington DC and immediately begins facing all of the troubles a boy in junior high must face: the fears that go along with being the "new kid," bullies, loneliness, a big brother with no time for him unless he is bossing him around, and a kid sister he finds himself having to take care of. Top it off with a mother who has to go away for a while, and it is a wonder Andrew doesn't go crazy! Blessed with smarts and a wry sense of humor, however, Andrew rises to the challenges (even when he doesn't want to) and truly becomes the "big deal."

This book brings back memories of my childhood. It's a story of a boy who moved with his family to Washington D.C. and tells about his struggles with childhood, and getting no respect. It is a very funny book for kids, and was the first book I remember laughing out loud while reading!