Stevens Books

This is a wonderful book with a range of easy to more complicated crafts for children from 4-8. We have done a number of the projects in here and not only do my children enjoy them, but they get some exposure to cultures outside of their own. There are suggestions for changing the art projects to incorporate more creative impulses as well. It's the one craft book I keep returning to because the ideas are so interesting.

This is another excellent art book in the "A Williamson Kids Can! Book" series. I have several in the series, all of which have provided me many ideas for my students' art projects. I have used this particular book least however, because the projects are more complicated than the other books, and require more adult intervention, especially with younger children. It's advertised as for ages 4-8, but for children to work more independently, I recommend most projects as suitable for ages 7-13.

Materials include paper, aluminum foil, yarn, salt dough, yarn, popsicle sticks, mud, paper plates, papier mache. There are recipes included for the papier mache and salt dough. The projects represent the following cultures: Native American, Latin American, African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese. None are very authentic, but are good simulations of arts from these cultures, and can enhance cultural studies, or be done just for fun. One project I have returned to several times because of it's ease to do, and because of its attractive artistic results is the Guatemalan Wild Cat.

This is another excellent art book in the "A Williamson Kids Can! Book" series. I have several in the series, all of which have provided me many ideas for my students' art projects. I have used this particular book least however, because the projects are more complicated than the other books, and require more adult intervention, especially with younger children. It's advertised as for ages 4-8, but for children to work more independently, I recommend most projects as suitable for ages 7-13.

Materials include paper, aluminum foil, yarn, salt dough, yarn, popsicle sticks, mud, paper plates, papier mache. There are recipes included for the papier mache and salt dough. The projects represent the following cultures: Native American, Latin American, African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese. None are very authentic, but are good simulations of arts from these cultures, and can enhance cultural studies, or be done just for fun. One project I have returned to several times because of it's ease to do, and because of its attractive artistic results is the Guatemalan Wild Cat.

The Kidnapped King is a very good book. This book is mostly about a boy named Dink looking for the King , Queen and the Prince of Socotra because they are friends. The royal family were being held prisoner in the hotel by Joan Klinker because the king's enemies wanted to take over the country. This book is a mystery book. My favorite part is when Dink looks for Sammi ( the Prince ) when I got to this part I didn't want to put the book down. Dink is brave, smart and an ordinary boy.

A new kid on the block (staying in Dink's house!), a little action (a kidnap!), a little language lesson (French!), and a lot of teamwork (involving both children, parents, and authority figures) leads to another intriguing tale and a happy ending. Ron Roy's A-To-Z-Mysteries have proven quite successful in our household. I've now read all eleven installments to my four-year-old son, and he has found them immensely entertaining. Similarly, our best friend's daughter, an advanced elementary school reader, promptly consumed these books and deemed them enjoyable. Sure, like most of the chapter book series for little people, the plots tend to be marginally predictable -- conversely, these books weren't written for the parents (and the children seem to find the mysteries sufficiently compelling). I also find that, at a certain level, the fact that the characters in these mysteries are (reasonably) normal children confronting seemingly pedestrian criminals is a welcome break from my son's fascination with the preternatural and his preference for the less realistic (but highly entertaining) series such as the Secrets of Droon, Bailey School Kids, and the Magic Tree House. Also, unlike many of the series books, it does not seem critical to read the books in order (although we do). It's also nice that the protagonists -- Dink, Ruth Rose, and Josh -- play well together, think through difficult problems, exhibit good manners and, for the most part, display the type of vocabulary you won't mind if your children repeat.

This is a book about three friends who solve mysteries. In this book the three friends will rescue three rich people who are the King, Queen, and Prince.

Now I will tell you about the story. These friends names are Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose. These friends have solved many mysteries and saved many people from going to prison.

This author entertained my feelings. People write comments on his books because they like them. The mysteries he writes are very good.

The illustrator is also very good at drawing. He draws exactly what the author writes. The drawing looks really real.

I recommend this book because it is a very good mystery to read at night. I like the way he makes the kids find clues.

Very useful book for those responsible for keeping young children interested and involved with handicaft projects. Supplies are readily alvailable and at nominal cost. Instructons are clear and uncomplicated.

Kids Create! is an excellent collection that uses various mediums and can apply to children with varied artistic ability. I am a 6th grade art teacher, and I purchased the book after borrowing it from the library. There are too many wonderful ideas to let it slip away! My students especially love Carlson's collection of sculpting projects.

The craft instructions in this book are indeed easy, fun, cheap to do (etc) for kids. But the best part was the discussion in the back of the book on appropriate levels of creative projects for kids of different ages. It clearly outlined what attention span and dexterity level you should expect from kids of different ages. And it had useful advice for adults on how to make the project fun for kids; not just push the child to produce an "aesthetically ideal" finished project. That unanticipated inclusion in the book made it really stand out for me.

My 10-year old son is not the first one to run to the books every night to read! However, when we picked this book up he looked forward to picking up the story where he had left off and seemed to really enjoy the characters.

Danny's life is baseball. Though when his divorced mother starts to go out with someone, Danny is worried she will get remarried. Since his dad can't come to his games anymore because he's travelling too much with his new wife nobody will come and see him play. Also, Passover is coming up and his mom won't let him go to any games on Passover because of a seder he has to go to. With all this going on he is afraid to tell his coach he can't play in a game against their biggest rivalry. Will Danny stop worrying about everything and continue to concentrate on baseball? Read the story to find out.

I enjoyed this book. It is about the importance of observing one's holidays and preserving one's traditions. But not at all costs and not without compromise, flexibility and change. When his mother insists that Danny miss the Little League opening game in order to attend a Passover seder. Danny is miffed. But eventually he does realize that loyalty to his family and faith can be achieved without disloyalty to his team. Along the way Danny also comes to terms with his parents' divorce, learns alot about the fallibility of adults and matures in general. I particularly appreciated the fact that the way in which the Passover seder is observed is non-traditonal and thus very realistic for a large segment of the Jewish population. Attendance at a Passover seder is something that 90% of Jews do, most of them in a not strictly traditional way. Well done with lovely illustrations

I started with the last story, The Spells of Ordinary Twilight (for a class on grief I am going to teach), and was moved by content and style to read on. I became engrossed by Eternal Love, and sat happily waiting for more than an hour in my doctor's waiting room, reading this story about two retarded young people, and how this relates with the story of the girl's parents. Having had a handicapped daughter, I could only nod and feel every emotion along with the characters of the story. From there to: Stupid Girl. Here I was not being able to put the story down. Then there is Night Sky and the wonderfully observed immigrant' story: The Palace of Marriage. All of the stories have merit, the list is long. The characterization is true, the language always appropriate to the story, always real. The writers are equally talented in their use of metaphor and simili, and their observations ring true. The stories, one after the other, capture different elements of LA, from the would-be screenwriter to the Russian immigrant to the jilted woman with emotional ties to a man with Aids. They take place in LA and are typical for that city, but as they touch the human heart, they are also larger than the city in which they play, they are universal stories, everyone, anywhere should read.

Bravo to Steven Gilbar for collecting these varied, poignant and hilarious stories about the vast and complex City of Los Angeles. We get a taste of many cultures with protagonists spread from Van Nuys to Hollywood, from Beverly Hills to El Segundo, from Malibu to Long Beach, and on and on. There are stories here by Yxta Maya Murray, Walter Mosely, Ty Pak, Kate Braverman, Bernard Cooper, and more. For those of us who live in this great city, this collection will reaffirm the dazzling variety that makes up Los Angeles. And for those who don't know this city, this book will disabuse them of the cliches they've accumulated through the years.

Reading these short stories is like being a fly on a Hollywood Blvd. Coffee Shop wall, or perhaps even a lost Angel sitting on a freeway overpass. This is a compilation of short quick stories by various writers.
As a former Californian growing up just north of Hollywood, I had to read this book and so glad I did! What fun this is to get the various tidbits and glimpses into the diversity and choas that is California.
While enjoying these stories I felt like I was right there, driving along Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu and stopping along the way in Trancas to grab some breakfast and eavesdroping on the fasinating conversations swirling around the room or watching the assorted characters coming and going.
Each writer brings his or her own California experience to the page from the gang member to the foreigner or the wannabe to the eccentric, all dealing with the smog, traffic and the surrealistic reality that is California.
If you've never been to California, you will come away with an insider's look into one of the most diverse States in this Country told by some of the most gifted writers around telling it like it is.

This is the story of the final days of the Holocaust when the Final Solution was inflicted upon the Jews of Hungary with devestating fury by the nazis and their local collaborators The Arrow Cross.

This is not a happy book but an insightful one that covers this portion of the bloody social engineering of Hitler's Final Solution, his attrocity against Jews.

Six eye-witness accounts of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry by the Nazis are at the heart of this work. This and the witnesses return fifty years later to the place of the destruction and their reflection upon this.
Their testimony is part of the sacred act of remembrance of the destruction, and of those destroyed. It is of course a very partial act and can never compensate for the destruction.
With the murder of over four- hundred and fifty thousand Jews were murdered thousands of families, whole worlds.
The mind and heart cannot encompass or understand this.

exellent visual and historical document please advise publishers of the following p201 liberation photo, it is J Krammer with british gaurds at belsen not Fritz Klein revisionist would love that let us never forget.

The succession of essays, each on a facet of Reagan's philosophy, reveals an inspiring amalgam of contrast and comparison among Reagan, Jefferson, Jackson and FDR. Even Gatsby, Willy Loman, Horatio Alger, Micawber and Mr. Magoo are pointedly drawn into the mix. Indispensible if you wish to know Reagan.

In The Last Jeffersonian, Steven Greffenius persuasively contends that Ronald Reagan articulated the values of American democracy as understood and defined by its great Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson. It's a unique and valuable analysis. (Lou Cannon)

I had long ago all but dismissed Ronald Reagan as an amiable and polished speaker of lines he had been given to read. Still I was curious about his appeal, even to such intelligent critics as George Will. Will and others had written columns over the years defending Reagan's views, but I wanted more: a coherent defense of the man's principles in view of his (to me) obvious callousness towards the have-nots. It was for this reason that I read Dr. Greffenius's impassioned championship of Reagan. Through Greffenius's presentation of the principles Reagan defended--all stemming from his radical belief in the importance of individual freedom--I began to think of Reagan, for the first time, as a brilliant conduit for the principles of democracy first espoused by Thomas Jefferson. Greffenius does not ignore Reagan's critics, but engages them directly. And as I read this book, I found myself thinking often of F. Scott Fitzgerald's conclusion to The Great Gatsby. The Last Jeffersonian opened my eyes to the ways in which Ronald Reagan gave us, perhaps for the last time in history, a view of our America from "somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night." I can't, even now, describe myself as a Reagan fan. But The Last Jeffersonian was nevertheless an interesting and very worthwhile read.

What a fascinating book. Photo after photo of faces and their foibles, unadulerated, in your face. One can't help but wonder the stories behind each, what brought them down, what they did, their innocence or guilt. Young and old, the battered and bruised, some smiling, mugging (!) for the camera, others angry, frightened, defiant, sorrowful, every emotion in between, including a few who appear downright psychotic and the stuff of nightmares. The collection includes some early photos from the 1800s and continues through the 1960s / '70s. Hair and clothing styles change, entire eras are represented along with their mundane minutiae. The only hints supplied about these characters are what's been scribbled or noted upon the original photographs. Tantalizing bits which beg for filling in between the lines. Each and every face is a novel in itself. Scruffy, poignant, offputtingly bona fide.

On page eleven of this intriguing book there is a sort of disclaimer that says: The fact a mugshot was taken does not establish that a crime was committed or that the subject of the photograph is guilty or innocent of any wrongdoing.

So not all the folk who appear on these pages are denizens of the underworld but most who do no doubt found out that the vine of crime yields bitter fruit, or words to that effect. You only have to read the list of priors on the cards to assume that nearly all those that do appear are guilty of something in their past.

All the photos are from the collection of Mark Michaelson (who also did a handsome job designing the book) which now runs to 10,000 shots from the 1870 to the early 1970s. Considering that the average mugshot is kind of predictable I'm amazed how interesting the book is. Many shots fill a page, sometimes the suspect is holding the board with their ID number, other times it is painted on the image in white paint. Interestingly you'll come across a page or two with cards that cover several years in a criminal's career, each with an age revealing photo and perhaps more relevant, details of a hopeless lack of success in wrongdoing. Pages 172 and 173 graphically reveal, in five cards, the failures of Joseph McGraw from 1931 to 1943 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Page 222 shows John Korkkobecz with a police file at thirteen, fourteen and eighteen.

Some law enforcement departments weren't satisfies with just a face they wanted a head to toe record. New York city, Fresno and Bridgeport are featured in the book doing this. A couple pages near the front show a neat way of getting a face-on and profile in one shot by using a mirror at an angle to the head. It looks really effective so I wonder why the technique never caught on?

The book's design and production is rather impressive. Most of the photos are black and white, some are sepia but the printing is actually four color with a 175-dot screen. This material in the hands of some other publishers would look really tacky but Steidl believe in putting out a quality product whatever the editorial content.

Despite the mundane nature of the contents Least Wanted is a fascinating look at one part of the criminal world so, as they used to say in Hawaii Five-O, "Book 'em Danno".

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Friends who stop in and browse this book in my living room never fail to fall in love with it. The photos are well-organized, making them more fascinating to look at than if they'd been randomly selected. An excellent gift, by the way. I highly recommend this one.

This is a warm, funny story about a young girl growing up. The story is captivating and touching. This is one of those great finds that keeps you thinking about the characters weeks after you put the book down. Great story.

Liza's Blue Moon is a moving story of a teenager's coming of age. Stevens' attention to detail brings the characters to life as they confront contemporary issues from teen insecurities to family tragedy. Liza is quirky, lovable, and down- to-earth, and through her, Stevens captures the essence of a girl seeking her place in the world.

"Liza's Blue Moon" is a one-of-a-kind story of a girl who just doesn't fit in. Ignored and differnet she tries to be herself. Liza is worried that her family, " is no family at all, just strangers living together." "Liza's Blue Moon" is recommened for teens to young adults and even parents who might want to know whats going on in their children's minds. It's for the people who are lonely, the people who aren't, and everybody in between. A sensitive and often humorous book for anyone who can laugh, cry, and want to just be themselves.

I read this play a several years ago, before it was really published, and then acted it out competitively for audiences, winning a state championship with the sheer tragedy and beauty of this wonderful and heartrending story. I recommend this play to anyone who enjoys a play that both tears your heart apart and sews it back together in one sitting. Absolutely magnificent!

Steven Dietz' "Lonely Planet" is a two-character, two-act play in which the bonds of friendship between two gay men are stretched, snapped, reformed, and revisited in the setting of a map shop in an unnamed American city. While the plot is sparse, the depth of the characters enriches the play and keeps its themes relevant, regardless of the era.

The two characters, a frenetic 30-something named Carl and a subdued 40-year-old named Jody, are developed wonderfully through Dietz' language. The characters often break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience during their monologues, which increases the intimacy of the play. Their dialogue crackles with humor, anger, disillusionment, and empathy. In the beginning, Carl's quirks make him seem the more desperate of the two characters, but Dietz gradually shifts the focus onto Jody's foibles and insecurities.

"Lonely Planet" isn't heavy on plot; there's plenty of activity throughout the play, but the central action that drives the play to its end unfurls slowly, and with care. Nothing is rushed in Dietz' script, everything is laid out with a purpose, and the result is one of the most emotional endings I've read.

While "Lonely Planet" is a wonderful read, plays are meant to be performed and viewed; I saw a production in Springfield, Missouri, a few years ago and was pleased that the tense moments and humorous moments and heartbreaking moments were even more pronounced onstage. Readers will no doubt discover wonderful language in the script, but watching a production will make for an even richer experience.

Steven Dietz' "Lonely Planet" should attract a wide range of readers, audiences, and actors because its characters are fully developed with human foibles of insecurity and anger, and the emotions it pulls from the audience and readers run a tremendously wide range. It is also more than a play about AIDS, or any disease: it is a humane work about friendship and the moments that test and strengthen that bond.