Wagner Books

Another "best of" book for Batman's villains featured in a movie, this one was released to coincide with Batman Forever. Just like other trades like The Greatest Joker Stories and Scarecrow Tales, we get the first appearance of both of these villains as well as a few more recent tellings. And just like with those other books, the more recent the story is, the better.

Including the first stories these villains appeared in is definitely necessary to see where they came from, but suffer in comparison to the more recent retellings of their origins which have depth and maturity. It's nice to see that nothing much else changed though and the basic premise of these characters remained intact with their backstories (interesting fact, Two-Face's original name was Harvey Kent, probably changed later not to be confused with Clark). But other than that, the cheesiness of those early stories and the one liners always puts me off. Seeing Batman pitching in the Police vs. Fire dept. baseball game in broad daylight just does not work for me.

The book starts getting good with Original Sins, which focuses a lot on The Penguin's back story oddly enough. Lots of good artists and writers contributed to that. The last story, The Eye of the Beholder, is by far the best which was featured in the Batman Annual in 1990. A re-telling of how Harvey became Two-Face. It's no Long Halloween, but it's the next best thing and goes to show that Two-Face is still one of Batman's most interesting and tragic villains ever.

I would have liked to see more recent stuff with Riddler. In fact my biggest let down with this book is that they combined these two villains instead of giving them their own best of. The Scarecrow Tales gives us 8 stories and with this book they only get 3 stories each not including Original Sins. Not a bad collection for historical value, but way too short. These villains needed more pages. Here's a look at what's collected in this book.

The Crimes of Two-Face **

The Man Who Led a Double Life **

The Riddler **

The Riddle-less Robberies of The Riddler **

The Riddler's Prison Puzzle Problem *

Original Sins ****

The Eye of the Beholder *****

Where I believe the movie does some injustice to the characters of Two-Face and Riddler, this collection redeems the characterization that first brought Two-Face and Riddler notoriety in the Batman universe.

Nigma, the Riddler, is a man obsessed with the thrill of robbing while trying to outwit Batman and Robin. He is not a killer, but a thief seeking a worthy rival in games of the mind. This collection honors and even re-establishes these definitive aspects of the character, as seen in the story "The Prison Puzzle."

Two-Face is a man who feels betrayed by the law that he spent all his energy protecting and upholding. He wonders if the only way to truly defeat crime is to commit crime. Two personalities co-exist not at different times, but simultaneously. He is constantly half-Jeckyll, half-Hyde. Again, the stories in this collection highlight the important features of Two-Face down to his obsession with the flip of a coin.

Considering that these two are probably my favorite villains, especially after "The Long Halloween" and "Hush," this anthology was well worth the price.

this book features two-face's first apperence, 3 riddler stories, a "secret origin" story featuring the penguins origin, the riddler's veiw, and another two-face story, also the great origin of two-face! great book! also a index of thier apperences up to 1995. riddler's refernce to the 60s tv show villans is classic.
the reason it gets only four stars is because it should have been alot bigger.

heros: batman, james gordan, robin.

villans: two-face, riddler, catwoman {mentioned,} Scarecrow {mentioned,} joker, penguin, mad hatter {mentioned.}

This collection of classic Batman stories focusing on the Riddler and Two Face is a nice addition to any Bat collector's library. It features the 1st appearances of the 2 villians. Also 2 1960 Riddler adventures. My only critisism is the other Two Face stories are too current both published in the '90's. Solid book and well worth the money.

This was an unbelievable story. I just couldnt put it down!

Cara had a lot of problems. Problems she couldnt deal with so she did what many people do. Put up a wall, a front, put her gaurd way way up, how ever you want to say it, she did it.

But Byron manages to pull that wall down and it's amazing!

I dont want to say anything because I want you to read it!

First, I like Melanie Milburne, so I was disappointed with this effort. She tries to deal with the effects of emotional abuse, but the heroine just comes across as a whiner. This needed to be a longer book to explore the issue, its effects, and how the heroine overcomes the abuse - not just a blinding epiphany that she needs to grow up and put her past behind her. I couldn't see how the hero had, in a four-month relationship, seen any good side to her - I wanted him to move on and find someone else. Even at the end, MM did not convince me the two had overcome their past and differences and that their future would be a happy ever after.

Back cover:
Baby by blackmail! Millionaire tycoon Byron Rockcliffe storms back into Cara's life, even though their marriage is long finished. Knowing that Cara's design business is on the verge of collapse, Byron offers to save her from financial ruin by giving her the contract of a lifetime. Although he says his proposal comes with no strings, there's a catch: he's not just looking for an interior designer to complete his luxury-he wants Cara to furnish him with a baby...

Comments:
This book had a heroine with A LOT of emotional baggage which was the driving force throughout the entire book. Byron swept Cara off her feet in a whirlwind relationship and after a couple of months their relationship/marriage began to fall apart. Cara felt that Byron's family was too involved in their life and then believed that he was having an affair with a close family friend. Rather than come between them she leaves Byron and goes back home to her mother. As it turns out, the root to all of Cara's low self-esteem and low self worth stems from her good for nothing mother. Since day one Cara's mother has blamed her for everything that's gone wrong in her life. She blames Cara for her husband's death and them for the tragic accident that leaves her crippled and dependent. So, up until the time her mother dies Cara has been living a miserable existence. Then enters Byron. He wants a baby and Cara is the person to be the mother of is child. He wants them to remarry and start again. However, the trip to a loving relationship is met with a lot of obstacles. My main problem is that at the end of the book Cara realizes her self worth all of a sudden and let's the past go (Another reviewer stated this also). She never talked about her feelings to anyone so that's why I was a bit confused as to where this surge of self worth came from. But overall, this book takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions. Pretty good for a new author.

Unlike the other review, I didn't find the heroine Cara whinny, just locker within herself. She was trying hopelessly to not fall apart at the seams and to do that she had to lock herself way from anything that could hurt her. Including the man who loves her.

Byron, comes from an overpoweringly close knit family and can not understand that Cara can not cope with it. He tries hard to make her come out of her shell, unsuccessfully. I agree that the book was too short and could only have been better in a longer story. But in the time alotted I did enjoy the story, felt for the characters, cried with Cara at one point, and then cheered for the ending.

To me that amounts to 4 stars. There was a lot of growth in the characters, even if some of that growth was forced at the end.

Enjoyable quick read.

The book is about men needing to be more like Christ in their interpersonal relationships using baseball as a model. From experience, I have found men who work on having godly male relationships also tend to have stronger marriages and families. Most churches do a fairly good job of telling men how to be better husbands, fathers, and workers but they do a poor job on helping men learn how to mature as a brother in Christ who can draw out other men into deeper more genuine relationships. Geoff Gorsuch and Dan Shaffer address male relationship issues as well as the process for growing into a contributing member of a band of brothers. Growing deeper in the lives of men as brothers in Christ is critical to making men intentional followers of Christ where they live, where they work, and where they play. I use this as the main tool for developing new men's ministry small group leaders.

This book does one thing well - it helps men understand the importance of being in a small group. It explains the process for forming these relationships and the benefits men can expect. Great for leaders.

Guiding men into meaningful relationships with Christ is laudable but not at the expense of their relationships with their partners, who are reduced to subservient roles with no real input in the marriage. You're taking a long step back, baby.

This book is a good introduction for those who would like to lead a small group of Christian men. Gorsuch makes the process of starting a mens group and measuring its progress very simple, without being simplistic. The book is short enough to be read and absorbed quickly. After finishing his book I was able to write out my purpose statement for such a group and the basic plan to begin. I also found the appendixes to be helpful. Geoff Gorsuch has done men a favor by not writing us a 300 page book on small groups. His brevity makes the contents easy to digest and hence they are empowering. Rev. Don Nelso

Pretty, superficial treatment. I agree with another reviewer's question about why purple drawings on a light purple background? It's amazing and sad how many of the spacecraft detailed have already been cancelled or deferred.

Excellent book, great graphics, a great explanation of the technology. I am tired of reading books written in the 60's and 70's about future space designs that didnt happen. Everything in this book can and will happen, and as an engineering student I will work hard to make these designs a reality. Thanks for providing a fresh, and modern view of what will happen in this century.

In a book where the centerpiece should be the graphics, why oh why did they choose to print the diagrams in a muddy purple on a light purple background? I guess to make them look somewhat like blueprints, but I would have preferred clarity!

This book provides a summary of all the current and planned space exploration projects, both manned and unmanned and at the time of publication it was fairly up to date. The timetable presented for the International Space Station is outdated, but the expected launch dates for the planetary missions are correct. The book also provides a summary of many of the commercial space adventures which I have not seen anywhere else.

There are no photos anywhere in this book, but each section contains several drawings or more of each piece of hardware. The drawings are intended to look like the old blueprint drawings (hence the subtitle name), however, as an engineer who works for NASA, we don't use blueprints anymore.

On a sad note, due to the recent budgetary cutbacks associated with the new Bush Administration, many of the projects presented in this book have been canceled or deferred, so this new and exciting book is unfortunately already out of date. Get it anyway; it's still a good book and the drawings are top notch.

I would recommend this book to every pastor and person who wants to see others set free from the things that have held them back from living a successful life.
This book explains clearly what Cleansing Stream Ministries is and how it works in the church to bring freedom to everyone who desires freedom.
A must for every pastor!

Cleansing Stream Ministry has changed my life more than anything I've encountered since becoming a born-again believer. I have been set free from overwhelming fear, rejection, abandonment, and shame. I just finished reading Chris Hayward's book, and it did a wonderful job of explaining how Cleansing Stream is designed to work in the local church. It would be especially helpful for pastors to read if they are considering getting involved, but good for any believer who just can't shake those things hanging on from their past.

As for the bad review by another "reader" (I don't think they read the book): As you go through the Cleansing Stream study, you pay for your study materials. You pay another fee to cover the expenses of the retreat. Then, at the retreat, you are given the opportunity to give an offering (no pressure!) to help take this ministry around the world (even into prisons). Most people have been so affected by going through this process, they can't wait to help the ministry take this to others, and get involved themselves. I highly recommend the book and the ministry. If you could hear the testimonies, you would have no doubt that God is using this ministry to set His people free.

I went through Cleansing Stream Deliverance. Twice. The only thing that I lost was money. It cost $300.00 to go through a 4 month seminar which ended with a weekend retreat. Even at the retreat they were asking for money. It seems to me that if these people have the gaul to say they are providing deliverance and ask for this amount of money for it that they'd do a better job of checking out who leads the groups. If you ever try to ask them for help (aside from buying their products) you will quickly find out how truly unhelpful they are. Cleansing Stream? More like Cleasing of Your Bank Account.

Deliverence is a much needed though much misunderstood ministry.I have seen it administered in many different ways over the years and never has it made so much sense. Cleansing Stream Ministries is Bible based and as gentle and loving as you can imagine. God has used (and is still using) this ministry to set me free to do the work He has called me to do. By keeping the ministry under the leadership of local pastors Chris Hayword honors God while keeping the ministry (and ministers) highly accountable. I reccommend that you not only buy and read this book, you should also buy a copy for your pastor.

I did not find this to be very helpful in planning for my upcoming retirement. To be fair, I have looked at several retirement advice books and not found any to be of much help.

Being newly retired at age 53,I figured I'd better find a way to keep out of trouble.This book is it! There are so many things,even little things,that I had not considered as part of my retirement activities. I have been engrossed in the book since it arrived,and as soon as I get organized,I will be off and running.I would recommend this jewel of a book to anyone who might need a little help getting used to a new life..retirement!!

I borrowed this book from the library and liked it so much that I had to buy it. It has ideas, quotes, resource leads, and an index. This book will continue to serve throughout life.

Reviewed Kathleen Dowdell for Reader Views (2/07)

"How to Enjoy Your Retirement" is a provocative, well-written book about activities you can do to help you enjoy your retirement. This third edition, published in 2006, keeps pace with constantly changing information that is available at our fingertips. In the introduction, the authors advise taking a personal inventory of what you think you will need or desire in your retirement years. Appendix A contains questions such as: Who Are You?, What Do You Do Well?, Why Are You Retiring?, and How Do You Feel About Retirement? This is a useful tool to evaluate your situation since your life will be dramatically changed with an abundance of free time on your hands (unless you plan on babysitting for the grandchildren). If you do decide to spend lots of time with your grandchildren, Appendix B lists numerous activities that you can do with them. Appendices C through I are broken down into additional resources, activities, tips and suggestions that will aid in the transition into retirement. An appendix dedicated strictly to travel provides names, addresses, and phone numbers of airlines, car rental agencies, cruise lines, hotels, vacation homes, and state visitor bureaus as well as internet sites related to travel. There is a wealth of information in these sections alone.

The meat of the book is found in the list of activities alphabetically listed from A through Z which offers a wide variety of ways to spend free time in retirement. There are over 1000 ideas sure to spark the creative side of any brain. Topics such as Chatty Cathy - "get your Chatty Cathy doll fixed by e-mailing Chatty Cathy's Haven" and Seasonal Contests - "start seasonal contests for guessing when the first measurable snowfall will occur" or this is your life - "make a video for yourself or someone else" are sure to motivate anyone to action for activities and further research.

This is a fun, quirky book that can be used for the serious undertaking of searching for activities to do during retirement or as a book of light reading to pass the time. The book can be used as a resource to brighten your mood on a dreary day or to find further information on the web for a topic you wish to pursue. Authors Tricia Wagner and Barbara Day compiled the A to Z activities from ideas and experiences of friends, family, neighbors as well as themselves because they saw how individuals' perceptions of retirement have changed over the years. They felt a need to address the variety of feelings people approaching retirement experience and to share information to help with these ambivalent feelings. Their success is apparent in this 3rd edition. "How to Enjoy Your Retirement" book would make a nice gift for someone approaching retirement or for someone who has been retired for a few years and wants to add some excitement to life by pursuing new avenues and areas of activities.

This book included chapters on Gustav Stickley, joinery and woodworking techniques, wood finishing and upholstery. The heart of the book is ten projects, complete with large color photos. They range from a hall mirror to a Morris chair. Some designs may be original, one is from Popular Mechanics' Mission Furniture, How to Make It, and the rest seem to be based upon articles from Stickley's The Craftsman magazine.

Not surprisingly, since most of the general designs are based on Stickley, they are on the whole quite attractive. They are simplified versions of production designs, and were originally meant for the home woodworker. Unlike the reproduction book Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture, there is a wealth of detail and all of the pieces have a place in the modern home. The author has included two pieces that I call Neo-Craftsman: a coffee table and a hall or foyer magazine table.

The engineering of the pieces, beneath the facade, may cause some problems. In particular, Mr. Wagner seems to be unaware of the problems that seasonal wood movement can cause when large panels are tightly secured. For instance, his coffee table top is doweled in place. I should be mentioned that the author is very fond of using dowels EVERYWHERE in the furniture. He even uses them to assemble drawers.

I recommend this book, with reservations. Like most similar books, you must have a shop full of power tools, and be familiar with their use, so it really is not for the complete novice. Knowledge of doweling and making mortises and tenons is a must, and it seems that one would have to have a jointer and a planer (or be accomplished with the hand tool equivalents) for the majority of the projects. There are a wealth of exploded drawings of the parts, but they are poorly drawn. I suspect that the illustrator Ms. Barbara Smullen is not a draftsman or a woodworker. Some of the perspectives are drawn wrong, and one would think that some tenons are haunched when they are not. However, all of the measurements seem to be correct, so one can go by them.

Note For The Advanced Woodworker:

It is useful to see completed pieces from the Stickley book. I don't like some of Wagner's joinery techniques, but you can use proper tabletop fasteners and can properly dovetail the drawers, etc. Another thing he has done is skip tenon shoulders for some spindles - I guess to make construction easier. Of course, then the edges of the mortises have to be perfect. One odd thing that I noticed in the photos is that he doesn't seem to use quartersawn oak anywhere. I wonder whether this book was a project assigned by a publisher...

After reading Blair Howard's "Arts and Crafts Furniture", I was expecting a lot from this book and it didn't deliver. I agree with all of Donald Thomson's complaints above. The joinery seemed questionable and he took short cuts I would not have made. Additionally, I felt his pieces lacked the elegance that the better mission designs have, both by Stickley and by others. However, the book is very detailed and easy to follow, so it should be easy for a beginning woodworker to follow. Joining boards and cutting mortices appeared to be the most advanced things he ever did, and he avoided cutting mortice and tenon joints whenever possible.

When I became interested in building "Mission Style" furniture I purchased this book. The designs are wonderfully illustrated and easily followed. I particularly appreciated the comments provided by the author as to the skill level required to complete a specific project. The beginning of the book provides a brief but informative history of Gustav Stickley and some important techniques that are required in building the projects.

I would highly recommend this book to any beginning interested in building "Mission Style" furniture. This book has inspired me to read more about Gustav Stickley and to build more challenge pieces of furniture. Absolutely Excellent!

Wagner has done a great job explaining wood working techniques for the beginner. This is a great book for beginning woodworkers to use when building this Mission furntiure. I built the table. Had great results. (A nice historical introduction makes the best reading in the book!)

In the original Korean version of this book, there is a very significant final chapter on elitism in Korean society. This chapter is omitted from the translated versions.

This book provides an excellent overview of Korean history. It is neither too skimpy nor too detailed. It also contains a number of useful photographs (black and white) and illustrations (black and white), which helped me read this book through. While many books (either written in English or translated into English) on Korean history deal almost exclusively with Korean War, only a few books are available that describe the history of Korea from its prehistoric beginnings to the modern colonial occupation of Korea by Japan. Although Korea is the most important neighboring country of Japan, the history textbooks used in Japanese schools spare very little space for this topic. I recommend this book to anyone, who is interested in learning Korean history, as a first book to read.

This book is very difficult to read because it is not well-written and also because there are too many details. Furthermore, the author introduces so many characters in each chapter but never talks about them again later in the book. So it is difficult to determine who is important and who is not important.

I find it impossible to believe that one reviewer found this book "neither too skimpy nor too detailed." How else do I know that this book is truly too detailed and inaccessible for most readers? One of the translators, Edward Wagner, concedes in another book ("Korea: Old and New") that this book was, in fact, too detailed.

I read this book to get an understanding of the history of korea in the greater sense, and also as one of a group of books on Korean history. It is very comprehensive, coverinig gthe range of Korean history from a brief synopsis of the prehistory of Korea, through the major part of ancient Korean history to the bulk of more modern history. I enjoyed this book finding it to be an interesting read, with a lot of details, would make a good history text for a class on korean history, which is exactly what I wanted from this book.

"Radical Hollywood" is both fabulously entertaining and enlightening. For movie fans (who isn't) and students of American history, it provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the radical politics of the directors, screen writers, and actors who were part of the Hollywood mainstream until McCarthyism drove them out. When you reflect on the greatness of their work, you realize that the witch-hunt was our loss as well as theirs.

The cover photo of "Radical Hollywood" suggests that many of these figures were not ordinarily associated with the left. With James Cagney placing his hand somewhat menacingly on Jean Harlow in "The Public Enemy", you have to wonder what the connection is. As it turns out, the script was written by William Bright, who was one of the first left-wing innovators in Hollywood. Hailing from Chicago, he was part of a group of youngsters around Dr. Ben Reitman, Emma Goldman's longtime lover. During the Great Depression, he worked for a time as a smalltime bootlegger and was inspired by this experience to write about criminal life, emphasizing how social relations are distorted by capitalism.

Cagney threw his support to the burgeoning labor movement in the 1930s on Bright's prompting. He signed on to a support committee for strikers in the San Joaquin Valley in 1934. When the Hearst press began to redbait Cagney, he pulled back from future involvement with the left. If witch-hunting had not been a factor in Hollywood from the beginning, it is not too difficult to imagine much more willingness on the part of movie stars to speak out on social and political questions.

To see how figures such as Ed Asner, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn are stigmatized in the equivalent of the Hearst press today for having the temerity to speak out about US foreign policy, you can only appreciate the scholarly effort that went into "Radical Hollywood". For in the final analysis its authors demonstrate that radicalism is very much a phenomenon that grew out of the American soil and was not imported by agents of a foreign power.

Radical Hollywood, by Paul Buhle and David Wagner, is an exhaustively (if at times exhaustingly) comprehensive and, as far as I can tell, mostly accurate (if at times chronologically confusing) catalog of the many U.S. motion pictures created during the brief cinematic "Golden Age" from roughly the beginning of the New Deal to the onset of the Cold War by what could loosely be called the Hollywood Left -- or the Left in Hollywood, such as it was.

The fact, though, that Buhle and Wagner had to write a book largely to explain the alleged "radical" subtext in these films by their non-monolithic screenwriters illustrates how the "threat" posed to U.S. society (read: the capitalist class) by such pictures was wildly exaggerated by right-wing anti-communists for political reasons. (Was Lassie Come Home, for example, going to undermine the foundations of capitalism simply because it was adapted for the screen by a Communist?) And yet, maybe that perceived subtlety (where present, enforced perhaps at least as much by studio economics and cultural restraints as by national politics) was the kind of "subversion" the inquisitors found so dangerous to the interests of the social class they actually represented.

Or maybe it was a case of guilt by either membership or association, with the work of any Communist -- or anyone associated however remotely with a Communist or the Communist Party -- being cast under suspicion, whatever the nature of his or her work. But just as Freud is reputed to have said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes, say, an expressly comedic film is just that, and nothing more. And even from a Leftist perspective, that is not necessarily bad. Consider, though, Sullivan's Travels, which oddly political yet intriguing picture instead of self-consciously being "an answer to communism," actually makes a case for it in spite of itself, and which despite its intentions (or perhaps because of them), may be more politically effective than many a more tendentiously political piece of cinema, even when the title character keenly observes that, "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh," it being "all some people have." (Curiously, the opening scene-within-a-scene of this 1941 comedy -- written and directed by Preston Sturges, who, like this film, is not mentioned by Buhle and Wagner nor is he identified by them as being a part of the Hollywood Left community -- anticipated the ending of the 1948 drama Ruthless, co-scripted by one of the Hollywood Ten and discussed by the authors.) Indeed, there is nothing inherently wrong or reactionary with making people laugh, provided one sees that culture can and should be for the edification as well as the entertainment of the public. And this is where skilled and honest Leftist cultural workers are in their element. But just as an artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery, according to the great Paul Robeson, so, ultimately, must an artist's audience.

However, Buhle and Wagner betray a kind of not so much discernibly anti-communist as anti-Communist (or anti-Communist Party) subtext of their own throughout the book -- typical of that tendency of neo-Left thought developing in the 1960s which, by intent or in effect, sought the very break with the historical continuity of the Communist Left that Buhle and Wagner see as a consequence of the Hollywood blacklist, as when they blame "Party bureaucrats" for the demise of the Hollywood Left (or what passed for it), when were it not for the (albeit imperfect) agency of the Communist Party (often in the midst of internal struggle as well as external attack, the effect of the former evidently not sufficiently and fairly understood or appreciated by the authors), most of those who became the radical screenwriters and filmmakers of Hollywood would likely never have even thought of attempting what they somehow managed in some form to bring to the movie screen.

This is a good look at the often ignored early radicals of hollywood. It gives a good history of the time leading up to and the aftermath of the Blacklist and it's antisemitic tendencies. Paul Buhle, et al seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject but I found their method of sharing the information a little overwhelming and pedantic. Every page is dotted with references to very obscure films, many with alternative titles, that are impossible to find. It's difficult to envision many of the situations and influential aspects of the films when you can find no more information on them much less see them. Taking all of the authors information on faith is not the usual film studies method. In contrast to many books about hollywood this one dosn't have many salacious details about harlets and moguls. I would recommend this book to serious film/hollywood history buffs only.

It's quite true that the authors' knowledge of Hollywood film history is encyclopedic, and this alone makes the book an indispensable reference to the stories behind the stories of innumerable great and less-than-great films. Described elsewhere as "the Abbott and Costello of film studies," these two spew forth gallons of embarrassingly wrongheaded and outmoded leftie humbug; nevertheless this is exactly what makes their work so useful. Yes, all those "paranoid" right-wingers were right all along about the real motives and agendas in Hollywood "back then." And not much has changed...it's still "Fantasyland" in more ways than one, which ought to be an important clue to the etiology of leftism. My only real objection to this work is that being so thoroughly deluded by their own political fantasies as they are, the authors attempt to claim almost everyone in Hollywood as a real, potential, or lapsed leftie, whether or not there was ever much actual evidence of it...a kind of triple-reverse McCarthyism. One final tip: buy this book second-hand. I'd hate to think I'd given one red cent (no pun intended) to either of these authors or their publisher.

I think this book was a very nice well written book. It is good for cildren of all ages. My daughter is 15 and she really enjoyed it. [Her favourite rugrat is Chuckie.] I think you should get yours today!

Kathi Wagner has a great future. Share this book with a child

This is a silly book that little ones will think is fun, but for a parent trying to introduce potty training it leaves one wondering....... For instance, I did not appreciate the part where Chuckie is supposed to be using the toilet paper to clean himself after using the potty because it shows a chaotic mass of toilet paper all over the place. I'm trying to encourage my child to use a few sheets & not to unravel the entire spool of toilet paper! Also there's not much in the way of a story to read. I've read a half dozen other potty books and they were heads above this one.

Whether you're child loves Chuckie, Tommy, Phil & Lil and Spike or not, the pictures and situation in this book will delight. The only thing missing from this wonderful paperback is Angelica's devious influences. In several short pages, author Kathi Wagner and illustrator Ron Zalme capture the babies' individual personalities and send Chuckie on the quest of a toddler's lifetime. Pure fun, whether you're potty-trained or not!