Schools and Instruction Books

If you are a die-hard fan of Coupland, this is a must have. The narrative in the book is very, very short, reminiscent of a warm-up for Hey, Nostradamus! or Girlfriend in a Coma. Yet somehow it is very coherent and affecting by the end. The faux-yearbook entry text dispersed throughout is sometimes comedy gold and sometimes very sad and affecting. The overall "theme" of the book is the inconsequentiality, yet monumental drama that is high school life and it is handled very well. The montage of yearbook shots, and their juxtaposition with the text works very well. Also, note that the copy I ordered was the original non-trade paperback edition with the slipcover that is shown on Coupland's site (www.coupland.com). I believe there is a newer, trade edition and this may be the one you get if you order from Amazon UK, although I am not sure. In any case, this is undoubtedly an "art" book and may not be worth the price for someone looking for something more substantial from a literary perspective. However, if you love Coupland's style and want a unique item to add to your collection, this is an excellent little piece.

Very little text, mostly photos from a high school in the 70s,
with yearbook-syle quotes and classmate notes. Extremely short
narrative of a ghost of a student inhabiting schools interspersed.
If you're looking for substantial text from/about Coupland, pass.
If you want a short, nutty post-modern fiction thing, this is it.
Some of the photos are amusing, but most manage
to make the 70s unglamorous and depressing.

I was slightly disappointed when I received this book. There is only one drawing for each character along with a brief description of the character and five steps on how to draw them. The book starts off with an introduction from Cale Tucker (main character). I thought there would be more drawing tips for each character and that it would show how to draw the characters faces, etc., but there's only one pose for each character to draw. The characters featured are Cale, Akima, Korso, Preed, Gune, Cook, Stith, the Drej, and Chief Gaoul. Included also is a guide how to draw each of the spaceships. There's also some graph paper in the back to draw the characters on, which takes up half the book. I recommend this book to Titan A.E. fans, but it would have been nice to see some more poses and tips to draw from.

This is a good book if all you want is to draw each charecter in a single pose, but not anyhting more then that. It has onlt one picture of each charecter. The drawing method isn't even that great. It uses grids, and grids are useless if you want to truely learn how to DRAW the character from memory. When you use the traditional ball-and-line method (which real animators use), you learn how to "see" your drawing in verious dimentions which allows you to draw the charecter in different poses. It also makes for better remembering as to HOW to draw the character. With the grid-method the book uses, you only see the charecter in one pose, and one dimention. Totally useless if you want to draw from mind. Buy this book if you are simply out to collect merchandise from this great movie, or if you just want the nice pictures (as the pictures of the charecters are actually nice to look at).

It is amazing how different the colors are look and behave. Confused by the labeling PB42 or Hue or ASTM I? Why does the same labelings (i.e. PR108) appear on multiple colors? What do those weird names really represent? It makes for interesting reading - the history, the best, and the worst products. I always wondered why some of my watercolors looked grainy. Not all colors by the best manufacturer rate highly. This book looks like a lifelong effort that will save your experimenting forever to find a good Cadium Red color, a member of one of the 10 major color groupings covered.

Inaccurate information abounds. Tiresome reading. Little good information. Overly expensive...sorry I bought it.

a poor quality book, badly written and full of mistakes. wilcox is clearly a charlaton, he rants on about other paints being poor quality whilst trying to sell you his own.
I do not recomend this book to anyone.
buy it at your peril

If you spend hours or days painting a watercolor picture, you are going to want to use the best possible paints. You won't want to see your painting fade, become blotchy, or otherwise deteriorate due to inferior paint. To prevent just that sort of thing, this reference book attempts to educate you on the pigments used in watercolor paints--their lightfastness especially, but also other qualities. Which pigments will fade or become blotchy over time? Which will stay strong and true? This book does its best to exhaustively answer those questions.

This book has been updated several times. It is due for another update, but since there is no telling when or even if such an update will be produced, it is still so valuable that I highly recommend getting it now before you buy any (more) watercolor paints.

Although I am reading it all the way through (because that's the kind of person I am), this is not a book to be read, but rather referred to. Let's say, for example, that you want to replace a red you've been using. You would turn to the description of the red pigments, glance through to find the pigments that have been rated highly lightfast by the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Measurement) and that have the color quality you want, then you would turn to the paint reference section to see what brands offer a red using the chosen pigment(s). Even if you cannot find a brand that suits you (and you should be able to), armed with the information in this book, you can go shopping with confidence, checking the paint tubes to make sure they have the pigment you want and not some pigment that will fade and ruin your painting.

For that alone, this book is valuable.

Allow me to address some of the comments other reviewers have made. One reviewer commented that the Da Vinci paints are student grade. I disagree. I've tried a number of different brands, and Da Vinci's artist-grade paints are wonderful--buttery, smooth, and a pleasure to use. (I also like many of Windsor & Newton's paints.) Yes, Michael Wilcox contracted with Da Vinci to create his own custom line of paints, but, as he states in the latest edition of this book, he did that many years after the initial editions in which he had already praised and recommended many of Da Vincis's paints. And he doesn't hold back in criticizing many of the Da Vinci student-grade paints, nor does he hold back in praising or criticizing any brand of paint.

I believe that Mr. Wilcox has tried to be as objective as possible, and I also do *not* see any inappropriate pushing of his own line of paints. He has a single very low-key page--at the back of the book!--describing the Michael Wilcox School of Color, which lets you be the judge of whether you want to look into it more. I also haven't seen any advertisements of his line of paints in the book yet, and, as I said, I'm reading it cover to cover. (I'm in the reds at the moment, though, so I could be wrong, but if the remaining pages follow the pattern already established, I don't expect to see any such advertisement in the remaining pages.)

Another reviewer said that this book has out-of-date paints (it does) and *doesn't* reflect reformulations (but it does). Had they read the book (though perhaps they had an older edition), they would have found Mr. Wilcox's reasons for including discontinued paints. He states that some people may have those older paints still in their supplies, and so he wanted to present that information for those people. If you are a watercolor artist, you know how long paints last. I have tubes I purchased ten years ago. I know artists who have tubes they purchased even longer ago. How valuable it is to be able to read what is in those paints, and possibly avoid using something that will, in the end, disappoint!

He also provides information on old formulas, with an arrow pointing to a new entry on the reformulated paint. Again, including information on both the old and new formulations is valuable. If you are an artist with the old formulation in your supplies, you will want to know that (A) it is perhaps unsuitable and (B) there is a better replacement available for it. Yes, it is possible that there have been even further reformulations since the last edition, but each edition has been keeping up with the times, and I fully expect that, should Mr. Wilcox produce another edition, it will be as up-to-date as possible.

The one valid criticism of this book is that it could be better organized and better edited. DEFINITELY. There are missing words, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, dead-end sentences, orphan sentences, sentence fragments, and so on pretty much on every page. The organization of the material could also be better, and more information on both his testing methods and on the ASTM standards would be greatly appreciated. Mr. Wilcox should perhaps be told that there are copy editors he can hire on a contract basis to copy-edit his works and improve them vastly. Better yet, a developmental editor, who will be more expensive but also more valuable, could help with the organization and content as well.

An alphabetical index of at least all the colors would be great too. A professional indexer could create such.

These are the reasons I gave this book four stars instead of five are (A) the age of the book, (B) the errors, and (C) the need to better organize and expand the content, especially the information on testing standards and methods.

However, flaws aside, this is an enormous work, enormously valuable, with clearly hundreds if not thousands of hours of work put into it, and the information shows that effort.

It should also be mentioned that, before Michael Wilcox published the first edition of this book, whether you would get good paints from even some of the major manufacturers was a hit-or-miss proposition. Many non-lightfast pigments were used, and poor quality paints were created, even by the giants. When this book hit the scene, it had a great deal of positive influence on the watercolor manufacturers. Many of them dropped or reformulated their more questionable paints. That in itself tells you the value of the information in this book. Of course, the ASTM had a lot to do with it too, but without this book pointing out the lack of clothes on the emperor, I am not sure how much weight the ASTM standards alone would have had.

If you are a watercolor artist, do yourself the favor of adding this book to your reference library.

This exhaustive (not to be confused with exhausting) research-based volume should be mandatory reading for all those artists interested in giving their customers their utmost quality of paint on works of art sold. So many paints are not light-fast, or are 'fugitive' (absolutely unreliable), or are packaged by the manufacturer as 'new' colors when they are, in fact, only creative blends of basic colors that any artist can create with colors they likely already have. This book, covering many of the watercolor paint producers in the Western world, exposes these flawed paints, but also gives credit where due to the top-notch pigments and their manufacturers. Details of content, health ratings, color-fastness and quality of brush use are easily understood. Fantastic color swatches (before and after exposure to light) are beside each manufacturer's sample. My only complaint is that this is the only edition available (pub. 1991), as the author said it would be updated periodically, which does not yet appear to have happened. There were only a couple of Quinacridone colors 12 years ago at the time of publication, whereas there are many more now.

Ok, Christopher hart is not the best in the manga business. I think this book is more for expanding your horizon of villians, not teaching you how to draw them. I have to admit though, it showed me some things I didn't think of before. It also showed that some of the harder aspects of drawing are not so hard if you break them apart. Three stars.

I'm a manga artist myself. I don't make them, but I do a lot of fan-based art and such.
Anyway, I do a lot of evil characters. Since I've already developed a talent and a style, I just use this to perfect my villains. Books by Hart like the Fantasy one he did (helped me do dragons an' demons better. And I learned how to make gnolls ^_^) helped a lot. As did this one. Only buy if you know what you're doing. Otherwise, How To Draw Manga series is right up your alley.

However unfairly, I believe that it is necessary to be able to draw manga before publishing a book instructing others how to do it.

Unfortunately, the art in this book is very westernised (not to mention ugly) and most of it does not even approach a "manga" style, and threfore is pretty much useless to most aspiring manga artists.

Avoid this book (and all other members of the same series by Chris Hart) at all costs.

I had mixed reviews about this book, but I had to admit the reason why I bought this book was because of the title. Afterall, no one has drawn a book totally dedicated to villians.

First of all, the book starts off by introducing you to drawing villian’s eyes, which is rather helpful since eyes are one of the important aspects when drawing villains. There’re also the “Good” vs “Bad” expressions and some explanations to go along. Then, there’re various types of baddies, from fighter chicks to medieval villains, and not to forget villains such as monsters, demons and aliens.

Unfortunately, there are mostly one or two examples for most villains, which can be rather limiting if you’re trying to draw the same type of villain in a different way. However, I think this is where your imagination will come in. Some of the arts also strike me as rather kiddy (or perhaps, it's meant to be more for children), although some of the full-page color artworks are very nice.

In addition, I’ve also noticed that most of the examples have a certain “American” (instead of Japanese”) style to it. For the serious mangaka-wannabe though, you are better off getting more “technical” and “Japanese-Style” books such as the “How to Draw Manga” Series, but overall, this book will make a nice reference or resource book for people interested drawing American cartoon.

I've been hosting anime drawing workshops at local libraries, and I've always been on the lookout for books I can recommend to kids interested in continuing to draw in the anime and manga styles. So I checked out this book at a library recently with the intention of compiling a new list of drawing books that I would recommend to the people attending the workshops this summer.
This book will not be on that list.
Quite frankly, despite the fact that there are several very talented artists who contributed to this book, it's lousy. Most of the artwork featured is either mediocre or *not* done in the manga style Hart claims the book revolves around; in fact, seeing how Mr. Hart's art numbers among the worst in the book, I'm skeptical as to whether or not he is a credible source regarding non-Western artistry at all. (His Western-style cartooning is really quite good, so I'm rather surprised at his ineptitude in this field, myself.)
As I said, there are some very good pieces in this book as well--they really stand out when you see them--but they simply make for good references, as most of the "step-by-step" diagrams are about four steps long, adding up to a pretty useless instruction method overall. The proposed "villains" in the book, in fact, are rather one-dimensional from a character perspective, but I can understand how it would be far easier to resort to stereotypical black-and-white personalities than to flesh out a really interesting villain (because, well, that wasn't what this book was supposed to be about, so I can't really hold it against him.)
Most, if not all, pictures were colored digitally--something that most people won't have access to--and a number of them were printed with rough and jagged edges as if they had been drawn with the pencil tool in a Photoshop (or even paint. Strangely enough, these rougher works are actually some of the better ones in the book, if I recall correctly.)

Please, if you're interested in drawing in the anime or manga style, find another book. If you're interested in Western comics, check out Hart's other work (or the Marvel/DC instructional books, which are quite good.) But if it's manga style you're looking to learn about...then this is NOT the book for you.

Nice approach for young artists to learn about drawing horses. It uses the various approaches of simplified lines/shapes to create the basic shape and illustrates some examples of shading and coloring that help inspire more realistic techniques. The cartoon-style horses are a little silly, but might help very young artists feel less discouraged if their early attempts don't look just like the realistic ones in the book. Our children 5 and 7 yrs. tried this book and both got something out of it. It's a little thin - could have been a little longer but it has a surprizing amount of material in it for such a small book.

This is a great book for the kids who are horse lovers at heart

My Daughter loves to draw and she loves this book!!! She is 8 and this was perfect would recommend again!!!

Since I ordered this for a young budding artist, I was willing to wait awhile until it shipped. What a disappointment - this book is not at all what I expected - I imagine I should have been warned by the price. There is almost no instruction about drawing horses - the pictures are pretty but they will not help in actually learning to draw horses. One star is almost overly generous for a "learning" book.

This book is pathetic. It has almost no instructions, only not-very-realistic horse drawings on each page. If you want a great horse drawing book, check out "Anyone Can Draw Horses." This book uses non-conventional methods, such as sketching the basic skeleton to get the horse's shape correct. It never ONCE tries to make you use circles and other geometric shapes. (I don't know about you, but this never works for me! The drawing just gets disproportionate!) However, if you like the circle method, try "Draw 50 Horses."

The book is boring, its ideas have nothing to do with kissing techniques, excercises are silly.

Not worth the money nor the bother!

I dont usually take the time to write reviews. This book had a profound impact on my life and the way I see myself in relationship and the way I see my partner. I spent the 1st 40 years of my life not knowing how to truly connect with a woman. Sure I was a good kisser. Now kissing is meaningful for both of us and the exercises in the book have helped take us to heights we never dreamed of. The kind of connection we are growing now is one that is fulfilling and satisfying and without end. We took turns reading it to each other and I loved every minute of it. I highly recomend it to everyone, especially thoes who pride themselves in being great kissers. Read the book and hold on to your hat!!!

If you are looking for a book that gives you technical explanations of how to improve your kissing skills, this is NOT the book. There is almost no discussion of the mechanics of kissing at all. What this book is, is a metaphysical approach to connectedness...basically, if you aren't at a place of inner-peace and connectedness with yourself, you can't share that with someone else. This book is a whole lot of ethereal fluff...and I tend to like ethereal, but not when I want real guidance. I was very disappointed and actually returned it. It wasn't even worth keeping around.

This book would be better titled "Loving School" because it primarily addresses how to connect with your loved one. If you are looking for advice on how to be a better kisser and technique, this book does not serve the purpose.

There's a lot of information we never get on how to enhance the quality of our relationships with our beloved. The entire content of this book fits into that category. I read this the first time as single person at the suggestion of a friend, wondering what I could possibly get out of it. I was exceptionally surprised! The exploration of our "inner lover" and the breathing exercises are designed to help us integrate the loving aspects of ourselves, bringing that incredible energy into our daily life whether we are alone, preparing for our great love or have been in relationship for years.
Being in relationship now, I find these practical steps to bring an excitingly enhanced physical, emotional and spiritual experience to our connection with each other. In reading, I found I was invited repeatedly to explore my innermost self to find how deep my love actually went, only to find it was unlimited - and I could share this all with my partner.
Don't let the title of the book fool you. While these exercises may take your kissing to a whole new level, your experience of what is shared between your hearts and souls in these tender moments can quickly become the highlight of your days together, even if it's the single moment of kissing each other goodbye in the morning. I would recommend this book to any person wanting to find and know that deeper love!!

I have this workbook and I feel that the content needs to be updated. I photocopy the exercise pages and others but I would prefer a different workbook for Calligraphers. I don't use carpenters pencils...but my Sheafer Fountain Callgraphy pen broad nib works with this book. I think for what I paid for it that I could have gotten a better deal elsewhere.

Not the greatest letterforms for beginners to be looking at... don't use this... please!

This book is great with its workbook format. It really did make it easy to learn the style of calligraphy it teaches. Its format makes it so simple that all you need is a calligraphy marker or pen. The rest is all in the book, from how to instructions, to tracing pages, to practicing, and to decorative projects. I really enjoyed it and also gave a copy to a 10 year old who equally enjoyed it.

I am so tired of seeing calligraphy "how-to" books put out by folks who don't really have the background and knowledge, but I guess it makes them money. I wish the author would take the time to truly learn good calligraphy letterforms before passing hers on to the unsuspecting public.

I found this book to be very comprehensive, easy to follow and will recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn calligraphy.

I would recommend this book, but first I would make some changes to it. If the book was up dated and it had more realistic pictures with a lot more details then it would be more exciting to draw the pictures in the book. When you read the book to learn how to draw it the book doesn't really explain how to draw the picture in the best way it can. Plus the author seemed like he only put in the drawings that he liked instead of thinking about other peoples thoughts. The only people that would read this book would be teens, children and some adults intrested in drawing non up dated drawings that are old and boring. They should show how to draw the steps better other than letting the persone do half the picture and then all of a sudden the picture is finished. But if the book was more exciting and up dated I'm sure people would love to read it. But other than that only the little kids would love to read this book. So yes, I recommend this book to little children.
Misty L.

If your an origanal artist it's pretty good. It covers a wide variety of things, but it dosn't get in to very good detail. Cats, scary stuff, dinosuars, people, robots( needs inproving) and stuff. Not much style, so if you want to become a comic book artist this book would probably be pretty useful. The cats, dinosaurs, the machines, maps and buildings sections are probably the best. This book would deffinetly inprove your drawing.

My 12 year old son received this as a gift and it's one of the most used books in our house. It covers many different techniques and styles of drawing and is a great starting point for a young artist who really wants to improve and expand!

I borrowed this book for my 8th grade art class and ended up buying it because it was a class favorite. The color drawings are compelling and kids lined up to have it to work with. It has a large variety of topics covered and although it isn't "step-by-step", it is close enough with the breadth and variety of examples being worth every penny.

If you're looking for a good introduction to drawing, keep looking. This book has examples from the various types of drawing (cartoons, monsters) but very little in the way of step-by-step instruction or depth. We got this hoping it would be interesting for our children but were sorely disappointed.

After homeschooling three of my children, I can truly empathize w/Dan Riley. He wasn't just interested in his daughter's academic development but what appealed to me was his focused attempts to assist her in developing "character", which a lot of educated and "successful" people, unfortunately, do not possess.

I picked this book up from the library with hopes that it would offer some insights as I prepare to homeschool my own 7th-grade daughter next fall.

Too bad I didn't want information about how to enroll her in a $20,000 year school that requires each student to own a horse: that was in this book. The Riley family also traveled to Europe: I don't know how much Gillian [the "A Girl] of the title got out of the trip, but she did seem impressed to be viewing Michelangelo's instead of the copy her sister had seen at a Vegas casino.

But try as I might, I can't come up with a description of 1 complete lesson. Most of the book consists of Riley's ruminations about the process of removing his daughter from the classroom for a year and descriptions of disagreements between he and Gillian, chiefly about her desire to return to public school to be with her friends.

Ignore the inside flap blurb: this is no "wise and witty memoir of home schooling." It's rather the ramblings of one not-very-likeable man who seems clearly to be doing this for himself, not his daughter.

I found this book to be a quick and easy read. Riley's sense of humor make the book enjoyable to read, yet it is not lightweight material. Perhaps the best part of Riley's book is the honest re-telling of what happens when you homeschool. Many homeschooling books paint homeschooling in such a glorious light, that the real life nuts and bolts of homeschooling gets swept under the rug. Homeschooling can be difficult and exhausting. Is it worth it? For some people, yes. Dan Riley captures the gritty, one on one nature that makes homeschooling a viable alternative for some families.

As a former homeschooled student myself, I found this an interesting but not representative account of what homeschooling truly is. While it was indeed interesting to read about Dan Riley's customized curriculum for his daughter and how the experience improved their relationship, I was disappointed with his failure to use a homeschooling parent's best and most-used resource--other homeschooling families. Unlike most of these families, he failed to seek out other homeschoolers for Gillian to know and failed to take advantage of the hundreds of extracurricular activities developed specifically for homeschoolers. Gillian's experience was more isolated than any other homeschooled student I've known(and I've been in contact with over a hundred for the past ten years). Academically, she may have flourished but socially she missed out on the well-developed network that has been in place among homeschoolers for a decade. This book must be read for what it is: a highly individualized account of one experience in home education, not as a guidebook or source of representative research on home education in America.

This book makes a case for "watering down" music education. All students have the ability to learn. No student should determine what is taught in a music class anymore than in a Math or Science class. If you are interested in how to teach to the average, buy this book. Those who put down contest or festival ratings are usually ineffective teachers unable to reach that level of musicianship. If you would like to help students reach their potential in music expression and performance, find another, more practical book instead of this self-indulgent garbage. I agree with the reviewer below - if you voted for George Bush, you probably believe people are able to do more for themselves than if you are a liberal Democrat. Pass up this socialist garbage!

This is a though-provoking, different look at music education. During a 20 + year career, I was continually troubled by the "Mozart Effect." defense of music, and the need to perform for ratings and trophies (at which I was VERY successful, by the way). Woodford challenges us to look at music as inherently good - not as a vehicle to get trophies (which is an extrinsic motivation), or to raise test scores (which have little to do with teaching and MUCH to do with socio-economic status). By abandoning those notions, the study of music could reach many more than the 10 or 15 percent of school populations that it now reaches, and become an art form that belongs to everyone. That whole "voted for George Bush" and vilifying of socialism commentary was kind of sad -- Guys, open your minds -- it's OK to disagree with your favorite radio talk show entertainers!

I disagree vehemently with the above review. I will grant that the book gets preachy at times. I will also refer potential readers and reviewers to the title of the book in forming their expectations. The book is about music education in the bigger picture, and the role played by music educators and students. At times it gets incendiary. That's a good thing. It's supposed to. It wants you to get beyond getting a "1" at festival into what else you have or should have to offer as a music teacher. I also have the advantage of having met Paul in a small informal setting and hearing him explain his views. If you want hard core philosophy go for Reimer, Jorgensen and that crew. Just looking at the title willl give you proper expectations. Finally, if you voted for George Bush, don't bother with this.

I had to read this book for a graduate music education course. When it was assigned, I looked forward to reading it because, up to now, I have found Canadian scholars of music education (e.g., Bowman, Elliott, Stubley, Lamb) to be exceptionally fine thinkers with excellent, cutting-edge ideas. I expected the same from Woodford, another Canadian. Unforunately, I was very disappointed. Woodford is not in the same league as his Northern colleagues. The content of his book (it's just a booklet, actually) will be unhelpful and uninspiring to any music educator interested in learning more about music, or music education, or engaging his/her students in the joys of music making. Woodford's book is about turning music teachers and music education into political-social tools. This is not a new idea, and it has potential, but Woodford does not have the writing and thinking abilities needed to justify his spin on this topic. In a nutshell: this book is an unconvincing and pedantic plod.