Youth Books

Tender and true. I hated hated hated for it to end.

This book is better than J.R. Moehringer's The Tender Bar and the The Tender Bar is a near perfect Memoir. Here is the difference. With Moehringer, like Crandell, you are getting a story that will change you, but with Crandell's The All-American Industrial Motel you are right there beside Doug, hearing what he is hearing, seeing what he sees, and trying to breathe like Doug is trying to breathe. Chapter 18, is one of the best chapters in modern literature. Those who need this book the most, men twenty-six to forty, the Gen Xer's, whose confusion and raw votes led us to the America we have today--the killing--will try to say Crandell's account of finding your life in the Reagan Years and it's black greed wake, doesn't apply. But a few oh so lucky ones will know they have finally found the salve. While they didn't grow up in the forsaken tornado flatland of Northern Indiana, they still struggled and are still struggling with everything Doug Crandell has been so brave to share. Crandell has raised the shades men. It's time to give up the Kettle One. Put the Red Bull and Jaeger back on the shelf men and pick up Crandell's All-American Industrial Motel. Those products were meant for someone else your same age, not you. You are the son of your own father. Thank you Doug Crandell.

This exquisite Memoir will split your heart in two and you will wonder how you had survived with just the one before. The union workers in The All-American Industrial Motel are men I have known and loved my whole life. Their lives are as true as the story Doug tells of his awesome summer in Indiana working in the ceiling tile factory with them and it has taken me three quiet days to gain sufficient perspective from the book to write about it. It is that piercing, that honest, the voices so vulnerable that the reader is raw from the connection.
Doug Crandell writes to us so much of himself and of so much love and respect for his family that you want at once to hide in the life you've made, safe from the hurt of having left, all the while longing to be there again soaking up all the intricacies of family.
To real work, real love and real risk the author pays homage and I am grateful to have been in the audience for such bravery!

Like his first memoir, Pig Boy's Wicked Bird, the All-American Industrial Motel takes place during one pivotal year in Doug Crandell's life. In this new memoir, the year is 1990 and Crandell is one class away from college graduation and is working at a factory in Indiana along with his father. The farm is gone, and his family has been facing tough times. The tension within the family at this point is volatile, and Crandell's deteriorating relationship with his father is described in fantastic detail. Crandell finds an escape in his friendship with Jerry, a rough co-worker who he's known most of his life but has only befriended during his time in the factory. His ordeal is heart-wrenching as he tries get his father to open up emotionally and balances whether he should just leave with his degree or stay and become a "lifer" at the factory as he watches those who have taken this path. The book may seem bleak, but you will not be able to put it down. You feel a connection with Crandell, and will find yourself drawn in by the people who he befriends in the factory. You will also find yourself frustrated by Crandell's own frustrations and his family's bad decisions. Crandell is a writer of extraordinary ability, a wordsmith which you should not dismiss.

My Top Ten list of American writers changes with my mood and interests. The list is populated by Sherwood Anderson, David James Duncan, Ezra Pound (not from Europe, but from Idaho actually!), Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, Delillo, O'Connor, et al. But, with his earlier work, PigBoy, Doug Crandell leapt onto the list, and his place is cemented by his latest memoir, The All-American Industrial Motel. The story is tender and frightening in the way that secrets between fathers and sons can be: the truth you both know but don't dare speak. The book is funny, heart-felt, and strangely riveting. Having had more minimum-wage jobs than I care to recall, where I was the college boy amongst the blue-collars, relating to this story, and the thick atmosphere of the factory culture, is comforting in the way that sleep is after pulling a double shift.

Crandell reveals enough herein to make one nervous with an anticipation of future events that other authors could never wring from common lives. This is the author's gift: making the melancholy struggle of mid-west lives seem more important than those we read of in the tabloids. And of course, they are. Thanks Doug for a great book!

Features the full text of the seder, along with beautiful airbrushed illustrations and the usual Artscroll easy-to-follow instructions.

It's a real haggadah (not just a storybook), so it might make a beautiful gift for a Bar/Bat Mitzvah; one they'll actually use from time to time. But get one for the younger kids, too -- they'll love looking at the gorgeous pictures.

The illustrations make the Passover story come alive, especially for children and adults with little or no background.

The Art-Scroll Youth Haggadah is a wonderful tool to help Jewish children to take part in the Pesach Seder. It takes us through the preparations for Pesach and the Seder itself, with the complete text , while using language in the translation and comments that children can understand. It also has the Hebrew text alongside the English text.

It has fabulous illustrations that bring the Jewish Festival of Freedom to life.
It ends off with the songs sung on Pesach including the song well known to children in Israel - Chad Gadya- One Kid. This cheerful song-on which The House that Jack built was later based-also has a deeper spiritual meaning.
Every Jewish child should have a copy of this remarkable book, ready for Pesach.

It Is Goo

This is a perfect Hagadah for children. It's true to the tradition and the illustrations are compelling. A few years ago I bought several, so that we could have one for each child at our seder. I believe that having their own Hagadah makes the seder a more dynamic experience for the kids, and each year, as I place them on the table, I am very glad I made the investment.

Along with Laurie Lee's other prose, among the most lyrical and magical travel memoirs, with characters drawn beautifully and moods captured poetically. He grew up in Slad, a village next to Stroud, a small market town in the Cotswolds. My mother was born just a couple of years later in Stroud, and grew up in the same environment he did. I was born nearby, and spent parts of my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s there, and it is indeed magical. Leaving Stroud was a bold step for him, as my mother could describe to me as she left Stroud when WWII started, having been due to start at a Music Conservatoire in London in September 1939. Since the War had just started, my mother at 19 went to London anyway to work for the RAF in the days, and as an air raid warden and ambulance driver in the Blitz, at night. She told me stories about Laurie Lee who became a favored son of the town, though his writing speaks for itself.
His prose, like so many of the great memoirists and travel writers is indeed poetic. As a man who was an auto-didact, he had an affinity for simplicity, but grace and elegance few others have mastered.

"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" [1], author Laurie Lee recounted his first sojourn away from home. At age 19, our narrator-biographer, walked out of his village at Stroud, Gloucestershire, and headed toward London. As Lee himself recalled, he was 'still soft at the edges' when he said farewell to his mother (a poignant scene in the opening chapter). All he had with him that Sunday morning in June 1934 was 'a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese.'

After nearly a year of living and working in London as a cement laborer, Lee decided it was time to move on. He bought a one-way ticket and sailed to Spain. He settled for Spain because he had had an introduction to Spanish. All he could speak then, Lee admitted, was only one Spanish phrase: 'Will you please give me a glass of water?'

In July 1935, Laurie Lee landed in northwestern Spain. For many months he roamed the exotic and history-filled landscape, living off his music and the kindness of the people he came to love. From Vigo, he wandered southward through the New Castile region (Segovia, Madrid, Toledo). By December, he came to the coastal region of Andalusia (Cordova, Seville, Granada). There, Lee holed up at a Castillo hotel until the outbreak of the civil war in July 1936.

This author's second autobiographical sketch could have been subtitled "From Spain With Love." His inimitable poetic description of the Spanish landscape and its inhabitants is sensual as it is lyrical. The warmth and beauty of this passage [no pun], for example, undulates this reviewer's reveries, not of memories but of what has never been: 'When twilight came I slept where I was, on the shore or some rock-strewn headland, and woke to the copper glow of the rising sun coming slowly across the sea. Mornings were pure resurrection, which I could watch sitting up, still wrapped like a corpse in my blanket, seeing the blood-warm light soak back into the Sierras, slowing re-animating their ash-grey cheeks, and feeling the cold of the ground drain away beneath me as the sunrise reached my body.'

Lee's "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" and its third autobiograhy "A Moment In War" have had a farther reach than any of his other celebrated works. These writings have been adapted to music to which Charles Baudelaire could only spoke of metaphorically. In June of 2002, the Allegri String Quartet in The Salisbury Festival (UK) premiered "A Walk Into War." A musical piece which the quartet had commissioned based on the two latter biographies.

The author once wrote that autobiography is 'a celebration of life and an attempt to hoard its sensations...trophies snatched from the dark... to praise the life I'd had and so preserve it, and to live again both the good and the bad'. By all measures he had not done badly. He was and is the one modern author whose memoirs have transcended into the realms of music and visual arts ('Cider With Rosie', a 1998 film by John Mortimer).

1] Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy - Book 1:"Cider with Rosie" (1959); Book 2:"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" (1969); and Book 3: "A Moment of War" (1991).

It's a shame that this fine book is not in print. Those going after used editions--and you should--are encouraged to look for the 1985 reprint stunningly illustrated with classic paintings of Spanish life. But back to why you want to read this: in 1934, a young, naive Englishman who had never been out of his rural neighborhood packed up his violin and went walking, first to London, a hundred miles east and then via boat to Spain where he walked from Vigo in the north down to the southern coast. I'm having trouble shelving the book: is it a straight memoir? Certainly it is very much about the writer's encounter with the world at a historically significant time and about his own growth process. Or is it a travelogue? It is a very accurate account of the unique Spanish culture and countryside. Although written more than 30 years after the actual experience, Lee's account conveys a fresh sense of wonder and discovery and resists overlaying too much foreshadowing and hindsight. His style is lyrical, vivid as the blue Spanish sky and honest. He is refreshingly free of nationalism and prejudice.

His admirers have commented, variously, that Laurie Lee 'writes like an angel', a 'poet, whose prose is quick and bright as a snake'. For another writer such praise might seem lavish but not for Laurie Lee. He writes beautifully, producing books that electrify and enchant, exhilarate and mesmerise. 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' is the second volume of a marvellous trilogy. Part autobiography, part evocation of all the bewilderment and uncertainty of the 1930's, it is characterized by the lyricism of its poet author. Leaving his home in the Cotswolds, the young Lee walks to London in 'high, sulky Summer' with high hopes of making his fortune. He settles, happily enough, in a London boarding house with an engagingly eccentric Irish Cockney family, and supports himself by labouring on a building site and by playing the violin. In a life of opposites, we are treated to a first-hand account of the ugliness and tension of the disputes between employees and unions. In the dawn of the first, disquieting signs of dissatisfaction - a feeling in the 30's that led inexorably to the policy of Appeasement, and thus to war - we see through the eyes of a naive adolescent. It is this naivete, coupled with the glorious spontaneity that floods this book, which leads him to Spain. Knowing approximately one Spanish phrase, Lee decides to see Spain and so begins the love affair wtih a country that was to obsess him for the rest of his life. Never has Spain been so vividly painted. From the scorching heat and vivid, voluptous women of Vigo, to the false glamour and dilapidation of Madrid, Laurie Lee writes with a passion to match his captivation. An absolutely unforgettable book with a host of sharply drawn characters. From the sexily confident child, Patsy, to beautiful Cleo, Philip with his 'fine hungry face and a shock of thick obsidian curls' Lee sketches the myriad individuals he meets with a lucidity that stamps them in our minds forever. Who can read this novel and not dream wistfully of the days when cars were a rarity in our country. Or of a Spain unscarred by war, where the laundered, lacy dolls modestly avert their eyes from the gaze of the young men 'pocket dandies, carefully buttoned in spite of the heat.' Truly a book to treasure forever.

Laurie Lee's writing is beautiful, simple and elegant: down-to-earth but poetic. I first read this book when I was 14. Twelve years later, it's still in my all-time top three. It is incredibly evocative of Spain before the Civil War - it describes a place and a moment in history seen through the excited eyes of a youth. It is nostalgic but not unrealistic. Read it. You won't regret it!

Be...a Woman is a beautiful and inspirational journey that will be a source of encouragement to all women who take the opportunity to explore its spirit. The book reaches out in so many different ways and makes a woman want to be all that she can be. The photographs are captivating in the way that the essence of each individual shines through. Kim's words are poetic and speak to the hearts, souls and minds of women everywhere. I was moved by her enchanting references to 'hands' and the power that their gentle touch can have. Be...a woman conveys the fortitude of women and the eternal link. It is brilliant in its sheer authenticity.

What a simple and comforting book... The photography and poetry compliment each other as they highlight each woman's unique quality. "Be...a Woman - expressions of life" gently directs us, the reader, to realize the beauty and strength in ourselves and in the women in our everyday lives. This book could be read in one sitting, but I found that by reading just one page at a time, the words and photos triggered thoughts and memories of my life and encouraged reflection. Each woman will relate to something within this book whether it be, an expression, an attribute, or a story.

I am glad to be a beautiful woman.

I may not have said that yesterday, but I am saying it today.

I may not feel it everyday, but I am feeling it today.

And when I don't feel it, I know that there are two other women in the world that know I am beautiful.

Kim MacGregor and Arline Malakian know it and through their beautiful book Be...a Woman, they are helping others to realize their own beauty.

This book has one ribbon bookmark. It needs more. As I looked through its beautiful photography and read the enlightening words on its pages, I realized I needed some of those little sticky post-it notes. Seven to be exact.

The words and images made me think about my own ideas of beauty and how traditional they were. Attributes that one would not relate to "beauty" were realized as a strong characteristic of it. Words like reflective, courageous, exuberant, vibrant and gentle.

I wanted to go look at myself in the mirror and see if I could find these qualities in my stare, my stance and my smile. I wanted to find something beautiful, ignoring the traditional definition of beauty.

And I did.

I found courage. "Life acknowledges courage to be its strongest ally."

I found exhuberance. "...with spirit, heart, and a wicked sense of humor, I can laugh in the face of adversity, knowing I can summon the power from 'with-in,' so I will never be left 'with-out.' "

I found forgiveness. "Neither perfection nor imperfection alone bring me joy; it is acceptance of both that make me whole."

I found beauty in three things today: this book, myself and my life.

This is a beautiful book that makes me proud to be a woman - the strengh, character, and wisdom portrayed in the book is an inspiration. The photograhy captures the spirit of these very different women, each beautiful in her own way. Standards of beauty should be limitless, and that is the essence of the book. It would make a great gift for any wonderful woman in your life - mother, sister, friend...

This book is not my usual fare, but I had the pleasure of meeting the authors last year, and received it as a gift.

So I could easily have missed a delightful experience.

The authors are a professional photographer and a woman who has been a model since childhood. Having both worked in a world where superficial beauty is often over-valued, they set out to find the inner essence, the core of a group of women from all walks of life. Not all have conventional "good looks," but the authors uncovered the inner radiance of each of them. The book is sepia-toned collection of photographs, poignant poetic sketches and journal entries.

As they say in the introduction, "We discovered how we rarely take the time to truly find out about someone else, and in so doing, discover things about ourselves. As women, perhaps we need to draw more from our shared experiences than from the desire to be "better than," "thinner than, " or "more successful than." They go on to say that by casting aside our internalized limitations and inadequacies, we can discover that we are more than what we think we are. We can let go of self-criticism and feel the abundant flow of energy and beauty that is all around us.

That is a message that both men and women need to hear.

Some books are to be enjoyed in an evening, but others linger with you long after you have reached the end. This is definitely in the latter group: the book is an inspiration that may radically alter the way that you look at both women and men.


Highly recommended.

Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

funny ,easyto read, information priceless to a long time Methodist
like me, I learned a lot from reading this book, it is a reference
for me, I'd like to thank the author for writing it

This book is a great read and VERY pertinent. It really makes you think and Belton had lots of great ideas. VERY FUNNY.

Attention ALL United Methodists (whether or not you think you're confused)! This book provides exactly what the title suggests and does so in an organized, intelligent, and humorous way so I won't waste your time elaborating. Buy the book. Better yet, buy 4 copies. Give one to your church library and submit an article for the next issue of your church newsletter calling attention to the new addition. Take the 2nd copy to your Sunday School teacher and volunteer to use the book to teach the next several weeks for him/her. (I'm sure they deserve a break.) Give the 3rd copy to your youth director. (I sure wish it had been available to me as a youth.) Keep the 4th for yourself and loan it out often. I slightly disagree with the authors opinion that the "Bible Belt" is a state of mind. Perhaps, but I think we struggle with these issues much more in the south than anywhere else. Buy the book. You won't regret it.

I bought this book shortly after joining a United Methodist church. As a former southern baptist, I found this book very helpful in discerning the differences between the denominations. I've since recommended this book to several friends and family members.

I concur with Laura's analysis of this book. This is actually an introduction to UMC theology/doctrine, but it is presented in a very readable format. It describes what makes United Methodists distinctive from other denominations while allowing for diversity of belief. Buy it!

This book is easy to read, in down-to-earth language, and Question & Answer format. Presents ideas from a teenager's 1st person perspective. Covers a variety of relevant topics. Besides helping parents and teachers, I think high schoolers, college kids, and maybe junior high kids will find this book to be useful.

I bought this book on the advice of my son's psychologist and it was worth every penny. I am also a special ed teacher and will recommend it to every teacher I know.

I ordered this book at the recommendation of the psychologist who tested our daughter for ADD. It is written for older children and teenagers who have ADD or ADHD. My daughter, age 17, found it interesting. It helped her know that she was not the only one with this condition and gave her many tips for coping with life. Although I found much of it redundant, the book helped me see ADD from the perspective of a teenager.

This book is a must for parents of ADHD children as well as educators. As both a parent of an ADHD child and a teacher, I found this book enlightening as well as practical. It is a very easy read, in fact, I read it in two days. It is easy to understand and is written in layman terms not scientific/medical jargon. It explains so many aspects ADHD is language that parents can understand and offers some sensible solutions to everyday problems. This book has become by ADHD bible.

this book is the best insight for a parent dealing with the frustrations of a bright teen struggling with ADD issues. The opportunity to read the words of teens who have dealt with the struggle give moral support to parents that there is hope. This is a must buy!

The other reviews have been spot on, this is a page turner extraordinaire--delightful moments, amusing stories, amazing adventures in days of yore.

If you've read Farley Mowat, you know him as a passionate defender of the beautiful "Others" with whom we share our planet. This book is a joy-filled description of his early life and formation as a nature-lover. We hear of the wild beauty of Canada, the Quixotic plans his father devised and his mother endured, and the daring adventures which will become the foundation for his later writings. Although a light-hearted story overall, Farley does not avoid the difficult times, including a powerful depiction of the effect of the Depression on the Canadian provinces. It is a love song to the strength of character and perseverence of our northern cousins, as well.

When the book ends, the reader, like the writer, wonders if there will ever be such a wonderful time again. Sheer delight.

I've been a big fan of Farley Mowat's literary style since I first read Never Cry Wolf back in junior high school. Even as a 9th grade Earth Science teacher, I show the silver screen adaptation of this great novel. Born Naked, however, is of different 'stuff' than Never Cry Wolf. Here is a book written in a light, easy-to-read fashion that highlights his early years in this great world. We, the readers, are along for the ride when he travels to the Arctic on a research mission with his uncle, or when he makes his daily rounds to inspect the nests of local birds in Saskatchewan. This book is written in a truly entrancing style. I had a very difficult time putting it down. There are some questionable portions in it dealing with his discovery of his own sexuality, but they are far outweighed by the sense of awe and discovery he felt as a youngster. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone that enjoyed Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, or anyone that wants to experience the childhood they only dreamed about

I enjoy all of Mowat's books, but this one is particularly good. His style is conversational, his humor is biting. Clearly a man who does not suffer a fool lightly. Farley Mowat is a national gem. Buy the book...

Canadian author Farley Mowat's Born Naked is a must-read glimpse into the author's much self-written about life. It's hilarious, it's poignant and a must for any Mowat fan.

Before World War II, life in the self-sufficient Lebanese farming village, Magdaluna (Tower of the Moon) was simple, shaped by the olive harvest and the summer procession of peddlers and gypsies. Everyone knew everyone, no one went hungry. There was no running water but the village well was pure and cold. People had no need of watches or calendars. After the war, change - Western technology - swept through the village.

When Civil War came in 1975, little remained to be bombed into rubble. Accawi's memoir recalls his childhood in this vanished place with a series of witty and poignant vignettes.

While faithful to the immediacy of a child's view, Accawi's stories are shaped by his adult perspective of humor and regret. Though he mourns the destruction of timeless village rhythms, the idyllic and the cruel frequently coexist in his stories, as if human life necessarily embodies both.

His first story, a joyful overview of childhood summer pleasures, culminates in a terrifying lesson for a boy not yet five. He learns that adults, even beloved family members, are "capable of doing anything - horrible things - and not seeing anything wrong with it. But the scariest thing about it was that they had the power..."

Radio was the first of the marvels to transform Magdaluna. Accawi's father brought it, returning from war. Flocking villagers, forced to be civil to one another under Grandma's roof, settle feuds, discover romance. But, alas, radios proliferate, people stay home, the convivial evenings end, new feuds arise.

Before the gramophone comes gathering people together again (but destroying the old evenings of folk dancing) and the telephone draws the men away from the companionable village madam, and the automobile scatters the village forever, Accawi introduces us to its characters.

His grandmother, illiterate and wise, tells him hard work can make him a mountain who needs no one's approval, "big and immovable, and people will have to deal with you." Though she had bags of feathers in her attic, she filled her parlor furniture with corn husks. "She was a one-eyed, no-nonsense Presbyterian with a frightful work ethic, and she did not want any of her visitors, including the red-nosed preacher she was sweet on, to get too comfortable and stay long."

His mother, also illiterate, was a tough survivor from the Turkish-Syrian border and a philosopher who always told the truth. Then there's Wadi, driven crazy by love; the unhurried shopkeeper who introduces Accawi to ice and operates the olive press; the traveling butcher; the mean lute player who grows beautiful roses; Abu George, the farrier, the best for miles around.

And every once in a while, something new comes along to shake things up. Each new technological machine brings delight to the child and it's only afterward, when he sees the effect on his village, the changes in the people he cherishes and the traditions that mean home to him, that dismay comes.

"But it is good, all of it, good; even the bad is good. Because of it I am what I am today."

Accawi draws us into his bygone world with love but without sentimentality. His vivid, well-crafted stories bring his isolated village to life with all its warts and wonders.

This book grabs you from the first page and takes you on a journey that sticks with you long after you have reading this incredible book.

Accawi has a masterful touch. He's profound yet clear. His story make you laugh out loud and break your heart all in the same paragrpah.

You can't go wrong with The Boy from the Tower of the Moon.

I cannot think of another book I've read with greater passion. Anwar Accawi possesses the ability to draw the reader into the mind of a five year old boy, and into the creative way its thinking process helps him understand the world around him. At the crossroads of change in the 1940s , the Mount Lebanon village of Majdalouna has very colorful and unique characters living at the fringe of what (then) modern life had to offer. The five year old Anwar untethers his mind to describe the village, villagers and their changing way of life.

About Anwar Accawi the author: another Mark Twain in the making? Possibly!

I read the Anwar Accawi essay "The Telephone" in the best American essays for 1998 edited by Cynthia Ozick. His writing is terrific. We need more new writers of his talent and the essay and information about other cultures will come alive again.

I discovered this book by chance, and was so, so happy to have found it while reading it. I am Norwegian, but was born and raised in Lebanon, and recognize so many of the funny, sad, beautiful incidents Anwar Accawi describes. It's a wonderful book! And a loving tribute to Lebanon, the best place in the world - we were so lucky to grow up there in happy times!

This book touches my heart. It is so typical of the many children who are lost through the cracks by our educational system. It shows real courage on the mother's part for never giving up on her son even in his darkest moments. The family was drawn into Brian's World as victims of circumstance.
So many children and their families suffer because their child has learning disabilities and most educational systems seem to turn a blind eye as our precious children turn to drugs and suicide to escape the torment and torture that awaits them inside our schools and at the hands of peers and authorities alike.
Brian was a bright young man who learned to cope the best way he knew how as he drifted through the cruel world in which he lived. I laughed at his antics and cried with his mother as she struggled to save her precious son.
I believe this is a book for all to read from 12 to 99 and especially for educators. I think Brian's short life has a message we need to hear before it is too late for yet another of our young people.
A must read to add to your summer list of reading materials you won't be able to put it down until you finsih. ...

"Brian's World" by far is one of the best written true stories I have ever read. Throughout the entire reading I felt the author was sitting beside me and telling me her story. She writes as though she was talking directly to me and you can feel it comes right from her heart with total honesty. Throughout reading "Brian's World" I found myself not being able to lay it down for any length of time; when I did lay it down I was right back with it in my hand and reading, just wanting to know more about this fine young troubled youth whose mother loved him unconditionally from the beginning of his life to the end. I recommend "Brian's World" to all parents around the world.

Catherine Roberts writes courageously about her struggle to protect, support and encourage her son from illness in infancy through learning disabilities to drug and alcohol addiction. Catherine faced the many challenging situations in raising a learning-disabled child with grace and dignity and ALWAYS with her son's best interests at heart. She shares with us hers and Brian's tale, honestly, truthfully and frankly. The book is chock-full of emotion and interspersed with pain and humour.

Catherine Roberts writes courageously about her struggle to protect, support and encourage her son from illness in infancy through learning disabilities to drug and alcohol addiction. Catherine faced the many challenging situations in raising a learning-disabled child with grace and dignity and ALWAYS with her son's best interests at heart. She shares with us hers and Brian's tale, honestly, truthfully and frankly. The book is chock-full of emotion and interspersed with pain and humour.

I laughed, I cried, I felt the pain of Brian and his mother as they journyed through life trying to find a place where Brian would fit in. I know this story all too well and I could relate to all the turmoil that this family faced. I could feel their pain as teachers and authorities alike labeled Brian and condemed him. I cried as peers tormented and ridiculed this loving caring child. It was the fact that Brian was taken from an outgoing child model to the depths of substance abuse as he looked for peer acceptance that broke my heart. I wanted to shake him many times as he manipulated his loving mother to get his own way. He certainly learned the system and how to play it at the expense of his mom. But through it all she showed Brian unconditional love and acceptance never faultering or giving up on her precious youngest child. When you read some of the funny things Brian did as he grew into his teenage years, it is hard to realize that he understood the english language so litterly in its content. Brian was a very bright child who thought very seriously about the future and what he wanted even as a child. I loved the story about him at about age 10 when attending a business meeting/ tour of Weyerhauser he asked the Weyerhauser representitive how much money he earned. But his explanation for the question was extremely well thought out for a ten year old. I also enjoyed and laughed through the story of Brian's practice driving his fathers antique car and then after getting hooked on the garage painted it with wood paint and a paint brush in hopes no one would notice. I was apaulled to learn that Brian after being rehabilitated for 10 months in juvenille hall was let out with no place to go and no support form the system. This is so typical of what happens to many of our youth today. I commend Catherine on a job well done. I would recommend this book to all from teens through seniors. My grandmother read this book as did some of my students and all of us gave rave reviews. I would recommend that all teachers and people working with troubled youth especially the youth justice system take the time to read Brian's World. You won't be able to put it down until you get to the back cover. I can't wait to read Catherine's next book.

I teach reading, and I like Rylant's work. For me, BIBBA was personal. Rylant grew up near where my father's family lived for generations. My Dad left to escape the poverty-- he didn't want to be a miner like his Dad. As I grew up in Utah, I knew very little about my Dad's early life.
BIBBA was a wonderful read, especially since Rylant is only a few years older than me. I vividly remember Bobby Kennedy's charisma, and the shock of his death. There are many places in BIBBA to cry-- when Rylant's father dies just before she is to see him for the first time in many years, for example. There is also the simple joy of that first kiss, and all those little moments of growing up. Read this book!

If you loved sharing Cynthia Rylant's Henry and Mudge books with your kids, do yourself a favor and read this memoir of growing up in Appalachia. I was delighted to find Ms. Rylant's talent for telling tales of simple magic at work again in this personal story. You might also enjoy reading Missing May, and CYnthia Rylant's other books for older children and young adults. She is a very special writer whose writing for kids is clearly not her only gift.

Focusing almost exclusively on her childhood and adolescence, Rylant describes growing up in the small town of Beaver, West Virginia. She was abandoned by her beloved father, an alcoholic, at age three, and sent to live with her grandparents between the ages of four and eight, while her mother went to nursing school. The heartbreak of losing her parents so young is the reason she became a writer: to help her make sense of life. Rylant discusses her passion for the Beatles, Bobby Kennedy, and kissing. A sensitive, often humorous piece of self-revelation by a fine writer. Includes personal photos and drawings that evoke the Beatles era in a scrapbook style.

"But I'll Be Back Again" is the autobiography of Cynthia Rylant, who writes books for young people. In BIBBA, Rylant recalls her childhood and adolescence in West Virgina. The book opens with her mother's separation from Cynthia's alcoholic father. Rylant goes on to discuss her extended family, her friendships, her heroes, her youthful sexual awakening, etc.

One intriguing aspect of the book is the way Rylant reveals how people and issues from her childhood eventually were reflected in her works of fiction. This is a short book, but well complemented by 16 pages of photos and documents from Rylant's childhood. Rylant's style is frank and direct, yet also demonstrates grace and tenderness. Overall, a fine book.

Any young person who admires Cynthia Rylant's books should treat themselves to this book. Anyone who writes, or who wants to write, should read this story of a young girl who becomes a writer. Full of wonderfully detailed stories and snippets of her life; this book is a joy.