N Books

but unlike the passage from 1 Corinthians, Eleanor Cooney's perception and view of Alzheimer's disease is clear, unmuddied and unlike any that I've ever read. As the disease clouds the memory and behavior of her mother, the range of emotions that I felt as a reader and witness were sometimes too much to bear.

This is a book that I first read when a condensed version appeared in a Harper's magazine article in 2001. I purchased the book shortly thereafter since my own mother had been diagnosed with the disease a year earlier at the age of 58.

I still pick up Death, in Slow Motion every few weeks. I can't tell you what a comfort it has been to me as I journey through the dark and twisted tunnel of care for my own mother. Although our circumstances are different, and the case of every Alzheimer's patient is truly unique, I felt and still feel as if I have met someone who is willing to hold up that mirror and tell me what I am in store for - but in a comforting, compassionate and very honest manner.

Eleanor Cooney has written the most eye-opening and honest account of Alzheimer's that I have ever read! I was a caretaker to my Mother who also had Alzheimer's and much of this mirrored our experience. It felt like someone was finally telling my story: I'm broke, I'm exhausted, I can't take it, I'm abusing substances, I love her, I sometimes wish she'd die, I miss her....I hate myself!

I don't always find authors or experts that have her down to earth way of relaying the real nitty-gritty experience of caring for someone with Alzheimer's. She's an intellegent, strong woman who jumped head-first into the role of caretaker of her Mother, Mary who was beginning the long decline of Alzheimer's. This is a task many children take on and barely survive. Eleanor Cooney is definately a survivor and a brilliant, funny, brutally honest author.

But Eleanor Cooney is also a wonderful storyteller. I feel like I have been in these Connecticut neighborhoods and homes, and have met this cast of characters that tell the exciting story of Mary Durant's life. I especially feel like I've met someone special, Mary. It's hard to remember the person that's inside that Alzheimer's shell. Eleanor has done her Mother proud and left a loving memory of a very beautiful, creative and unusual person.

As the author remarks of Alzheimer's: "you will never be the same once it's paid you a visit." I have not been the same since I've read this book! Do yourself a favor and take this journey!

I bought this book because I had to for a Psycology class report. I read this in 1 day and was pulled in by the true, raw emotion described in this real story about the author and her mother. It is the kind of book you want to read about a subject you want to look away from. I recommend this for anyone who has a loved one suffering with Alzheimers, in the medical feild, or just someone who wants a gripping, powerful read.

p.s. I bought this book used.....wonderful condition...used is the way to go for any college student! low $$$$

This superbly interesting book reads like a story. She has done something major for anyone taking care of a person with Alzheimer's Disease. Her amazing honesty is like a breath of fresh air, and the book helped me more than any other book or support group.

This book is required reading for Alzheimer's caregivers and anyone else who wants to understand what Alzheimer's truly does to the patient and the family. Ms. Cooney gives voice to the myriad emotions the Alzheimer's caregiver experiences. Her down-to-earth style draws you into her harrowing world. This book is a valuable addition to the Alzheimer's genre!

A very enjoyable read and inspirational. I went out purchased a sketch pad and started drawing after finishing the book!

This is a great book! I read it in an hour and a half. I enjoy knowing the process people take in order to deal with life's occasional hiccups that knock the world out from under you. It helps to know that you're not the only one sometimes. It's always a relief when the person works it out positively and thinks enough to want to share it with others. Thank you, Danny!

love it, love it, love it !!!!
a wonderful inspiring little book.
perfect smaller size (6"x8") to carry along with your sketchbook to keep you encouraged in your drawing.

I suppose I had some misperceptions of this book. I was assuming there would be more inspiration that would cajole me into journaling and artwork. I also thought is was he who was disabled - it was his wife. There was little mention of how his wife's diability figured into the whole pictue of his life. As a disabled person, I thought there would be some insight into overcoming disability to do what you want. I do however, love the way he draws and journals. In the end I saw this as a simple journal that anyone might have done. I still have his other book and I have higher hopes for that.

i loved it! i recived the book for valentines day and finished in a day...its very intresting to examine dannys drawing and learn about his life in nyc..

This cookbook wasn't exactly what I had hoped for. The recipes use a combination of farm stand and store-bought ingredients, some of which are a little more exotic than what my local grocery store may carry. My biggest caveat is that the recipes have no nutritional information listed and when you are dealing with something as luscious sounding as Raspberry Cream Scones, it would be easy to overindulge.

I absolutely love this cookbook. I have already made several things and everyone has raved about the meals. Easy to follow, lots of fresh vegetables and produce are used making it very healthy also. I would highly recommend this cookbook to anyone, it would make a terrific shower or birthday gift for someone who loves to cook.

I love every recipe I've tried in this book, and all of them are easy to follow, fun to make, and taste excellent. These recipes and all of the tips throughout the book have made cooking much more enjoyable for me, and they always come out great.

I stayed away from the meat recipes at first (I only occasionally eat a little meat nowadays), but I have found that some can be made without meat and are excellent! For example, the lamb curry with saffron couscous tastes amazing with no meat at all. The flavors of the indian curry spice mixture in this recipe is the best I've ever tasted anywhere and is perfect for veggies with either basmati rice or the couscous.

The salad dressings are also amazing. I had never tried a salad dressing with roasted walnut or hazelnut oils before, and it's so wonderful and brings out the flavors in a salad. They're so simple to make, I never buy the bottled kind at the grocery store at all anymore, and it tastes so much better and fresher when it's homemade.

There are lots of healthy, nutritious and at the same time delicious recipes, just real and delicious whole food with a ton of variety. The cookies recipes are great too!

This is fast becoming my new favorite cookbook. I have only tried a few recipes so far: Seared Scallops, Artichokes with Jalapeno Arugala aioli, Fusion Cole Slaw, and Cheesy Zuchini. They were all excellent. I look forward to creating many more. The pictures make me want to make all the recipes, just beautiful!

A great cookbook also tells a story. This is a wonderful story of a family, a business, and filled with incredible recipes. The discussion of why organic and the types of foods that are best for you start the reader off. There are personal touches with photos that make the reader feel a part of their story (so to speak). The recipes have history to them and are excellent. It is good sized book and is more than worth the price paid. A must for the serious cook or someone just getting started and wants to explore great food possibilities

Series book. The large, readable print makes this good for children to read.

Summary
Frog and Toad are friends who share life together. I love the "To Do List," which includes "Wake up." Lobel wrote and illustrated more than 70 books. This book received a Newberry Honor Award.

Illustrations
I love the fresh and pleasant green and brown pictures, as did my children.

When Frog and Toad saw a snake, the snake said, "Hi,lunch!" Frog and Toad ran away.
Toad made cookies and Frog said, "They got will power." Toad made a list then when he got to Frog's house, Toad said, "We have to take a walk." They went on a walk. Suddenly, Toad's list blew away.

My daughter's nursery is decked out in Frogs, so the discovery of these books made them books we had to consider. They are fun and the illustrations are grest. At eleven months she is too young to read them herself, but we read them to her - and she enjoys them. The stories are simple with a central theme - do good for others, treat your friends with respect, help your firends when they need help, laugh, and aporach life with adventure. These are great virtues to instill in young minds. If the books were made in cardboard stock, Teah would be even more happy with them - as it is she frequently grabs one of them when it's time for her bedtime story - and great bedtime stories they are. By the time she starts to read she will know the stories by heart, but that's ok - fond memeories of bedtime stories like these should help her build a lifelong interest in reading on her own.

The Frog and Toad books were favorites of my daughters when they were young. I often give them to young friends, and was very happy to share them most recently with my two year old grandson

Learn the value of friendship with one of the most delightful duos in all of children's storytelling! Perfect bedtime stories or beginner's reading books, kids love the animorphed amphibians and funny adventures. Buy one and you'll have to get them all!

J. Lyon Layden
The Other Side of Yore

It's Easier Than You Think is one my favorite books. It's short, sweet, easy to read, and will make you feel better. I reread or dip into it from time to time. I highly recommend it whether you have any interest in Buddhism or not.

best explanation of Buddism for the American reader -- just bought another copy for a friend

Exceeded my expectations, this was my first purchase! Book was new, arrived quickly, & was a great price!

Although the book never dives too deeply into the history of Buddhism, Sylvia's personal stories, accompanied by her thoughts on Buddhist practices, provides more insight into the teachings of Buddha than I could have absorbed in any straight forward text. Since this was my first book on Buddhism, I really appreciated the down to earth method of writing she employs and the honesty with which she shares her experiences. Knowledge is a river flowing through time, and Sylvia Boorstein is a wonderful voice for this modern day and age.

I really enjoyed this book. It simplified and de-mystified Buddhism and protrayed it as a viable lifestyle/worldview for Westerners (and all people, for that matter). Reading this book genuinely brought me happiness.

The Marva Collins story is an inspiring story of a teacher who was passionate about teaching and excelled through the odds set against her by the school system.

marva collins is such an idol and inspiration for me. she is so full of morals and has a brilliant answer for all of life's problems. get this book if you want to hear the most intelligent things from the most intelligent human being walking the earth! she is HIGHLY underrated as an educator and everything! i really needed to find her b/c as she says, "in this slippery world we all need something to hold onto...." thank you Marva, I love you and God bless you!

I first read Marva Collins Way several years ago, and have reread it many times since, to help guide and clarify my thoughts about education. She has revolutionized public education, and people's perceptions of it. She has also effectively refuted the growing slew of people in the highest places
of academia who stubbornly cling to long-discredited theories about the intellectual inferiority of certain races in this country. I would recommend this book to anyone, and ask only that you read it at least twice, because it has too much to absorb, to just read it once. It will possibly alter your concept about education, and just who is capable of learning. If you use Marva's concepts as a teacher, I guarantee powerful results!

I read about 70 pages of the book and unfortunately lost it during my travel. I will be buying this book again. Marva is an extraordinary teacher who has taught me at my middle age that NO CHILD CAN FAIL TO SUCCEED in school. She has achieved this with such re-sounding success that one would want to have a teacher like her for all children in the world. I have no words to express how great the feeling is when you know that every child has all the potential to succeed.

I have been re-reading this book (0r parts of it) every year since I first read it in the 1980's -- it is an inspiration to anyone in the teaching profession. I also give it as a gift to the special teachers that I know or that have made a difference in my own childrens' lives.

This book hit home. One of my best friends gifted me with this book and it has been one of the best gifts ever. I work full time and have a 10 month old daughter. After reading just a chapter I felt relieved to know I am not the only one feeling stressed with all there is to do everyday while maintaining a home, work, relationships,etc. This book gives permission to slow down, and it says it's okay to stop and listen and not do the big birthday parties and attend all the holiday parties and events. Just being and listening and not doing anything together is time well spent.

As others have noted, this book is a series of reflections about motherhood and the importance of slowing down to savor daily life with loved ones.

This book energized me to make several changes in my own life. Part of my motivation for homeschooling this year was a desire to have a more conscious, contemplative, and purposeful life rather than a frantic-mad-dashing here and there life.

In fact, as the holidays approach, many of my friends are feeling "swamped", "overwhelmed", "stressed" - feelings I remember all too well from previous years. While I still have my moments, overall I am much less stressed than last year. The overall tenor of the holidays is much happier and calmer. I have done my best to pare the holidays down to the essentials, to keep things simple and personal, rather than grandly extravagant. Extravagance has its place, but when children are young, I think simplicity makes so much more sense.

I loved this book so much I chose it for my book club of busy suburban SAHMs. I was quite surprised to find only two (out of nine) loved it as I did! Three thought the book had "some good ideas", but they clearly didn't connect with the author.

The other four were quite negative about Mitten Strings. They felt it was too preachy and perfect and Pollyanna-ish, that "real" people couldn't live like the Kenisons without lots of money. But it's not a financial lifestyle she is talking about, it's an internal one, it is simply making a conscious effort to notice, appreciate, prioritize and streamline.

In trying to figure out the mixed response to this book in my book club, I came up with a couple of ideas. I think the crux of liking the book has to do with the following:

First, it depends on whether you are at a point in your life where you actually consider rushing madly to be a negative thing, rather than proof you are productive. Some people feel empowered and energized by rushing and being busy!

Second, it depends on how contemplative you are feeling when you read the book. The more contemplative you feel, the more likely you might enjoy the book.

Finally, it depends on whether you enjoy visual and poetic language. The author writes with a heartfelt, genuine sentimentality that, while I enjoyed it tremendously, can apparently be off-putting to people with more pragmatic sensibilities.

One reviewer said they would not give this book to a parent of an autistic child, or one with Down's Syndrome. I actually think this book has considerable merit for families with special needs children - the key is knowing WHEN to give the book. I have a child who was diagnosed with autism at 3, and when he was younger and we were rushing around madly from therapy to therapy, ransacking our home to make it an engaging learning environment, etc..., I would not have been in the frame of mind to appreciate it.

In fact, according to my three criteria above: the mad rushing was proof I was doing everything I could to help him; who has time to be contemplative when you are trying to save your child from autism; and poetic musings about the wonderful lives of families with typically developing children would have been quite upsetting.

NOW I see things differently. I think the ideas in the book have even MORE relevance for children with special needs, who often thrive in calm, centered environments. I think children with special needs deserve to have their progress, however slow or small, deeply savored and appreciated.

Well anyway. This is not a book that EVERYONE is necessarily going to love, in spite of the steady parade of 5 star reviews. Nevertheless, I join the parade and give this book 5 stars based on my own incredibly positive experience reading it.

I truly enjoyed this book. It is not a religious book (despite the title) nor a parenting guide; it is a deeply spiritual look at what it means to be a family.

Mitten Strings touched me in such a way that I felt like I was reading a letter from a good friend. There was a sense of peace reading it and imagining my family in her book. Her basic premise is to slow down, notice the details of your children's lives and be present with your family. But the book goes so much further than that. We all know to slow down...but to be reminded how magical it can be, with illustrations that are so tender is even better. I highly recommend this book and in fact purchased seven more to give to my friends as a special gift. I'd love to meet the author (Katrina) and sit over a cup of something on the front porch while our children run circles around the house!

It is rare to say but so true. It was given to me by an older woman and it truely changed the way I parent my two boys, see life and helped me create a summer that I will treasure. A must read for those who want to slow down and get off the "treadmill" of life.

This is often the first book I read to my upper elementary student children. Many have not been read to or for some other reason do not know the JOY and FUN of a good book.

We act this one out. From getting their muscles "kneaded" and arms "stretched" like dough. I get their permission first. Sigh... that is the decade we are living in.

We "shake" flour (really a salt shaker.) And sprinkle oil (in a firmly sealed vial.)

We whirl and twirl a stuffed animal in the air. Next the checkers (pepperoni)

Then the children "cook" in the oven. (actually under a desk.)

This is one book the children ask for and moan when I tell them it is at my other school.

It makes believers of them that books are exciting.

What a fun book! Our 3 year old loves being made into a pizza with all sorts of toppings made from paper or play food. Great activity that ends with a nice hug!

This is a wonderful and exciting book for all family members of every age. It's sturdy, nicely illustrated,easy to hold and to read. Talk about love in the family, this book illustrates to parents the importance of communicating, touching, and just having a good time with our children. Pete's a Pizza brings out the child in adults and keeps the child in children.

Cheer your kids up by turning them into pizzas. A cute book for any collection.

Petes's in a bad mood because he can't go oult to play with his friends on this rainy day. To cheer him up and pass the time, his dad invents a fun and unique game. He is going to make a pizza out of Pete! The book is very amusing as the dad rolls the dough (Pete) and sprinkles cheese (paper) and tomatoes (checkers) on the pizza. This could be a wonderful game to play with your own children. Loads of fun to be had.

I purchased this book based on its recommendations, and I'm not sorry I did. It's been 25+ years since I touched a sewing machine, and this book definitely helped take the fright away. Perfect for new seamstresses of all ages.

I have the Rip It! book and love it. I just got this book for my niece for christmas. She wants to learn how to sew and I know this is the best book out there for her. It's very easy to understand and comes with patterns for her to learn with. I'm also getting her a sewing machine from www.sewfastseweasy.com
I love giving! She is going to be so thrilled!

I bought this book for my daughter and she has taken to sewing extremely fast. She's so proud of what she makes. Her enthusiasm for sewing now is almost too much for me to keep up with. This book was was easy for her to understand and the illustrations were very clear. She's been playing around with reconstructing her clothes so I'm thinking of getting her the Rip It book as well. I'm happy to see her involved in a positive hobby that she truly enjoys and gets satisfaction from.

I just bought this book because I wanted to delve into sewing a little more. I knew how to sew but I didn't know much about sewing techniques or terms or sewing notions and how to use them. This book was very easy to understand and explains everything I need to know about sewing and using notions and patterns. It's now my sewing bible! If I get stuck on something I grab my sew fast sew easy book.

The book is great it even comes with patterns. The book is easy to understand and has lots of detail. I would definatly recommend it.

I thought that Up Up, Down was a great book. When the father fell down and his bottem was red. That anna repeats the same things. The baby brother because when he said no!! there were great. Yes in the store I always repeated the same thing. All kids read this book!!!

I think it was a wonderful book because the book was funny. My favorite part was when Anna fell down, because it was funny. The funniest part was when Anna said, I'm the queen of the castle mommy is a dirty rascal. Anna was my favorite character, because Anna was the funniest character in the book. The illustrations were very wonderful and colorful. I recommend all children should read this book.

I liked this book because it was a funny story. My favorite part was when Anna said, ouch my favorite character is Anna but I thought this book is all ages to read this book yes, I remembered something about my live. So have fun and buy this book.

I thought the book Up, Up, Down was a great book. My favorite part was when Anna repeated what their parents said to her. Also, I thought the funniest part was when Anna bundled up her parents with humongous band-aids. My favorite character is Anna because I thought she was very funny and always fooling around.

My favorite part of Up, Up, Down is when Anna parents told her, "Don't climb." The funniest part was when Anna sang, "I'm the king of the castle, mommy's a dirty rascal." My favorite character was Anna. I recommend this book to kids in elementary school.