Shepard Books

When trying to help children deal with the death of a loved one, it is most beneficial to have a good story to help them realize that their feelings are shared by others. Children often believe that when bad things happen nobody can understand what they are going through and are hesitant to share their feelings. I think this book would be extremely helpful to parents, teachers, counselors and anyone else who works with children. It provides a platform for discussion. Too bad it's out of print! Children's literature often avoids subjects that need to be addressed. I commend the author for taking on a sensitive subject in an obviously personal way.

When trying to help children deal with the death of a loved one, it is most beneficial to have a good story to help them realize that their feelings are shared by others. Children often believe that when bad things happen nobody can understand what they are going through and are hesitant to share their feelings. I think this book would be extremely helpful to parents, teachers, counselors and anyone else who works with children. It provides a platform for discussion. Too bad it's out of print! Children's literature often avoids subjects that need to be addressed. I commend the author for taking on a sensitive subject in an obviously personal way.

This book wonderfully depicts the Maine coast and all its beauty. Jim Arnosky not only portrays the Maine coast, but also the way the sea provides Mainers a way of life. As a Maine resident I feel Jim has captured many aspects of the Maine coast that make it so wonderful. I recomend this book to anyone who enjoys beautiful paintings of the wonderful coast of Maine.

This book wonderfully depicts the Maine coast and all its beauty. Jim Arnosky not only portrays the Maine coast, but also the way the sea provides Mainers a way of life. As a Maine resident I feel Jim has captured many aspects of the Maine coast that make it so wonderful. I recomend this book to anyone who enjoys beautiful paintings of the wonderful coast of Maine.

I read this book as a child and I still remember how much I loved it...which is saying a lot since I am now 32! I read it several times and enjoyed it each time. My fourth grade teacher gave the book to me as a Christmas gift and I couldn't have asked for a better present. I recommend this for children ages 10 and up...it is a story you will remember.

Cathy, an 11-year-old teetering on the brink of the "terrible teens" has learned to juggle some issues. She tilts at windmills and looks for excuses to rebel, such as insisting on riding a bike on the sidewalk instead of in the park. She has a loving father, stepmother and stepbrother who is a year her senior. Her biggest ally is her paternal grandmother, who is a very astute woman.

Cathy is very silly and infantile, even for eleven. She believes that her mother is dead and has no memory of her. Every year she leaves Manhattan for the bucolic tranquility of rural Maine, the home of her grandmother. In Maine she reconnects with her boy-crazy, irritating, not too bright friend Marianne. Marianne is really for the birds.

Once ensconsed in Maine, Cathy meets a woman summering there. The woman has rented a cottage and asked Cathy if she would pose as a model for a children's book she is illustrating. Cathy jumps at the chance to model and earn money for a bicycle she wants to buy.

The summer appears to drift along up to a point. Cathy's stepbrother Andrew and his delinquent friend Donny arrive towards the latter part of the summer. Marianne hooks up with Donny and entices the other two to eavesdrop on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It is there, in the darkness of a church parish hall that Cathy recognizes the woman she thought was just a summer resident in Maine. Masks come off and the results are...well, somewhat of a revelation.

It is Cathy's wise grandmother who puts the pieces together for them all. She was the most appealing character. I like the intelligent conversations she had with her spoiled, silly and very immature granddaughter. I also didn't like the way she playacted at "being a woman with a past" (talk about a very bad cliche) and quoted trite lines from old movies. Cathy was a very annoying, unappealing and tiresome character. A pie in the face for Cathy! Although I didn't like Cathy, I liked the way her extremely articulate grandmother brought truth and logic in where it was sorely needed.

The wise, well-spoken grandmother was what kept this book from receiving 1.5 - 2 stars.

Old John is a story about a family whos Grandfather is coming to live with them. The Parents of the household have a arguement of allowing Old John to stay. They reached a agreement to allow Old John to stay but he arrives late so late that Jacob and Laura(the kids of the family) get back from school when he arrives. When Old John arrives he gets his furniture in place puts a weird picture of Einstein with his tongue sticking on the wall above the couch. Once Old John got settled in the house he started to kind of take over certain parts of the house like the right corner couch in the living room. Old John later showed that he used to dye for a living and started to dye for the neighborhood and then went and painted the house. Other then dye for the neighborhood he never really left the house until one day a old lady friend came to a hotel and Old John started to get ready to visit her. Laura was watching Olf John get ready but when Luara look the other way Old John disappeared and the family got worried. One day Old John went swimming in a public swimming pool with a white with black triangle bathing suit and embarrassed Luara which got them both angery at each other.

The book Old John by Elizabeth D. Crawford is a fasinating and cool book. Some of the parts where sad and other were happy. The book is a bout a family that wanted their grandfather to come visit them. The only problem was that insted of visiting he comes into the Schirmers yard with a moving van to live with them. The Schirmers are the main family. They where sort of mad at John came but they calmed down. Father was upset at Old John because one he only wanted him to stay for a while and plus the house was way to small to fit five people. The kids Jacob and Laura love their grandfather becuase he tells them stories about his past. This book is for anyone who just loves to read.

The more you know about psychological theories and Winnie-the-Pooh, the more you will enjoy this book. Dr. Williams blasts away with tongue-in-cheek satire aimed at the psychologist's belief that everything that is said, thought, dreamed, and done has many layers of significance. Unfortunately, that approach means that your enjoyment will be modest if your knowledge is correspondingly limited in either area. If you know little about psychology and have not read Winnie-the-Pooh, you may not get most of the humor in the book.

In Freud-like fashion, Dr. Williams begins by descrbing the case for Winnie-the-Pooh being a super psychologist. The thrust of this argument is that Winnie employs every method ever recommended by any psychologist or psychoanalyst somewhere in his fictional adventures. In fact, he often combines them in a single fictional encounter.

The book then recounts seven cases and Winnie's role in them.

Case 1 -- Pooh Cures Christopher Robin of Arktophobia (fear of bears)

Case 2 -- Pooh Assists Piglet to Mature

Case 3 -- Pooh at His Most Eclectic with Tigger

Case 4 -- The Problem with Rabbit

Case 5 -- Parenting: Kanga and Roo

Case 6 -- Wol's Problems with Communication

Case 7 -- Eeyore: A Case of Classical Depression

The cases are written up like Freud's with the exception that they are illustrated with many drawings from the original Pooh stories.

As an example of the approach, the book Winnie-the-Pooh opens with a reference to his living under the name of Sanders. That is never mentioned again. Dr. Williams provides a lengthy argument in favor of this meaning that Winnie-the-Pooh is describing himself as the Sand man, the bringer of dreams. This is an indication of his role as psychotherapist.

In the famous story where Winnie eats too much honey and cannot get out of the hole in the tree, Dr. Williams reinterprets this as Winnie-the-Pooh making an example of himself to discourage others from overeating rather than using aversion therapy on them.

To put this prescience into context, Dr. Williams points out that the Pooh stories date in the 1920s. In the text, he finds "frequent anticipation of theories and practices which more plodding psychologists arrived at much later."

I don't know about you, but I didn't think much about Jung when I read Winnie-the-Pooh. Obviously, the references were too subtle for me.

Those who have experienced psychotherapy will probably find humor in the observations made about Winnie-the-Pooh that they may have heard applied to themselves. Could the observations be equally apt?

This book is best enjoyed by a roaring fire on a cold night with a warmed snifter of brandy, and savored slowly.

After you have finished the book, you might consider the many instances where novels do show ways to solve psychological problems through their fictional developments. Could it be that we can use fiction to be our own therapist? Or, is someone else the therapist? If someone gave you the book, perhaps they are the therapist. If so, is the author the propounder of the theory . . . or is the character?

See the possibilities for humor in pomposity everywhere!

I bought this book because I read a lot of books on psychology AND I was introduced to looking at diverse themes through the "Pooh" world view when a frind suggested "The Tao of Pooh," by Benjamin Hoff. I got this book thinking it might be entertaining and illustrative as well.

It is entertaining for the first while, but generally not very illustrative. As the previous reviewer said, the more you know about shools of psychological theory the more you will enjoy the book. But if you are looking to either learn something about psychological theory OR looking for images and anologies that illustrate concepts in a striking or perceptive way, this is not the best book.

It is entertaining, but it can get old if you are not careful. The tone is very tongue-in-cheek, I had some good chuckles. The kick of the book is looking at the world of the Hundred Acre Wood through such over-the-top scholarly eyes. There is an "inside tone" to his dialog with the reader: sort of a "uninformed and unstudied individuals fail to appreciate this, but you and I can clearly see..." attitude runs through the entire book. I enjoyed that in the first few chapters, but after a while the joke got old. To be fair, I did read this in just a couple long sessions in just a couple days. It may be enjoyed more as a nightstand book where you read a chapter or two every few days.

In terms of learning anything new from the book, one is not likely to get more than a few nuggets of information about one theorist or another. The book is orgainized more by character and story than by psychological concept, so one never really gets to see a school of thought fleshed out in a way that enhances your understanding of it. But, if that's not why you're reading the book, you won't experience it as a short-coming.

It is a fun book, especially if you LOVE Pooh or psychology. If you love and know a lot about both this could be a good, light read to nibble on before bed or over lunch.

This book was created as a response to William Cronon's edited volume, Uncommon Ground (1995). Cronon's book ultimately has stood the test of time better than this collection, but the two should always be read together. As a unit, they provide both a thoughtful collection of views on the changing definition of "nature" in American life and also a fine historical view of 1990s environmental thinking.

Essays by various authors from a symposia in California, Reinventing Nature looks at where our concepts of nature originate and how very different they can be. Several of the chapters explore some of the naive myths we hold about native peoples, their values, and attitudes toward the land and its resources. An excellent eye-opener for the general reader.

If you always wondered what the hell the "GIANT" posters meant, now you can read their creator's book and find out. Includes great photography of Shepard Fairey's work from around the world. This new Hardcover edition is a really nice edition.

the book's good if you'r really into the obey giant type stuff. it doesn't have much text, and is really thin. i also wished it covered more of his non-giant work, and more recent graphic design work. but if you like seeing the giant in the star a lot, more power to you.

I've been to South Dakota a number of times and have had many questions about the landscape, etc. This book has the answers and the pictures to go with it. I especially appreciated the glossary and the further-reading list.

I bought this book for a weeklong driving tour through North and South Dakota, and found this book invaluable. If you are interesting in the natural resources and park systems in these places, it has lotsa info you won't get in maps (especially many beautiful color photos) altho the advice given wasn't always useful.

This book is perfect for anyone who experienced the lazy splendor of a summer thunderstorm as a child. We got it from the library, and after one reading ordered it. Excellent for older preschoolers.

This story is about a young boy who grows up on a farm. He wakes up everyday to pretty much the same thing. To start his day he gets his dog, and heads down to his fishing spot. The day is unusualy hot, and everything is hiding from the sun, including the fish. He sees a storm in the far off distence and heads home. When he gets there he helps get all the animals in the barn so they don't get muddy. It is a decent story that tells about country life.

The homeschooler bookgroup I help run decided to read this book as part of their weekly discussion. I was unfamiliar with it since (as you have no doubt noticed) it's kinda out of print. Still, it had appeared on the New York Public Library's list of the 100 best children's books out there. I was willing to give it a shot. After reading it, however, I came to the unavoidable conclusion that somebody must've bribed the selection committee for that list somewhere down the road. There was just no logical reason why it was on the list. The poems were fine, I guess, but the illustrations were poor and you could probably get poems of equal (or better) wit and whimsy if you tried (check out the School Library Journal review for some great selections). That was my attitude as I settled down for a discussion with the kiddies. And boy oh boy was I in for a surprise. Apparently this is the funniest book ever written. Silly me. The children adored these poems. They laughed and read them aloud and shared their favorite ones with each other. They said which ones they didn't think worked and they wrote their own for fun. So I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm not a particular fan of the book. On the other hand, kids most certainly are. I can vouch for that little fact personally.

There are twenty poems in total here and they are universally silly. Usually books of poems will alternate the wacky ones with some that are genuinely poignant. Author Rick Walton isn't exactly into being meaningful, however. The result is that you have a bunch of different creepy crawly critters vying for you attention on every page. Some poems are remarkably short and to the point (as with the one featured in the book's title, "When a bug climbs in your mouth / and you don't know what to do, / CHEW!". Others are longer, as with a treatise on the virility of the cockroach and how when all is said and done they'll outlive everybody. Some poems take up a single page while others are treated to colorful two-page spreads. Whatever the case, it seems that inevitably the human beings interacting with the bugs are the tormentors and the poor little insects are the tormentees.

The book was illustrated by Nancy Carlson. She's a perfectly nice Minnesotan illustrator that I, for the life of me, do not get. Her popularity astounds me. Carlson illustrations are almost shockingly simplistic and cartoony. "What To Do When a Bug" is no exception to this rule. Pictures in this collection are colorful, sure, but almost half-hearted. One particularly egregious example comes with the aforementioned cockroach poem. Carlson displays a scene where dinosaurs and cavemen coexist together. If that weren't enough to get your little historical inaccuracy dial spinning, take a gander at the image of a triceratops bloodily biting into the neck of a brontosaurus. Aside from the kind of gory aspects of this (I do have to admit that Carlson shades her blood nicely), even the least dino-interested child could probably tell you that triceratops were herbivores. What the heck is going on?

That's kind of the tone of the book, actually. Most of the poems went over exceedingly well with my homeschooler group, by the way. Two exceptions were the poem "Let's Spray" (kids thought the "Stop or I'll shoot" joke was lame) and "The Dance" (which ends with the awkward line, "Oh, what an awful blow"). They loved "The Early Worm", and "Billions of Bugs", citing both as being both fun to read and funny. Something all the poems in this collection should have been.

If you are getting a version of this book published in 1995, then I have to warn you that as the bindings age they begin to smell. You know that kind of gross old book smell that some picture books acquire over time? Well these puppies have it in spades. Aerate frequently, that's my advice. Otherwise, I say with a sigh, this is definitely going to please your children. They may take issue with some of the poems and adults like myself might moan and groan over its half-hearted aspects, but there's no denying its popularity with the kiddies. A fun book that its hard not to cringe over.

I am an educator and used this book while studying "bugs" with second graders. They couldn't get enough of it. I was constantly having to "fish" it out of someone's desk because another student wished to read it.