Bloom Books

WHEN THE OCOTILLO BLOOM by Linda LaRoque is a sweet relationship story set in west Texas where Lynn Devry goes to work at Seth Williams's summer camp for troubled teens and finds a whole new way of life. In this sweet contemporary romance, the two learn to discover a love that heals the pains of their past relationships and vow to begin anew. I loved how Lynn thought she was going to work in a relaxed atmosphere at a Dude Ranch, but ends up having to deal with a stern taskmaster at a camp for troubled teens instead. Plenty of conflict and tension to keep the reader reading until the very end!

Terry Spear, Author of WINNING THE HIGHLANDER'S HEART & HEART OF THE WOLF

I read this book and enjoyed it from beginning to end. The characters are charming and memorable. I really rooted for Lynn. Not only is the love story well-developed, but Lynn's personal growth went a long way in holding my interest. The setting was unusual and entertaining as well, making me feel as if i were there viewing the warm-hearted story. I would recommend this story.

Ms.Larouque penned a story full of people I'd love to meet and animals so real they made me remember what it's like to bond with a horse or a dog. Her story is unusual in several respects. The tender love story is sweet without being cloying, there are grown-up conflicts, and realistic resolutions. The story is set on a believable Texas ranch, where the cowboys actually ride horses while giving troubled kids skills for coping with real life.

"When the Ocotillo Bloom" is a wonderful tale of a woman coming into her own once the kids are grown and hubby has moved on to a younger wife. The author skillfully takes us along for a heartfelt and often hilarious ride as Lynn learns to reconnect with "the spontaneous child inside her, the happy, carefree individual who loved to have fun". The characters are well drawn, believable and for the most part, likeable folks. A thoroughly enjoyable and recommendable read!

wonderful book for young children. the format is engaging and the story is charming. great artwork as well.

I purchased this book specifically because of the Lenape Indian connection and a unit being taught in my second grade class. It also didn't hurt that my own family is from the Lenape Delaware tribe. The book had lovely illustrations and simple text. The use of Lenape vocabulary added a great touch and my students and I loved that there was a pronunciation guide in the back of the book. A definite asset to any library, especially if you are celebrating Native American Hertigage.

Every culture has its own ways of celebrating the seasons. When the Shadbush Blooms shows young readers how the Lenape Indians (also known as the Delaware Indians) live according to the seasons.

The story is uniquely told from two different viewpoints. It is told by Traditional Sister and Contemporary Sister, each from her own time. These viewpoints show us how the traditions have changed, yet stay very similar. David Kanietakeron Fadden`s paintings grasp life in traditional times and current times extraordinarily. His paintings draw the reader in, and make them feel as if they were there as well.

The young reader that I shared this book with had a great time comparing the similarities between the different times. She seemed to enjoy learning about the traditions of the Lenape and following the adventures of the girls telling the story through their year.

I found this an engaging look into the lifestyles of one of the native tribes of the United States. I enjoyed the way the book was presented, and found the additional information on the Lenape in the back of the book extremely informative. This is a wonderful example of multicultural writing that shows how people live close to the land and themselves during the changing seasons.

Armchair Interviews says: Highly recommended.

While the beautiful illustrations may first attract you to Where the Shadbush Blooms, the words that describe the feeling of joy that children take in their families now, and took long ago--and the simple pleasures that hold families together--will hold you and any child. Kids will be fascinated by the historical differences in clothing and tools, and interested in similarities over time. They will ask you to read and reread the story, and they will love trying to pronounce the Lenni Lenape words for the seasons and the moons. (The authors wisely included a pronunciation dictionary along with the background of the tribe.) The book holds potential for family conversation, games, and challenges--not to mention those in a classroom. While it describes the Original People, it applies to all people and to the strength of families everywhere. It deserves to win the Caldecott. Susan Gilbert Beck, former Children's Librarian, Librarian and Information Specialist, Certified Teacher, Emanda, Inc.

My 9-y/o daughter absolutely loves this series of biographies and could not be persuaded to wait until our Lewis & Clark unit before she read this. While it didn't strike me as a particularly outstanding book, and the illustrations are mediocre at best, she enjoyed the fact that she could easily read and understand it. The book sparked an interest in Sacagawea and the Expedition, and she obviously learned a lot from reading it. Here is the twenty-star review she wrote for me (to be read very dramatically):
"There is a story about a young girl who was captured by Minnataree, was brought on an expedition featuring exciting adventures, leading men across rivers and through mountains with a newborn baby on her back. She found food when they were hungry, medicine when they were sick... Her name is - Sacagawea."

My 1st grader had to read a biography for a class project and this book fit the bill perfectly. Her reading level is right at the Merlin Mission Magic Tree House book level -- about a hundred pages, give or take, and pictures are still necessary to break up and amplify the text. This book is probably best for kids in the 6-10 year old range and it's not going to win any literary awards, but it's informative without being overwhelming, has lots of pictures (which are simple line drawings, nothing really artistic) and is a good gateway to other biographies. My 6 year old like this book so much she ran around pretending to be Sacagawea for about a week afterward. We went out and got a few more titles in the series, purely because they're so readable.

One caution is that some biographies include some of the less savoury details about their subjects. The Thomas Jefferson bio contains information about his affair with Sally Hemmings, his black slave (not withstanding the fact that this affair is hotly debated by historians). While this is handled in mild and appropriate ways, parents need to be aware that it's there in case they would prefer not to have their children read it. The Tom Jefferson one is one we skipped because we didn't feel it was appropriate for a 6 year old to be reading, nor did we feel like explaining it to her at this age. Just be aware that some of the bios may raise topics you might not want to address if your child is on the younger end of the reading range.

I gave this book to my 6 year-old granddaughter and this really got her interested in "history." This has turned out to be her favorite book. It helps for her to live in Charlottesville, VA (home of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello). There is a statue of Lewis & Clark downtown. If you look carefully and don't blink your eyes you'll see Sacagawea in the back of them, sitting at their feet. I explained to her that it should have been the other way around. She should have been prominent and they should have been at her feet because if it wasn't for this young native woman, the now famous trek commissioned by "Mr. Jefferson" (as the locals say), they would have starved to death/and or killed long before reaching their destination.

This book starts out in Idaho. It's about a woman named Sacagawea, who was taken away from her family. A few of her friends left her. The men who came for her called her bird woman.
Sacagawea got married when she was 15 and had a baby. She guided Lewis and Clark across the Western United States. They had to map it out for Thomas Jefferson after the Lousianna Purchase. It took a long time for them to travel to the Pacific and back. She was a huge help to them because she knew what food was safe to eat and what to use for injuries, and helped communicate to the Native Americans they encountered along the way. Lewis and Clark and her took a ship to find here family and they did. Lewis shot himself. Sacagawea died in1896. I think another title for this book should be The Life About Sacagawea. I think she should have lived longer. I will like to tell people to read this book because it's a great educational book. The best part was when she had her baby. The part that I didn't like was when she died. She is a true American heroine.

This is a WONDERFUL book for the beginner and amateur competitor who needs a little more finish on their horse in the show ring. It's very detailed and easy to understand-I HIGHLY recommend this to anyone who wants to show western halter horses!

This book was bought as a gift for my daughter who will be starting a young horse in halter this year. She is delighted with the book. She says it is informational and easy to understand.

She is excited to try the techniques in the book when Spring arrives and she can work with her horse.

Winning at Halter

This was a really good book, covering many basics in the conditioning, feeding and grooming of halter horses. It was clear, concise, and easy for most levels to understand. I would not say it is for someone brand new to horses or showing though. There were tips on handling and showing stallions as well as an explanation of why acupuncture is used on halter horses. I would have like to have seen more info on actually being in the show pen, little tips and secrets that can be helpful when showing.

This book goes into extreme detail requiring extreme investment in preparing horses for halter classes. While the advice is very good and you can see what lengths some are willing to go to, it goes far beyond most people's capacity. As a Foundation Quarter Horse owner and breeder, I will take a lot of the advice to heart, but there's a lot that, for my type of showing, is way over the top.

Martin Bloom's Accommodating The Lively Arts provides a technical guide to the design and renovation of theater spaces, from location and shape through fundamentals of theater design. Any involved in theater will find this an important consideration on organizing and building spaces.

By no means a glossy record of dramatically realized theater designs, it is rather a gentle manifesto of theater design principles. The author, a practicing designer of theaters, cultural centers, and exhibition structures, says that spaces for live performances should consider three fundamental elements: focus, platform and frame. It all makes perfect sense. The author has added some helpful little sketches, and there is an introduction by Chris Marowitz.

I picked up this book expecting to read a fairly technical account of how to design and build "better" theaters because I happened to know that it is by an architect who has spent much of his professional life designing theaters and performance spaces. What I discovered is not a "how to" book (although all architects might well profit from its many insights into how architecture should "accommodate" the intended functions and users of a structure.) No, this turns out to be a book by an individual who has spent much of his life involved with theatrical productions on various levels and is here passing on his compressed wisdom about the very essence of what makes for a satisfying and significant visit to the theater. It is not a history of theaters as structures, although it does weave its insights around the historical development of performance spaces, from the earliest Greek threshing floors to contemporary theaters-in-the-round (and there are drawings to help us see the essential elements). It is not particularly concerned with individual buildings by architects, whether well-known or otherwise. It is, rather, about how the elements of physical spaces affect our experience of theatrical productions--serious drama, light comedy, musicals, whatever. On one level, we are all aware of this--whether the seats are too cramped, how the sight lines are obstructed, yes, and whether the ladies room is inadequate. But Martin Bloom has thought much longer and harder and deeper about al these matters, and you end up feeling he has revealed something essential about the point where architecture, theaters, drama, and life intersect.

This was a great book. Huxley's view of a future "Utopian" state is very shocking, and it says a lot about society and technology. It really makes you think, and I like that. It is also very straightforward and it's hard to miss the point Huxley is making. If you like science fiction this book is a must! Definitely worth your time.

Everyone should be required to read Brave New World. Huxley provides great insight into the effects of science dominating the human race. He shows that life in the Utopia is more efficient in many respects, however it lacks the deep human emotions that give meaning to life other than "constant consumption." Although first published in 1932, it is amazingly close to reality of life today. Brave New World's vivid descriptions and lively commentaries will hold your attention throughout the entire book. Once you pick it up, you won't be able to put it down!

Aldous Huxley's `Brave New World' takes place in Europe, in 625 after Ford (people started a new era in 1908, the year in which the American industrialist Henry Ford produced his first Model-T car). There is a New World society. People are no longer born the natural way, but the state creates and conditions them. Humans are being mass produced and preconditioned to become members of one of the social classes, ranging from Alpha plus to Epsilon minus. People are going to work and get their soma. They get their education at their level and they get sleep teaching. It's a totally arranged life.

Aldous Huxley was born at Godalming in 1894, into a prominent family of scientists. The nearly blind man was educated at Eton and Oxford and writer of many novels, short stories, essays, drama and verse, but `Brave New World' has proved to be his most lastingly popular work. The title was taken from Shakespeare's `The Tempest', in which Miranda, when seeing the first glimpse of the world outside the island on which she grew up, speaks the words: "O brave new world that has such people in it."

In this novel-of-ideas and dystopia, or in other words, a savage criticism of the scientific future, the motto is Community, Identity and Stability. There is no love, no individualism and people do not have emotions. Everybody belongs to one big group. No one is alone, because everybody is the same. The motto is, off course, an ironic contrast with the battlecry of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It's obvious that Huxley wants to point out the dangerous aspects of the advancement of science. People will abuse the results of investigations, which will make the individual disappear.

The link of the motto with the battlecry of the French Revolution is not the only one. Many of the character's names are composed by use of the names of historical heroes. For example Benito Hoover, is made of Benito Mussolini and Herbert Hoover. This way the writer is parodying all the time.

The story starts at the London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where the Director explains some students how humans are being made by the Bokanovski-process. Eggs divide again and again (sometimes even 96 humans are beings hatch from one egg). When the Director asks a student whether he knows what a parent is, he answers: `"Human beings used to be." he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. "Well, they used to be viviparous."'

Bernard Marx is different from others. Something went wrong when he was in his bottle. He turned out to be, although he is, too small for an Alpha. He doesn't look like and has more emotions than other Alphas, which makes him not belonging to the big group. He and his colleague Lenina, a very pretty girl, who is very popular among the Alphas, go to New Mexico, to the Savages. Here the people haven't been scientifically produced. They meet John and his mother and take them to their world, which John really likes. He would love to see the New World. John hasn't been manipulated, so he's still able to have strong feelings....

A real pessimist can only think of a world like this. Therefore I think it's amazing how Huxley made up this story. It's been a great pleasure reading it, and it makes you start thinking about what the world will be in the future. Next to that, there's another, an educational aspect in the book. People have to be aware of abusers of knowledge. Huxley sure makes clear what he wants to say. It's a perfect novel.

Excellent! Absolutely indispensable for the Amazon traveler - not only is it packed with useful info, but Bloom clearly understands the local cultures in a way that few travel writers do. Highly recommended-

Not many books are available about Amazonia,and indeed this is a very useful one when trying to find information on excursions, guides, food, health... but some remarks on the cities and their inhabitants are quite superficial. The way people live in cities such as Manaus or Belém should make us think of more than what colorful the marketplaces are, if we intend to understand a bit of what's happening in the Amazon, and in Latin America. The inclusion of detailed maps of the cities and some budget hotels could greatly improve this book.

Few books have ever excited me as much as this one. My copy has a sticker that says it won Best Guidebook of the Year and this book deserves it. The author has obviously traveled herself through the Amazon and she gives a lot of "up close" tips. But what makes the book so special are also the articles written by other people--scientists and shamans who work with tribal people. The chapter by Dr. Meyer who had a shamanisticc experience with an Indian tribe and fire ants is just incredible! I wasn't even planning to go to the Amazon when I visited Brazil but somehow this book ended up in my hands and changed my life. Whether you are going to the Amazon or just want to read about it,get this book. I loved it!

Humor, sensibility, a down-to-earth approach to collecting event practical tips with respect for tradition and the meaning of the age old significance of the Jewish religion's rite of passage make Emily Haft Bloom's special "How to...How not to..." book a read that I found to be both instructive and constructive

I highly recommend this book if you are planning or know someone planning a Bar/Bat Mitzvah. I am finding the book to be very helpful and user friendly in sorting through the many aspects invlovled. The book has been a huge help to our family. Thank you Ms. Bloom.

I am currently planning a bar mitzvah and find this book extremely useful. Ms. Bloom provides helpful information on how to plan anything from a simple bar mitzvah to an extravagant bar mitzvah, never losing sight of the true meaning of this rite of passage.

I am still digesting "Ulysses." I read it while walking around Dublin a few years ago. It was marvelous to trace the steps of Leopold and Molly, and to see what they "saw," but the novel remains a distant pleasure to the reader. I must admit it is not the most accessible book ever written, but it gets four stars for its intent ... and that it is better than "Finnegan's Wake." Be warned: This novel is not for the casual reader. This is one of several excellent accompaniments to "Ulysses" and well worth the price and the time to compare against Joyce.

It is an extremely detailed critique of ''Ulysses'' on many different levels but it also is a compendium of the various critical methods used in modern literatore as a whole.All contributors are obviously experts in their particular areas. The book itself was in excellent condition and despatched promptly.

Professor Margot Norris of Irvine has written several very well received analyses of the works of James JOyce and their place in literary and political history, including Suspicious Readings of Joyce's Dubliners, The Decentered Universe of Finnegan's Wake: A Structuralist Analysis, the ahistoricity of which she later repudiates in another commentary, and the iconoclastically revolutionary commentary Joyce's Web: The Social Unraveling of Modernism (Literary Modernism Series). Another of Prof. Norris's landmark studies for any serious student of literature must be her essential Writing War in the Twentieth Century, which, passing through WWI and Hemingway, concludes with press censorship in the Persian Gulf War or Bush War One, as she examines how and why writers have been unable to effectively deal with the question of war in the modern world, including after the Bomb, and how and why writing strategies have been monopolized for the service of war making.

Pardon that brief introduction of Prof. Norris's remarkable work in order to set a context for her editting this current volume of criticism from various methods and perspectives of James Joyce's Ulysses, including her own feminist approach which notwithstanding retains its balance and perspective and appreciation of Joyce's subtle use of irony and subtexts in creating a subversively liberated literature.

Being an over 250 page volume of such varied yet profund literary criticisms, there is a portal here for nearly everyone to enter and feel comfortably challenged to deeper appreciation and understanding. Then, once safely inside this Joycean smorgasbord, you may browse to find absolutely new perspectives for comprehending more fully the gleaming cut gem which is Ulysses, voted the greatest novel of the twentieth century, a mystery of comprehension which only expands and leads on to hunger for more.

Prof. Norris has done here a great yet economical service for any student of James Joyce, both advanced and initiate, rendering what might seem unconnected and even unintelligible logical and clear and joyful. Ulysses after all has some of the most delicious jokes in all of literature, if we only have the ears to hear. The parodistic style of the later episodes in particular are a scream. Norris and company here open our ears and our minds to appreciate gratefully and happily what we are missing.

If you can get only one commentary on Ulysses kindly consider this one as a welcome opening. I have read several and this one seems to me like a great place to start, and to stay, and to read the slippery mysterious novel a million times more, while holding firmly the strong and wise hand of Prof. Norris, as Dante did Virgil, or more properly Beatrice.

Other contributers of note include Derrida on deconstruction, Devlin from a psychoanalytic perspective, and Patrick McGee on ULysses in the light of Marxist ethics.

Highly recommended and I have already ordered a second reading copy, as my first got caught outside last night with me in a heavy nightfall desert hailstorm, as I could not leave home without it, and it got soaked even inside the safety of my knapsack. Very valuable and welcome friend and helpmate in the rocky road of Ulysses. Get one and awaken.

Informatively written by Rebecca Bloom (a gifted teacher of metaphysical subjects with eighteen years' experience), Begin Your Psychic Journey: Discovering The Path To Your Intuitive Gifts is a unique self-help guideline to unlocking one's psychic abilities to reduce stress, unify body, mind, and spirit, improve optimism, find inner peace, and more. Packed from cover to cover with exercises to encourage growth, advice for protecting oneself from negative energies, and pathways to wisdom that has transcended generations, Begin Your Psychic Journey is an excellent introductory guide and highly recommended for novice Metaphysical Studies students.

Rebecca Bloom's Begin Your Psychic Journey is a treasure-chest of spiritual practice, beginning with its enchanting cover of mountain valley and stream. Within she presents a variety of tools for exploring links between one's intuitive nature and day-to-day experiences. Ms. Bloom's message encourages one to learn to explore and trust his or her inner nature.

Even if the reader only reads and works with the chapter on meditation, the money and effort would be well-spent. Beyond this chapter are a variety of lucidly presented activities, such as those on crystals, dreamwork, animal guides, auras, chakras, and others. Each activity is easy to follow and is capped with a helpful anecdotal entry. Much wisdom pervades this outstanding manual for perusing one's spiritual journey.
Joseph Kirschner, Professor Emeritus

I know you have read it over and over -- a "must have for your collection." This is truly one of those books. Ms. Bloom, the author, speaks to us easily and freely. I have read many books where I felt like the author was either talking to me like I was incompetent or way over my head. Ms. Bloom writes as though she is sitting with the reader and speaking to them. This is quite helpful. She has the ability to explain things to the reader that gives you many an "aha" moment. What I appreciate the most is that this book will help the reader move forward no matter what stage of self-discovery you are at. I have gifted this book to a few friends and have been thanked over and over for the insight provided. You will find that this book will be a treasure in your collection.