N Books

We used this book for our children from the time they were born until they were three years old. They loved it! The illustrations are fantastic and beautiful. Any time I give a baby gift I always include this book. Highly recommended!

When my son was in preschool, this was hands down one of his favorite books, along with Vol. 1. The stories are simply written yet remain true to the spirit of the Word. We highly recommend these books!

PERFECT FOR TODDLERS! This book offers short bible stories in language that is perfect for preschoolers!

Our family loves the Read-Aloud Bible Stories volumes, I just wish the other volumes were as readily-available! This volume includes several stories from the old testament including David and Goliath, Joshua and the walls of Jericho, Baby Moses (my daughter's favorite), and a few others which I can't remember off the top of my head. Excellent volume and I am actually using this also for our toddler class of sunday school at church. The illustrations are great and do really capture a child's attention, the stories are simple but not dumbed-down. You will not be disappointed with this book!

Our children are all grown now, but these books were their favorite Bible story books. The stories are told in simple words with plenty of repetition. The last page of each story reviews "What did you learn?" for reinforcement. We give volume 2, our favorite, as a baby gift and are always thanked profusely.

This book is one of the best books about the fire service I have ever read. I hung onto each and every word. It was though I was there sometimes.

During the tumultuous period of the 60s when author Dennis Smith wrote Report From Engine Company 82, the book was a cry for help from exhausted, frustrated men. Men who cleaned up in the aftermath of other exhausted and frustrated inhabitants of a society stretched to the breaking point.

As I type this, a younger firefighter in a comfortable, air-conditioned fire station among a population that by-and-large respects my profession, it's easy to forget the sacrifice of our past brothers who unceasingly fought fires, city hall and the population they served, until they had forged the modern fire service.

It's an important book for new firefighters to learn how the iron men of old did the job. And for the general reader it's a testament to both a volatile period in our nation's history, and to the timeless strength and courage by which good men have always worked to keep back the chaos of barbarism and destruction.

I spent 10 years in the fire service in both engine and truck companys. While I have many memories and stories to tell, the author, Dennis Smith, sums up the life of a fire fighter in an urban environment about as well as can be possibly told. Trying to balance the unpleasantries and sadness against the satisfaction of saving a life or helping a family overcome one of life's most agonizing moments is very well portrayed in this book. This is what a fire fighter's life is about folks. There is no other book that I can remember that tells it any better than this. If you're thinking of a career in a big city fire department or for that matter, if you're even thinking of becoming a volunteer fire fighter this book is a must!

I first read this book 20+ years ago, when I was under 20 years of age myself but streetwise from being the "wheels" (with a driver's license and a car) for various escapades all over Chicago in my raucous, hard-partying and utterly politically incorrect youth. Many aspects of "Report From Engine Co. 82" stuck with me through the years, and I've re-read it several times. Now I'm 40 and an ER RN in a Chicago hospital where we see more than our share of the extraordinarily dysfunctional lives of the people who live in poverty in the neighborhoods that surround our hospital -- the type of job and environment Smith portrays so well in "Report From Engine Co. 82."

"Report From Engine Co. 82." tells truths about the nearly inescapable poverty and illiteracy of people scraping by in lives that are marginalized in every possible way because they don't -- can't -- really care for themselves appropriately because they don't even know how. Poverty isn't what it used to be -- but it's still as screwed up as it was in Smith's first book. Most of our ER visits aren't really emergencies, just as most of the calls Company 82 responded to weren't emergencies, either. Nowadays, people call 911; when "Report" was written, that 911 system didn't exist yet. But not much has changed since then, in terms of what the firefighters/paramedics respond to and bring to the ER.

Most of the "emergencies" he sees are not emergencies. The non-emergencies, combined with the real emergencies, portray the dangerous and unthinking way poor people live through a combination of lack of resources, lack of experience with the "straight" world, lack of common sense, and minute-by-minute survival thinking. Most of these emergencies and non-emergencies are easily prevented -- if people had common sense, proper parenting, and a normal instinct for self-preservation.

These qualities, however, are surprisingly hard to come by in poverty, and this is what Smith dramatizes. The heroin overdoses. The stupid kids doing stupid things because they are constantly left unattended and to their own devices. Kids who shoot themselves in the thigh or foot -- or worse -- "playing" with guns. Fires that kill children because space heaters provide the heat slumlords refuse to provide in their code-violating buildings. The incipient hatred and distrust poor minority neighborhoods have of the white emergency personnel and firefighters who respond to their calls. The huge cultural gaps that make true communication and understanding so difficult -- even when you're both the same race and both speaking English.

What Smith accurately portrays is the way poverty-stricken people "live in the now" -- people whose entire lives are spent with no real financial or material stability or security. These are people for whom the concept of saving money for the future is impossible, either as a concept or a reality. People for whom making an appointment days or weeks in the future, and actually remembering to get to the appointment, is nearly impossible. Their main mode of thought is: what do I need to do now, what do I want to do now, what do I need or want to do in the next five minutes. This inability to think about and plan for the future is endemic, as is the inability to prioritize that which really matters -- one suspects because most of these people realize on some level they have no future that truly matters to the rest of society, and they're incapable of living as the rest of the "straight" world lives because they never have, didn't grow up with it, and don't know the language of living that life, let alone the mindset.

These are the people and children who have no insurance, no health care, no glasses when their vision is bad, no braces or dental care when their teeth are bad; who never use birth control (to prevent pregnancy OR to prevent disease transmission). People who don't understand why it's inappropriate to come to the ER with an upper respiratory infection and get pissed off when they wait hours for care while higher priority, higher-acuity patients (in respiratory distress, cardiac arrest, heart attacks, asthma attacks, and overdose, etc.) are taken before they are.

Conversely, these are also the people who shun health care until they are so sick they can no longer avoid it, and discover they have cancer... Cancer that could have been prevented or at least treated, often saving their lives, had they ever had regular health care -- but who are now consigned to an inevitable death they will blame on the healthcare providers who couldn't save them because they were at a stage beyond saving or treating in any way other than palliative.

Smith's New York is NOT the New York of Sex And The City. This is the New York of the infants whose welfare mothers don't immunize them, but have the latest, most expensive coats and boots because conspicuous consumption is how they live: you show how much money you have by wearing all that your money has bought you (rather than doing the far less glamorous but sensible things more responsible people, whose children were WANTED rather than accidental, do). The New York of the kids having kids who have kids, all of whom have never known proper parenting, nutrition, or health care. The overdoses. The children who come in with accidental poisonings or burns from household chemicals because no one was watching them. The attempted suicides with anything and everything -- cold medicine, knives, guns, illegal drugs. The kids raised by siblings because the parent is completely incapable, if they're even around, with or without the additional problems of substance use/abuse, addiction, or domestic abuse. The families which are largely single-parent families -- and where the parental figure may be an elder sibling, aunt or cousin who cares more for the children than their biological parent(s) does or is capable of doing.

This is also the world of the terrified illegal immigrants who wait so long to call for help because they're afraid of INS (now ICE) and deportation; by the time they do, they're often too sick to save. The penniless old people whose pensions don't cover their living expenses and who don't call for help because they're terrified of being discharged from the hospital to a nursing home and losing what little autonomy and material security they have left. The fractured families (with utterly dysfunctional dynamics) who interfere with the paramedics' jobs -- as well as the tight-knit families who are rich only in love for one another. The people who refuse help they desperately need because they fear and distrust the paramedics and firemen trying to help them, and because their healthcare illiteracy is such that they have no idea what is necessary to save their lives, and so refuse or avoid medical treatment that could stop problems in stages when they're still treatable. The mothers who speak no English, who superstitiously fear that emergency treatment will kill their children, yet who are so desperate to save their babies, they don't know what else to do, because all home remedies have now failed. The endless numbers of people who let their prescriptions run out or try to save money by taking less than the prescribed doses and then have severe health problems that wouldn't happen if they bought and took their meds as prescribed -- but who, for multiple reasons, can't and/or don't. The people who beg not to be brought to the hospital because "people DIE in the hospital" -- people who don't understand that their neighbors and family members who died in the hospital, died because they waited far too long to call for help, and were therefore were beyond saving when they finally got to a hospital.

Anyone who works in public service as a fireman, cop, nurse, social worker, or psych intake worker in a big city -- and in poverty-stricken, crime- and drug-infested suburbs and rural communities -- can relate to Smith's book. For everyone who majored in something else, this book opens a door and exposes the lives of people you don't even know exist, people you don't acknowledge when you're forced to share a bus or train with them during rush hour (or who you intentionally avoid by driving in your own car, despite the expense of gas, insurance, and time spent on the commute): the people who don't work, or the people who work wage-slave jobs like janitor, maid, fast-food worker, security guard, who can barely pay their bills or care for their children with what little they make -- or who blow it all on liquor and/or drugs and/or gambling (or all three) to escape the miserable hopelessness of their lives. The kids who have the latest "stuff" -- whether it's the shiny ten speed bicycles Smith writes about, or today's video games and cell phone/mp3 player/cameras -- but whose parents can't or won't give them what they really need: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a stable environment from which to emerge every day to deal with the life-endangering risks of walking to and attending public schools that do little more than babysit and warehouse kids whose futures include teen pregnancy (and the late-term, life-threatening miscarriages that go with total lack of prenatal care, with or without drug use), repeated incarceration, and shorter-than-average lifespans due to the daily likelihood of violence in their communities and their lives.

Smith's portrayal of this kind of poverty is not pretty but it is not unsympathetic -- there are glimpses of beauty and hope, mostly in the young women and children who haven't yet been ruined by their surroundings. Smith tempers it all with a matter-of-fact acceptance that although it is his job to care for these people, he may never really understand them because he's now too removed from that life, and he takes on faith that they possess human qualities they often fail to demonstrate. But some do show their humanity, and those are the people he does it for.

Smith does an excellent job of portraying the paradox that the job of these firefighters and paramedics is to help and save these people, which by its nature includes finding them WORTH helping and saving, at the same time as they move and live as far away from these neighborhoods and the associated poverty, crime and drug problems as they possibly can. This is not merely a racial difference. There are plenty of black and Latino paramedics, cops, firefighters, nurses and doctors who straddle the gulf (some might say 'minefield') between their class and the class of the people they help, in circumstances that are at best trying and at worst nearly impossible to help them transcend for any sustained length of time.

Smith portrays the sympathetic detachment required to know that this is what you do, all day, every day you work, with only the hope that one or two out of ten people will actually genuinely and sincerely thank you for what you do or have done for them -- which is that elusive reward you get, one that can make it all seem worth it when it happens -- and to hope that when you show up and give this of yourself on every shift, there might be one kid or teen who sees what you're doing, who still has enough time ahead of them to see this glimpse into another world... A world it is just *barely* possible for them to enter given enough determination, education, mentoring and drive, and sadly also given enough instinct to discard much of what they learn in their families about how they THINK the world works, versus how the world REALLY works for the more educated and better-off people who run it.

The fact that Smith can show all this without denigrating an entire class of people -- does, in fact, portray them with humanity and the grace one occasionally sees in these circumstances -- is because he also recognizes that he is not that far removed from the kind of poverty he sees on the job (he grew up poor, too). He recognizes and accepts that he is that kid who admired firemen as a boy and saw a different world -- he is that kid who made the leap to the next class up, to the working class and blue collar as opposed to poverty-stricken. He understands the dysfunction -- the drinking, the drugs, the abuse -- that occurs in the neighborhoods Co. 82 responds to because it occurred in his neighborhood, his family, his poverty, while he was growing up.

This understanding that few "get out" -- and that he was one of the lucky few -- underscores with sympathy his otherwise stark portrayal of the job of a NYC fireman in the 70s when NYC was not a desirable place to live and people did their best to escape "the city" as soon as their financial circumstances permitted it.

The uncensored version of this book (which is the one I've read multiple times) also shows the bizarre split someone who works as a fireman/paramedic, nurse, or doctor must negotiate within themselves -- the intimate knowledge you have of the bodies of the people you must save, which is merely part of your job but which you can't really talk about to any family member or lover who isn't in one of these fields. I don't mean merely intimacy with people's genitals -- though there is that, such as the way the Smith describes heroin overdoses getting icebags put under their testicles (negative stimulus, designed to bring unresponsive, unconscious people back to responsiveness and consciousness). I mean the intimacy of seeing people stripped of their modesty and dignity, voluntarily (prostitutes) or involuntarily (the terribly sick), whose personal space and body integrity you must necessarily invade, often in less-than-respectful or diplomatic ways because there is no time for those niceties when someone is dying and you're trying to save them. People who don't work in these fields can never really understand how you can be unaffected by the nudity, exposure and/or intimate knowledge you have of these total strangers, and the disinterest or casual attitude with which you greet what would shock most everyone else.

And, of course, you're not unaffected by this knowledge. Sometimes you're disturbed, or someone or something sticks in your mind -- the things you've seen or had to do -- and is recalled in inappropriate moments with your loved ones. You're not unaffected, you're just emotionally calloused or you compartmentalize it, in order to repeatedly perpetrate and endure this violation of the boundaries between strangers and its inherent power imbalance: you, as the emergency personnel, never have to reveal any of these intimacies to your patients... but they must necessarily, willingly or not, reveal them to you. This includes the mentally ill and the hopelessly drug-addled or dopesick (or both, combined) -- sometimes the most disturbing intimacy of all: the insides of their heads and their distorted, sometimes frighteningly unhinged, perceptions of the world around them.

Before anyone decides to dedicate their lives to becoming a firefighter, they would be wise to start their research here. Some 30+ years after it was first published, this book still shows remarkable insight into the lives, struggles, and emotions of a professional firefighter. When I started on the road to becoming a firefighter, being a volunteer and reading Dennis Smith books asserted in my mind that my life would be wasted doing anything else. For others, this may convince you that the job is not for you. It isn't for everyone. Either way, this is a very enjoyable read and worth the time and money for anyone, not just firemen and wannabe's.

After reading a short story in Reading class, my daughters became very curious about the Titanic. This book is a good overview of the ship and the voyage.

this is a good book for kids who are intersted in titanic.my nephew love this book,buys every book he can find on it.

This book is very great for kids who want to get a good glimpse on the inside of the ship and see what the interior actually might have looked like back then.

I have it sitting above my head on my book shelf among a couple of other titanic books.

I definately recgomend this book for any one and not just children.

My seven year old nephew was enthralled by this book. The amazing illustrations fill every page with a wealth of detail for both adults and kids. The story line is excellent too--it follows two families, the Goldsmiths and the Carters, one in first class, one in third, as they make their way across the Atlantic. The book doesn't gloss over the fact that many died, but has just enough detail to hold kids' interest without being scary. A real find.

My 7 year old son has become fanatical about all thing related to the Titanic. I was thrilled to find there are so many good books out there for children of his age, this particular book is no exception. Great copy, wonderful pictures. He reads this one over and over again.

What a wonderful story Ohlsen has written. I heard of this book in an audio tape of a talk given by Paula D'Arcy, called Spirituality for the Second Half of Life. Ohlsen stubbornly pursues the Poor Clares in Wisconsin, a Franciscan order of nuns whose ranks were becoming depleted. The congregation of the downtown church was also diminishing quickly. Ohlsen writes about the church and the poor Clares journalistically and restoration of individuals to both the nuns' ranks and the church's fold begin. Parallel to this exploration of the lives of these interesting women, is Ohlsen's articulation of her own spiritual search...fascinating and comforting all at the same time. A must read.

I can see how this book might apeal to some, but I found it far from a "spiritual classic." While touching in many ways, the author kept throughout a sort of superior tone that began to grate, as if she was amused at everything she saw and heard. I think she was trying to be witty, but it often came off, at least to me, as a little snotty. But the book has its moments.

Kristin Ohlson stumbled onto the Poor Clares at just the right moment. It was Christmas morning and she was feeling bereft. A former Catholic who no longer believed in God, she impulsively decided to attend Mass at a church where she could hear the Poor Clares singing. Thus begins this intriguing saga of a search for faith and a newspaper story.

I would call this Divine Providence. Others might call it serendipity. Ohlson needed inspiration, and the Poor Clares needed the attention her journalistic interest would generate. True to the mentality of those who place their trust in God alone, the Poor Clares did not seek her help. It took her months to get the Clares to respond to her requests for an interview, and as she waited, she became involved in the ailing parish community attached to the convent.

Ohlson is an engaging narrator -- open, warm, and honest. She brings her full journalistic skills to this story. Despite my sadness at seeing the diminishment of vocations to contemplative living, I found her presentation of the life of a once flourishing community totally engrossing. Though I cannot claim, as another reviewer has that this is the current "Seven Story Mountain," I will say that I am very glad that I bought and read the book.

I just read Stalking the Divine and loved it.

Full disclosure: I met Kristin Ohlson at a writer's conference and spent some time chatting with her. If I hadn't liked the book, I wouldn't have written a review at all. But, I can hear her voice as I read. I've read other writers whom I've met in person, and they don't always sound like themselves.

But, Kristin is as delightful, unassuming and smart on the page as she is in person. Reading this is akin to a conversation -- you'll find yourself responding with nods of your head, furrowings of your brows, chuckles of recognition. It's that good, and she's that real.

I, too, was brought up in the Catholic fatih, and became an atheist. I'm still an atheist after reading this book :) Kristin so effectively communicates her own wonder, doubts, and drive to discover that I was completely captivated.

The history and reality of the Poor Clares is also a story well worth one's time to read.

This is a lovely book regardless of your faith.

You might also call this book 'self-absorbed journalist works out truce with the Second Person of the Trinity.'

I bought 'Stalking the Divine' after reading the glowing reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. What closed the sale was one reviewer's description of it as a latter-day 'Seven Storey Mountain.'

Yet for every expression of admiration for the Poor Clares, Ms. Ohlson is compelled to share, say, the icky feeling she gets when she utters the word 'Jesus.'

On page five, Ohlson describes stumbling into a Catholic church in Cleveland after a lengthy absence and being horrified to hear a priest wag his finger about the evils of abortion. This reviewer has been a Catholic for thirty seven years, yet not once have I heard a priest address this subject outside the petitions at Mass. A lapsed Catholic wanders into an anonymous church and hears a pro-life homily? Call me skeptical.

When I was a stand-offish boy greeting my visting aunts at Christmastime, they'd tell me to 'quit arm-hugging' and to give them something real, heartfelt. Ohlson's book is a 272-page Catholic arm-hug.

If you love C&H, you'll like this book. For me, Calvin is like pepperoni pizza... when it's good, it's really good, and when it's bad, it's still good.

Unfortunately, I say it rather cynically.

My, there are so many monsters peopling this strip. The kid's a monster. His parents are monsters. The tiger's a monster. The teacher's a monster. The babysitter's a monster. And the only character who's not a monster (and more of a victim) is naturally enough, a young girl who is never bad or gets into any trouble. And the strip, while a rugrat's fantasyland, also smacks of extreme adolescent rebellion.

The strip is so overrated even after its demise a decade ago that it's been ensured that no cartoonist alive or yet to be born would ever create a strip as well-worshipped as it is for all eternity to come. So why not just remove the whole comic section from the news for good?

This book combines material from both Yukon Ho! and Weirdos From Another Planet!. Perfect to read with a blanket and a cup of tea on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It lifts my spirits up and makes me laugh, even when there's no one around. Really, that could be said about any Calvin and Hobbes book, though!

Whether the collection is the "Indispensible" or "Essential" or "Quintessential" Calvin and Hobbes, it doesn't really matter. Watching this hyperactive, hyperimaginative child and his willing though wise accomplice, Hobbes, take on evil babysitters, Susie Derkins, the class bully and all creatures (real or imaginary), is a pleasure and laughter without stop. "The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes" is another in a long list of the great comic work of Bill Watterson. This is an indispensible/essential/quintessential collection for all Calvin and Hobbes and humor fans!

Calvin is a beam of light, a dinosaur, Spaceman Spiff, a pollster on the election of new parents, a robotic explorer from Jupiter (in search of chocoloate) -- well lots of things. He's all the best and all the worst a boy about five can be, and that covers a lot of ground.

If the others around him never quite see things Calvin's way, that's really not his problem. Hobbes will always understand, and generally offer some understated commentary on events. I prefer not to say too much about Hobbes. It's really best if you let him introduce himself.

This book is a treasury of daily and sunday color strips. It captures a part of one of the best strip comics ever. If you already know C&H, you'll surely want this collection. If you missed the strip when it was still in the papers, this will give you a wonderful introduction.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood, and Calvin offers his for your enjoyment.

//wiredweird

This is a book for the young, but it is also a good book for the parents and everyone in between.
I had this book w/record when I was a little girl and the meaning behind this very small simple book came to mind many times through my life... (middle aged now) It resonated with me because I perceived my family didn't believe in me, didn't think I would amount to anything, treated me as if I was stupid and laughed at me, my dreams... so I grew up trying to be my own "cheerleader"... which was daunting at times... yet, like this boy planting the carrot seed, I also somehow knew (trusted?) inside me there was a seed that would grow with enough positive energy, light and love. It is my passion to cheer my fellow humans on... believe in yourself, believe in your children, believe in the people around you and they will believe in themselves and so on and so on and so on...
We all came here with a gift (seed)... let it move through you (grow) and do not listen to the negative voices/opinions around you, no matter how "influential" they are.
"My story" is done, coaching session over ;-) Cheers to ya!

My 3 year old son knows this book word for word. It is a superb story about patience and tenacity. Yet another library book that become so beloved we turned to amazon....

This book is a wonderful portrayal of perserverence and faith. Delightful to young and old!

i was happy to receive the book. it is exactly the book i remembered and its nice because it is hard.

thank you

This book had a huge impact on me as a child.

Everyone told the boy his carrot seed would not come up. Even the adults. My reaction was this: adults know everything, so why is this boy still trying? I was truly surprised when the carrot seed sprouted, and I clapped and cheered. My next reaction was this: maybe *I* shouldn't give up, even when other people tell me to. This is one of the greatest lessons I've ever learned.

I read this book to my own kids now, and they love it as much as I do.

First book in the Demonata series.

Grubitsch "Grubbs" Grady goes to live with his Uncle Dervish in a creepy old mansion after his parents and sister are torn to shreds by an evil demon named Lord Loss and his familiars, Vein and Artery. Grubbs witnesses the gory scene, but escapes by tapping into a magical ability he never knew he possessed. Once in his uncle's house, Grubbs learns more than he ever wanted to know about the Grady family curse, which involves werewolves, demons, and chess.

Lord Loss is an exciting fantasy/horror story, filled with suspense that left me wanting to read more. After his parents are killed by the demon master, Lord Loss, a teenage is introduced into a world of demons and magic by his uncle. I think a lot of teenagers would enjoy reading this book. Darren Shan uses every word in the book to describe the characters, the thing around them, and their feelings. The story is completely unpredictable and I was left reading chapteer after chapter, The characters are realistic and I can relate to what they feel. I gave this book a 4 out of 5. It is one of my favorite books because of how the story is told which so much detail in every sentence.

Demonata
Book 1: Lord Loss

This story starts off with this one kid and his family who absolutely loves chess. They play a game every night and they are the best of the state and know one can beat them. Grubbs (Grubitsch) Grady doesn't get why his family has to play chess so much. He doesn't get why it's so important to the family, but soon, very soon he will find out the truth.
Grubbs family went out of town to a ballet Grubbs spends the night at his aunt's house for the night. But Grubbs was too curious to let his family treating him differently unnoticed. He sneaks out of his grandma's house to see what id really going on.
He finally gets to his house and his parents vehicles are still there. His front door was unlocked so he went in. The whole house was unusually cold. Every chess set that was in the house was broken and skewed around the house. The only light on in the house was in his room. Grubbs never learned what curiosity killed the cat meant until now.
When Grubbs opens the door to his room all he sees is blood stained walls and the demon artery eating his sister alive and the other demon Vein chewing alive his mom.
That's just the beginning, if you like horror books and demons and werewolves, this is the book for you. There's a lot more to this book than what you just read and it get's much, much better than the beginning is.
This book comes close to being just as good as the Cirque De Freak, but it's not quite there yet.

Another must read seires by Darren Shan This book is awsome its about demons and everything magical but mustly demons u will be itchting for the next book after u read Lord Loss

THIS BOOK SENDS SHIVERS DOWN MY SPINE!!!!!


P.S. BUY OR LISTEN TO THE BAND RAMMSTEIN!!!!!!!!!

(IT'S A GREAT BAND!!!)

I saw a young girl on an airplane several months ago completely engaged in this book and decided to give it a shot for a family trip to Alaska (1 1/2 hour dinners and a 4 1/2 flight). PERFECT solution. My 11 month old daughter LOVES this book and completely enjoys turning the pages, finding the pages with "moving parts" and/or texture.

She was captivated every evening at dinner and still picks this as one of her favorites. I highly recommend this book.

My 11 month old LOVES dogs and cats. She can't read this by herself yet but she gets excited when we bring this book out and let her look at the doggies and pet them!! It blows her mind and she can't get enough. I can't wait until she's old enough to read it alone and not rip off the doggies ears etc. Well made book and very interesting for kids who love dogs.

My 2-yr nephew and 18-month daughter love this book! It is a constant favorite before bedtime and she loves pointing and touching the different furry spots. There is even a "sticky" tongue that elicits laughs every time. The dog's pictures are great and the book is quite sturdy for toddler handling. This book is a must-have for any baby/toddler library!

My 19 month old daughter loves it! I start the sentences and and my daughter tries to finish them. She loves lifting the flap at the end and seeing the cat. One caution...The tabs can be ripped off fairly easily. I actually had to get the book twice because my daughter liked to play with it so much.

I bought this book for my granddaughters. They loved it. They liked the pictures and the interactive opportunities. It was a perfect book for 18 month olds. The little tails were torn off almost immediately but they still love the book.

There are an awful lot of dead bodies per capita in this book, and quite a bit of fairly mindless violence, but that said, it's a page-turner that is extremely well written. Unlike other reviewers I found nothing confusing about the elements of the plot, just found some of them unlikely in the extreme (both the ostensible pre-historic Chinese settlers of the Americas and the ostensible pre-historic Phoenician settlers just happen to have come upon and used the same underground and under-river storage caverns? Wouldn't proof of Phoenician settlers of North America alone have been enough??) This is clearly a read oriented more towards boys, but girls who like adventure stories will enjoy it too.

I have to agree with another review the cover of this book just hooked me. This came into the library where I work (5/6 grade) and I immediately snagged it. Read it in one night and have not seen the book on our shelves since!!! It has been out constantly since we put it in the collection. Our kids like it (mainly the boys and our teachers love it!!). There's action and creepiness. The scene in the cave was so vivid I could feel the cold damp and the spongy feel of the body as our hero, Tom, groped his way around in the pitch black. Excellent!!

N.D. Wilson's LEEPIKE RIDGE tells of a preteen who has always lived next to Leepike Ridge - but who finds himself lost beneath it when he escapes the man set to marry his mother and finds his escape raft has left him underground. His discoveries under the ridge - of a body, a dog and more - will answer questions and challenge his survival skills in a riveting adventure kids will relish.

I read a review that made comparisons between this book and Louis Sachar's Holes. This kind of comparison always makes me skeptical. "We'll just see about that," I thought. I read it. I saw. And I get it now. This one is worthy of that comparison -- and then some. And this book will definitely appeal to fans of Holes.

Leepike Ridge is a book for every kid (and every grown kid) who played in refrigerator boxes, caught critters in the woods, and floated down creeks on homemade rafts. It's a fantastic story with a grand adventure, a heroic boy, bad guys that you love to hate, a loyal dog, and a hidden treasure. The fact that it's beautifully written with magical, transporting descriptions is gravy.

If you know and like a boy between the ages of, let's say 9 and 13, Leepike Ridge would make a fantastic gift!

Great fun and very hard to put down.

I have no clue how it would go over for younger readers, but if you're a not-so-young reader, it's a real treat.

Living By the Book: The Art and Science of Reading the Bible -- At Last! Someone who knows how to read the bible and is willing to reveal his secrets to us. Why don't church bible studies start with this book? This book should be the first book of the bible study curriculum. I praise God for finally leading me to Howard Hendricks book.

Howard Hendricks is outstanding at revealing how exciting reading the Bible can be, but even more important was how he explains how to accurately determine what the writers were saying to the original hears, but also to us now. His directions reveal tried and true methods to "rightly divide the Word of God" that many other books on how to read the Bible just never see. I have been reading the Bible for more than 30 years and have seen truths that I missed over and over, just like when Sherlock Holmes looks a crime scene and understands all kinds of details that the untrained just can't see.
Reading this will open up the Bible and God's revelation like never before.

As a required reading for my Bible Study Methods course in seminary, this book opened up a new world to me in the area of Bible observation, interpretation, and application. I did not know what I did not know. I highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn how to read their Bible in a new, more in depth way, to receive all that God's Word wants to reveal to us.

We've just started using this study with our small group from church and I'm thrilled that it will teach everyone how to dig deeper and understand the word on their own. Howard Hendricks is a great bible teacher.

Dr. Hendricks is a gem! This book is for anyone who finds the Bible overwhelming or intimidating. This book will help you develop method for study that will make the Bible easy to understand.