Big Books

Big Red Truck is a favorite. Colored pencil illustrations by the author are wonderful and tickle kids. Children like it, adults roar with laughter. Daydreaming is not stifled but chores are done. A boy can dream big, cross the country and be home for supper. This is a slice of normal home life.

I have read several professional reviews of "Big Red Truck." To me, these reviews seem oddly unresponsive to a wonderful book about a boy's take on an ordinary Saturday in Spotsylvania. Maybe the subdued colors (reminding me of my own youthful efforts in colored pencil), and the gently expressionistic art work, failed to attract the reviewers' eyes.

To me, these subtleties are strengths, because I can take renewed interest in the book each time I read it to my toddler son. "Big Red Truck" has grown on me, my son, and my wife over the course of several months of library checkouts. I look forward no less to reading it to my daughter when she's old enough.

This book has the same kind of humor (a refrigerator with a giant "Behemoth" logo, for example), nostalgia, and straightforward mystery that makes "In the Night Kitchen" so charming. Unlike that acknowledged classic of dream-time, though, "Big Red Truck" is a carefull! y controlled daydream. It's an outdoor story, set in a recognizable American landscape on the border between the rural and the suburban. A musical analogue would be the sophisticated simplicity of Pat Metheny's dreamier music.

And, unlike "Night Kitchen" -- but like Maurice Sendak's superb earlier work -- at the heart of "Big Red Truck" there is an honest, significant, even dramatic interaction between parents and child.

A Walter Mitty-like toddler drives a big red tractor trailer, lunches at a diner, overturns his rig, and gets pulled over by a police car. His bemused parents see only a red tricycle, peanut butter sandwiches, a spill, and a fast pedaling boy. Charming pastel illustrations from an intriguing, slightly fish-eyed, perspective

My husband brought this book home for our two-year-old. We all love to read it! Our daughter likes to guess who is coming in the door based upon the description, as well as reciting the "refrain" with us. At dinner the other night, someone mention splashing, and she said, "Stan and Stella in the big red tub. I splash, you splash..." Great find!

My 6 and [...] girls LOVE this book! It's funny and has great illustrations. We recently read this in my 6 year olds class and everyone there loved it. My sister, a librarian, also finds this to be a big hit at storytimes.

What a great book.
My children (age 2 and 3) absolutely love it and can't listen to it enough.
Literally, it is wonderful. It rhymes, it has repetitive words that my children join in to "read", and it's funny (when the hippo joins in). If you look closely at the last page, you can figure out how Stan and Stella's imagination thought up all those animals in their tub! My children enjoy finding all the animals in the story (on the last page).
I want to get another copy just as a keepsake for when they have children someday.

The pictures are bright and large and vibrant. The story rhymes and it is just a great story for little kids. My daughter is one years old and she sat and listened and loved the pictures. It is also neat because it is using the kids imagination. You will have to read it to find out. I am a librarian and I am buying MY own copy.

Although first published in 1982, this book may be more important to today's readers as the passage of time has resulted in a shifting importance to this book's content. Along with serving as an insightful contribution to folkloristic analysis, the book has now become a major resource for understanding the social history of the blues. In this respect, Evans' analysis provides a good way to understand and appreciate both historical and contemporary blues music. Evans' interviews with blues musicians from the 1960s and 70s, in particular, provide irreplaceable resources for learning about well-recognized blues players like Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Tommy Johnson as well as lesser-known, but still important, figures such as Mager Johnson, Willis Taylor, and Mott Willis, and Fiddlin' Joe Martin. The focus on Drew, MS gives this study a good example of a community with a thriving local tradition, where many of the previously-mentioned musicians played, and it provides an especially strong way to understand the development of the blues tradition in the Delta. Evans' careful transcriptions of a variety of blues songs and sharp analysis of tunes and lyrics further contribute to an understanding of the music within the context of a once-vibrant local blues tradition. The book culminates in a extensive analysis of the development and diffusion of the tune "Big Road Blues." This chapter includes thorough transcriptions that show how the song has been played by a number of musicians. It is especially interesting and worthwhile to listen to some of the recordings that Evans mentions (and that he, himself, even produced) while reading about the players who created the various performances of the tunes.

In the interest of fairness, I'm giving this book five stars, though I admit that I am not totally qualified to rate this book in its' totality. I say that because, I have no knowledge of reading music and much of BIG ROAD BLUES by David Evans is designed to teach blues music as well as entertain readers.

The book was certainly entertaining giving rich and colorful history of blues pioneers and the Mississippi delta small towns where blues found its roots. As for the music part of it, it was way over my non-music playing head, but I am certain guitar artists and aspiring blues musicians would benefit greatly from its lessons.

Even without a music background, simply as a lover of blues music, I found this book very readable and informative. The book is laden with brief biographies of obscure blues musicians largely forgotten by all by the most devout blues fans, as well as pictures that lend character to the book. This is a book I believe any blues lover would enjoy reading.

Everything I have seen by or edited by David Evans has impressed me with his thoroughness, his seriousness, and his respect for tradition. This is no exception. Books about the blues are often written by people who know little or nothing about the Blues, or worse, by people who have just enough misinformation, stereotypes, and wrong attitudes to make their book a threat to knowledge about the Blues.

David Evans is a serious student of the Blues. He has spent decades in Mississippi and other parts of the South interviewing, getting to know, studying, and playing with real Bluesmen, living in the blues environment, and learning the entire gamut of musical culture that Africans brought to this country. His study is from the standpoint of a trained folklorist and musicologist, not a mere enthusiast.

This book centers on a study of the Blues traditions of the Drew, Mississippi area and takes the song "Big Road Blues" identified with Drew musician Tommy Johnson and recorded in 1930 by the Mississippi Sheiks as "Stop and Listen" as the center of that study. Along the way, Evans provides a history of the development of the blues and a history of the development of analysis and study of the blues up to the point of publication of his book as well as a final chapter with suggestions and questions that his study poses to the general methodology of Folklore.

Evans gives a very good picture of how the Blues tradition was passed won in the Drew Area. This is important because the Drew area included significant Delta Blusicians like Charlie Patton, Son House, and tangentially Robert Johnson and Howling Wolf. He distinctly describes the education and sharing of blues men and women, and through his study of Big Road Blues/Stop and Listen, he gives a picture of what defines a blues despite the characteristic shift of lyrics between different players. Moreover, instead of providing the usual air-headed summary of well-known blusicians, Evans gives a picture of the role in transmission and development and playing of many grass roots blues singers who were never recorded and rarely performed outside of Drew and the surrounding area.

There is a lot to be learned here. The text is well-noted and has a great bibliography. There are pictures of almost every blusician that Evans mentions, mostly taken by Evans, his wife, or his research assitant. They are many lyrics. All of this is done with care and clarity.

Another thing that I like about Evans is his accuracy and modesty. Too many folklorists assert the final truth of what are their own conjectures or inqueries. Too many writing about music insist that whatever their small bit of survey suggests is the gospel truth for the whole world of blues or music as a whole. Evans is guarded, concrete, and modest in his conclusions. He never tries to assert a relevance for his conclusions beyond the area of study. Instead, he calls for more studies like his own to capture other local traditions and other aspects of the blues.

One note: This book was originally published in 1982. I would suspect that in the original publication it was in a larger trade hardback format. Here the text seems to be shrunk to fit it into the paper back format. As such the type could be a little bit larger and more work could have been done to reproduce the photos more clearly. Moreover, remember that when Evans speaks about "today" or "recently," he is speaking in 1982.

We need more studies like this one. Anyone serious about the blues should buy this book, read this book, and study it. It is unfortunate that the companion album is no longer available on CD

My son has all of Ken Wilson-Max's activity books. He got them when he was 3-4 years old and continues to enjoy them now that he's almost 7. The books have held up well to repeated use, though at first I had to supervise so he could learn how everything worked. Great for taking on trips since they are small and have some quiet activity.

Our son adores this book. He knows it by heart and wants to read it again and again. The moving "pop-up" parts are manageable for someone with typical 3-year old fine motor skills.

i got this book for my nephew and he loved it! He loves to pretend that he is in the space shuttle.....he has me read it over and over.....the best part about the book is that it is interactive and that children can make up their own stories when playing with it.....it's great for the imagination.....the authors' other books are just as good:)

Gorgeous book. Almost like being there as we read. Enjoying it now and

will for years to come.

The wide double format spread of the pictures is awesome. I have had it open in the living room since we got it, open to a new picture everyday. Every picture has a frame around it, just like you would have if you had it on the wall.

BIG SKY captures some gorgeous panoramas, capturing natural landscapes and tinting to explore some of the lesser-known state parks and wilderness areas across the country. It's a personal celebration of the American West by a photographer who spent over twenty years searching for just the right sites and experiences: when one was found he'd take a series of panoramic shots and stitch them together on a computer, here produced in panoramic 27x9 inch spreads to properly capture the results. Art photography libraries as well as public libraries strong in visual travel representations will want this.

This is a very cute story about the virtues of bathing, as seen through the eyes of a bear who has a distinct lack of personal hygiene skills.

Just looking at the cover, the comparisons with Eric Carle's style will be inevitable (something that the publishers seem to have intended, considering the layout).

The story is simple, but clever. Big Smelly Bear never bathes. The only creatures who want to come near him are flies. The other forest animals all ran to get away from his stink.

But when Big Smelly Bear needs a friend to scratch an itch that he can't reach, he might finally have to take that dreaded bath. He may even find that his friendship with Big Fluffy Bear is worth the trouble of an occasional dunking in the river.

Kids will giggle over the title and the main character, and the book gives some good positive reinforcement about baths, as well as some lessons in friendship. The illustrations are colorful and fun, and the book is a good length for a quick bedtime story with big legible print for youngsters to follow along.

This is a great book! We have to read this book every night before we go to bed. My two-year-old can recite most every page (and does this all day!). Have fun!

This is an excellent book which teaches children that others in society will act and think of them differently if they don't clean themselves up, wash their clothes and the like. Illustrates to children the benefits and interaction from their friends (and even the opposite gender but this will be over the head of younger readers) won't happen with poor hygiene as they'll want to keep their distance or avoid you is brilliantly portrayed through the two main characters (bears).

Illustrations are more in the style of softer cartoon looking animals than more realistic looking style illustrations other illustrators of animals use, but I think it suits the story well. The basic plot is a bear doesn't really care that it smells and is known as Big Smelly Bear by the other animals. It refuses to bathe in the river and as its smell gets worse and worse its skin becomes itchy. It tries everything to get rid of the itch such as rubbing against a tree and using a stick to reach its back.

One day it notices a female bear in a tree. She tells him she is known as Fluffy Bear and he asks her to come down and scratch his itchy back. She tells him she will if he has a bath first which he refuses to even think about. Of course his desire for Fluffy Bear to scratch his back is starting to outweigh his desire to follow his non bathing stance!

A good book with a very simple storyline and a bit of repetition between the two main characters which kids of course love but those who are really adults and don't understand that kids read and take in messages from books differently may well find simply annoying. Big Smelly Bear is of course a kids' picture book so if you're just an adult who likes to read books with pictures you may want to choose something a bit more mentally challenging.

I have a 21 month old girl and she just loves this book. It is very colorful! She has learned many new words from this book. It covers everything......body parts, clothing, every day activities (dressing, sleeping, bathing), foods, animals, things that are found in the garden, and farm animals. Get this book for your child!!!!

This is a great book for children who are just starting to talk. This is not for 4-8yrs as stated, but 0-3yrs. My son loved to look at the colorful pictures and ask me what they were.

I bought this book for my son who was 6mos and he loves it to this day. The pictures are big, simple, and real. Much better then the Cartoon books like this. The big cardboard pages are easy to turn for little hands and very durable. I would recomend for 0-3 years.

I wish I had videotaped this year school year but due to time constraints I did not. This book comes on the heels of using Paul Fleishmann's, Joyful Noise, Poems for Two Voices. Both books offer students an interactive way to practice oral poetry reading and have lots of laughs in the process. This was in my 6th grade classroom, and my professional peers in 7th grade used this book to have their students write Advice Poems to my 6th graders going into 7th grade next year using the two and four voice formats. This book is a classroom must - you won't regret the purchase! Use the two-voice poems for your grade-level students and the four-voice poems for your high level students!

This book has three poems for four voices. Once you teach kids how to use the format they take on the task with gusto. Each poem has a different flavor. Paul Fleischman's flair for language is wonderful, phrases roll off the tongue. The concept of four voices really motivates kids to pay attention to each other and the "beat" of the poem. We need more of this kind of poetry experience to turn kids on to poetry.

Those who loved "A Joyful Noise" and "I Am Phoenix" will feel that they've hit upon a treasure trove in this group of poems for four voices. The only small disadvantages: this book only contains three poems (maybe somebody should write a sequel?), and the arrangement of the color-coded lines can be a bit confusing. (Each "voice," or color, can have more than one line on a page.)

So, have fun. And then go write a few masterpieces of your own. Keep the Big Talk going.

I am in the process of reading the book. It is very interesting. I just bought a Black Mouth Cur puppy and the book was recommended on the American Black Mouth Cur website.

I grew up in East Texas and have lived around the Big Thicket all my life. As a child, I heard my grandfather and his brother tell tales of the bears and "panthers" they had hunted in the early 1900's. I picked this book up one afternoon and began to skim it, and I was hooked within minutes. I couldn't put it down. In the 60's and 70's the authors interviewed many older residents of the Big Thicket area, allowing the old-timers to simply relate their rememberances, from the 1860's on up into the oil boom and logging days of the early 20th century. The dialect is distinct, and the authors do a good job of conveying the pronunciation. The stories these people tell of the hardships and yet the wonder of living in a true wilderness is simply fascinating. If you have any interest in the Big Thicket area of Texas, or if you just enjoy tales of life in the "wild and wooly days", then you will certainly enjoy these stories. It's truly a wonder that these folks survived the hard life and wild animals! My wife and I were so enthralled with these stories,that we found time a few days later to drive over and visit some of the remaining thicket, near Saratoga, TX.

Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by lifelong naturalists Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller, Big Thicket Legacy is a compendium of engaging and informative anecdotes about life and living in the Big Thicket country, which is a nearly impassable area of Texas territory that only a few pioneers dared to brave. In those days, only the heartiest of individuals and families could call a place within the heart of the Big Thicket home; their tales have become a part of Texas folklore, and in Big Thicket Legacy are preserved to available to the general reading public, thereby recounting a very special experienced wisdom for new generations of Texans.

The Scriptures, part of the Big Thoughts for Little Thinkers series, attempts to explain to young children what the Bible is and why it's important in our everyday lives.

Author and illustrator Joey Allen begins the book by having Gabe, a lively and friendly little boy, introduce himself. "The Bible is the most important book in the whole world!" Gabe says.

Gabe asks readers to consider what life would be like if our parents never spoke to us, or never taught us to tie our shoes or say our ABCs. Then he asks us to consider what it would be like if the one who created us never spoke to us and never told us how best to live. "But God has spoken!" Gabe exclaims. First, he points out that creation can tell us some things about God. Then he says we can learn even more about God by reading the Bible.

Gabe explains that the Holy Spirit directed specific people to write the Bible. He describes the tone of the Old Testament and says the "entire Old Testament points to" a Savior, who would come in the future.


"When Jesus came to earth, He showed us what God is like. Jesus acted like God and talked like God because He is God! When we learn about Jesus in the Bible, we are learning about God."
Gabe explains that "people who believed in Jesus gathered together all the books that come from God" and put them in one book, called the Bible. He tells us about 40 people wrote the books of the Bible, including a fisherman, a doctor, and a farmer. He explains that the Bible wasn't written in English originally, but that God protects the message of the Bible, no matter how many languages it's been copied into.

Gabe explains that God always tells the truth and always keeps his promises. Therefore, "every morning when you wake up, you can be happy because the Bible says God is with you, and one day you will be with Him in heaven." The Bible, Gabe says, teaches us how to live as God wants us to: loving God and other people. The Bible also helps us grow and protects us from sin and other things that can hurt us. If something in the Bible is tough to understand, Gabe urges us to find someone who's been a Christian for a long time, and ask them if they can help us understand it better.


What I Like: This book speaks truth with such clarity; what an ideal introduction to the Bible! All the assertions are backed up by biblical verses, and the cartoonish (but not crude) illustrations are inviting. I also like the child-friendly size of this book (about 6 inches by 6 inches).


What I Dislike: The term "Holy Spirit" is never explained, so parents should be prepared for questions on that. Also, there is paragraph in this 32 page book that offers so weak an argument, it doesn't belong in this otherwise fine volume. Gabe says the Bible is like no other book because "you can tell that it comes from God because it does not sound like something a human would make up."


Overall Rating: Excellent!

Kristina Seleshanko, editor of Christian Children's Book Review ( ccbreview at blogspot dot com )

These books are great! The illustrations are amazing - each character has so much energy they just come to life! The characters will capture your heart while teaching children the truths about God and the Bible. They make a perfect gift for any child or a unique baby shower gift for those who are expecting. Joey has not only presented the truth of God in easy to understand books, but his illustrations just leap off each page. I love them all!

Be sure to read the Forward and A Word to Parents in this book. It is a great message to adults as well!

These books are great! The illustrations are amazing and the characters will capture your heart while teaching children the truths about God. With each page the story just comes to life and the energy of the characters really draw you in.

These books make a perfect gift for any child or a unique baby shower gift for those who are expecting. Joey has not only presented the truth of God in easy to understand books, but his illustrations really come to life. I love them all!

Be sure to read the Forward and A Word to Parents in this book. It is a great message to adults as well!