Disney Books

Anything by Frank & Ollie is golden with memories of the golden age of disney animation, and the part they played as part of walts top animators, "the nine old men" as they were lovingly known. Also be sure to get the documentary video "Frank & Ollie" to see for yourself what wonderful guys these two gents really are.

Though not as 'deep' as The Illusion of Life, the book Too Funny for Words is a must-have for all animators and story people who want to peek into the serious world of creating movie magic... It is THE book on the subject of 'sight-gags'. (Remember to also get Frank&Ollie's Greatest Disney Villains and The Making of Bambi books! - You already have The Illusion of Life, of course!)

The latest version of Hyperion's popular book, "The Art of Animation," will soon be available in bookstores. Bob Thomas, the author who wrote the original "Art of Animation" back in 1958, has merged the existing versions of his book with previously unpublished interviews with Walt Disney and new material from Disney's upcoming "Hercules" to create a chronicle of Disney animation that is bigger and better than ever.

The new edition of Thomas's book is entitled "Disney's Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Hercules." Whether or not you own an earlier version of the work, the Disney fan in you will find this new book interesting and worthwhile.

As in the past, "Art of Animation" is split into two parts. The first half is dubbed "History of a New Art," and its nine chapters recount the history of animation, particularly the pioneering work of Walt Disney and his studio. The second portion of the book is called "The Making of Hercules," a

This book contains hundreds of useless and fun trivia questions about the older (and some of they newer) Disney characters, films, shorts and attractions. From `Can you name Daisy Duck's three nieces' to `What was Mickey's Starland originally called when it opened in 1988', this book has enough easy trivia mixed within the very picky, unusual facts to keep any type of Disney fan entertained.

The book is also organised very well, with the index listing the character's name, the movie or the attraction. So, want to find questions on Peter Pan? Check out page 57. How about Walt Disney? Page 171 for you!

And of course trivia books are always interactive - one game I played with my little ones was to ask them the questions for a particular movie and then watch that movie so they could find the answers they missed.

Great fun for the family!

I love this book and the 3 other ones. It is full of funny infomation that you never knew you needed to know. If you like this book buy the 2nd and 3nd version. Note: When Your bored you won't put this book down!

These stories were a departure from the normal Uncle Remus/Brer Rabbit stories published by Disney. These were completely new stories created by Disney featuring the Brer characters as well as a few new characters, which made this book unique. Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox are basically competing for the attention of Molly Rabbit throughout the book. Copies of this book are not very easy to find, but if you come across a copy, it would make a fun addition to your Disney library.

My youngest daughter received this book from her grandfather when she was a very young child. During a long winter battling colds, I found myself reading these stories aloud to her. Lo and behold, both of us were really getting into the dialect and wild humor of the stories. Many of the older editions of these stories were murky and top-heavy with unwieldy dialogue. This version is easier to read and understand by contemporary children. The illustrations are whimsical and the stories move at a rapid pace. I have used this book as an elementary school teacher (grades 3-5) for over 10 years. The kids love for me to read to them and enjoy the stories year after year. I highly reccommend this book for parents and teachers.

The book is easy to read and understand. Without it we would have floundered around like everyone else. Each day had a plan and then we altered it to suit our specific needs and desires. We found all of his recommendations to be right on target. The maps are a god send used inconjunction with the hand out maps. The book gave me the confidence to know when and where to make reservations for meals, when the best time to show up for shows. . . just everything!! We made our trip with 2 school aged children (middle and elementary)during the 2nd week of Sepember. While I don't promote taking children out of school for vacation, once in a lifetime is worth it. Moving through Epcot and MGM were easier than the Magic Kingdom which had an overabundance of children in strollers. For anyone using the guide. . . don't be intimidated by the sheer volume. There are really that many places to sleep, eat and things to see and do. Do clip out the appropriate maps in the back of the book and take them with you each day and ALWAYS get there early and move quickly early in the day and kick back as the day moves on. Thanks again for writting the book Bob. I felt like you were my best friend by the time we came home

Some great ideas especially on dealing with children. Some information is not complete you can check in early (well before 3:00p.m.) the desk will store your bags and give you your pass, I am usually in the park of my choice before lunch. Just return later (one year not til 10:30 p.m.), collect your bags and key, and you have not lost your first day on you length of stay pass

Very well-written, considering that this German critic (I see that he's also prepared Pallas guides to Southwest England, East Anglia, and the West Country as well as Oxford & Cambridge and, in German, "Schotsland.") has David Henry Wilson's solid (or transparent?) translation to filter his own personality and perspective through. Pallas Guides apparently are British, so this is the first one I've seen. They're tinged with the Blue Guides cultural sophistication, but with less local color re: the natural resources, architecture, and the historical nuts-and-bolts of the edifices. Instead, this book's laid out going from the southeastern border at Monmouth to go up the coast along Cardiff and Swansea with byways into the mining valleys, industrial archeology, fortified and later eccentric castles (Cardiff again!) and Roman ruins. Sager then follows the coast up to "Little England" at the tip of the peninsula, ending the half-loop around Fishguard.

Then, he circles within Mid-Wales and the Marches before starting again at the border to re-enter Wales along the Northern coast, gradually and thoughtfully considering the debate over jobs vs. scenery in Snowdonia, admiring the Menai bridge, explaining carefully the controversy over holiday homes vs. waiting lists for council homes in such former Welsh-speaking enclaves as Anglesey and Lleyn, and then concluding powerfully with R.S. Thomas' poem "Reservoirs" and the last fight against the tide of anglicization and tourism in the mountains.

Throughout, Sager knows well the contradictions as a German travel writer celebrating this compromised Principality (and he tells us precisely why the English designated it as such-- a fact I as an American had never understood before) within a kingdom. He fairly presents the demands of those wanting increased autonomy: economist Leopold Kohr, folksinger Dafydd Iwan, and Hay-on-Wye's bookseller Richard Booth among them. He also counters with an understanding of the appeal of rural Wales for incomers and visitors. He highlights in self-contained essays on such topics as the language debate, slate mining, Lord Bute and William Burgess' medievalism, the Romantic vogue for the picturesque, the Ladies of Llangollen, the demise of the chapels, Aberfan's disaster, and "The Manor House of Servants" at Erddig Park many lesser-known subjects (compared to most tour guides) deserving attention. Blaenau and Ffestiniog are treated as two daughters, one grey, one golden, competing for a suitor's eye. Paintings and décor gain as much scrutiny, if not more, than Eryri and Cader Idris.

One example of his scope: he considers "yr hen iaith," the ancient language, deftly. Sager suggests that the "problem has solidified into a kind of national monument: for some it is an ancient pedestal without a statue, and for others a statue looking for a base." (66) He wryly notes but three pages into his text that the dragon's tongue stands as the emblem of the Welsh Language Society (Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg). "The amputated tongue is as much a symbol of amputation as it is of language." (12) Sager's rather pessimistic about the viability of the tongue, and his own guidebook, as he well knows, contributes to the tension of Welsh heritage. It brings tourism, it creates jobs, it lures incomers. A few come to Nant Gwrtheyrn on Lleyn to learn Welsh; but they learn it in a village that lost all of its original, Welsh-speaking, families after the last granite quarry closed in the 1950s. Many more flood since then into the Lleyn peninsula for brief or permanent escape from English cities. (A sign of anglicization: I cannot include the proper Welsh circumflexion vowel mark for Lleyn into this review format!)

Somehow, Sager manages to move you along the Welsh itinerary steadily while pausing to share interviews and contexts without making it all sound like potted history or rambling erudition. Dylan Thomas, Saunders Lewis, the painter Richard Wilson, John Cowper Powys, Adelina Patti, Robert Owen, William Morgan, Gwen John, Mary Elizabeth Thompson, Eric Gill, Gwynfor Evans, George Borrow, and Arthur Clough all come alive in these pages. You may not know them all beforehand, but you will be interested in each one after you read his short but inviting introductions. He integrates further material into his the first sixty pages, taking on such icons as the Eisteddfod, the proliferation of castles, and rugby to illustrate deftly his own knowledge of how such items enrich our understanding of Welsh culture.

With Sager, you travel from your armchair. His simple but appropriate photo inserts enhance the presentation, and a supplement (I refer to the 3rd ed. 1998 rather than the latest 4th ed. 2002) specifies holidays, gives a short reading list, a small excursus on various tourist topics, and a small list of places to shop, sleep, drink, and sightsee. I do note no other than the two general road maps. This is one drawback; the visitor will need a much more detailed map, as the text like the maps remains largely "general" about exactly how to get to most of the places mentioned. This guide might best be employed in preliminary planning a trip, researching a place, or using it as I have, simply to get the sense of Wales-- albeit from afar.

I close with an example (p. 75) of how efficiently yet skillfully constructed are Sager's entries. This is the very first town he describes. He combines the necessary detail with a narrative command of his subject, combined with a personal touch that expresses his interest in whatever he shows you. "Like an inverted funnel Monnow Street leads uphill from the bridge to the town centre: broad and roomy down below, where the markets were always held, but increasingly narrow as it climbs upward to where St Stephen's Gate used to stand. It's a perfectly normal street, with its old houses, shops and pubs, and all the usual small-town bustle-- but then suddenly it broadens out into an unexpected square that echoes with a distant heroism: Agincourt Square. And her our little town takes on a new and unforeseen greatness. A cue for the entrance of Harry Monmouth."

If you really want to know about Wales before you travel this is the guide for you. This is a book to be read and digested not just skimmed through. It is rich in history, art and literature. It gives a deep understanding of the people, the land and its culture. It is not a travel guide per se but will certainly inform your travels. This is not for the lets hit the high points crowd.

I have such fond memories of my parents reading this book to me as a child.
Daisy Duck straightens out Scrooge McDuck's poor attituted and turns the town's view of gretty Scrooge's around.

Button Soup is one of my all time favorite childhood books. I really liked the story of how Daisy Duck was able to trick old Uncle Scrooge McDuck to become a warm and generous person. It is a very heart warming and charming book to read with your kids.

This was one of my favorite books as a child. The pictures are beautiful and the story is fun and educational. I will be reading it to my children.

When we were little, my sister and I LOVED this book. It's got dragons, magic, a mean Lord Gurr, and poor Minnie and her nephews. What's not to like? The illustrations are very colorful, too.

This Christmas, I found a vintage copy of this book and gave it to my sister as a gift. She read it aloud, and it's as good today as it always was. Morals: don't be greedy; if you help people, you will be rewarded.

This book was one of the reasons I decided as a fifth-grader in the 1960s to become a nuclear engineer. A year ago, while searching for a copy of the Disney film Our Friend the Atom, I bought a 1961 printing of this book. I had honestly forgotten just how well written it really is. For all of its naiveté - arguably just reflecting the naiveté of the times - Our Friend The Atom nevertheless proved that solid technical content can be presented in an attractive and, most importantly, understandable package. Forty years after its release, the mix of form and substance still holds up well.

I have since bought three additional copies (all different printings) for my collection of early atomic energy memorabilia, including a first printing. In these days when nuclear power seems a dying technology, Our Friend The Atom reminds me of the promise it once held.

I got this book for a Christmas present when I was about 8 or 9. I was interested in science at an early age and eagerly sought out popular accounts. This book was well illustrated in the Disney style and clearly written. I remember reading it from cover to cover in one sitting -- an re-reading it over and over again -- and being fascinated by the portraits of various scientists, the depiction of things and technologies related to the atomic world. One part stood out above all: the story of Avogadro's hypothesis that equal volumes of different gases contained indentical numbers of particles. For some reason, this absolutely fascinated me. Why should this hypothesis be true, and how could one possibly know it? I even tried to make up what I now recognize as kinetic theories to account for this -- of course, I didn't know any real physics so I was way beyond my depth.

I can really say that this book helped inspire me to go on to a scientific career. I recommend the book for children, and for anyone interested in a simple, popular account of the atomic world, and also a period piece representative of the '50's in America.

This book was as interesting as it is helpful. It had a few pointers in it that the others didn't. The post-it notes come in handy to mark the items to re-read or remember before you leave on your trip.

Hello! Please read the previous reviews with the knowledge that they were written for older editions of this book, written by different authors. I've lived next to WDW for ten years and this edition was rewritten to exclude any previous errors. I'd appreciate it if you'd judge this edition on its own merits. If you've read this edition, I'd appreciate your comments and reviews. Thanks!