My young daughter (15 months) and I have just completed our second reading of this extensive collection. My daughter loves Jemima Puddleduck and Mrs. Tittlemouse. She can flip all the pages until she finds one of these characters and then proudly points them out to me. As a parent, I love the stories because of the crazy and adventurous plots. In the Tale of Mr. Tod, Benjamin Bunny's children are locked in an oven while Mr. Tod (a fox) and Tommy Brock (a badger) duel in a territorial battle of wills that involves suspending a full pail of water over a supposedly sleeping Tommy Brock. The first time we read it, the suspense was killing me! Another favorite is the Pie and the Paddy Pan. A very proper cat named Ribby invites Duchess, a dog, for lunch. Duchess correctly assumes that Ribby will serve mouse pie. She concocts a hilariously funny scheme to substitute the mouse pie for a pie more suitable for a dog. Obviously, the lunch is disastrous, and pretty darn funny. I decided to buy all Beatrix Potter's works in one complete source book after reading Jim Trelease's READ-ALOUD HANDBOOK. He stresses the importance of reading aloud to children and one of his highest recommended authors is Beatrix Potter because of the complex sentence formation and vocabulary introduction. While my initial reasoning may sound rather boring, we continued reading these stories every night because they are truly delightful tales with lovely delicate drawings.

I rushed home every day after work to read a little more of this Trollope comedy. The book starts out with the death of a bishop during a change in political power. The new bishop is a puppet to his wife Mrs. Proudie and her protégé Mr. Slope. Along the way we meet outrageous clergymen, a seductive invalid from Italy, and a whole host of delightfully ridiculous characters. Trollope has designed most of these characters to be "over the top". I kept wondering what a film version starring the Monty Python characters would look like. He wrote an equivalent of a soap opera, only it doesn't take place at the "hospital", it takes place with the bishops. Some of the characters you love, some of the characters you hate, and then there are those you love to hate. Trollope speaks to the reader throughout the novel using the mimetic voice, so we feel like we are at a cocktail party and these 19th century characters are our friends (or at least the people we're avoiding at the party!). The themes and characters are timeless. The book deals with power, especially power struggles between the sexes. We encounter greed, love, desperation, seductive sirens, and generosity. Like many books of this time period however, the modern reader has to give it a chance. No one is murdered on the first page, and it takes quite a few chapters for the action to pick up. But pick up it does by page 70, and accelerates into a raucously funny novel from there. Although I didn't read the Warden, I didn't feel lost and I'm curious to read the rest of this series after finishing this book. Enjoy!

Rosemond provides a no-nonsense, commonsense approach to parenting where the goal of each stage is to allow your child to grow into the next stage with firm and loving guidance, but little interference. He is a delightfully humorous writer who obviously loves children. If you have not read any of John Rosemond's books, I suggest that you read his Six Point Plan first. He builds on the foundation he provided in the John Rosemond's Six Point Plan to Raising Happy, Healthy Children, and I was certainly glad I had read it before I started this book. That being said, there is a tremendous amount in Making the 'Terrible' Two's Terrific that is specific to this particular age and the subject warrants its own book. Yes-there is a potty training chapter too! He devotes the first section to the different developmental wonders of two year olds and the challenges these can create for parents. I've found, as a parent, that understanding my daughter's developmental needs has led to greater patience. This is a scary time for kids, as they are beginning to realize that the world does not revolve around them. He fully understands that two year olds have limited attention span and while he is viewed as a conservative, his approach emphasizes prevention at this stage and is not overly harsh. END

This was a nice quick read and Dickenson does a great job of carrying the reader into the active mind of a terminally ill old woman. Rachel is confronted by her avaricious son about the appearance of one of Dad's antique pistols on Antiques' Roadshow of all places. This sparks an investigation by Rachel through both her loyal nurse and her own active mind as to the actual events of over 40 years ago. Every family has a story repressed somewhere in the subconscious of the most experienced generation. These are the interesting stories that don't seem to be recorded for subsequent generations in the family bible. The Matson mystery is particularly horrific and I couldn't wait for it to unravel. Rachel uses her extensive collection of photographs to spark her memories and we are all transposed back to the lives of Jocelyn and Rachel Matson before and after he was a prisoner of war in WWII. The main characters are all dead and she is forced to contact their surviving relatives for little bits of information. The only remaining witness to the events is Sergeant Fred and he prefers to leave the whole sordid mess dead and buried. The characters are beautifully crafted and realistic. On the whole, I enjoyed this novel very much. It is wonderful light summer reading at its finest.

Things Fall Apart is a powerful epic story that follows Okonkwo, a member of the Ibo culture at the turn of the last century. He is young, ambitious, hardworking, and tough. About the only softness we see in Okonkwo is reflected in the treatment of his favorite daughter. We watch Okonkwo make some unfortunate choices and run into a long string of bad luck. Along the way we see him successfully fight to maintain his sense of personal and tribal pride. He is only beaten down toward the end of the book by the introduction of the English colonialists. While the story of this man is interesting, it is only the instrument of Achebe's parable. The first section of the novel introduces us to the system and culture of Umuofia (the name of the village). Achebe makes no attempt to portray this as Utopia, and deliberately adds large sections of what white westerners would perceive as atrocities. The village abandoned twins to die in the forest, men beat their wives, and the oracle ordered the ritual killing of a prisoner of war. I was quite literally horrified for more than half of the book. Slowly I was able to overcome my preconceived notions of a proper society and view this functioning system as different, but noble. Then, stealthily the colonialists came. The missionaries tried to correct what they consider to be defects in the current system. They save the twins and embrace the untouchables, two acts that westerners reading this welcome. Through their noblesse oblige efforts, however, they disrupt a working economic and social system. Over time the new culture invades and spreads like the locusts in the middle of this story. Seemingly minor "corrections" to this system eventually lead to major changes in government, the economy, and the existing tribal hierarchy. The local population was taken from within and before they realized that they were being destroyed it was too late. A proud respected tribal elder like Okonkwo has no place in the new society and the previous one no longer exists.

The book is simply written, but the real strength in this powerful parable is its organization. I have found myself reflecting on this book since I finished it three weeks ago. As a white American this reinforces my belief that Western nations can't fix everything, and often things don't need fixing at all. Of course world politics aren't that simple. This book details the dangers of a clash of cultures from both the well-meaning missionaries, and the later oppressive imperialists. While he does a beautiful job of sensitizing readers of the west (is this why it was written in English?) he is smart enough not to try to provide any solutions. We are left only with questions, yet the introspective process can certainly be beneficial.

My parents had a collection of religious books for the kids to read at church when we were very young. I remember loving the small books and the individual stories. I credit these books with my firm foundation of biblical events and stories compared to so many other children who grew up in the confusing 1970s. When my sister gave The Good Samaritan, to my daughter (her goddaughter) as a baptismal present I was elated. The pictures are lovely, and of course the story is timeless. The phrasing is all in rhyme, which I found to be a bit hokey, but my daughter loves the rhythm. When I come into the room, I often find that she's picked this book or another from the same collection and is excitedly reading (or pretending to read). This book, and other Arch books, are essentials in every Christian home. They are fun and simple introductions to the bible.

My husband and I were very skeptical when our friends kept crediting "the sleepy baby book" (our nickname for this child-rearing masterpiece) for their little girl's wonderful sleep habits. We just nodded and smiled because we were certain that they were lucky enough to have a baby who just happens to like sleep. I read the book anyway while I was pregnant and used it on our baby from day one. The results are amazing. Our little girl sleeps 12-13 hours a night and takes two 1-hour naps a day. Another set of friends is using this method on their 8-week-old who is consistently sleeping nine hours at night. This method requires that the parents be in tune with their baby's needs. It takes time to learn the signs of a baby that is tired but not yet overtired. That is one of the secrets of this method. Put your baby down before he's overtired. Another secret is seemingly counterintuitive. Don't keep your baby up during the day so she will sleep better at night. You need to read the rest your selves to get the whole picture, but it is a strange mixture of revolutionary thinking and common sense. He also backs up all his theories in the beginning with tons of interesting studies. This is a must read for expecting parents.