Wood Books

Besant is so gifted in enlightening one on the spiritual path! This book of essays will inspire you when you need a lift and comfort you when you are in despair. She simply is incomparable in her ability to shed light on life and the divine.

Dr. Besant presents her material with loving concern for all people on the path to spiritual enlightenment. Her style is thoughtful and illumining, not doctrinaire or dogmatic. Every chapter guides and inspires us to greater love and service to all mankind.This is a work I'll cherish and return to again & again.

For someone who is looking for a deeper understanding of the nature of reality and/or the attainment of a better life, this book will educate and inspire you greatly, opening up many doors of opportunity for you.

For the earnest and devoted seeker of The Path, this book contains much light that will surely illumine many obscure parts of your search. It clearly lays out the direct way to finding the narrow path and also gives many subtle keys that will prove to be necessary as you progess closer to the light.

I would also recommend "The Power of Thought" by Annie Besant, The Path of Light by Lorr/Crary, and any of the Ramacharaka books.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is full of suspense, adventurous, imaginative, and the plot is original. The story moved fast and I kept me interested until the end. One of the author's strengths in writing is in his descriptions. I could clearly see in my mind's eye the places, sights, and sounds of the book as well as I could visualize the characters as I read. This book is a great read for young teens; especially boys. I highly recommend it for readers who like adventure, mysteries, and technology.

I read a lot of children's fiction. This is one of the top five children's books I've read all year.

The villains are believable. The excitement is real. The personalities of the protagonists are three-dimensional.

This book takes me back to the Danny Dunn books of my childhood. A great read for young teens and preteens.

The Strange Town series kicks off with this fun first volume entitled "The Woods Behind Trevor Malone's House". It follows a young inquisitive trio of best friends through an amazing adventure that occurs in their small strange town. There's a lot of mystery and adventure, balanced with humor. It's a fast page turner with general heaps of excitement, that's great for the imagination. Can't wait to see the next book in the series.

Excellent, practical, "how-to" to enhance any teacher's writing program. Katie Wood Ray continues where she left off in "Wondrous Words" and expands on the technique of giving students concrete examples of writing styles to emulate and improve their writing skills. We will be using the text for a faculty book group in the fall.

Why isn't this book more widely read? Wood-Ray offers excellent direction to teachers - at all grade levels - who are seeking to improve the instruction of writing. Her central ideas are:
1. Texts should be used to mentor students to write real things in the ways real writers write.
2. Writing needs to be `studied' and not `taught.'
3. Teachers need to be writers and gatherers of mentor texts, but curriculum can not be determined before the students begin to study.
For teachers who want their students to write well, this is a text that lays out options for letting this happen. You'll want to spend a summer reading it and thinking, so that when you return, you'll be ready for superior kind pedagogy. It is rare for a book to speak so compellingly to all teachers, Kindergarten to College, but I believe that Study Driven is the wonderful exception.

This book is one of the most inspiring professional books I have found for teaching writing. Katie Wood Ray continues to grow her theme of teaching writing in a holistic, authentic manner. She helps the teacher find ways to use mentor texts and authors and inquiry of such to give children examples of how to write. In doing so she guides us to make our classroom a true workshop of writers inspiring and helping each other. Her reference lists of potential resources for a variety of writing is wonderful. She also helps us frame our teaching of dry titled writing styles into more realistically named writing. Pursuasive writing becomes commentary and advice writing. Narative text becomes memoir. In doing so writing topics come alive for students and purposeful in real world context. This book has become my primary resource to guide my writing curriculum this year. The book is useful for all grades. Fantastic book!

This book dspelled many of my personal myths about public management. I purchased Tales from the Trenches as a reference for my Business Management class. I wanted to contrast private management with public management. I felt private management was more dynamaic and challenging. I now see that public managers, espcially at the local government level, are just as sophisticated and resourceful as their private counterparts. They also make the same type of blunders. The authors have done a great job in their selection of real life tales. I found
the manqagement advice they dispersed throughout the stories very useful. I also loved the cartoons which set the theme for each chapter.

Collaboratively written by former city managers Len Wood and Joe Baker, Tales From The Trenches: Achievements, Blunders And Challenges In Local Government Management is a grand collection of great achievements and ridiculous blunders in local government. Innovations, challenges, and good intentions that went horribly wrong, pack the pages of this involving and highly readable guide which is especially recommended reading for all voters, and which will provide particularly meaningful to those with a personal and/or professional interest in local politics.

After reading Len Wood's and Joe Baker's new book, I'm reminded why I entered this interesting profession. "Tales from the Trenches: Achievements, Blunders and Challenges in Local Government Management" provides an insightful glimpse into the event-filled life of public managers.

The eleven chapters reflect the key public manager responsibilities and challenges. Each chapter contains several stories that illustrate key management concepts. Included with these tales are tips containing advice and alternative approaches to addressing the situation. Stories are written in a straightforward manner, and best of all, are true to life because current and former local government managers contributed each tale.

What makes "Tales" especially valuable is the 180 page Instructor's Manual which complements the book, chapter for chapter. It contains discussion questions for each tale along with numerous case studies, management exercises and questionnaires.

Assuredly, "Tales from the Trenches: Achievements, Blunders and Challenges in Local Government Management" will inspire young professionals to take a close look at a local government career. This book is also a good mentoring guide.

This review was submitted to the California City Manager's Newsletter by Greg Ramirez, Assistant City Manager, Agoura Hills.

Although this book is aimed at parents, it is a quick and easy tool for teachers as well. I have seen several ideas that can be used in my kindergarten classroom and shared with parents to use at home. The book also covers severl levels from beginning spellers to higher levels.

I found this book very practical and helpful.It gave me fun games and simple word lists.try this book if you want tips and useful information that really works.

If you want your child to win the national spelling bee this probably isnt the book you need but if you want simple explanations of fairly hard spellings this is a great book. You get lists of words with tricky sounds in them and a lot of word families and its all explained in easy terms. I have taught my child many of the lists and will keep going.

My daughter is one and a half years old. She loves this little book. It's a clever little story about parrots who fly off to exotic places. As I almost sing the refrain about the parrots "sitting in a tree spreading their wings..." a big smile creeps over her face and she starts to bob her head from side to side to the rhythm of the rhymes. The artwork is vibrant, engrossing. All in all, a good find. One potential con: the book's physical construction is more for a mature reader-- a minute of inattention with a one year old and the book might drastically change states as children that age bring new meaning to the term "voracious reader."

My toddler and I enjoy reading this interactive book on a regular basis.
She likes to identify colors, various objects and count along. At the end of the story she regularly says "mas" more in Spanish. This book is a must for any child's library!

We have this book and it is a bedtime favorite! My children love it! The rhymes are catchy and fun, they even end up singing parts of it as I read. The pictures are bright and colorful with a lot to look at. I have four kids ages 2-7 and they all love this book, I would definately recommend it.

For perfectly good reasons, we tend to associate Cajun and Zydeco music with Louisiana, but for much of the 20th century, Cajun and Creole people moved West into Texas, usually for straightforward economic advantage - the towns and cities of Texas offered more employment and better living conditions - and they took their music with them. You are at least as likely to find people playing Zydeco in Texas as in Louisiana. In the introduction to this stunningly handsome book, the author makes the point that it was in Houston, not in New Orleans or any other Louisiana city, that `the folk music of black Creoles from southwest Louisiana first (underwent) a major synthesis with urban influences to create, document and codify that sound'. He goes on to make the claim (and as the book progresses, to substantiate it) that `several key innovations in the evolution of this music - concerning not only its name, but also its instruments, recording history, leading figures, and stylistic twists and turns - occurred initially in Texas'. He uses the phrase `Louisiana Lapland' to describe where `a large part of south Louisiana seems to have "lapped over" into Texas, and quotes John Minton to the effect that the music `first made its mark' in Texas, before becoming popular back in Louisiana. Later, he asserts that `Zydeco is a doubly syncretized musical phenomenon, a hybrid that required transplantation and cross-pollination to come into existence' - saying in effect that Zydeco, as we know it could only really have happened in Texas.
The book is a celebration of this music and its associated culture, marrying Roger Wood's text and James Fraher's photography. It is a marvellously successful combination. The photographs, of which there are a great many - on average, every other page seems to be given over to one - are beautifully reproduced in a monochrome of outstanding depth and clarity. Fraher is evidently as much an artist as he is a Zydeco fan, and he has captured the people, the instruments, the atmosphere and the context of the music with great skill, sensitivity and style. Almost any photograph could be singled out for special mention, but for just a few examples - Leroy Thomas with his stars and stripes accordion, Raymond Chavis almost in silhouette, the proud determination on the face of Sherman Robertson, Zydeco dancers at the Silver Slipper, Dora Jenkins in seductive pose and Vanessa David in action at a festival. There's an especially poignant portrait of L.C. Donatto Jnr, holding a photograph of his father and a rubboard that has been played so hard it has a gaping hole in the middle. This is black music, but Fraher's scope extends also to the white people who are and have been players in the scene, as club owners, collectors (including a fine shot of Mack McCormick), fans, dancers and even occasionally as executants.
The illustrations are so striking, and you could spend so long admiring them, that you might almost forget to read the text, but that would be a bad move. Wood's account of the music has to be the most definitive yet published. He is well informed and lucid on the subject of the music's history - the chapter `Chank-A-Chank and Social Change' tells the story of how the music came to be, and it is a measure of the thorough job he has done that it begins by noting a French presence in Texas documented as far back as 1682. A couple of pages on, he points out that Amadie Ardoin recorded in San Antonio in 1934, and that just over a decade or later, it was at sessions in Houston that the first two recordings were made whose lyrics included the word `zydeco' (or a variant of the word - the book goes into some detail on the etymology, variation and development of the term), by Lightnin' Hopkins and Clarence Garlow respectively. The music's history is thoroughly rehearsed, supported by what looks like meticulous research and plenty of fine oral history - an appendix giving the list of interviews carried out takes up more than three pages. There is a chapter devoted to Clifton Chenier, covering the introduction of the piano-key accordion and the invention of the rubboard (the first one was made by a Cajun welder by the name of Willie Landry, based on a design drawn in the sand by Clifton himself). This must be one of the fullest accounts of Chenier's life and music yet published, and it ends by quoting Wilbert Thibodeaux - `Clifton Chenier is the only zydeco man who ever really deserved to call himself the king'. Amen to that, but we're still only a little over halfway into the book.
The remainder covers the wide range of other Zydeco men and women - not kings or queens perhaps, but plenty with claims to the aristocracy. It also tells the story of how Zydeco's popularity grew and grew in the years following the king's death - he had benefited from the wider interest in the music, nationally and internationally, but it has been the last twenty-odd years (Chenier died in 1987) that has seen the music's greatest popularity. It has also been a time when, as Moore states, it: `went through a process of radically redefining itself according to a multitude of contemporary realities and new possibilities'. These change factors are covered here, and the story is brought right up to date, not only with the work of young radicals and experimenters like Li'l Brian Terry, but also with the reach back into the music's roots represented by Les Amis Creole (a recent Arhoolie CD). The story covers not only the musicians themselves, but also the role of the venue owners, the musical instrument makers, the recording companies and so on.
This book is a beautiful object to own for its own sake, but it is also of major significance in the documentation of Zydeco, and is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning more about this most extraordinary of music. (this review, by Ray Templeton, first appeared in Blues & Rhythm magazine, used by permission)

I could hear the Zydeco music playing as I read this book. Roots, if you want to know how Zydeco orginated, who played or stills plays Zydeco music and where to go to listen to this music, this is the book. Being a Zydeco music fan and actually attending zydeco events that are mentioned made this a very exciting book.

James Fraher's black and white photos highlight a solid story of the most influential players and history in Zydeco music past and present, and while the survey focuses on the genre's rise in Texas, any with an interest in Cajun or Zydeco music will find it incorporates facts and history from other states as well. Chapters chart the movement of black Creoles from Louisiana into Texas and the cross-influence of their music with other Texas forms. The seven-year collaboration between writer Wood and photographer Fraher provides powerful visual embellishment to the facts and biographies within.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Some Christians believe our spiritual relationship with Him is enough to overcome depression. Some believe that He uses others' experience and medication advances to help as well. I believe the later. This young gal does a great job appreciating what depression is for it is an enemy she battles. Her preciousness shows through her battle. Her sharing encourages the rest of us in the same battle. Out of her weakness she has opportunity to show her strength. Her chuckles are sweet.

Joanna Swinney, who has struggled for many years with depression and has now emerged from it, shares her experience and her suggestions of what might help (and has helped her) with her readers, who may either be suffering from the same affliction or who may be involved with a sufferer and are looking for ways to cope and to help. It is a book of great courage, and, for someone aged 28 when the book was published, unusual wisdom. I cannot myself share Joanna's deep religious belief, but I can understand how her beliefs and the community of fellow-believers will have contributed to her healing, and even for a non-religious reader there is so much here that is inspiring, helpful and practical. There are many things she tells us about helpful relationships and strategies, as well as sensible things about therapy and medication. And she writes wonderfully clearly and vividly. An inspiring book.

Joanna Swinney's book is a comprehensive look at depression, how it affects the sufferer and those around them. She describes what depression can feel like and how support from people can make a significant difference. She discusses talk therapy and medication as well as some things that people can do themselves to help when they are depressed.

The book is written from a Christian perspective and she talks about a lot of benefits that the church and Christians can bring, as well as some of the difficulties that Christians may have, particularly with regard to suicide. This is an informative and excellent book which should be helpful for people dealing with this subject and which, although not unrealistically positive about the outlook, is an encouraging read.

I had the opportunity to hear Trapper speak at the Boise Power series in SLC a few months ago. He is a tremendous speaker!! Tick Tock is an excellent book in solving the challenge of creating balance. The exercises are great and the stories are truly engaging. I would recommend this to anyone.

I had the opportunity to hear Trapper speak at the Boise Power Series in SLC. He was superb! By far the most engaging speaker in the group - and I received a copy of this wonderful book. After having worked through it....I am online to buy some for gifts! Don't miss out on this!

I've had the good fortune of attending a seminar by Trapper Woods in the late 90's and have waited for several years for him to write a book. He was by far the most gifted speaker I'd ever heard and his message was one that helped me immeasurably in my professional and personal life.

The message in this book is profound. Regardless of how much "stuff" we've accumulated in our lives, regardless of how much money we earn, the real key to happiness and productivity is to live in accordance with our values. What is most beneficial about "Tick Tock, Who Broke the Clock", are the exercises that force us to look deep inside and (sometimes painfully) grade ourselves on how we're measuring up. Based upon our deepest core values, we then establish activities that help us bridge the gap between where we are and where we need to be in order to live a life of congruency.

Thank you Trapper and Bill for this gem of a book. Your message is powerful and deep. Very very well done!

George Wood describes the strategies he brought to bear, and others which can be brought to bear, in public education high school reform. The result? A school that does not do absurd things to youngsters, which encourages them to become good citizens, and which leaves them opportunity to go to college, or not--but not to fail as persons.

His advantage is that his high school, Federal Hocking, was small; that he was skilled at seeking teacher collaboration; and that he has imagination.

His disadvantage is that he subscribes to some time-worn Essential School maxims. Nevertheless, he is able to do creative things and you get a sense that he, the teachers, and the students are spending more productive times together.

A quick read. Implementation of his ideas takes some real planning and commitment.

George Wood's book is an amazing description of what can happen in a typical public high school, if you organize the school as a learning community, focused upon developing citizens and neighbors. Wood is a high school principal who has written a book about what has been done to improve his high school in rural Ohio. This is a must read book for anyone who is concerned with the deterioration of the public schools in America. Wood, through stories about students, provides helpful suggestions for how to improve schools. His stories will have you crying with joy as you see the impact of a school organized to care for each student as an individual. Read this book, and then, give copies to your school superintendent and school board. After reading his book, you'll want to pack your things and move to his town, just so your kids can go to his school. And the truth of Wood's approach is that it can happen anywhere. What a breath of fresh air and hope for our nation's public schools.

As a member of a school district that was given a huge grant from Bill Gates we were encouraged to read books that would assist in thinking out of the box. This book certainly did that!! The author was able to take you through the necessary steps that worked for his school all the while not telling you that his way was the only way!! What a refreshing thing!! I really enjoyed the specifics that he wrote as well as the unique stories included. This is definately a book that will be used in our district! In fact our Administration has agreed that if not mandatory, it is a book that is recommended for all teachers and parapros. So if you are looking for tips to change, here is a book that has a ton of ideas and a real school that had real change!!