Bean Books

Do you like "home cookin' as much as me? This book has GREAT "home cookin' family recipies - some have a cajun touch. I say call the family and let's open the book and laissez les bons temps rouler!

This book is as much about the stories of family and friendship as it is about cooking. You can sense the passion for all things food and fun in the authors words. I know I have lived the story. Brandon Hall, Tim Hall's son.

This is a reprint of the earliest known manual of bobbin lace patterns, along with a brief discussion of lace and needlework instruction books of the period, and some patterns worked out from the woodcut illustrations of the book itsself. This is not a book for beginners to work from, but an excellent resource for moderately experienced bobbin lacers and anyone involved with historic costumes of the mid-sixteenth century. A wonderful book.

I love this book. If you know the basics about bobbin lace, this book is for you. The patterns are exquisite and historically accurate. The explanations of some of the patterns are very helpful for all but the extreme beginner (never worked with bobbin lace before). I highly recommend this book!

This book is perfect for kids who don't always eat all their vegetables- they will find it funny and easy to relate to! The Lima Bean Monster captures the interest of children who, like Sam, try to be sneaky and find ways around eating their vegetables. Kids in kindergarten through third grade especially would find this book amusing and funny.

This is a very cute and funny book that shows the unexpectedly silly consequences of not eating your veggies (and feeding them to the dog or hiding them in your sock). I was afraid it would be heavy-handed but it is not at all preachy, and the illustrations make it even more fun.

My daughter who is now 3 got both Little Bean's Friend and Little Bean when she was two years old and they quickly became her favorite bedtime stories. I think that she found she could relate and put herself in Little Bean's shoes. Very enjoyable for both parents and children.

Little Bean is a delightful toddler learning the joy of making friends. My two year old daughter immediatly associated Little Bean with D.W., the well known little sister in Marc Brown's "Arthur" series, whom she adores. The illustrations capture the essence of an active, happy child. Great for kids starting pre-school and going through the same experience. "It's a beautiful day. You'll have more fun in the yard," Wallace writes. My daughter recites this line each time we head outdoors. We look forward to more Little Bean adventures!

I had never heard of this author and just happened to pick up this book. I am so glad I did. It is one of the best books I've read in a long time and I plan on reading all the other books by this author. I think it's a " man's" book, but it had me laughing several times. I can imagine what anyone would say when attacked by a barn owl!! Thanks Mr. Bean!!

Gregory Bean does an awesome job of capturing the flavor of life on the high plains and foothills of contemporary Wyoming.He is especially adept in his decription of both Wyoming wildlife and landscape. His characters are authentic modern Westerners and his portrayal of Wyoming pathos stings the imagination . Bean tells a "tight" story, adding no unecessary detail or event and leaving out nothing which might highten the sense of adventure his books give to the reader. I must say that I had trouble putting down all four of his novels once I began reading them.

My son Antonio is now 1 year old. And hadn't it been for Lorraine Kelly's book I wonder how he would be eating nowadays. HEr book and eating plans gave me the assurance I needed on how and what to do for him. And most important, creating a healthy eating habit that will, hopefully, last until his adult age. What we eat is one of the most important elements in staying healthy and Antonio is living proof. So far, he has not had anything, barely had even a cold. And nothing better for a mom than a healthy child. Highly recommend her book, don't miss out Moms.

I bought this book last year when my baby girl was 5 months old and it saved my sanity.
Not only does it provide a wide variety of recipes from early weening right up to toddler stage but you can learn what needs baby has and how to satisfy them and keep them healthy.
The menu planners are not something you should take literally but are a guide to what you could give and have often helped me when I've been stuck for ideas.
My sanity was saved as I was becoming obsessed with the idea that I didn't know what to give and if it was healthy or not. I didn't like buying processed or powdered baby food all the time even though they aren't going to do any harm, especially the organic versions. I found it just as easy to prepare and freeze a batch of different foods every Sunday, and use them through the next month.
In fact I love this book so much I'm buying my friend in Florida a copy.

Maggie Bean is addicted to candy. She needs a few bags to get her through the pressures of the week. At her house, the tension adds up because her dad's been out of work for months and they're barely scraping by. Maggie's gained weight during this time - so much weight that it's embarrassing her family. And they've decided to take action.

Her parents force her to join a weight center with her aunt. Maggie can't believe the humiliation, but neither can she stop eating candy. Things turn around when two coveted spots on the swim team open up and both Maggie and her best friend decide to try out.

Only Maggie's too embarrassed to be seen in the local pool wearing a swimsuit that grandmothers and pregnant women also wear. So, she decides to train in secret, and no one knows except the other teen in her weight program.

THE MELTING OF MAGGIE BEAN takes a tale of a social outcast and creates a realistic outcome. Maggie has two main goals, but to accomplish them, she'll need to dig down deep and discover her inner strength. Maggie Bean will inspire readers everywhere to strive towards their own goals and make them a reality.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Rummel

Maggie Bean is on the plump side with self esteem so low that she avoids looking into mirrors. Every week she sneaks into the drug store while her mother does the grocery shopping to buy that weeks supply of chocolate and candy. She realizes that being fat isn't what she wants. What she wants is to be popular, pretty, and thin. She thinks trying out to become a Water Wing is the way to get there.

I really loved this book. Whether your a bit too plump or on the skinnier side, I think there's a message for it you.

Mokie and Bik live on a boat called BULLFROG: they live on it and around it and are twins whose parents are busy, so they have a nanny, Ruby. Black and white drawings by Jonathan Bean accompany a fun story of two siblings who love boats: perfect for elementary-level chapter book readers who like the water.

I credit Wendy Orr with launching the surprise sneak attack of the century. As I write this she is by no means a household name. Her books are distinctly Australian in flavor and tend to span no more than 100 pages apiece. Then 2007 rolls around and BAM! She starts hitting the American market left and right. First her book, Nim's Island gets sold to a big Hollywood studio and will star such luminaries as Jodie Foster. Then the American release of "Mokie and Bik," comes with an uppercut to the jaw. Yankee child audiences'll never know what hit `em. I would like to warn you here and now that upon picking up "Mokie and Bik," your average adult reader is going to have one of two reactions to the writing. Either they are going to embrace Orr's delicious, sing-song use of the English language or they are going to read half a page and disregard it out of cowardice. I'd estimate that a good 25% of the potential adult readership won't have the sheer moxie to read this aloud to their child, and that depresses me. It's been a long time since I've seen an author take such a wild and wonderful chance with words, phrases, definitions, and pronunciations. This isn't a verse novel. It's three times as amusing and creative as that.

Mokie and Bik, girl and boy twins, live out their days on their mother's boat, scampering about all the live long day. Their father, to hear them tell it, is a parrot with a pirate who has been out to sea so long they've almost forgotten what he looks like. So while their mother does her Arting and their nanny Ruby fishes them out of the sea by their overalls whenever they tumble in, these two get into trouble faster than a man could blink. Whether they're fishing up "eee-normous fisk", learning to swim (via the old toss-em-in-with-a-rope-around-their-waists method), or walking their saggy soggy dog, these two are making a head-first, devil-may-care, hot-snorting, rip-roaring dive to remain in the pantheon of classic children's literature. And you know what? You'd have a hard time arguing against it. Pure liquid charm, this book.

Some twins develop a language entirely of their own, and Mokie and Bik seem to fall smartly into that category. What they say can be deciphered eventually, but it takes some doing. You have to understand what it means when the twins say that their father is a "parrot" who'll come home with "a pirate on his shoulder" and a "treasure on his chest". So what does the book sound like? Here's a taste: "They monkeyed off the roof to the slippery wet deck, slip slide slippering in soggy socks, skate chase racing up to Bullfrog's bow - Mokie was bigger but Bik was faster - and Bik balanced on his sliptoes at the very front point." The spellcheck on my computer is going bonkers over words like "slippering" and "sliptoes" and I wouldn't have it any other way. The water patrols sometimes give the twins, "police cream in a cone." Catching food from the sea is "fisking".

The worry here is that Orr would get cutesy on you. I know a certain percentage of you out there cringe in the deepest depths of your soul when you encounter a children's book where the author lets his or her characters intentionally mispronounce something because, to them, it equals automatic funny. But that isn't what Orr's doing here, so shake off your cringes and give the book a shot. This is a title that concerns itself with the elasticity of language itself. How far can the author push words and phrases so that they still make sense but come out sounding magnificently mangled in the meantime? Somehow Orr manages, and the result is a book that luxuriates in lines like, "Laddie was a sheepdog, a saggy, shaggy, long licky-tongue dog with brown eyes hiding under his wool."

This is a book that demands that you read it aloud. And let me tell you, it is mighty hard to read this book to yourself when you're taking a red eye flight home from Seattle and all you want to do is hear the way Orr's language bounces off your tongue. Bedtime stories rarely come as sweetly as this. It also pairs beautifully (if on the slightly younger end of spectrum) with Natalie Babbitt's wonderful, Jack Plank Tells Tales which also has a sea-based harbor feel. And don't let me forget to mention the evocative pen-and-ink illustrations by Jonathan Bean that capture the flavor of the story. For two twins who are always "overboard or underfoot," you'd need an illustrator with the ability to convey that sheer unbridled energy. Bean does decently in this respect. It's a slim pup, coming in at only seventy-some odd pages, but it packs one helluva wallop. Label this one most certainly worth your time and attention.

I read this book with my kids and they were fascinated. They memorized many of the scriptures because some of them were also in other stories within the same book. They noticed that and were able to memorize them. I highly recommend this book because, in the world we live, kids need to know there is a God in heaven who loves them, cares for them, and wants the very best heaven can offer. Adults could also learn from the stories found in the book.

I have two daughters (4 and 1 years old) plus a 10-year old step-daughter. All three of my girls absolutely adore this book! Each devotion consists of a story about the kids on Apple Tree Lane, a "Thinking Time" for questions about the story, a "Praying Time" for talking to God about the lesson the story teaches, and a "Sleeping Time" that is a fun activity to go along with the story. My one-year-old loves finding Night Light, the cute little critter that leads you through the devotions. We love the book so much that I've purchased a second one for my step-daughter to keep at her house.

I first read these astounding love poems nearly 40 years ago in college, and they are the only such poems besides Blake's to have stayed with me. Knott is a truly gifted poet, and this short collection will blow you away with its power to refresh the immediacy of words themselves.

I'm actually searching for a copy of this book. In the late sixties I used to buy this book and give it away on a fairly regular basis. To a great extent the voice and the mechanical structures of these poems had an enormous influence on what I thought about my own work in those days. I've never been much of a poet, but what good there is in my work probably originates from reading books like this one. I still remember many of these poems in a book I can't find a copy of lo these many years later: "the only response to a child's grave/is to lie down beside it/and play dead". I do wish the man well. If you see this book it is worth reading. It will move your heart and not with schmaltz and not to manipulate you. Truth is always the real lesson.