Big Books

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!

May is American Studies Prof. at U. of MN,& wrote: "Screening Out-the-Past" He dislikes Bob Hope-Bing Crosby's.."mindless' Road pictures,also Ronald Reagan,(head, Screen Actors Guild)for stifling emerging "left-wing",independent producers,& all those who were not 100% anti-communist. Hopefully, he'll prove his points by updating with coverage of post 60's Hollywood....

This book is a well researched account of Hollywood during the Depression, World War II and at the beginning of the Cold War. It is a must for everyone interested in the history of Hollywood.

"The Big Tomorrow" depicts Hollywood as a 'populist and progressive world that offered a vision of an egalitarian and humanitarian world in film' before the 1950s. The author demonstrates this on the example of actor Will Rogers, a Cherokee Indian, director Frank Capra, and others. May shows that not only film content had changed but the theatres as well. The central themes were gangsters, fallen women and ribald comics while the language and dialects of the folk were used. The theatres underwent a change from lavish, sumptuous ones, where seating was divided between the high-paying and low-paying, to democratic movie houses. The author uses several photographs to illustrate the changes. Inside Hollywood actors, directors etc. formed unions that supported New Deal reforms. The second part of the book explains why World War II and the Cold War reshaped politics and moviemaking in Hollywood. May discusses censorship and the role of CIA agents in Hollywood. Films presented a 'new' woman now. Female characters focused ultimately on a home life that preserved traditional gender roles, symbolized in the rise of 'patriotic domesticity' while during the Depression female characters of 'empowered women' fulfilled themselves. May also points out the change in the portrayal of African Americans and Asians. The rise of anti-communism and its effects are dealt with. Those who wouldn't or couldn't prove their belonging to the communists were suspended. However, they found a new market for a dark 'film noir' that challenged the consensus and set the stage for a youthful counterculture in the 1950s and 1960s.

This is one of those books that is difficult to over praise. Over and over while reading this book, May helped me gain new insight into aspects of Hollywood cinema from the thirties, forties, and fifties, and continually suggested to me new areas of research to undertake. In the long run, I believe that his book is going to have a profound effect on the way that I view movies from those decades.

Before I move on to the considerable praise I want to heap on this book, let me dwell briefly on a couple of negatives. I think this book has a much broader appeal than the author might believe. The book takes an essentially popular subject, and couches it in an overly academic style. As someone with a strong graduate school background (albeit in philosopher rather than cultural studies), I managed to always make sense of his argument, but sometimes only with difficulty. There was also a too-heavy reliance on statistical data for my taste. Clearly he feels that the data gives greater force to and to a degree validates many of his arguments. But I feel that it also caused the book to drag at points.

But overall, this book is a stunner. The thesis of the book is a complex one, and any attempt to state it briefly will distort it to a degree. I will try to minimize my distortion. May begins by arguing that there was a radical shift in social and political outlook in Hollywood in the 1940s. The effort in Hollywood to eliminate political dissent and to promulgate a monolithic vision of America is well known. May argues that this was a break with the legacy of the thirties, in which the Hollywood talking film had developed as a mode of expressing an egalitarian, anticapitalist, and multicultural affirmation of the New Deal. Thirties films were highly critical of big business, with representatives of big business frequently appearing as villains in films. As America entered WW II, however, and began to unify in order to oppose first Hitler and Japan and then the Red Menace, movies reflected a different order, which was nonegalitarian, pro-big business (with big business disappearing as a villain in films), and nondissenting.

May attempts to tell this story in several ways. His brilliant first chapter dwells at length on the movie career of Will Rogers, who articulated a vision of America that varied greatly from the Anglo-Saxon dream that looked to Europe for models of success and social ordering. As May quotes on several occasions, in response to the New England social elite, Rogers, who identified with his Cherokee heritage, wrote, "My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower--they met the boat." The second chapter of the book continues this to display many example of multicultural republicanism that permeated 1930s filmmaking. He then proceeds, in perhaps my favorite chapter in the book, to demonstrate how this egalitarian vision of America profoundly influenced American movie theater design. Rejecting the theater palaces that dominated 1920s theater design and which represented an affirmation of the social layering of the European model--with different prices of admission for various areas and separate entrances--American designers moved to a conception where all viewers paid a uniform price and seating was not restricted, with all viewers entering through the same entrance.

The second half of the book deals with the undermining of the egalitarianism of the thirties by a new vision of Americanism in the forties. The first of two chapters devoted to this displays this by articulating the vision of a white consumer culture, where individuals look for freedom in a private realm emphasizing family and material comfort. The second chapter deals with the politics in Hollywood to help eliminate all those who dissented from this vision or who had a political history that did not conform to this vision. These were painful chapters to read, with the ruthless suppression of political dissent. May deals in some degree with the history of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which in the 1930s strongly affirmed the ideals of the New Deal and egalitarian ideals. In particular, the career of the first appointed president of the SAG (in the 1930s, the president of the SAG was elected by the membership), Ronald Reagan (i.e., he was not elected by the membership at all) is dealt with at length. May ends his book with a discussion of film noir and its attempt to express dissent from the accepted and sanctioned cultural norm.

Anyone interested in cultural studies, the political climate and culture of the US in the thirties and forties, or the history of Hollywood should read this book. Easily one of the more compelling books I have read on film in the past two or three years.

This is an incredible little book, thoughfully and carefully written and beautifully illustrated. It can be read as a surface story of a family and their dog, but the scriptures at the beginning and end point to its real meaning, an explanation of Jesus' love and sacrifice. It's simple enough for a child to understand and complex enough to have adults thinking deeply about what love means. The questions and answers at the back are very helpful, as are the suggestesd activities. My six-year-old loves this book, and I've used it as a devotional message with adults and kids! (original review on CBD 9/18/2006)

A truly moving book! I have all three of the books in the Big Topics for Little Kids series. My kids love them all.

I've never seen an online way to view an entire book... but if you go to the author's site (search for bigtopicsforlittlekids) and you'll be able to flip through every page of these beautiful books online!

I purchased this book for my preschooler as a way to introduce the message of salvation. This book is a fantastic parallel to the simple message of salvation. The author uses a dog that saves her family as their house burns down. It shows how the family loved the dog, and how the dog loved the family. The book then tells of the night "that changed everything". It is somewhat sad, but so is what Jesus did for us on the cross. While the story is sad, it is also heartwarming, and full of compassion. The issustrations are captivating for little ones. It also includes a question and answer session in the back in case your child has any questions. Wonderful book!

It is such an incredible shame that this book is now so hard to find. Even the Main Library in San Francisco keeps just two copies for "Library Use Only". Years ago, while I was still in elementary school, we spent a great deal of time building an appreciation for the natural environment. Today, I remember little of the California ecology or Native American Culture that we studied, but I still regard Wawona and the other inhabitants of the redwood forest with fondness. In hindsight, I'm amazed at how little the authors resorted to anthropomorphism in writing for kids while keeping the subject matter rich and substantive. It says a lot that I can actually still read it today without much embarassment. I do hope they consider a reprint. This book is one I would love to share with my young nephew and the younger generation.

I WAS TEACHING SCHOOL IN THE 60'S AND THIS APPEARED IN A SCOTT FORESMAN SUPPLEMENTAL READING BOOK FOR ADVANCED STUDENTS. MY 4TH GRADERS WERE DEEPLY TOUCHED BY THIS BOOK AND WE READ IT AND CRIED MANY TIMES. IT WAS BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN AND THE CLASS COULD SEE THROUGH THE EYES OF "THE BIG TREE" LIFE AS IT PASSED HIM BY OVER THE HUNDREDS OF YEARS THAT THE BOOK COVERED. I BELIEVE THAT MANY OF MY STUDENTS GAINED A GREAT DEAL OF REPECT FOR NATURE AND A GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES THAT FACED THEM THEN. I WANT TO GET THE BOOK TO SHARE IT WITH MY GRANDCHILD WHEN HE IS READY. IT IS A HEARTWARMING, THRILLING BOOK FOR CHILDREN AS WELL AS ADULTS.

I read Big Tree as an elementry student in the late 1960's. The book had a profound influence over me. The story helped me as a child put in perspective time as it relates to humans and time as it may relate to other entities in nature. I ended up with a life long interest in nature and a Biology undergraduate degree. Everywhere I live as an adult I plant my region's closest relative to a Big Tree (a bald cypress). Now I need to find a copy of the book for my children to read.

This book is packed with information and key tricks to catch the big fish! If you are ready to become a serious fly fisherman you have to add this book to your collection!

Thanks!

The book was great, and Walcker publishing did a fantastic job!!!

Joe Butler knows how to go get the BIG ONES...I've fished with Joe, co-hosted a TV show with him and have seen him get on the scent of a fish...he doesn't let go until his net wraps around the monster. This guy taught me more about the secrets of nymphing Colorado streams than anyone I've ever met. He is always eager to share his knowledge and this he does in BIG TROUT ON FLIES. If you want a good read, packed with real gutsy tactics from a master of the art, get this book. Then go buy some heavy leader. Harry P. Davis