Sheep Books

Little Lamb is a nice large picture book for children with pretty watercolor illustrations. The story is a very common one; baby animal plays with others, wanders off while exploring and is suddenly lost. Kind of mediocre in my humble opinion.
But you don't buy this book for the plot! No, the big draw for Little Lamb is the fascinating flocked pages that give a fun, fuzzy feel and matte appearance to only certain areas of the pictures. Every page has something to discover as kids have to touch all over to discover what parts are fuzzy and which are smooth. The lambs are always flocked of course, and other bugs, flowers and animals that should feel furry or soft to the touch are flocked, too. This will help to teach very little ones about the textures of nature.
I thought this would be a great book to add to the Easter selection on our coffee table. It doesn't have anything to do with the holiday, but the lamb theme and the pastel colors fit in beautifully. Most importantly, our kids (2 and 5) enjoy it. I can recommend this to anybody whose tots like interactive picture books, such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

This was one of my favorite books to read to my children when they were tiny. The illustrations are lovely, the story is simple and easy to follow, and nicely written. The children get to learn and make animal sounds as the little lamb meets different farm animals. The kicker for my children were the fuzzy parts on each page. They loved to touch the "wool" or "fur." This tactile element seemed to help them pay attention to the book when they were very young.

I got the book as a gift, then bought other copies to give as gifts.

Little Lamb is a very cute story about a little lamb named fleecy who was very energetic. Fleecy would be so full of energy that she wouldn't be able to sleep while all the other lamb's were. Then Fleecy's mother began giving her idea's on how to fall asleep. As in Counting stars and clouds, but once they realized there wouldn't always be stars or clouds, fleecy began to count the sheep.

I read this book in a mall book store today. It has delightful illustrations, in simple but bright colors. Not one of those overly hectic try to impress the art world books. The story is simple, with those repeat sentences that young listeners love to echo...or shout out. The animals have a fuzzy texture. I am ordering this for the grandchildren for Easter! And can't wait to read it to them.

This is a comic adventure of the type made popular by the animated television series. The premise is that a baby sheep was left on the doorstep of a human named Momma Mutton. Momma has weak eyes, so she names him Johnny and raises him as a human. He learns to walk on his back legs and he is intelligent, even when compared to human children. He goes to school and does well, although he fails miserably as a basketball player. After deliberately losing in the finals of the school spelling bee, Johnny discovers that he loves water ballet and he goes on to win a large number of Olympic medals.
I found the artwork and coloring excellent and the bizarre premise was amusing. It is not cerebral, but fits well and tastefully into the current offerings for children's entertainment.

I send my grandson books on a regular basis. So far, this one has been his all-time favorite. So what if it's a little silly--it's great fun and imaginative. There's nothing better than the sound of a child's full-belly laugh!

I've enjoyed Mr. Proimos' previous books, but this one is the funniest yet. It has the same warmth and offbeat humor as "Joe's Wish" and "Loudness of Sam" (both of which I highly recommend). But I must admit -- this latest book of his left me, along with my 4 and 6 year-old laughing out loud. No child can resist a sheep that dresses up like a runny nose, nor should they! And no adult will either. This is going to be an instant classic - so buy it now. Better yet, buy the hardcover!!

This is just another book that draws on Nickeledoen and other kids TV for its inspiration. It can be funny but this style of book is feeling so much like watching TV, I'd like to turn it off. Joe's Wish was very charming and had a nice message but this comic book is just a waste of time. This is not a children's book in its truest sense. Mr. Proiimos, please go bck to the Loudness of Sam and your special gift of creating children's literature that does not imitate TV.

I bought a used book titled "A photographic Atlas of the Human Body" by Gerard Tortora. The book looks almost new, there are no writings or creased pages. I received the book in less than a week just as guaranteed.
The book has excellent photographs and graphics.

This book is a very good companion if you are using osteology blocks with pictures in black and white. Is just 32 pages and the information is limited, however the pictures are great and allow you to see the little details that escape from black and white photos in other books. Did I mention the price? Is very affordable for struggling students like me.

If you have the Tortora book, then you do not need this atlas. I would highly, highly recommend that you do not waste money on this atlas. Spend a few more dollars and get a copy of the Netter's atlas for students. Trying to use this atlas in my human anatomy lab/class (intro) has been nothing but annoying. Many important landmarks are overlooked and I have repeatedly had to refer to Netter's to figure out where landmarks are. Avoid this atlas and save your money and frustration.

I'm a pre-med student, and when I first heard about this book from my professor, I was a bit skeptical that it would help me or anyone that wasn't already in med school. But when I got it, it was clear and easy to follow. The pictures weren't some badly drawn figurines, or a mess of grey, unidentifiable body parts, they were real photographs of the skeleton which were, thank goodness!, easy on the eyes. I might not be in med school yet, but I'm making sure I have this book with me. As a revision and reference book, this one is the greatest!

Barclay, I believe has a fake PhD. This book isn't that helpful because it's based on Barclay's own experiences and not what is written in Scripture. Though he does give scripture, he lacks the ability to exegesis the word of God.

This book helps to identify whether you (or your people) are a sheep, goat, or wolf. Even includes a test you can take to identify them. One of Dr. Barclay's classics.

This book helps to identify whether you (or your people) are a sheep, goat, or wolf. Even includes a test you can take to identify them. One of Dr. Barclay's classics.

This book helps to identify whether you (or your people) are a sheep, goat, or wolf. Even includes a test you can take to identify them. One of Dr. Barclay's classics.

The main character of this story is Beth Grenee. She works in the Tree Theatre. George Lamb, caretaker of the Tree, was not well-liked by the cast. He liked to have power over other people and liked to bully others. So Beth's friends decided to play a prank on George Lamb. But the prank did not act according to their plan and George Lamb turned out to be dead. Beth relised that one of her friends could be the murderer and was very confused. She was determinded to find out the truth. Beth found some valuable information that leads to to the murderer and an attempt was made on her life. Can she survive?

This book centres around a youth theatre group in England. Then one day their obnoxious caretaker, George Lamb, turns up dead. Beth, the stage manager, found the body. She knows she didn't do it, but who did? Now everyone in the group is looking at each other with suspicion and fear. One of Beth's friends is a murderer, a murderer who may well kill again. An excellent book worth the read. If you're under 15 you'll love it.

a good book i highly recomend it to 10-15 year olds good reading keeps you in suspense somtimes

When Finn Dalton and Felicity Trent cross paths again it's once again in the middle of a job for both of them - a job that generally involves retrieving jewels for various reasons. How can two apparent jewel thiefs have any future together? But when Finn and Felicity start working together to hunt down a gemstone they start to unravel more going on than a simple theft. Why are so many people after the gemstone and might it have more significance for Felicity's employer than she realises? Can Finn and Felicity trust each other, despite knowing they are working for different ends? Can their race to find the gemstone end happily?

This wasn't a badly written book with various plotlines, a jet-set lifestyle and some small puzzles. However it was also rather disappointing with lazy plotting in places (Finn's friend Rafe seemed to always be able to find out the information Finn needed, any time of day or night, despite his own romance story apparently taking place at the same time) and some rather improbable events. Finn was a fairly well drawn character but I didn't ever feel that I knew Felicity and she wasn't as likeable as Finn. The Advanced Reader's Copy that I read had some mistakes in some of the British aspects of the book (famous biscuits being called MacIvities, rather than McVities, for example), and I felt rather unconvinced about the puppetmaster behind Felicity and some of the other Brit characters. Still it was a reasonable read and surprisingly different than the previous instalment in this series, showing that the author has more than one string to her bow plot-wise.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2008

Finn Dalton and Felicity Jane Trent are thieves tracking the same gem. Finn and Felicity have a history together, a history that is part business and part pleasure. The undeniable chemistry between them has never been as strong as it is now. They desire each other but don¢t necessarily trust each other. Finn proposes they team up this time. Felicity is wary, but for the good of the hunt she agrees. The stakes are high this time. Finn is putting his heart on the line. Felicity is hiding something from Finn though. Can she trust her secret and her heart to a thief?



Fin and Felicity take a high stakes adventure in The Black Sheep and the English Rose. The fact that either one or both of them could be lying to get the gem kept me on edge, waiting to see what would happen. The chemistry between them is intense. It simmers chapter after chapter until it finally boils over. A mystery and a red-hot romance make The Black Sheep and the English Rose a fun and sensual book to read!

Nannette
reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

In New York City, Finn Dalton sneaks into a hotel suite only to find jewel thief Felicity Jane Trent tied naked to the bed. They have a history competing for precious jewels, but have not seen one another since Prague two years ago. Finn offers to team up with Felicity Jane to retrieve the Byzantium gem that both want; she asks how to split one stone and he says he is not sure, but there are other things he desires. She explains that artifact dealer John Reese caught her looking into his things. He tied her up and left with the stone. He is meeting his buyer's contact. Finn asks Felicity Jane why steal when she is wealthy and runs a renowned charity. She will not respond, but he assumes it is the thrill.

Finn and Felicity Jane join Reese and his client Andreev, who is buying the gem for octogenarian collector Chesnokov. Andreev leaves followed by Reese. Finn and Felicity Jane go to Reese's hotel room where they know an unknown woman had been there. They take a glass that might have her fingerprints on it. At his Manhattan sanctuary he learns the prints belong to Julia Forsythe, a San Francisco art dealer; they find her itinerary on the net. They believe Reese went to California with her so they follow them. Finn and Felicity Jane want one another, but he insists she stop stealing; she refuses.

The lead couple is terrific as they share an odd confrontational loving history filled with sexual innuendos while the return of the lead characters from the previous "Black Sheep" tales adds depth as they perform critical but minimized support roles. The mystery of what is truly going on is cleverly disguised; however, the "villain" never makes a first person appearance leaving the audience somewhat dissatisfied. Still this is a fine romantic suspense.

Harriet Klausner

If you're familiar with these two poets, you can already appreciate the intensity, sincerity, and uniqueness of their vision and the horror the Shoah forced upon each of them. With that background, the sweetness displayed in this correspondence, especially of Sachs to Celan, is doubly remarkable. Little or no melodrama can be found here, despite the difficulty of life's events in the years covered and the poignancy of the subjects of some of these letters. The well-considered footnotes relay highlights of each writer's biography and explicate their difficult circumstances.

The entire collection spans only a few dozen pages, but is a valuable insight into the lives of these two most consquential German writers. For those unfamiliar with their poetry this correspondence may still be impressive, but if you've read and appreciate either of these writers, this book is worth owning.

The book takes the reader through the amazing friendship of these two writers. I found the book to be a wonderful aid while writing my term paper on the works of Nelly Sachs. The book provides a great insight into the lives of these two authors.

A bunch of letters written over 16 years by two nobel-winner poets. It's heartbreaking. Nelly Sachs, "his Li", loved him, no doubt. Her "dearest Paul" was married with a child. It is fascinating to read how two poets process the most common story among people. With tenderness and sadness and so much dignity. And as Nelly Sachs says: "Love is inhuman". This book reveals the sensitivity it takes to write poetry and how this sensitivity marks your every single gesture, making sometimes life to be simply unbearable. "If only I had you here" Nelly Sachs says, and that is what the reader wishes with her. An unfulfilled wish. They met only once and never again. Hard for simple people, even harder for poets. "You are my light" they say to each other and from the third letter she feels he is her home. Did they decrease each others loneliness, or did they make it bigger? It's up to the reader to decide.

Alpine Sentinels is more of a pamphlet that a book. It's only 49 pages. But given the dearth of material available on the Sheep Eaters, it's a book most will want anyway since it does provide a few interesting and unique bits of information about these amazing people who lived in the ultra-rugged mountains of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.

The other books I would recommend are "Mountain Spirit" by Loendorf & Stone and "Indians in Yellowstone National Park" by Janetski.

Tony Taylor's ALPINE SENTINELS is a direct, readable, and knowledgeable account of an American sub-culture that was viable for many centuries and is now gone, crowded and displaced by the westward movment of Euro-Americans. The book honors its subject.

The translated picture book is slowly getting more and more attention in America today. It used to be that you'd see a foreign translated title maybe once or twice in a year. Now, however, books from Germany and Italy and all kinds of places are getting more and more attention. Finland, however, has never had an American picture book hit. So when "Brave Charlotte" came out, it looked like the Fins had a sure thing going. A cute plot. Lovely little illustrations by a German illustrator. And it's all about an adorable sheep who just want to help others. What's not to like? Unfortunately the book just does not hang together very well. I'm not certain if it was the translation, the nature of the story, or the odd plot arc but for all it's charms, "Brave Charlotte" definitely comes off as less than satisfying. It's perfectly nice to look at and all. But I seriously question the New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year honor it received. Nice but definitely no wonder.

You have your normal everyday sheep, and then you have Charlotte. Right from the start she was different. When the other lambs stuck close to their mothers she would go bounding off in pursuit of adventure. When they would sleep at night she'd find a secret spot far away in the countryside where she could look at the moon. One day, the shepherd who tends the flock breaks his leg. The sheep don't know what to do and old Jack the border collie is too old to go get help. Who's it up to to save the day? Why none other than Charlotte, of course! Off she goes to get help. She fords streams, bounds over fields, hitchhikes on the highway, and finally finds a farmer who knows her and gets a doctor for the shepherd. Having proved herself, now all the sheep turn to Charlotte for guidance and protection. And Charlotte takes Jack the collie to her favorite spot.

I had some problems with the story, I have to admit. Some of these were definite translation mistakes. Translator Alyson Cole may know quite a lot about changing Finnish words into English, but she knows bupkiss about sheep. Jack the border collie is repeatedly referred to as a sheepdog. But sheepdogs are very different from collies. A sheepdog looks like a big while wooly sheep and protects the flock because it thinks it IS a sheep. Collies do the herding and the work moving about the sheep. There are other mistakes in the book as well, though. Part of the problem is the ending. The last image in the book is of Charlotte taking Jack off to see her secret spot. Jack is mentioned several times in the book by the other sheep as being old, but he never says a word himself. There isn't any contention or friendship shown between himself and Charlotte until that very last image. So why end the book with Charlotte sharing a secret when her newfound friendship with the dog is without any cause whatsoever? Then there's the problem with Charlotte's inclination towards dangerous situations. Stohner plays up Charlotte's adventurous nature, and that's all well and good at first. She climbs comically tall mountains. She climbs high trees for the fun of it. But then she starts doing dangerous things as well. She leaps, on purpose, into a "fast-running stream" for no apparent reason. Worse still, the sheep find her one day, "on the side of a dangerously busy road, staring at the oncoming traffic". She doesn't want to tell the other sheep what she's up to. Now, the other sheep are portrayed like overly timid busybodies. Then you have a youngster eyeing a busy road and their worries come off as interfering and persnickety. What a great lesson for the kids! Hey, children! Great news! If you want to cross that incredibly busy street or leap into some nearby rapids, feel free! Anyone who tells you to be careful or to watch yourself is probably just a wimp. Do what you feel instead! Sheesh. I don't usually care if a picture book has a lousy message, but I doubt very much that I'd be the only person to view this scene in the book with a slightly critical eye.

I mean, the illustrations are lovely, yes. Of course they are. Artist Henrike Wilson really does make Charlotte appear to be a very pleasant bundle of warm cuddly wool. She has a lovely little benign face that fits the story very nicely. But the fact is, I found the pictures in this bok to be far far nicer than the tale itself. So when it comes to nice sheep pictures, this book excels. When it comes to coherent sheep-centered plots, it's less than fabulous.

If you'd like an especially nice sheep-centered picture book, find yourself a copy of Rob Scotton's, "Russell the Sheep". Or Mem Fox's, "Where Is the Green Sheep?". Or books like, "Sheep In a Ship" or "Sheep In a Jeep". These are all fine and frolicsome sheepish affairs. "Brave Charlotte" is perfectly acceptable as a book but it simply does not hang together as a whole. It's fine but there are many far better sheep picture books out there to choose from. A secondary purchase at best.

Anu Stohner and Henrike Wilson's Brave Charlotte tells of Charlotte, who's different from other sheep. She likes to explore her world and wander, while old sheep stick close to home and go for security. When danger hits the herd, only Charlotte is brave enough to go for help in this engaging story of courage.

This book is excellent. By reading it you will learn a lot about Haruki Murakami and get a deeper view of his work. Also, you will get to learn about his first two novels, "Hear the Wind Sing" and "Pinball, 1973," which I think are only published in Japan.

Murakami Haruki is without doubt one of the more important and inventive Japanese novelists of today, one whose works are widely read on both sides of the Pacific. However, this very popularity tends to make him something of an anathema in academia, which shows of course in the relatively conspicuous dearth of critical studies focused on him and his fiction (in English, that is). For that reason alone, then, a good book-length monograph on Murakami like Matthew Strecher's "Dances with Sheep" is welcome indeed, if for nothing else than to start the critical discussion on Murakami off and running.

And it is a good start in many ways. Strecher has a knack for picking out the common themes and significant motifs in Murakami's fiction and elucidating them in meaningful ways, all while clarifying his contextual place in the cultural milieu of late twentieth-century Japan. He has read widely in Japanese critical studies of Murakami and shares their insights, opinions, and approaches with the reader. And he's willing to take a stand for Murakami's serious relevance over and against some (like Oe Kenzaburo, no less) who'd dismiss Murakami's novels as so much mindless, consumerist fluff--in fact, Strecher counterintuitively and convincingly argues that Murakami's fiction contains an implicit critique of Japan's overly consumerist society and its impact.

That said, the book has issues. The author's own insights are usually quite on target, but then he seems compelled to bring in the jargon-ridden obscurities of French critical theory. Annoying but understandable given the popularity of this methodology nowadays, I suppose, but here it's managed in the clumsiest of ways--that is, Strecher will go on and on for pages expounding on some French thinker's postmodern notions, and then start a new paragraph with something like "that goes for Murakami too" or "Murakami thinks the same thing" and then kind of plug and chug these extraneous ideas into Murakami's novels as-is. And as with most postmodern hot air, too, inane aberrations inevitably result, the funniest being when Strecher claims at length that there's no difference between history and fiction since it's all just subjective narrative linguistic construction--and then takes the Japanese government to task for denying or whitewashing past Japanese atrocities, implying that there is such a thing as objective historical fact after all.

This ties in loosely with a greater problem, the author's utter failure to live up to one of his chief stated aims at the beginning of the book. The preface, in fact, where Strecher tells us that, given both the complexity of Murakami's fiction AND its popularity, he intends this book to be useful to both the scholar of Japanese literature and the casual, general reader who reads Murakami only in translation. He totally blows it for the latter. First off, just logistically, this is a rare and commonly unavailable book, and so unlikely to fall into the hands of the general reader in the first place. Second of all, Strecher decides to limit himself to works already translated into English and then consistently breaks this rule (though most of these have been translated since, so the passage of time has helped him out here)--he also relies extensively on two early short stories of key importance by Murakami that, okay, have been translated but that are all but impossible to get a hold of in America, and so ultimately just as unavailable to the general reader as something untranslated.

Finally, the inclusion of the French postmodernist stuff (including the obscurantist psychobabble of Lacan) is bound to strike any casual reader as inexplicable nonsense, and Strecher's attempt to make Murakami seem "political" by trying to compare his wonderfully subtle fictional worlds with the crackpot Marxist rantings of Louis Althusser seems very ill-advised--for some strange reason Marxism still has some respectability in the ivory tower, but out in the real world it's dismissed as a dead ideology and good riddance, when people even think about it at all, that is. And its inclusion here just doesn't ring true. Murakami's quest for individual identity is every bit as inimical to Marxism and class warfare as it is to hyper-capitalist consumerism and the powers-that-be. It's a sublimely humanist quest, in fact, making Murakami a strangely reluctant postmodernist indeed.

Still, this latter insight would never have occurred to me so clearly without this thought-provoking book. So even if the book has problems, even if you disagree with huge chunks of it, it's still a very useful and helpful way to ponder the fine novels of this popular and complex novelist. Certainly this must have been Strecher's core intention at the start of it all, and in this he succeeds admirably.