Shepard Books

I tend to prefer Bet You Can't myself (probably because tryingfind the way an experiment CAN be done presents a challenge, untilgiving in to the fact that is impossible), but this book is good too. This would be a useful book for elementary school teachers; students can learn some science and have fun at the same time. Of course, I don't mean to imply that only children can enjoy these activities! By the way, see the picture of the spoon on the nose? That doesn't necessarily work; don't place your bets on that activity. Most of them seem to work, though.

C is for city. Which is to say, New York City. At least that's the impression you'll receive after reading Nikki Grimes's eclectic alphabet book. Picture books have learned something that Sesame Street knew years ago. Mainly, that kids dig cityscapes filled with letters and numbers. As a result, "C Is For City" is a metropolitan dive into the beauty and excitement of the New York City streets. It's a kickin' little number that teaches kids their alphabetic basics while giving them a taste of the high life. Even suburbanites will enjoy it.

The best way to give you a sense of this concoction is to describe to you the first two pages. In them you've a fancy lady and her dog driving along a city scene that is both grimy and opulent. The words on the page read, "A is for arcade or ads for apartments/ on short streets with alleys alive with stray pets/ A is for Afghans named after their owners/ who drive them to art shows in silver Corvettes". In the pictures kids can find a variety of different things that all begin with the letter "a". Then they can flip to the last page in this book and see if they truly found all the "a" related objects. Each page or two page spread in the book is like this. Sometimes they sport a huge amount of objects. Other times, there are only a few. Through it all, Grimes's catchy well-paced alphabetic poems give clues to the various letters in each and every illustration. By the end of the book you find you've just taken a whirlwind tour through offices, operas, parks, parades, shops, streets, and every imaginable New York cityscape. It's surprisingly exhausting.

It shouldn't surprise much of anybody that Nikki Grimes has written such catchy four line poems. Best known, perhaps, for her young adult novel, "Bronx Masquerade", Grimes is adept at poetic license and creation. Fortunately for her she's been paired with the multi-talented Pat Cummings. Cummings has packed each page with original situations and multi-racial characters. Everyone from snooty ladies walking their poodles to Hasidim in their black garb traverse the pages of this book. Kids reading this story should make sure to try to find the little black cat that pops up in each and every spread. He's a sneaky one. The book was originally written in 1995, but even though the pictures show almost every well-known New York landmark (everything from the Washington Square Arch to the Empire State Building), the Twin Towers are nowhere in sight. Quite by accident, parents everywhere have been saved the necessity of explaining the Towers' significance to their four-year-olds. Remarkable.

Now I'll admit why I didn't give this puppy five stars. It's basically an unfair reason, but one that I'm unable to break away from. Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Graeme Base's, "Animalia" will note the similarities between that picture book, and this one. And of the two, "Animalia" is the better written and illustrated. So if you want to get your hands on the best alphabetic-find-all-the-objects-slash-animals-beginning-with-a-particular-letter book, this is not the one to purchase. But if you want TWO of the same kind, kindly locate and whisk away Grimes's, "C Is For City". It's definitely an exciting way to present the normally hum-drum alphabet. Consider pairing it with Nina Crews's, "The Neighborhood Mother Goose" for a particularly urban storytime.

For librarians and teachers who want to put together a really creepy, scary program for Halloween, this is one of the books to use. But read it thoroughly first. It's not your typical Dickens fare. And it's not for the very young. Older kids will enjoy it and want to discuss it later. I would guess it would be best not to use it for kids under 5th or 6th grade.

This book brought back a lot of childhood memories and I found it a very good source for writing children's books. Nice read.

_Circus of the Wolves_ tells the story of a black timberwolf captured in the wild and placed in a circus. His trainer is compassionate and empathetic, and gradually earns the wolf's trust. Together, they teach circus born wolves to perform, howling in chorus, hence the name of the book. Eventually the trainer realizes the injustice being done by caging something wild, and allows it to return to the woods it was captured in.

The story is mediocre; were I to rate it based just on the story, I would give it three stars. The artwork (by Robert Parker) warrants the fourth star: the watercolors capture the flavour of the wolfs wildness, his frustration at being penned in, and his longing to be free again much more effectively than the story itself.

Interesting premise, hard to put down. Quite original and I suspect the author has some experience with "crossing over" based upon the narrative.

Being a beautiful daughter of a wealthy mandarin, My Nuong had always been staying in her great house with the servants and surrounded herself with richness. But, she was very unhappy for she often felt lonely and had no friend to share her feeling with. One day, she heard a lovely piece of music which come from a bamboo flute of a fisherman name Truong Chi from the nearby sea. The music was so mesmerizing that it has capture her heart immidiately. She never felt anything like this and she has began thinking of it as "true love". Although she had never know of the fisherman's face, she has made a promise of giving him her hand in marriage. For some reason, the fisherman did not come to the sea to play the music anymore and this affect My Nuong deeply. She is very upseting and start to misses the music which make her now very ill. Her father try to find doctors who could cure her of this illness but none succeed. When My Nuong told him about the man and the music she had fall in love with, he sent for Truong Chi. But fate had been cruel to them for at the moment she look at him, she was disgust with his ugliness that she hated him. Truong Chi, with the first time saw My Nuong, had fall in love with her too. But My Nuong cast him away and being too heart-broken, Truong Chi died of a silent death. His heart had magically become crystal and unknowingly, My Nuong had carved it into a beautiful cup to use when drinking tea. But somehow, My Nuong heard the same music of Truong chi from the crystal cup and she had cry in regrets and sorrow for the unfortunate fisherman. Her tears roll down into the cup and had broking the seal which set Truong Chi's soul free. Such a loving story and a must-read one that no one could forget but thinking of it always. Love come from heart not appearances just as this story tells us.

Sheppard entered the Navy as a seaman recruit in 1948, became an officer and retired as a full commander in 1977. This book is the third in a series covering Sheppard's career in the Navy. It covers the period 1970 to 1977 when Sheppard was executive officer of one destroyer and captain of another. I found it particularly interesting because I was in the Navy from 1977 to 1983. Sheppard answered some questions I've had for a while, such as why officers wore V-neck T-shirts and enlisted personnel wore crew neck T-shirts. My only complaint is that none of the names (save the author's) is real. Sheppard explains that the characters are real people with phony names, or composites of two or more people. Of course, once I got 50 pages or so into the book I realized why he couldn't use real names. He would have been sued. For example, when Sheppard was executive officer of a destroyer visiting Olongapo City in the Philippines, his captain got infatuated with a teenage filipino girl and completed paperwork to have a $400/month allotment sent to her, claiming she was his sister. Sheppard intercepted the paperwork and saved his captain's career. I supposed Sheppard might be embellishing events, or even writing fiction, but it rings true to me.

This was one of the first books written about Air Force experiences in VN. I remember reading it while stationed at Vinh Long in the Delta. We were flying helicopters and wondered if the world yet knew what we were doing in the Mekong Delta with the 13th Aviation Battalion. The war as this woman author portrays was still starting as she wrote, and hungry war correspondents were trying to get their new books out to describe "The Only War We've Got" before it was over. No one knew then that the Vietnam war would go on and on, over a decade. The two colorful pilots she is friends with were typical of those early warriors from the Cold War era who were yearning for a real fight, after all those years waiting for something to happen with the Communist threat. My book, "OUTLAWS IN VIETNAM" describes flying Huey D-models later in 1966-67, just before TET. When we read this author's work while in country, we were trying to see if anyone had yet captured the flying experience occurring in the Vietnam conflict.