Walsh Books

Gave me great ideas on involving families, setting up my classroom and setting developmental goals for children.

If you are looking for a cookbook of activity ideas, this is NOT the book for you! However, if you are looking for a good overview of appropriate practice with preschool children, this book does a valid job of covering the philosophy of early childhood education, setting developmental goals and the ages & stages between 3-5, involving families in the program, different areas of a classroom and how to put it all together.

Easy to read format, good examples & graphics, would be useful for staff inservice.

Reviewed by Neha Kashmiri (age 13) for Reader Views (8/08)

Twelve-year-old Maria Perez lives with her mother, Anita, in a poverty-stricken area in Monterrey, Mexico. Maria's father died when Maria was two leaving Anita to do everything she could to ensure their scarce survival. There aren't many jobs in the area and Maria and her mother have to walk more than three miles in the blistering heat to get jobs for the day. But even that is a fight and sometimes they aren't lucky.

When things start getting worse Maria's mother has to make a horrific choice. She chooses incorrectly, and Maria is left alone with nowhere to go and no one to turn to for help. Maria ends up in a girl's home, where she meets girls who had been in worse situations than her. Still, all alone, Maria has to learn to fend for herself and develops perseverance and courageousness in the hope of being reunited with her mother.

With their old life impossible to return to, what can they do now? How and where can they build another future? Could a better life be waiting across the border? Her honest, hard-working mother can't plan to go to the U.S. illegally, can she?

"The Crossing" by Taylor Joseph is a quiet, emotional story about a girl's determination to survive. The fact it was written by a 14-year-old girl in high school was impressive to me. The only two problems I had were that people were unnecessarily detailed and things were repeated. It's a story that hit close to home for me since I have had friends who ended up being deported back to Mexico. I recommend it to people concerned about the illegal immigration crisis.

The plight of a twelve-year-old Mexican girl and her mother is told in the debut novel of fifteen-year-old author Taylor Joseph. The Crossing takes an intimate look at poverty as a catalyst for desperate behavior. This story challenges perspectives on the issue of immigration with its human-focused view of illegal border crossings.

Maria Perez and her mother, Anita, live in a rural area of Monterrey, Mexico. The mother and daughter have existed in abject poverty since the death of Maria's father ten years ago. Anita works at a market a few miles away from their home, but makes very little money. She feeds her child mainly with the scrapes of food she is able to gather at the market. Maria assists her mother by getting work at a nearby farm during the summer and on weekends when school is in session. But the work is not consistent and goes quickly to any child who makes the three mile walk the earliest.

Food is scarce in the Perez house and when Anita is faced with losing their tiny home due to back taxes, she makes a decision that puts her family in jeopardy.

Joseph's story is quite impressive for such a young writer. The piece is highly descriptive, not only of the character's physical surroundings, but of Maria's inner struggles. While there is the occasional interchange of past and present verb tenses in the middle of a paragraph, this first effort is compelling. The reader gets an up close look at how poverty impacts a child's view of the world and herself. When Maria's mother breaks the law in an attempt to better their situation, Maria is sent to a group home. In the prayers and tears that pour from her body nightly, Maria juggles anger, fear, and longing. When she is reunited with her mother and the opportunity to cross the border into the United States arises, the pre-teen also wrestles with ethical issues that challenge her faith.

The Crossing will appeal to young and older adults. The story is honest and offers a view of poverty that many readers will have never been exposed to. There are lessons in this book that encompass love and desperation, hard work and unshakeable faith. I highly recommend it.

Getting the claim paid is truly the most difficult part of the insurance transaction. But the insurance policy is a promise, isn't it? Why do the insurance companies make it so hard to get them to keep their promises? Simple...profits. The less you know, the more they make. This book is a good guide on getting claims paid. Read it!

As an overview it is interesting. It is difficult to distill a complex subject like insurance down to just a few pages - just as it would be to reduce the law and the knowledge of an attorney down to a few hundred pages. Many claim situations are unique and require specific details to analyze properly. While you might rely on general observations from this book, it was published in 1999 and insurance policy wording does change over time.

The author is not James Walsh, as indicated. The actual book shows, "...by the Silver Lake Editors." James Walsh is shown as the publisher.

My 4 year old has been asking about God, why he can't see him. This is a good book to peak his interest. We've read it several times since we received it.

My son loves this book. He is intrigued by stars and all things sky-related, anyway, and this book ties that in well with a simple teaching about how God never leaves us. The part about the toy being lost hits close to home, too, since my son knows what it's like to not be able to find his "stuffed friend!"

The only thing I wasn't crazy about is the strange bear-like character who actually tells the story. He is somewhat strange, and my son was a little bit turned off by him.

There is an updated version of this book available. This is more of a storybook with black and white illstrations inside. Much of the original story is the same. The new pictures are sweet and effectively depict the events of the book. Together they provide a glimpse inside the NICU that is informative and capture the gamut of emotions that siblings of premature babies experience.

This combination coloring book/ story book has been written for siblings of premature babies. Katie expresses her feelings of jealousy, sadness and concern after the birth of her premature brother, Christopher. Finally, Katie is invited to visit Christopher in the NICU and looks forward to his homecoming. Although slightly outdated this book does a nice job of addressing the feelings of siblings of premature babies. The illustrations are clear and simple for coloring by children of all ages.

This book is an interesting anthology featuring 41 pieces which can be played without accompaniment, and ranging through all difficulty levels, though I found most of them to be easier to play after listening to the CD and knowing the tunes by heart.
Some melodies have slightly odd or changing tempos while they are played, and having a CD is of great help to understand the tunes and how they are to be played.
Most of the melodies are recorded with accompaniment, and on the music sheet the chords are indicated if you are fortunate enough to have someone play with you who can read chord symbols.

This is a great book! I definitely recommend it. The songs are fun to play. They also range in difficulty, from very simple tunes to more complicated ones.

I was hoping, based on the review given on this book, that I would learn a great deal more about some of the great Middleweights, such as Carlos Monzon, Marvin Hagler, 'Sugar' Ray Robinson, Harry Greb & Stanley Ketchel. Unfortunately, most of this book looks at a match by match retelling of all these greats, rather than try and flesh them out in greater detail.

While Mr. Walsh does an admirable job from a historical review perspective, it really fails to go beyond that and examine the greats in better detail besides personal tragedies (Monzon's killing of his second wife, Kid McCoy's murder, conviction, then suicide post-release, etc.). I was pretty dissappointed, overall.

Like any pro sport without a dominant sanctioning body, boxing poses difficulties for historians. Data tends to be missing, incomplete, or contradictory. In my research, I find that many writers covering the 1920s and 1930s have done shallow work resulting in errors. Walsh's research is deep and thorough. I wish he included an appendix with information about his source material (possibly writer/historian Gilbert Odd's personal archives!) but that's quibbling since this is a popular, not academic, book.

Every fighter has admirers and detractors, and Walsh is even handed in his descriptions of boxing skills. His assessments tend to be consistent with most boxing critics.

What is best, perhaps, is the way he makes his subjects come alive, placing them in the context of their times and land. I am intrigued, for example, that someone living in England captured so well the open spirit of my home, St. Paul, Minnesota, during the Roaring 20s.

Middleweight is the point in boxing where the power of the heavier fighters and the speed of the lighter ones come together. Walsh has written the definitive history of the men truly at boxing's apex.

Music for Native American Flute is my first songbook by Jessica Walsh, who has penned numerous other books on Celtic, Renaissance, Medieval, world, and ancient Spanish music for flute. Music for Native American Flute Vol. 1 showcases 41 songs from around the globe adapted for Native American flute tablature, most in the key of G.

There are songs from all corners of the globe: from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, Italy, Greece, Russia, medieval Spain, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Japan, Canada, First Nations (Ojibway), America, Peru, and Ecuador, all adapted for the range and voice of Native American flute. Each tune is described in the front of the book, its country of origin, and a bit about the tune's history. There is also an audio CD that features all 41 songs, so you can listen as you read/play along. Normally associated with First Nations music, the Native American flute is a virtual chameleon here, taking on the breathiness of a Syrian nay, the haunting song of the Andean panpipes, the dulcet tones of a Medieval recorder. The amazing feat is that a simple instrument that is generally heard in First Nations/New Age music in a much-simplified context has, thanks to Jessica Walsh, pushed the envelope into a virtuosic instrument capable of handling European airs, dance, and Eastern laments. I can't wait until a Vol. 2 is released, hopefully with more Eastern (Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern) flavour.

For a Native American flute, I would expect to find some Native American music. Not much here: two of the 41 songs are attributed to North American sources. As a new owner of a flute, I hoped that Volume One would include some easy minor-key tunes with bottom-up fingering, such as used by some 5-hole "beginner's" flutes. Only one short piece like this is included: "Woe Betyd Thy Wearie Bodie," from my Scottish folks, not our proud and nature-sensitive North American precursors.

The great asset of the Cadogan series is the in-depth historical and cultural context that the authors set their desciptions in. While all of the usual nuts-and-bolts information on hotels, restaurants, nighlife, etc. is there, the emphasis is on really getting to know and appreciate the cultures you are travelling through, rather than just being able to name the Top 5 sights in each city and take home postcard shots of each. If you read this book, you'll come away with a whole new appreciation for the country and its people, and you'll understand why you've decided to travel there in the first place.

Although this book is a good basic overview of travel in Italy, it is written in an unnecessarily pedantic style. I found other travel guides on Italy to be much more reader-friendly and useful.

While an entertaining book, it is somewhat hard to read because it is not well organized chronologically. Could have been a lot better.

Cook and Walsh give a great story of major league baseballs favorite past time, trading. from some of the most famous trades to others that your grandaddy might not know about. It's great book for the baseball historian or for the first time baseball fan whose interested in the nations great pastime. Cook and Walsh write with a color that is rarely seen in a book about this great game. The style should encourage one and all to read up and enjoy.