Bloom Books

The only reason why I brought this magazine is because of my favorite actor Brian Bloom if he wasn't in this magazine then I would not have gotten it.

Rondall Banks

Now in a newly expanded and updated second edition, "Playing With Print: Fun Activities And Ideas For Fostering Emergent Literacy" by early childhood education specialist Carol Ann Bloom offers Preschool, Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade classroom teachers tools that can greatly improve the development of their students' emergent literacy through utilizing a wide range of play experiences and literacy-related props. "Playing With Print" offers a wealth of different ways to incorporate print into the instruction curriculum for reading and writing that will attract, engage and inspire children to attach meaning to the printed word with a naturalness and expertness that will stand them in very good stead for further academic achievement. The thoroughly 'user friendly' text is enhanced throughout with illustrations and with 'Tips' making "Playing With Print" an invaluable and highly recommended resource for both classroom teachers and home-schooling parents.

Myra Cohn Livingston has once again compiled an anthology of terrific poetry. Here she has also filled a great need. This seemingly modest volume contains poems that speak to various well-known (and more obscure) Jewish holidays, providing both fine poetry and the emotion attendant to these centuries-old celebrations.

This book should not only be in every Jewish household, but also in the homes of all those who value spirituality of any denomination.

Part of the Bloom's Literary Criticism 20th Anniversary Collection series, Poets and Poems gathers the twenty years' of literary criticism expertise of Harold Bloom (Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University) into a single omnibus dedicates to scrutinizing some of the greatest known poets, including Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, William Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Butler Yeats, and many others. The spotlight on each covered author tends to span a dozen or fewer pages, yet concisely covers his or her strengths, weaknesses, backgrounds, passions, and favored modes of expression. Sample poems from each author illustrate the crystal clear points Bloom draws from the writing, in this quality literary survey and analysis. A genre-specific bibliography and an index complement this superb introduction to close readings of immortal poetry masters.

This is the first Outland collection, and Berkeley Breathed writes in the introduction:

"I'm proud of the 'toons in this book. I had more fun drawing many of these than usual. As in Bloom County usual. Look at the earlier Outlands reproduced here. You can see me playing, experimenting, even doodling, looking for unexplored nooks and creative crannies. But when I look at these myself, I smile because I know that like the wild caribou, I was doomed to return to familiar territory. Outland is, of course, Bloom County without the continuing narrative that a daily appearance allows. But Bloom County was never about children or cats or penguins. It was about a loopy perspective - my dubious legacy to this world, and in plentiful evidence within this volume. Enjoy. I have. But no more than finally getting to compare myself to a wild caribou."

After years of creating the wildly popular and successful 'toon "Bloom County" Berke Breathed scaled back the strip to a Sunday-only offering called "Outland". During the same time he was beginning his work on his wonderfully written and illustrated children's books.
In Bloom County we were offered characters that grew familiar, even in their various deficiencies. The strips were episodic, frequently thoughtful and almost always hilarious. At the same time we came to identify with the various characters: Milo Bloom the precocious pre-teen and his paranoid buddy Binkley. Cutter John, the paraplegic Vietnam veteran who led his buddies on role-playing Star Trek adventures. Steve Dallas, the chain-smoking slime-ball lawyer who got his come-uppance over and over, usually as a result of his insensitivity to women. Oliver Wendell Jones, the young computer hacker who caused panic at the Pentagon, on Wall Street and in his school's science class.

Outland doesn't have the same feel as it's not episodic at all. Each Sunday comic "stands alone" - and each one is full of Breathed's inventive artwork and the same brilliantly conceived satire. I don't feel like the story stands still long enough to identify or care as much about the characters, and for that reason Outland isn't as satisfying to me as Bloom County.

Still, there's good stuff here and in addition to revisiting some old friends Breathed gets pokes in on cosmetic surgery, video dating, male bonding and 1-900 numbers.

I feel that joint writers Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin did an excellent job with the writing and pictures exhibited in The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine. It's hard to believe that the demand for integrated schools occurred less than a century ago. The novel depicts civil rights activist Daisy Bates and her quest to integrate the public schools of Arkansas during the late 1950s and early 1960s. She stood behind the nine African American students who our nation dubbed the "Little Rock Nine." The book provides pictures of Daisy's life including eye opening shots of the abuse the nine students as well as Diasy herself endured from Little Rock's public just to gain equal opportunity to education. Readers will become inspired by and appreciative of Daisy's work.

Nicholas Dagen Bloom has produced a definitive work on the history on the New York City Housing Authority. As a historian he demonstrates an objective and thorough knowledge of a well-researched topic. Highly recommended.

The aphoristic, enigmatic, cryptic, verse of Emerson is collected here in its entirety. Much comes from his notebooks and journals. Emerson was criticized among others by Mathew Arnold for lacking ' the soul' of the poet. And it is true that the music of his verse is often a rough, awkward, intellectual one. And that what is memorable in it comes as a line here or there which could well come from his essays.
Nonetheless there are memorable lines and a few poems which enter the heart and mind, perhaps because once read in childhood anthology they remain as part of one's inner landscape. For me Emerson as a poet is primarily isolated like the most memorable Emerson of all,
" By the rude bridge/ that arched the flood/ their flag the April breeze unfurled /Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired' "The shot heard round the world".
In another sense Emerson appreciated Poetry and was the patron , and capable of recognizing the great value of , arguably, the ur- American poet, Whitman.
Reading the poetry is often a quite complicated intellectual exercise. But it is also one which yields new ideas, though perhaps those ideas are not felt as deeply as poetry should make us feel.

There's no need to say much about this. It's Emerson. He is revered as our "First Man" in American--our truly Original Adam in the Morning. It has been said that all thinking in America since Emerson is either with him or against him. He inspires in both directions--Melville mocked him and Eliot scorned him while Dickinson learned from him and Whitman proclaimed that Emerson brought him to a boil. This divided reaction continues to this day (note the reverance of critic Harold Bloom and philosopher Stanley Cavell and at the same time the derision of John Updike and Robert Penn Warren) though he is certainly back in academic vogue.

This combination of two L of A editions (Essays and Poems are published separately) creates a book that can be your daily bread. This is essential Emerson at your fingertips. The actual book is voluminous yet not cumbersome--and though thick, it handles easily and wears well--perfect for compulsive thumbing through.

Here are some of my favorite books about Emerson, biographical and critical: "Emerson: The Mind on Fire" by Robert D. Richardson is by far my favorite biography (it is still said that the work by Ralph Rusk is the definitive "factual" bio); Bloom's work is peppered with essays on Emerson, "Agon" is a nice collection as is "Figures of Capable Imagination"; Richard Poirier writes with a constant eye toward Emerson ("The Renewal of Literature", "Poetry and Pragmatism") as does Stanley Cavel ("Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome", "This New Yet Unapproachable America"); and I really like a book by Mark Edmundson called "Towards Reading Freud : Self-Creation in Milton, Wordsworth, Emerson, and Sigmund Freud". And there are hundreds of critical studies (probably thousands) to consult--the classic being Stephen Whicher's "Freedom and Fate" (but I like Jonathan Bishop's "Emerson on the Soul" better).

Enough rambling. Emerson continues to be startling at every turn--you may think you know him ("Hitch your wagon to a star", "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" etc.), but he will not be penned in.

This is what a book of criticism should be like! It should help people read literature more deeply, provide more background for those who haven't "studied" a writer but want to have the insights of someone who has. I've loved Mark Strand's poetry for years. NOW I know WHY I love his poetry. Buy this book first and then go back and get Mark's books. You'll fall in love with America's best poet all over again!