clack Books

Absolutely for preschoolers. My son loved this book almost as much as I did. Everything about this book was adorable- the silliness, the electric blankets, and the diving board. He and I couldn't stop laughing. The reader (most likely the adult) will love how often the neutral party isn't neutral at all. I'm an animal lover, so this book will always have a soft spot in my heart.

Your political leanings, notwithstanding, Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, is a wonderful book that will have children and adults laughing out loud. Farmer Brown is angered when he learns that not only does he own literate cows, but that they can type, and type they do with a daily list of demands to make their life more comfortable. Soon the cows are joined in their endeavor by the chickens, along with their demands, and more fun ensues. At first Farmer Brown refuses to deal with what he sees as recalcitrant bovine, but reconsiders when the animals enlist the aid of a duck mediator. Through a series of negotiations the cows and chickens get their demands met, but alas, the farmer learns too late, ducks also know how to type.

I don't know if this book really teaches children about mediation and cooperation as some reviews suggest, however, I do know that it will teach children how to laugh. The story is aided by wonderful watercolor illustrations by Betsy Lewin. Her very simple renderings add to the humor of the story, and the expressions on the faces of animals is worth the price of the book alone.

Quill says: This fantastic book also earned the Caldecott Honor in 2000, and is worth revisiting.

This is just a book of sheer silliness.

The cows, having obtained a typewriter, unionize for better conditions (they want lights and electric blankets).

When the farmer finally gives in to their demands... the duck runs off with the typewriter. (They want a diving board.)

There's no pretense of a moral here, it's just a silly book about a silly situation. Just what's needed sometimes :)

My students love this story (ages 7-12)! And I use it to teach students about the democratic process. This is a wonderful story about the options open to people in a democratic society. I have used it to talk about strikes, expressing your opinions and negotiations. DO my 7 year olds get all that from Click Clack Moo, not that they can articulate but they are getting it on some level. And it allows me to explain what a typewriter is. Do not underestimate what young people are picking up from a story such as this.

Every year, I use this book to help teach fourth graders to write letters- they really get it from this book! It's funny and appealing. I highly recommend it!

Cute story about how the farm animals outsmart the farmer. Silly and fun to read. Great pictures.

These books are so cute. Brand new and received in less than a week.

From the age of 9 months to 2 1/2 years 'Giggle, Giggle, Quack' was my daughter's absolutely FAVORITE book for us to read to her. Story revolves around when Farmer Brown goes on vacation Bob is left behind to watch the farm. Duck causes trouble by writing silly notes that make the farm animals lives much more fun and exciting while their owner is away. From ordering pizzas to bubble baths to movies and popcorn, Duck shows how sly and intelligent he is!! This story is written incredibly well and the artwork is wonderful. Still on the top 5 of books all-time that my daughter loves, this was THE book for awhile and you can't say that about many things young children adore! Wonderful, fantastic, a gem of a book!!!

***** HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

Arrived in great condition. This author is definitely tops in putting just a wonderful book for children.

Do you like silly stories? Do you like when someone gets into mischief? If you do, then you should read Giggle, Giggle, Quack by Doreen Cronin.

There are many times Duck gets into mischief. Throughout the book, he writes fake notes. One of them gave the animals free pizza for there food. In this book, the pictures are very exciting. On page 4, the animals are eating pizza when Bob isn't looking. Also, the storyline is very funny and interesting. On page 6, Duck writes a fake note about how the pigs take baths in a bathtub.

In conclusion, this was a very silly story. The animals get into a lot of mischief. If you like these, you will like this story.

So does my 4yr old granddaughter. All the Doreen Cronin books are favorites of ours!

So many of these reviews talk about boys liking this book -- well, my two-year-old daughter can't get enough of it. We read it constantly. The collage-style artwork is straightforward enough to understand but detailed enough to hold her interest (she likes to find the various cats and dogs and kids that are on nearly every page). Note that the title emphasizes trains but trains are only on one page -- each page has a different vehicle. So whether you have a boy or a girl, if they have an interest in buses or trains or cars or airplanes or bikes or motorcycles or boats, or, like my girl, ALL of the above, give this book a try!

This is a great book for active little boys (I guess girls too but we have a son). My son is 2 and has loved this book since we originally purchased it at age 1. We literally read it to him every single night before bed. The pictures are vivid and colorful and the story quite animated. It reads like a poem with so much flexibility in sound character while making the vehicle sounds. We utilize the story for educational purposes also. Not only will kids learn about various modes of transportations they will learn the medium in which they travel, how one differs from another, rationale for usage (getting to work vs. vacation) etc. You can really use the story to develop higher order thinking in your child. Its an excellent story. Highly recommended.

I first borrowed this book from the library and loved it so much that I had to buy a copy for my son's 3rd birthday. The art is amazing and the pictures are all very colorful. My son loves every form of transportation and it is all covered in this one book! He has memorized some of the pages and recites them with me as I read. I would recommend this book for any child, even as young as age 2 yrs. I also ended up buying two other picture books by the same artist and illustrator for my son's birthday.

Of course, every boy would not be complete without a healthy interest in trains, planes and every moving things. Our son loves this book and says "Choo Choo" nearly every night, asking us to read this book.

I have to say my two year old loves this book and I hate it. Its got gorgeous illustrations, filled with the kind of details that toddlers enjoy. The text, however, is horrendous, some of it doesnt even sound grammatically correct ("Trunk packing, seat calling, belts fastening." and "Same route driving, same time arriving"). Good childrens books have effortless rythm, but this one is so contrived.

This book is hilarious. Book arrived in mint condition. The book was added to our school library and every week it has been checked out. Kids love it

Don't buy this if you are looking for another wonderful story about Duck and his farmyard friends, buy this for your toddler. Very few concept books try to tell a story - most of them are just pictures and perhaps a word or two - this one does. Admitedly, with just a couple of words per letter, it's a very brief story (the animals go have a picnic), but it's a nice alternative to most early alphabet books. Our 19-month-old is very fond of this one and the companion volume, Click, Clack, Splish, Splash: A Counting Adventure which is also a concept book that tells a story.

We bought this book for our daughter because she loves the other two Doreen Cronin books that we have --- Click, Clack, Moo - Cows that Type and Giggle, Giggle, Quack. The artwork in this book is great and it is a very quick read but she always chooses to read the other two first. It's a great book to have in your child's reading collection but if you don't have any of Doreen's books yet I would get Click, Clack, Moo and Giggle, Giggle, Quack first.

Please keep this in mind as my son is way past learning his alphabet and this book was a great disappointment. No stories here, just a D for Duck, C for Cow, etc, from A-Z. I was going to give this review 3 stars but I should have paid more attention to the title. For what it is, it's a great book.

As a story book 0 Stars
As an alphabet book 5/5 Stars

"The cows on Farmer Brown's farm are typing again," proclaims the liner notes to Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack. And indeed, there they are right on the C-page, Clickety-clacking on the typewriter. A duck grabs a page from the cows and totes it along in his beak. By the M-page, he's also pulling a bright red wagon with a blanket-covered basket inside. Other animal friends join the wagon-wielding, page-toting duck as he runs along. Where is everyone going? The destination is finally revealed at W, where we see a picnic blanket crowded with fruits, a pitcher of lemonade and that picnic staple we all love - Watermelons! X - Y - Z brings the book to a satisfying close: X marks the picnic spot, Y-awns erupt among the picnicked-out animals, and then Z-zzzzzzzzz....

Animal illustrations throughout the book are engaging and often amusing, but too often they seem distracting and extraneous to the overall story. As an example, the G-J pages are a hodge-podge of action that seems only vaguely related to the picnic, and it culminates with a confusing depiction of the Duck jumping over an inch-worm that seems to be jumping at the same time. The page carried by the duck disappears completely from R through W (6 pages), and by the time it is revealed at X its significance may have been forgotten by the reader.

For children who eagerly anticipate the ongoing adventures of Farmer Brown's cows and know to expect that their typewritten page will play an important part in the story, this book should be a satisfying adventure. Those who have never ventured to Farmer Brown's farm should probably start with an earlier adventure in the series.

Years from now this book will be discussed in the same sentences as War and Peace, The Last Temptation of Christ, and the New Testament.

Brian Clack is a teacher at St Clare's College in Oxford in England. His book is important for anyone who wants to learn more about Wittgenstein and religion, and understand anti-realism in the philosophy of religion.

Brian Clack obviously has a pretty good grasp on Wittgenstein. He starts his book with giving an introdcution to Wittgenstein's philosophy in general. Then he continues with touching issues that more explicitly relate to religion and the philosophy of religion. He explains Wittenstein's ideas in Culture and Value and Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough. Thess texts by Wittgenstein himself may be somewhat difficult to understand, but Clack introduces the material and may show you how this relates to other parts of Wittgenstein's philosophy. The book also covers such topics as Wittgensteinian views on miracles and prayer, immortality and Wittgenstein's relation to radical theologians like Don Cupitt.

I give the book four stars because Brian Clack has dared to write a clear and simple philosophical text, while still being able to communicate the important points in Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. This is a very well-written book. The reason why I don't give it five, is that I think it should have contained a little more critical discussion. Some of the points Clack make should have been challenged a little or at least discussed more critically, for instance that religious language is not descriptive, that certain religious propositions are sbsurd or irrational if interpretated as descriptions of potential facts and Clack's general non-cognitivist attitude. It would have been interesting if Clack had mentioned Alston, Plantinga and Swinburne and some classical Christian thinkers a bit more and been willing to defend his own views.

However, this is an introduction and Clack has chosen an approach and in a sense I respect that. The most important thing about this book is that it is to-the-point, and raises a lot of questions. It is an excellent starting point for further thinking, and grosso modo Clack has written a very interesting book.

. . . along with some ribs, vertebrae and shoulder bones. But it's the skull that captures the most attention. The multitude of variations that occurred as animals moved in delicate steps from water onto land that make the story most interesting. And Jenny Clack's story of our four-legged forebears is a wondrous tale. Ever since Charles Darwin explained the nature of life's evolution, the question of how sea creatures moved to the land has been an enigma. Consider the many issues involved: walking, breathing air instead of filtering water, hearing in air instead of water, how to feed - and where, and protecting eggs. Clack shows how these topics were addressed by slow, incremental changes in body plan, with changes in one area integrated with those in another.

Walking on land meant not only building bones strong enough to support the body, but muscles to drive them. The humerus, the single bone in your upper arm, not only had to be stronger, it had to have joints for a new form of movement. A stride is far different from the flapping of a fin, so the paddling fin had to change. Clack discounts the older, simpler views that the "lobe-finned" fish just developed better "legs". Moving from the sea requires more than just crawling up the beach. There had to be an intermediate step. Clack finds that step in brackish lagoons and shallow, meandering rivers. There, the new four-legged creatures learned to walk on silty soils and learn to mix air and water breathing methods.

It was a reinforcing cycle as the change in surroundings developed new capacities. Diet went from fish to insects. No longer able to simply swallow prey as fish do, tetrapods began feeding on insects and their own smaller cousins. That meant biting and chewing, requiring stronger jaws and specialised teeth. Skulls once short and narrow became wide and flat. This reorganising of the entire skull required new musclature for support. The more time on land, Clack shows, meant not only stronger legs, but a sturdier backbone. Ribs developed that held muscles for breathing. Although the earliest tetrapods likely gulped air as a fish gulps water, before long they were using their nostrils to fill lungs.

As should be obvious, this isn't a simple narrative. The fossil bones are meticulously detailed - when they are available. Clack's task is rendered more difficult by the paucity of fossils. She has been lucky in her own finds in Greenland and Scotland. Others have encountered Carboniferous fossils in the Ohio Valley, Nova Scotia and Australia. The real treasures should be in coal seams where plant remains have become burnable stone. However, mining operations leave little opportunity for discovery. What has been found has often been misinterpreted. In order to depict what happened to tetrapod bodies over time, she is meticulous in describing individual bone types and how they changed. She helps the description with photographs and a wealth of line drawings. Still, this isn't a book for the uninitiated. It requires careful reading and no little back-flipping of the pages. The endeavour is well worth the effort, however. Clack has established an new foundation for understanding where and how creatures like ourselves originated. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Other reviews on this page describe the contents well, so I'll focus on my own experience in the hope that it will be helpful to others with similar backgrounds. I have no formal education in science past the high-school level. I learn about science by reading and Scientific American is my favorite source, although I sometimes read more technical material. Gaining Ground falls into the "more technical" category.

One thing I found is that I can't keep track of all the terminology. For example, Clack describes changes in the structures of skulls and that involves a lot of bones I had never heard of before. But by concentrating on the things that I could keep track of, I could follow her basic points. For example, as our ancestors moved to land, where the buoyancy of water no longer kept their heads from sagging, the many skull bones were consolidated into a smaller number for strength. I'll never remember the names of all the bones, but I'll always remember why they changed. The same is true of the separation of the skull from the shoulder girdle and the formation of the neck, and of various other changes. I was content with the fact that there was much I couldn't follow because there was much that I could follow and learn from. And I enjoyed reading it.

Since I read the book, an article by Clack appeared in Scientific American (Dec. 2005) giving an overview of the origin of tetrapods, without most of the technical detail. It is excellent and I will tuck a copy into the book before I read it the next time. If you're unsure about buying the book, read the article. Then tuck a copy into the book as soon as you get it.

[...].

This is the book to be read. There's no reason to hesitate, neither to read the commentaries to decide. As far as books of prehistoric animals are concerned, those of dinosaurs occupy most of them. And maybe this is the first, and the best I insist, to be written on the primitive form of tetrapods. Detailed investigations show us before and after the first members of tetrapods including their environmental conditions, soft tissues such as respiratory, sensory and reproductive systems and interpretation inferred based on the existent animals whose morphological character is insinuating. And, of course, their relationship analysed by cladistics comes in later chapter.
The most important point the author puts emphasis on is to urge our public image or concept on the early members of tetrapods. She intentionally avoids the word "amphibians" for them. You'll see why through the text. This is a superb book! Why don't you take a close look at their intriguing story?

Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods written by Jennifer A. Clark is a book on comparative anatomy of tetrapods on Earth.

The origin and evolution of tetrapods started about 370 million years ago, something strange and significant happened on Earth. That time, part of an interval of Earth's history called the Devonian Period by scientists such as geologists and paleontologists, is known popularly as the Age of Fishes. After about 200 million years of earlier evolution, the vertebrates... animals with backbones... had produced an explosion of fishlike animals that lived in the lakes, rivers, lagoons, and estuaries of the time. The strange thing that happened during the later parts of the Devonian period is that some of these fishlike animals evolved limbs with digits, fingers and toes. Over the ensuing 350 million years or so, these so-caled tetrapods gradually evolved from their aquatic ancestry into walking terrestrial vertebrates, and these have dominated the land since their own explosive radiation allowed them to colonize and exploit the land and its opportunities. The tetrapods, with limbs, fingers, and toes, include humans, so this distant Devonian event is profoundly significant for humans as well as for the planet.

This book tells the story of the evolution of tetrapods from their fish ancestry and puts the sequence of events into its ecological context. The story if founded on an understanding of the evolutionary relationships between tetrapods and their fishy relatives... their phylogeny... and traces the family tree of tetrapods from its roots to the point at which the major groups of modern tetrapods branch off from its original trunk. The tetrapod family tree is in fact more like a bush, with several main branches, some of which have died out during the course of evolution and some of which have become large and important from small beginnings.

This book looks at the changes that occured in the transition from creatures with fins and scales to those with limbs and digits in an attempt to understand how, as well as when, these changes occurred, and to do this, it is necessary to understand something of the anatomy of the animals involved. Chapters 2 & 3 are devoted to these parts of the story. Chapters 4,5,& 6 set out what is currently known of the earliest tetrapods and their lifestyles. By careful analysis of what is known of them from fossils, and by comparison with modern animals that live at the transition between water and land, it may be possible to understand a little of how the early tetrapods worked as animals. After the tetrapods had become established, they radiated into a ranges of forms requiring modification of the original tetrapod pattern. Chapters 7,8,& 9 carry the story forward from the origin of tetrapods to their ultimate conquest of terrestrial living. The final chapter drws together some of the threads that have been taken up in the preceding chapters and shows how they impact the study and understanding of tetrapods today.

All in all, this is a well- written, illustrated, and organized book, making for a fairly fast read even though there is a lot of material covered. Devonian environment and the timing of anatomical changes was fascinating.

Dr. Clack has really come up with a winning book. I envy her personal experiences finding Paleozoic fossils in Greenland. She goes into considerable detail with fish and amphibian osteology which is difficult to non-exitant to find in popular literature. But this book is no dry scientific text. It is an exciting subject and she does an excellent job of handling the task. I found her understanding of chemistry a little weak in a couple of places but the other information is superb. I had to give this book five stars because it is well presented and it is alone in its class. I am glad I purchased the book because it will make a great reference for my library. Thank you Jennifer Clack for a wonderful book!

2007 Update: My wife and I attended the 2007 SVP convention in Austin and we went on the field trip to North Texas to visit the very places where many of the early Permian fossils were found. My wife and I were present at the Author's presentation and got Dr. Clack to sign our book!

Parents of preschoolers are always asking, in our library, for counting books. It is delightful to be able to hand them this adorably illustrated, whimsical book. I am grateful to both author and illustrator for recognizing the important place learning to count has in the world of the toddler.

Creative poetic counting book with a cute story behind it. Recommend to any child in their 1-10 counting stage. My only complaint is that the spelling of the numbers isn't anywhere on the pages. Nice big numbers kids can trace their fingers on. No wonder Betsy Lewin is the Caldecott Honor winning illustrator. It's easy as 1-2-3 to fall in love with her paintings.

If it weren't for the absolutely charming characters/illustrations that our kids know from the other "Click Clack" books, this boook would have no appeal whatsoever. The other books show the delightful author's wit and humor. This book's limited subject material (counting 1 to 10) just didn't give her enough opportunity.