Bennett Books

There is a two page spread for each nursery rhyme, plus the fold over panel. The panel hides the animal in the illustration and asks a question, ('What did Mary have?'). You open the panel to reveal the lamb cavorting about and you read the entire nursery rhyme to answer the question and delight your children.

My children found the format enchanting, and the illustrations delightful. They loved to have me ask the questions and open the fold to show the answer and hear Mom read the whole nursery rhyme aloud just one more time.

Each of our children seemed to love these books best between the ages of 2 and 4, and during that time these books were oft requested at bedtimes and constant companions in the car.

They are small enough to fit nicely into little hands. These books made it easy for our little ones to learn some basic nursery rhymes (so important for early speech and rhyme patterns, and more importantly, fun!), to pretend to read themselves, to listen and follow a question and answer format, and more. They are seemingly simple, but there's a lot of value in these sweet little treasures.

I just finished reading this book yesterday! I thought it was excellent... I'm Jewish so I kind know a lot about what happened during the 1940's and this book had it right. Even the Hebrew (which was in english) was right. Plus, the plot and characters in this seemed so real. I would recommend this to everyone. However it has some bad lanugage and some teen and adult contact. But besides that it was wonderful!

Bennett and Forsyth have written a wonderful book that combines the beautiful with the practical. Unlike many authors who rhapsodize about impossible to grow flowers, the authors are very specific about the ease or difficulty of each type of annual. They are very specific about germination practices and times, bloom times, and the pluses and minuses of each plant. I learned how to sucessfully grow annuals that I had tried to grow two or three times without results. For many, there were detailed instructions for how to geerminate from seed both indoors and outdoors, as well as instructions on which plants to deadhead, and how (a topic often unmentioned, greatly shortening bloom times). The photos are gorgeous, and the authors are particularly gifted at picking annuals that are a little unusual, easy to grow and long lasting (agrostemmas, for example). I strongly recommend it.

an excellent book in the usual style of this author. a Bennett's island book. Joanna and Nils have to deal with Jamie getting older and becoming involved with a married woman on the mainland. Very happy to be visiting the island again through this book. very enjoyable.

This was the best book on angling I have read. It offered tips that work without any hype or promoting any brand names. It also doesn't assume that trout fishing is the only real type of angling. It has tips on all types of game fish, including the carp.

Good book!

The Art of Public Speaking by Millard Bennett is the best public speaking audio tape that I have studied. I have been listening to it for years, and still learn from it.

I recommend that this be your first audio tape on Public Speaking, the jumping off point into a new adventure.

Do not let public speaking scare you. It is easy if you have something to say. Stand up, talk about your topic, and be done with it.

Write an outline of your speech, Intro, Body, Conclusion. But do not read your speech, wing it, but follow your outline and notes. Use crutches to assist you, such as your notes, power point slides, pedestals, projectors.

Intro
1.)
a.)
b.)

Body

1.)
a.)
b.)
c.)

2.)
a.)
b.)
c.)

3.)
a.)
b.)
c.)

4.)
a.)
b.)
c.)

Conclusion
1.)
a.)
b.)

Our 3 year old daughter loves this book and enjoys telling the riddles to our friends, although she usually starts giggling before she finishes the riddle. The riddles are short and simple and therefore easy to remember.

`Backpacker's Cookbook' by Margaret Cross and Jean Fiske covers a remarkably complex subject for such a thin book. If you have never backpacked or cracked open the `Boy Scout Handbook' or Colin Fletcher's `The Complete Walker', you may have no notion of how difficult hiking and cooking can be. To be clear, this is not at all the same as tailgating, where you have no limit to how much you can carry, so you have practically no limits on the kind of food you can carry or the kind of dishes you can prepare.

There are three big differences between cooking at home and cooking while backpacking. First, you can use only what you can carry on your back in a pack and actually walk over uneven terrain at the same time. As a small, inexperienced Boy Scout, I was able to pack for an overnight hike with a scant 13 pounds; however, it is much more likely you will need upwards of 40 pounds of stuff for two or more days; especially if the weather is cold or wet or both. Second, walking 10 to 12 miles with forty (40) pounds of gear on your back means you will need to eat far more calories, and that means mostly fast calories, than you eat at home, even while going to work from 9 to 5 (assuming you don't walk or pedal to work). The classic high calorie hiking dish is `gorp' (good old raisins and peanuts) which may contain far more than just two ingredients (M&M's being the favorite add-in). Third, you realistically have less time to cook than normal, because you will be especially tired at the end of the day, and will have to spend time striking camp and packing up to start up at the beginning of the day.

This book covers those issues and more. This scenario is made even more complicated by the fact that in most hiking venues anywhere within 2 hours driving of civilization (Harriman Park northwest of New York City comes to mind), you will be discouraged by our wildlife guardians to not build fires using fuel you may find lying about. This means you need to add close to five pounds of gear for a camp stove and fuel. The best scenario here is that there are at least two people in the hiking party and they can split the stove and fuel between them. Things get REALLY dicey when you are hiking in an area with no ready supply of water. On the Appalachian Trail, for example, there are sources of clean water at every likely campsite. And, this is commonly water piped in from a friendly municipal water supply.

The other side of the coin is when you happen to be backpacking to a remote, but fecund fishing hole. This means not only do you have ample supplies of potable water, you have a practically inexhaustible supply of fresh, healthy protein. The only downside is that you have to tote your fishing gear in with you. But, my experience with `ultralight' fishing gear good for fish up to four pounds will not weigh much more than 2 or three pounds itself. While the shape may be awkward, fly fishing gear may be even lighter (but then, there are those waders!). The authors supply an entire chapter on cooking freshly caught fish.

One of the implications of these considerations is that you will need special equipment to cook on the trail. Fortunately, there is a great business in place for supplying an enormous range of specialized cookware. An excellent starting point is your trusty old local Boy Scout supplier. Not only is their gear made for effective camping, it is typically made for younger people, so lightness is a special characteristic of their equipment (I do suggest however, that you use your imagination. I recall some equipment such as the three piece eating set was made of fairly heavy stainless steel. For a short trip, heavy-duty plastic forks and spoons, two of each, may actually be lighter than the official Boy Scout issue.

One of the most amazing things about the book is the range of dishes the author believes one can actually make on the trail. To be sure, baking does require some highly specialized equipment (a reflector oven) and the questionable open fire, but it can be done, as long as you are especially careful about putting the fire out and assuring yourself that it is dead cold.

One other item which may never occur to a first time backpacker is the fact that all your gear and all your food has to survive in a tightly packed rucksack, and, you need to find all your stuff when you set up camp. This book continues the same traditional advice I learned in Boy Scouts, where everything is stored in its own clearly labeled muslin bag (at least muslin was the material of choice back in the day. I suspect there is a more high tech and lighter material available today, not to mention plastic zip top freezer bags.) This especially means that if you do plan some serious cooking on the trail, bag all the ingredients for each dish together. The good authors give us recipes with this very consideration in mind.

One last consideration is the fact that commercially prepared dehydrated (usually freeze-dried) trail preparations are relatively pricy. I'm surprised that the authors don't borrow some tips from the `Raw' cuisine folks on equipment to use at home to dehydrate food.

The novice hiker really needs this book, but they probably need Colin Fletcher's `The Complete Walker' even more, for sound paring down to the last ounce of weight advice on backpacking.

One of the best training logs ever created. This log stands alone as Steve Reeves has. One of a kind!

Before sitting down to read this book, the first thing I did was read the information on the back cover and then flick through the pages to look at the calibre of diagrams. I stopped a couple of times and instantly learned something. What then followed was an excellent read on a subject which is dear to my heart.

"The Battle of Trafalgar" by Geoffrey Bennett is a paperback book containing 250 pages of all the information you ever wanted to know about this, the most famous of all, naval battles. As a former Captain in the Royal Navy, Geoffrey Bennett went on to become a highly regarded naval historian and brings a refreshing and knowledgeable approach to the work.

Where so many accounts of various battles often commence with the fleet sailing out of port as they go to meet the enemy, here we have a more complete account of the "before during and after" the battle. Set in the context of the world-wide struggle against Napoleon, Geoffrey Bennett describes the ships, their crews, the tactics and the action itself using just the right amount of diagrams and pictures to support his immensely readable text.

Altogether, a good job well done.

NM