Scouting Books

I'm a junior in high school and have just completed this book as a grop project, and I can say it has been one of the best things we've read all year. This book is great for teachers and students who want to break past worksheets and conjugation and get into some literature that is fun, yet a little challenging to read for the average high school Spanish student. I hope we get to read another one of these!

Set in the Oregon Territory in the 1800's this novel is perfect for those who love stories of early Army days and Indian happenings. Angus or Red Elk, is the son of a Scottish father and an Indian mother. At the age of 15 he is enlisted and begins his career as a scout and interpreter for the First Army Regiment in the west. He is perfect for the job, as he has understanding of both the white man's world and the Indian world. The story takes you along the life of young Red Elk as he grows to manhood and travels through the territories of his forefathers. I felt it was interesting as the author weaves within the story the heart of the tribes during that time, giving the reader a taste of the past. Letting them feel their hearts, their fears and their courage. Manitou was also a spiritual read, as the author brings into the story-line the gods of the earth as they touch the life of Red Elk in a very tender way. Perhaps changing him forever. I feel Manitou is a good read for those who love the feel of the old west, want to read about Indian adventures and army activities, and have a taste of spirituality for a side dish.

This is #29 in the popular Pee Wee Scouts series. School has just let out for the summer and all the Pee Wees are looking forward to having fun. At their first meeting during vacation their leader, Miss Peters, announces to the delight of nearly everyone, that the Scouts will be attempting to earn a swimming badge over the summer. Molly, afraid to get even her head wet, is panicked, too embarrassed to tell even her best friend Mary Beth. Soon her excuses for staying out of the water wear thin, and when she at last confesses her inability to swim, the other children react sympathetically and find ways to help. When testing time comes at wheelchair-bound Jody's new pool, Molly conquers her fear, earns her badge, and afterward confesses all to her parents. The fast-moving plot is ideal for early readers. Simple pen and ink illustrations add a nice touch.

Journalists Alexander Wolff and Armen Keteyian show the underside of college basketball recruiting in this still relevant and hard-hitting book. As many know, the key to winning is recruiting the top players. Since the NCAA forbids paying athletes in cash - recruiters, scouts, coaches, and hustlers have alternative methods for landing the top jocks. As the authors show, those methods include gifts of athletic shoes, summer camps, and fun-filled recruiting trips. Parents of top athletes and their high school coaches sometimes receive dollars, favors and/or jobs. I particularly liked the authors' description of Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro, who skillfully exploits the process with his popular athletic shoes. Simply put, the game is awash in corruption,

Many realize that amateurism - paying athletes not in cash but with scholarships - is unworkable in big-money sports. Others know that too many top players leave college without a pro contract, and with little education. We fans may enjoy college basketball, but that cannot obscure the sport's dark underside.

A good book for the hardcore baseball fan. If you want to know more about the game this is the book for you. From Satchel Paige to Ivan Rodriguez the scouting reports are here. Great reading for players who want to find out how they measure up as a "prospect" or fans who want to see where the greats started out.

This Ready-to-Read "Peanuts" book focuses on Snoops as the world-famous Beagle Scout who leads Woodstock and his friends into the wilderness. Young readers get to follow this intrepid group as they hike through the woods, endure thunderstorms, cross tall grass and high bridges, all while Charlie Brown worries about Snoopy and Lucy comments on his strange pet. Snoopy tries to be a good leader, but his plans do not go well. You know how you can tell? Because there are two pages in the entire story where Snoopy has his "cool" eyes; those are where they are just diagonal slits. There is one early on and one at the end, but in between there are few moments when Snoopy is really in control.

"Take a Hike, Snoopy!" is based on the comic strips of Charles M. Schulz, adapted by Judy Katschke with art by Nick and Peter LoBianco (who have really gotten good at doing the "Peanuts" gang). This is a Level 2 book, which stresses reading independently (I have yet to see a "Peanuts" book that is not a Level 2 reader) by challenging readers with more-complex stories and varied sentence structure. There is also an episodic nature to the book that comes from adapting four panel daily comic strips. Clearly "Peanuts" is well suited for this task.

I was very surprised to see that this book is now in print. I searched for years to obtain an original copy of it, which was privately published in small numbers, and apparently given to Burnham's many admirers. The book is of most value if one first reads his fascinating book "Scouting on Two Continents". Burnham was one of the most fascinating adventure characters of recent history. His adventures covered the American Old West,Africa, and Alaska during the Gold Rush. He was a very tough man, and his entire life was filled with dangerous adventures. I hope "Scouting on Two Continents" will soon be available. Burnham's life should be the subject of a major Hollywood movie.

For those with an interest in Tom Horn this is a must read. The writer had first person contact with many of those closest to the story of Horn. He fills in a lot of the gaps left by books on Horn that were written in later years. The reader is left with forming his own conclusion as to whether Horn was justly hanged for the crime of which he was charged. It was well worth reading and I would highly recommend it to all.

I had thought this book would be great for my scouting son, but was disappointed in its content. It has some funny anecdotes, but not as much nor as amusing as what you can read in any Scouting magazine.

I found no humor what so ever in this book. Erroneous Scouting information. Poorly concieved, poorly written and poorly laid out. 50 pages of nothing for $7.95. Somebody thought he had a good idea and should have kept the thought to himself. Would not even make a good campfire starter. Save your money.

OK - I like the Three Stooges and any move scene with a good fart makes me laugh and this book falls into that genre. It's not meant to be a "serious" book about scouting (at least I don't think it's supposed to), but the little glimpses of scouting and the skits written around them are actually written quite masterfully and definitely in my opinion would deserve a scouting patch. For those who don't necessarily like childish type humor, then you probably need to look elsewhere. But if you're sitting on the can and need a good laugh to get things a goin' then this here is the book you want. :>)

Madcap Scout Tales is a fun book, especially the ads in the back. The book is colorful, cleverly put together and a quick read. The author is an Eagle Scout himself, yet has enough of a sense of humor to see the lighter side of scouting.

As a Woodbadge trained adult leader, I have to say I am completely dismayed by this book. There are enough real-life events on any given Scouting event to twice as many pages with humourous anecdotes. This book contained little more than humorless stories with even worse punch lines. Seriously-- a story about a kid getting carsick all the time culminating in a punchline where he took medicine for it may be funny to a first grader with a poor sense of humor, but hardly worth the effort to read the page where the story appeared. The only things remotely funny in this slim overpriced pamphlet were the fake ads in the back of the book--and they weren't all that funny.. I recommend that everyone save their money and avoid this rubbish.

Kent Rasmussen's editorial review is best left to the literists who cannot publish or write themselves. This was a wonderful tale full of adventure and is highly recommended to be read with the complete 5-book set of the Leatherstocking Tales. Enjoy.

James Fenimore Cooper wrote his Leatherstocking tales out of chronological order. The Deerslayer or The First Warpath was the last of the Natty Bumppo novels and because Cooper had matured both in age and artistic ability it is perhaps the best.

From the beginning we know this is a darker novel than the preceding tales. In the first few pages Deerslayer's companion, Hurry Harry, asks the young man, "...Did you ever hit any thing human, or intelligible: did you ever pull trigger on an inimy that was capable of pulling one upon you?"

Bumppo's answer is, of course, no. He is at the beginning of his career. He is known as Deerslayer by the Delawares because that's what he does. He has yet to take a human life. As soon as we read this we know this novel, above all else, is a coming-of-age story and someone's life is ticking away....

In the interim Deerslayer meets Tom Hutter and his two daughters, the dark-haired Judith and the feeble-minded Hetty. The family lives on a castle-on-piers in the middle of Lake Glimmerglass, a secluded spot akin to the Garden of Eden -- the perfect setting for a coming-of-age story. Except things are not what they seem. This area is actually more of a haunt of savagery, with not a little of it supplied by both Hurry Harry and Tom Hutter against the local Native American tribe, the Hurons.

Judith Hutter, however, is the engine that drives this story. She's a woman with questionable morals, and though she's somewhat older than Deerslayer she falls in love with his open honesty and his natural way of looking at the world. In a telling exchange she asks him if he has a sweetheart. He answers:

"She's in the forest, Judith--hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst...."

Judith perseveres. Has he never heard the laugh of a girl he loves? Deerslayer remains true to form:

"...To me there's no music so sweet as the sighing of the wind in the treetops, and the rippling of a stream from a full, sparkling, natyve fountain of fresh water, unless...it be the open mouth of a sartain hound, when I'm on the track of a fat buck."

In the pages that follow Deerslayer kills a man, a Native American attempting to take his life by deceit. He earns the reputation as "Hawkeye" for his deft shooting and helps Chingachgook secure the safety of his future wife, Hist. (She will be mother to the Last of the Mohicans, Uncas.) Further violence and treachery abound as Deerslayer is captured by the Hurons and tortured. Tom Hutter dies in an extremely gruesome manner and there's the mystery of Judith's past --even down to her parentage-- to be solved. But her love for Deerslayer is true and in the end she gives him her father's gun, a weapon of exquisite manufacture and excellent bore, which he will make famous--the long rifle, Killdeer.

In the end Deerslayer leaves Judith after yet more tragedy ensues. The novel ends fifteen years later with Hawkeye returning with Chingachgook and a stripling Uncas to Lake Glimmerglass. Everything has changed. The castle is abandoned and in disrepair, and the graves can no longer be found. Hawkeye tries to find out what happened to Judith, and we are awarded a glimpse of her fate, but no more.

As I said earlier this is a fairly dark book in the Leatherstocking Tales, but well-written. It's a good story and the characters really do come to life. There are the usual elements of humor and long-winded conversations but they don't detract too much from the overall enjoyment of this tale. Cooper also doesn't hold back in showing that violence, both necessary and ignoble, can come from anyone for any reason...at anytime.

This is one great book and I highly recommend it.

Can get past all the verbage. I found myself skipping sentences or paragraphs because of the way the auther keeps going on and on about the same thing without a puase or even carrying through with the same thought in the same sentence (kind of like I'm doing now!).
I really enjoyed the scenery images he paints, and the simple way of life portrayed. I also like the values the author held dear.
The first few chapters and the anti-climax were horrible. I didn';t think I was going to finish the book because of the non-sensical talking that occur in the first few chapters. And the book ended in such a goofy non-realistic morose way, that I wish I had stopped reading a few chapters before the end and imagined the ending happen the way I would have liked it to.
So I was dragging through the beginning, loving the middle, and depressed when I finished. Very odd sensation to read a book and get those kinds of feelings...

"The Deerslayer" is the sequentially first in the Leatherstocking series of America's first, great, professional novelist, James Fenimore Cooper. I read it in preparation for a trip to Cooperstown, New York and I am glad that I did. Set in upstate New York in the 1740s, it provides the reader with an idolized introduction to the society of white and red of this colonial frontier.

The criticisms that the dialogue and actions are totally unbelievable, while justified, do not detract from the story. While the simple, faith-filled actions of the "Feeble Minded Hetty" and the dialogue between Deerslayer and Chingachgook seem highly improbable, the do hold the readers' interest. While I am generally not one to pick up readily on character development, this novel is an exception. The contrast between Deerslayer and Chingachgook, the romance between Chingachgook and Wah-ta-Wah, the romantic web among Judith, Hurry Harry and Deerslayer, and the varying responses to changes in circumstance coming from sisters Judith and Hetty all contribute to the persistent popularity of this work.

Despite all the criticisms directed against Cooper as to form, the one thing that cannot be denied is that this book is very difficult to put down. I found myself always wondering what would come next and what would happen to the characters whom I had come to know. Whether you are looking for an insight into early American literature or just a good story, your search should lead to "The Deerslayer".

Race relations, environmental concerns, independent womanhood, the importance of personal character, survivalism, heroism, religion, cultural relativism, nature v. nurture, independence v. inter-dependency--sound like the latest hot topics in American TV, movies, and magazines? Actually, these constitute the bevy of themes that James Fenimore Cooper explored as foundational to the American experience when he wrote *Deerslayer* in 1841, setting it even farther back at the time of the French and Indian War, 1754-63. Some readers, not surprisingly, are put off by the ornate writing style of the early nineteenth century, but it doesn't hurt us post-moderns to turn off the TV and take a slower pace, interacting slowly with the writer and his thoughts. In Natty Bumppo, we find the first--and definitive--delineation of the American hero: selfless, dependable, restrained, tolerant, cagey, and moral. A generation raised on anti-heroes sometimes has a bit of a problem with the morality of Bumppo, but since 9/11, we have seen a revival of the American ideal that Cooper first defined in his Leatherstocking Tales. Don't give up on this one because of the language. Sit a bit and mull it over. You'll find Cooper will deliver remarkably well.