Brooks Books

In this delightful book, Kaarina Brooks serves up English translations of Finnish folk tales. The stories of Bear Finnish Folk Tales for Children appeal to the imagination and the emotions of children and adults alike and offer universally accessible, yet traditionally Finnish lore.

This book was the text my instructor assigned in an interpersonal communication class I took a few years ago. It is very readable, as are all books by the Coreys. It covers a wide range of topics and it uses case examples to illustrate the points. It isn't a counselling book in terms of having alot of exercises on questioning or empathy. It does discuss counselling skills, but it is more concerned with the worker's personal development, in terms of ethics, self-awareness, self-care, etc. The suggested activities at the end of the chapter really help the learning process. My only criticism of the book is that a few of the chapters are a tad long.

My almost-2 year old loves this book. She compares the items on the pages to the real ones in the house. The illustrations are so detailed that there are lots of words to talk about. It's been her favorite for about 6 months and no signs of getting boring, yet.

The CD is very good. The video tutorial section gave you a very good instruction. The exercise and tests can be modified, so you can skip the area that you are good at and practice the area that you are not good at. Most of all it grade your results instantly. The textbook has additional examples and problem applications for each chapter. I used this to teach my 9 years old son who is gifted in math. I wish I can find textbook/CD in other subjects as good as this one. I have bought many other textbooks with CD and this was the only one I found useful.

I love the Beginner's Bible Series. The stories are short and simple enough for any child to understand. Every time my 2 year old sees Noah's Ark, she says, "Jesus loves me." Isn't that what we want to hear? The pictures are colorful and pleasing to look at. Just right for any 12 - 36 month old.

Beowulf is a tale of glory, courage and death. It starts with a burial at sea, on a boat forever roaming the ocean with a rich hoard of gold and it ends with the pyre of Beowulf himself buried with a rich hoard in a mound to remember the dead king and to be a signal to all sailors about the land they will welcome as a harbour of peace. But the whole trajectory of this tale is founded on three exploits, three killings of monsters. First Grendel the sea monster who is destroyed with sheer muscular strength. Then Grendel's mother at the bottom of the sea in a lair that looks like a womb that has to be purified by the killing and beheading of both the mother and the son, a son that has no father and that is the last descendant of the outcast Cain. It is the perfect Christian rewriting of an old saga, the destruction of all monsters, of the last monsters bringing the end of Cain's line and the redemption of humanity in God by the cleansing of the womb that produced such monsters. It is the killing of the mother that had no husband and her son that had no father, of those unhuman beings that live on preying humanity. All the old legends are thus christianized and Beowulf, the hero, some would have seen a god in him in the old days, becomes a Christian hero who cleanses the womb and christianizes it, who brings the light of God to the world along with glory and peace. But the chistianization of the saga is only complete when a third killing takes place, a killing that will mean the death and sacrifice of the hero. The third monster is a serpent, a dragon, keeping a fantastic treasure under his guard. The monster of flight, fire and also water, the cross of all monsters of water, air and fire, living in a deep burrow in the earth. He associates the four elements and has to be killed for humanity to be free of such menaces. Beowulf will do it though he will die of it. It is the killing of the dragon in the Book of Revelation that opens the road to the New Jerusalem, the City of God. This dragon is also an obvious father symbol. Hence all the monsters are destroyed, and the victory is complete by the killing of the father, though that killing both means the death of the hero and the birth of a new hero who helps Beowulf defeat the dragon. The treasure of the dragon will yet not be appropriated by the winner because it represents the strength of this dragon, of the father, of the hero. The hero will be buried with it and the tomb will become a beaconing symbol of security and welcome for men. This christianization is very subtle. Eight warriors will enter the dragon's lair, eight like Jesus Christ in christian symbolism, but also like the omega of the Book of Revelation. And then twelve warriors will consecrate the burial mound of Beowulf, twelve like the twelve doors of the New Jerusalem, like the representatives of the City of God, of the prediction of the end of the world and the redemption of all worthy men and women after the last call of God who is both the alpha, the beginning, and the omega, the end, of life, of the world, of humanity, of any man's life that has to start with a heroic act and end with another.

The language itself makes it difficult to read but the effort is leading to a worthwhile beauty that no translation can ever achieve.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Published annually since 1973, the "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year" features the best work of some of the nation's most talented pen and ink commentators. This 1985 edition, recounting the events of 1984, contains over 300 examples of this sublime political art form by 131 editorial cartoonists. The cover cartoon of Ronald Reagan riding the United States like a horse reminds us that this was the President was reelected in a landslide (there is another cartoon inside that transforms the map into Reagan's face). Consequently, the opening salvos of this volume are devoted to President Reagan, Mondale and the Democrats, and the Presidential Debates. It is interesting to see that it was not the incumbent President but the challenger and his party that offered the better fodder for cartoons. After all, you have a former Vice-President whose administration had failed to be reelected heading the ticket along with Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated for the second spot on the ticket. Then throw into the mix the scandal of the Gary Hart campaign and Jesse Jackson's association with various undesirables around the world. Editorial cartoonists must have been pinching themselves to make sure all this wonderful nonsense was really going on.

In addition to the devastating defeat of the Democrats in the presidential election there were also the topics of the nation's ballooning budget deficit, the parade of geriatric leaders in the Soviet Union, and the grim spectacle of faminine and starvation in Ethiopia. There are also the old standards of defense spending, the Middle East, religion in the schools, education in the schools, and crime. But usually it is those unique moments in American history, such as Miss America Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to win the crown, being forced to resign because of the publication of nude photographs (Historical footnote: Williams is doing much better today than Ferraro). It always happens that while flipping through these pages that the year under review comes back in all its details. A standard history of the year 1984 could not serve as well.

This particular volume is graced by a foreword by Rep. Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and himself a frequent subject of editorial cartoons (a half dozen choice examples of which accompany his words). O'Neil posits that the dictum that a picture is worth a thousand words applies doubly to editorial cartoons and celebrates both their power and their potency. Looking through these pages from almost two decades past proves the point: looking at an editorial cartoon on the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympic games in Los Angeles can bring back the issue quite vividly. Then there is the poignancy of a couple of editorial cartoons that addressed President Reagan's announcement that a schoolteacher would be selected as the first "citizen passenger" to fly in space; the flight would probably take place in late 1985 or 1986.

When tripping down memory lane by flipping through the pages of "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1988," or any of its companion volumes in this series, what stands out the most are not the constant topics such as Congress getting nothing done, violence in the Middle East, concerns about the economy and defense spending, but the topics that are specific to 1987. That was the year of the doomed nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court and a players strike in the NFL, a great opportunity for editorial cartoonists to declare a plague on both houses. Then there was the PTL scandal that brought down Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye Bakker, a woman born to end up in editorial cartoons. Often, I find some of my favorite cartoons have to do with well-known personalities who died during the year: Jim Borgman has Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in the reception room in heaven and Bob Englehart drew the set from "The Honeymooners" with the figure of Alice weeping over the death of Jackie Gleason.

1987 was a good year for award-winning cartoonists, with Mike Peters picking up the National Headliners Club Award for his Iran-Contra action figures, Berke Breathed shaking the earth by winning the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for "Bloom County," and Dick Locher earning the Fischetti Award for a cartoon of Reagan as Karnak ("The answer is: 'I Don't Know!' Now, what's the question?"). The Iran-Contra hearings provided lots of fodder for satire, with Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North suddenly becoming a national figure, along with National Security Advisor John Poindexter. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan continued along with his "Teflon Presidency" while over on the Democratic side potential candidates Gary Hart and Joe Biden saw their campaigns self-destruct. You look over all the stupid things politicians were doing and no wonder the American public is jaded about scandals involving politicians. Then there was the controversy over promoting condoms as a way of reducing the spread of AIDS, just one of a dozen topics that cuts both ways in inflaming the passions of the American public. Still, all thing considered 1987 was a very good year for the pens dipped in venom by the nation's editorial cartoonists.

I really like editorial cartoons, whether they are current ones on the editorial pages of a newspaper or old ones in history books. But for the most part we are talking about satirical barbs at the high and mighty. Still, there are times when editorial cartoonists get to actually celebrate something and the breath-taking collapse of the Berlin Wall and of communist governments in Eastern Europe provided that creative opportunity: e.g., the cover shot by Clyde Wells of the "Augusta Chronicle" showing two figures armed with the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall. Add to this the demands for basic freedoms in both China and the Soviet Union and 1989 became on of the most memorable non-election years of modern times.

"Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1990 Edition" has the work of 163 different cartoonists from the United States and Canada. In addition to the quickening disintegration of the Soviet bloc, there was the first year in office for the "kindler and gentler" Bush Administration, the showdown was Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini putting author Salman Rushdie under a sentence of death for his book "The Satanic Verses." For scandals there was the Savings & Loan in Congress, the trial of Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal, the rejection of the nomination of former Texas Senator John Tower for secretary and defense, and the conviction of Leona Helmsley on tax evasion. Mother Nature added Hurricane Hugo qne an earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area during the World Series, while humans added insult to injury with the "Exxon Valdez" oil spill. There is a section we would find quite timely today dealing with Pete Rose being banned by baseball for betting on sports. Some things remain constant: there are always editorial cartoons about the economy and problems in the Middle East. It is amazing to me how vividly these editorial cartoons bring back these various issues. Give me a choice between an editorial cartoon and a photograph to preserve a moment in history, and I will usually take the latter.

Well, the cover of the "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1991" is certainly timely. It has Saddam Hussein declaring than his government is digging it to stay and then shows him standing in the grave his men are digging for their nation. This volume offers more than 330 editorial cartoons from the year 1990, which included not only the prelude to the (first) Gulf War but also the political upheavals in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, and the continuing efforts to control the growing budget deficit in the United States that would end up being pivotal in the next Presidential election.

The work of over 170 editorial cartoonists in the United States and Canada are found in this volume edited by Charles Brooks. The continuing circus in Washington, D.C. is a constant source of inspiration, whether you are talking the Bush Administration or the Congress. But the volume begins with the Persian Gulf Conflict, taking jabs at both the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and President Bush's attempt to do something about it. My favorite cartoon is from Jim Borgman of the Cincinnati Enquirer, which shows Saddam with a noose around his neck from a newly planted young tree labeled "Blockade" while Bush, all dressed up in military garb, says, "Now we wait..." It is hard not to look at these cartoons and now be overwhelmed by the irony that a dozen years later history is repeating itself.

Actually, there are more cartoons devoted to the efforts at political reform in the Soviet Union during 1990 as the country's economic deterioration threatened to undermine the "perestroika" of Mikhail Gorbachev. Meanwhile, Boris Yeltsin was elected head of the Russian Republic. Perhaps the greatest irony of looking back at these editorial cartoons is that Saddam Hussein is still in power (as I write this) and Mikhail Gorbachev is a historical footnote.

Other important topics from that year were the appointment of David Souter as Bush's "stealth nominee" to the Supreme Court, the trial of Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry on drug possession, the U.S. Census, the National Endowment of the Arts controversies, Pete Rose being convinced by filing false income tax records, and the deaths of Jim Henson and Ryan White. I always enjoy these works down memory lane because I find editorial cartoons do a better job of crystalizing the issues that defined the time than photographs or articles.