Nonfiction Books

I have truly enjoyed reading this book. I have some children's books on mythology that I read to my kids, and I found the topic so interesting I wanted a little something for myself. This is a great light reading of mythology for adults (or teens). I have always had a fascination with greek mythology - but when I took a college course in greek mythology - I felt that the professor pretty much killed any interest I had in the topic. Basically he threw us into some difficult text without much background info - and I ended up bored and "un-enlightened". Thankfully I rekindled this interest by reading to my kids. This particular book is just wonderful, especially if you are new to mythology - because the writing is very straight forward and accessible, yet fun and intriguing. Had I just started with this book in college, I probably would have read many more books, and ultimately waded into the more complex writing of the Greek plays. This is just the book to stoke the flames for anybody looking for a first adult book about the greek myths.

This book is full of stories of Heroes, Gods and Monsters, wonderfully written for easy reading and comprehension. A great book for anyone, especially young readers looking for stories that will open their minds to a world of magic and mystery.

Great book to get your childs imagination going. The information on Greek Mythology is addictive where you wont want to put the book down, until you've read the whole thing.

If you like greek mytholoy, but you're not an expert, this is good staring point. it is very clear, and the histories are very fun to read

This is more of a "Mythology for Children and Beginners" resource. Most of the more obscure Greek myths (and in many cases, the more interesting ones) are left out entirely; of the myths which are included, only one version is presented of each, obscuring the fact that in many cases there were multiple versions of each myth, each version interesting and useful in its own right. I would recommend for the enthusiast Edith Hamilton's carefully researched "Mythology" - there is far more Greek material presented in that book than in this and in a more engaging format.

I live an hour away from Beech Creek, Alison Bechdel's tiny hometown and the setting for much of her graphic memoir Fun Home. I've always found the area oppressive: dark, looming mountains casting perpetual shadows on impoverished, dying valley towns. But after reading Fun Home, I revisited Beech Creek, to see Bechdel's childhood home and the grave of her father Bruce, and to remind myself of how cruelly ironic life can be.

Bruce Bechdel, a man who loves literature (in his early days he identified with F. Scott Fitzgerald; in his final days he reads Proust), an aesthete with a taste for the baroque detail of the Victorian era, and a creative and versatile designer of interior and exterior landscapes, is born and lives in rural central Pennsylvania, running the family funeral home and teaching at the local high school. He never quite fits in. Always sun-tanned and exquisitely dressed (no plaid hunter's shirts or chewing tobacco for him), persnickety and a bit prissy, but at the same time speaking with a back-country twang, Bruce seems uncannily out of place in Beech Creek.

And he's a closeted gay man, who has occasional affairs on the side and otherwise sublimates his repressed sexuality by obsessively restoring the Victorian-era house in which Alison grew up. The tension of his closeted life makes him aloof, prone to violent temper tantrums, controlling, and sometimes cruel to both wife and children.

Alison's Bechdel's memoir of him, and the way in which her own identity both became the inverse of his and yet in many respects parallels his, is a sophisticated narrative that underscores just how complex personal identity is. Alison is who she is, just as her father was who he was, because of the convergence of Beech Creek, sexuality, alienation, fun, repression, the need to be creative, the yearning for affection, the factuality of history and the re-creation of memory. There's no formulaic happy ending here, no artificial structuring to make more sense of the relationship between herself and her father than there really was. Instead, what the reader is offered is a profound, sensitive, bittersweet effort to explore memory in search of identity--an effort which throughout is punctuated by Bechdel's references to both Proust and James Joyce--and an appreciation for the ironies of fate which make us who we become.

Other reviewers have mentioned that they read the memoir at one setting. I found it so intense that I could only take it in small portions, and even then I sometimes felt overwhelmed. For in sharing her own identity-forming memories with us, she invites us to plumb more deeply into our own. And both exercises, although potentially liberating, can also be harrowing.

I knew she was a cartoonist but did not know the memoir would be in cartoon form. It was reasonably well written but her family members just didn't come alive for me.
As a lesbian, I found it especially upsetting to read about yet another woman who felt like she had come home when she put on her father's clothes.

An absolutely brilliant, hard to put down and very moving story. I go back to it often and think about it always. Beautiful, witty, hilarious.

Perhaps it is inevitable that I'd fall for this book, given that I'm a fan of comics --Art Speigelman, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Megan Kelso, Gilbert & Jamie Hernandez... and of course Alison Bechdel, whose Dykes to Watch Out For strip I've followed for a long time. Compared to that strip, this book has a more gentle pace and wry wit. It says as much as written biographies in a surprisingly compact way. The ending disappointed some, but surely real life is harder than fiction to tie up in a tidy bow.

I cannot praise this graphic novel enough. I was so impressed with way Bechdel wove her memoir together, building from one memory into the next. At first I found some of her writing potentially pretentious, something I have seen in the writings of other memoirs where the author wants the reader to know how much they know, to be impressed with the use of precise vocubulary, and the manipulation of time to unfold a story. Usually, these don't work because they are not used effectively so much as for effect. Bechdel, however, has no pretense. Vulnerable and transparent, how she tells her personal story is so powerful it breaks your heart and inspires you soul all at the same time. Her use of the same image, with a slightly different perspective, is not merely clever but perfection. If I could beg her to write about her relationship with her mother, I would. But what would be the point? Then I would want to know more about her relationships with her siblings, with her lovers, with her neighbors. I could never have enough. It is enough to hope for more.

The cartoons are great in this handy book on discipline and instruction. There are many useful strategies and it is reader friendly. When I read some of the stories, I burst out laughing. It is informative while being entertaining.

The Mom's Choice Awards® honors excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of the panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, Ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times Best-Selling Author; LeAnn Thieman, Motivational speaker and coauthor of seven Chicken Soup For The Soul books; Florrie Binford-Kichler, Founder of Patria Press, Inc.- an award-winning independent publisher and Member of The Children's Book Council; Tara Paterson, Certified Parent Coach, and founder of The Just For Mom Foundation(tm) and the Mom's Choice Awards®. Parents and educators look for the Mom's Choice Awards® seal in selecting quality materials and products for children and families. This book has been honored by this distinguished award.

I bought this book to try and gain control of my classroom. I was brought in shortly after the school year started and have faced many challenges since then. This book has offered some wonderful ideas that I will most likely use next year, but it does not address how to put these things into place after the school year has started. I have been figuring that out on my own.

The behavior section is very helpful as it offers great ideas on how to address behavior as it happens.

Overall, this book is well written and organized. It has been helpful, but I wish it had more on how to implement after the year has begun.

As a veteran teacher, I know that today's classroom can be full of stress. Fred Jones gives every teacher, both new and experienced, the tools for reducing stress while doing the job of equipping young people. UNIQUE to most books for educators, it is equally as effective for teachers K-12.
As a "gift" to myself and my students, I reread Tools for Teaching each year in August. I didn't think the book could get any better until the newest edition came out ! Everything in previous editions is there, just BETTER and MORE !
If a teacher could have only one book in their library, THIS IS THE BOOK. It will carry you from day one to the last day of your teaching career.

I've recently bought the latest edition of this book, because I also wanted the attached DVD, which didn't come with the first edition.

I was very disappointed to find that the DVD you get with this book is just a cheap infomercial for some other book or DVD set that Fred Jones has produced. It was really useless. You might as well throw the DVD into the trash.

Save yourself a few bucks. Buy a used copy of the first edition.

This is a quick & easy read, but unfortunately, it's just more of the same old "pep-rally" type of advice: be positive, be prepared, always smile, & remember that all your students really want to learn a lot & really look up to you, even when it doesn't seem like it! This type of stuff doesn't do much good when teachers get into the midst of the inevitable problems that come up during the school year. To me, one of the most telling chapters was Chapter 6 "Who is the variable," which is a sort of "everyone should take responsibility" chapter. The author begins the chapter by discussing teacher responsibility, then goes on to tell about his meeting with some business leaders who were concerned about the quality of high school graduates. He ultimately put the responsibility on the business leaders for not having called the school to get specific reports on graduates they hired. In short, the only one he assigns no responsibility to is himself. Some might say he was somewhat responsible for giving the same degree to well performing students & to slackers & trouble-makers--that his signing of the diploma was in fact his recommendation, & that therefore he does bear some responsibility. He complains about teachers who complain about working conditions, but does not seem to feel that it is his responsibility to better those conditions.
I like teaching, & actually like the challenges that keep coming up--but then that's probably because teaching is a second career for me & I know I can quit any time I want. I know there is a shortage of resources & that as teachers, we need to work with that environment (which, to me, is amply rewarded by the long vacations). But it irks me to read these books that try to gloss over all the problems & just provide a superficial, Rah-Rah pep-rally, so-called "motivational" solution. I feel that teachers who get sucked up into this sort of thing are getting set up for a fall.
- JB

This book was good, except that it is pretty much exactly like "What Great Principals Do Differently" I wish I had read a review about it prior to buying BOTH of them..A good read for teachers.

In these early weeks of summer break I have still been thinking about teaching and what has gone before, along with what will present itself in 'the fall' (which for us means the end of July!). This book reminds me what I want to be as a teacher: respectful of all, motivating and challenging, in charge and yet (gasp!) nice!

Teaching is the most wonderful profession in all the world: the opportunity to truly make a difference in the lives of not just students, but their families as well as our colleagues and even our own families. Why not aspire to greatness? And does it really come as a big surprise that the qualities of a great teacher vs. one who is good, fine, or even mediocre may lie in actions and choices rather than in methods and superior knowledge? Why is it that we are taught the importance of repetition in teaching to an objective, and yet we ourselves get cranky if we feel something is "repetitive?"

I am very glad I bought and read this book, and plan to share it with my fellow teachers and administrators.

What a fabulous book to use as a book study with teachers of all levels and experiences! It is a quick-read with ideas that can be implemented as soon as the chapter is done being read. The book lends itself to deep, thought-provoking conversation between staff members whether you are a first year teacher or a "well-seasoned" teacher. Teachers don't want to put the book down once they start reading it. Whitaker draws his readers in by consistently talking about "great" teachers and the effective practices they use. A "must read" for every educator!

If you're an education student or already a teacher this book is mildly inspiring, however it does not offer anything you haven't already heard or read. Most advice is practical and common sense i.e. "form relationships with your students" "don't yell or demean them" "make it 'cool to care'"
There are many more books out there with more substance. The bulk of the author's career is as a school principal (he only taught for a couple years) so the text is written from an administrator's point of view, therefore there are idealistic philosophies and it lacks applicable classroom strategies or solid case scenarios. I do not recommend this book. Although a short read, it is mostly fluff.

Teeth Are Not for Biting (Best Behavior Series)

This is a great book to read to toddlers to teach acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It has colorful pictures and using simple words easy to understand. This book also offers tips and advice at the end for parents and caregivers.

I wish I would have seen this book four months ago when my now 17 month old toddler was in his biting prime. Nevertheless, I still purchased it (his biting had already significantly decreased) and I'm very happy I did. Once in a while his biting will "resurface" and home we go after day care to take a look at his "Teeth Are Not For Biting" book. The words are very simple and catchy, the illustrations are perfectly colorful for a toddler (white and bright teeth being the focus) and he actually gets the hint that "teeth are not for biting"! I highly recommend this book to any parent of a baby/toddler. Good to have, especially before the problem begins.

The best behavior series is tackling children's less than desirable behaviors one by one;preventing kicking, hitting, the sharing of germs, tail pulling, and now, biting. The text highlights the benefits of teeth for activities such as chewing and smiling as well as acknowledging situations where children might want to bite and alternatives to biting. A variety of well-drawn illustrations present a variety of children in multiple environments. The text does not follow a predictable pattern-while some phrases are used repeatedly, the pattern changes a few times over the course of the text, from "Teeth are not for biting" to "Biting hurts" and back again, which may be confusing for the 0-3 year old audience. Parents may appreciate the resources for discouraging biting and assistance with teething available at the end of the book.

My son had a real problem w/ biting, but after reading this book over and over, I really saw a reduction. It's a cute book, great pictures. Def would buy it!

As the director of an early childhood facility, we go through cycles of biting with the children. This book is one of the most effective books we use to help children, families, and teachers work through this difficult developmental stage. We have two copies--one for the classroom and one to send home for the parents to read with their child.

Anyone that has or is planning on getting a boat should be required to read
through this text. It may save lives. It will add to your enjoyment of
boating by teaching you about seamanship. A must read for any one who will
be on the water for recreational purposes.

As expected, this 65th edition is an updated version of the tried-and-true Chapman's. The photos and examples are current, and the plain language is easy to read and understand. It would be nice if everyone on the water had a good look at this book before untying and heading out onto the water. If you're a rag-head (or and aspiring one), supplementing this book with the Annapolis Book of Seamanship for a deeper dive into sailing-related detail is a really good idea.

This is a very large and complete manual for looking up various subjects. Full color, nice text good size pages and easy to understand. I saved half the store price buying it on Amazon. If you don't like it you can always use it for an anchor.

The "Boaters Bible" at the best price available ! Amazon repeatedly has delivered SOONER than the estimated time--others could learn from this company.

This book Chapman Piloting & Seamanship 65th Edition (Chapman Piloting, Seamanship and Small Boat Handling) was recommended to us when we bought our first boat some 14 years ago, and has become a bible for boating to us. We've given it ever since to good friends in need of some fundamental boating instruction, and they all love it. Not all information might be useful for everybody, but everybody will find some valuable information for their specific boating needs and skills.
It's fun to read, easy to understand and extremely informative. Two thumbs up!

Being American in Paris does not qualify one to write an authoritative book on Paris restaurants -- in a very real way, expat writers like Lobrano (and Patricia Wells, for that matter) condescend to the local culture and visiting tourists too. After all, would any American think to buy a book that purports to be the authority on American restaurants -- which across the board are now better than French ones anyway -- written by a Frenchman? Of course not. I would argue that Lobrano is as qualified to recommend Paris restaurants as George Bush is to draft a coherent strategy for lasting peace in Iraq. Consumers would be better off buying the book Parisians actually read, the Pudlow Paris guide, written by a Parisian and now in English, too. Jer

Will be sampling a few of Lobrano's suggestions in the next few weeks. Delightful reading. Spot on reviews. All too often the tourist gets "ripped off" in going to supposedly great local restaurants, which have long since lost their shine. I can't attest to the authenticity yet - but just the reading has me salivating. Indeed, as one reviewer noted, if nothing else, as one who will be eating solo during this particular trip, the book makes you wish you could find such a great eating companion. I just know I wont be disappointed.

Having been to Paris recently, I was curious to see how the author would treat certain of the restaurants I had visited. However, the reading became much more than that as I took great pleasure in reading about many restuarants that I had heard of but did not actually have time to visit.
The author has some clear preferences which become clearer the further one goes into the book. I found that I agreed with most of them from the standpoint of food choices and quality, service and overall ambience.
The coverage of restaurants is very good although some of the neighborhoods are probably too far out of the way for many visitors.

My biggest regret was that the book ended.
I really didn't want to put it down.

I just returned home from Paris and went to three recommended restaurants. They were all great and reasonable despite the sinking dollar. I liked trying the house wines which were a great cross-section of wines I didn't know and now I do! I also stopped ordering bottled water. Loved Astier, Bistro Paul Bert, Le Petit Pontoise. Alexander has a website where he reviews Parisian restaurants www.hungryforparis.com. Check it out, because it's also a great resource.

20 some years ago Patricia Wells' Food Lovers Guide to Paris changed my approach to dining in Paris, but that source has been woefully absent for some time. Hungry for Paris now has pride of place on my travel bookshelf. First, the writing is so good you almost feel like you're there - and you can only read two or three reviews at a time, because you get too hungry. Face it, Paris is wonderful, but it's full of crap restaurants. If you don't know where to go, you have a 96% chance of being disappointed. This book will keep that from happening. There are choices from casual to haute cuisine, and the accuracy of the reviews of the places I've been makes it clear that the book is thoroughly written and trustworthy.

Good thing my teacher was so good because this book is terrible.

The explanations are lacking in important areas and overdone in others. It spends like 2 pages on VSEPR theory, incomplete activity series and solubility rules, and terrible intro in stoichiometry. We only did 15 chapters, but this book didn't help at all. I didn't even read half of it because the problems offer no challenge whatsoever. Not enough application problems. The end of section review Qs only ask for definitions and explanations, no real chemistry. No difficult and tricky questions whatsoever.

Honestly, no clue why high schools use this text so much. Pretty sad if this is the best there is.

I'm an 8th grader that wants to learn chemistry very badly, and bought this book.

Most of the book provides an adequate explanation for all the essential concepts encountered in a regular high school course. I know this because after reading this book, I looked at the state tests for a high school chemistry course, and I could do most of the problems. There are many examples in the book that help a student understand what the text is trying to explain. There are also a lot of practice problems after each section and chapter that reinforces the contents of the chapter/section very well.

However, without a teacher, if some concept is not clear, then chaos occurs. There are selected parts in the book that are vague in a way. To me, the noticable ambiguity in the text comes in the bonding chapter. They sort of assume that out of nowhere you can write an electron dot structure, a concept that other review chemistry texts take pages explaining. Hybridization was also explained poorly, and several weeks after I read that part (when I was finished with the book), I finally thought I got it, and then a chapter review problem proved that it was still a mystery. I have another chemistry book that I use to help me understand in case I don't get what's going on in this chemistry book.

Bonding isn't the only chapter that is a disaster in clarity (although it is the worst). The chapters from about 16-23 were all not as good as the other ones. There was also some guessing involved in the oragnic chemistry section, but that was not too bad; I still figured it out.

My school uses this textbook (as I found out months after I bought this book). With a teacher, this book is perfect, but without one, get ready to think; appreciate the pictures in there when you can, but focus a lot on figuring out the material.

I just found out from my VISA company that not only you credit my money back but you charged the money for the item that I returned. Another words you charged me twice.

THIS IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE MISTAKE.

From your customer

This book was largely a disappointment. I had heard previously that this was the leading high school text that is used and had high expectations. I was disappointed to find a plethora of type errors (including math mistakes!) and also very poor descriptions of things like bonding theory, equilibrium constants, reaction rates etc. The book covers a lot but fails to get real advanced in much of anything. I would reccomend for the advanced high school student a college level text with a good teacher instead of wasting your time on this.

This book is a decent chemistry book that does a good job in covering chemistry material. Although there are not enough example problems in the book to gain a good understanding of the "math" goes on chemistry. The book doesn't provide goods STEPS in chemistry problems. For example, the text lacks a section that tells teh student how to draw a Lewis Dot Structure and the steps to determine bonds. This text also has labs but they aren't really that good.

The book does offer good examples of realife chemistry in action. Things are organized well with good charts, graphs, and summary tables. The book problems are o.k. but one should supplement the book with another excercise book. It's easy too understand and good for first year chem only.

Writing and reading came to me about as naturally as breathing. Even as a child I read books the way other people eat popcorn, and when I was about 8 a family friend had a tee-shirt made for me that said "I'd rather be writing my novel" (actually, I had the plots for THREE different novels going before I was 10).

Therefore, I sometimes struggle to teach writing BECAUSE it came so natural to me. Want me to write somethin'? Sure! Like Ishmael I cry "Get me a condor's quill! Get me Vesuvius' crater for an inkwell! Friends, hold my arms!"

Until I remember that there are a great deal of students at every level of education who struggle with writing for various reasons: it's boring, it's too tedious and confusing to create and then animate characters, English grammar is boring and difficult, or--as Ms. DiPrince and Ms. Thurston point out in the introduction to "UnJournaling"--it's too personal.

Actually, I hadn't thought about that last one. Not everyone is comfortable sharing details about their lives with classmates or teachers, and yet that's one of the most popular writing genres out there: "tell me a story about a time when..."

That's where UnJournaling comes in. With 200 different prompts, excercises and story starters, none of which are personal, even the most reluctant writers can be drawn out of their shell.

What's more, these aren't all just some story starter ideas, most are downright challenging, starting right off with #1: "write a paragraph about a girl named Dot, but use no letters with dots (i, j)" and moving right into #49 "you can use 25 words--no more--for a billboard advertising a product called `Zebra Wink'. Sell your product with those 25 words."

The authors are clever. Slipped in prompts teaching metaphor and simile (describe a car by comparing it to food), generating topics, finishing starters, language use (use the word "crumpled" in three different sentences and create a completely different feeling in each sentence) and describing things in great detail both by using and by NOT using certain words. Of course, there is the distinct possibility that any of the 200 excercises in this book could lead to a full-blown piece of polished writing; many schools here in FLA require students to have at least 5 polished pieces of writing in 4 different genres, and to have at least 10 published/polished pieces of writing by the end of the year.

These really are interesting, un-boring topics and I found myself highlighting many of them right off as I plan for the beginning of the 07-08 school year. "ooh! I could USE that!" I think, especially considering our School Improvement Plan heavily emphasizes writing this year, and I'm excited about sharing this book with other teachers in my school. In fact, I'm SO excited, I can hardly wait for the year to begin just SO I can use some of these prompts!!

...well... maybe not THAT excited...

Highly recommended for anyone who teaches any child of any age anything about the process of writing. Get this book, and it will quickly both have a place of honour on your bookshelf. In fact, you might need two copies--the first will probably get dog-eared and worn out right away.

This book is chock full of really good ideas that will get students writing. The "answers", or examples of written responses to each writing prompt, though, will either limit the follower-type, or encourage the creative writer to think "I can write better than that!" For teachers, a good book to use for writing prompts - just don't share the examples unless the class is really at a loss. The prompts are a lot of fun; definitely not your run of the mill classroom self-starters.

Not every student knows that he/she can write, and many students are hesitant to share personal experiences. This books is perfect for bringing out the writer in every student while allowing them to express their creativity without revealing their innermost feelings. Perfect start to a journaling activity or as a base for a more drawn out composition.

The quality of the writing prompts is beyond what I expected. I just received the book from Amazon and have used the prompts on writing students with great success. Highly recommended.

I recently purchased this book and immediately put it to use. I teach 8th grade writing and was looking for a book with prompts that would help students develop skills in all types of writing. The prompts in this book cover narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing. My students have seemed eager to write and share their responses to prompts they have been assigned so far. I also like the fact that an example of a response to each prompt is given in the back.