This is an incredibly well crafted novel. A brilliant, complex tale of complicated, twisted but plausible characters, fraught with tension. Savage masterfully employs foreshadowing and understatement throughout the novel; it clearly requires a re-reading to appreciate them all, as well as its many metaphors. This tale is so powerful that in the first read you are compelled to proceed reading rather than to slowly savor it. After having finished it, I found myself repeatedly rereading the impeccable last 15 pages -- the perfection of the novel's end literally takes your breath away.

It is rare that one comes across a novel as well written as this: impressive, satisfying, masterful.

Thomas Savage's "Power of the Dog" is a re-discovered treasure of a novel. Like Beryl Markham's "West With the Night," this book slipped into oblivion shortly after publication and never received literary accolades it deserved. When Annie Proulx wrote a new afterward for the book, contemporary readers took notice and Thomas Savage receives renewed recognition as an important American writer.
"The Power of the Dog," first published in 1967, contains seeds of a writing style that bears fruit in writers like Thomas McGuane, Annie Proulx, Jim Harrison and Mark Spragg.
While the book is a "western" in setting, it broaches misogyny, misogamy and homosexuality, subjects seldom touched in writings about the west.
Fascinating, darkly suspenseful and wholly satisfying.

Every once in a while you stumble across a book that stays on your mind long after you finish the last page. This is the type of book you want to recommend to everyone, but instead, you only tell your close friends. When people ask "Have you read anything good lately?" You respond without hesitating "The Power of the Dog," but don't bother to describe the book. It is just that good.

I rarely watch a movie twice, almost never read the same book over. This book is worthy of a second reading. I feel fortunate to stumble upon this incredible story by a genius author...

One of our teaching assistants came to me and begged for this title to be added to the library collection. After checking the book out online, I ordered it. To my delight, it arrived in my book order, and I immediately read it to my 2nd graders in library. We all fell in love with Clarence and Smoky. Both characters are well written and delighfully drawn. The simplistic storyline can easily be read by beginning readers. This is a must for every personal collection!

Clarence, a city dwelling little pig, sets out on his first big vacation to a dude ranch, out west. After a long and interesting bus ride, he arrives and meets Smoky, a very large and friendly purple horse who introduces him to all the pleasures of western ways. Smoky takes him on long rides through the mountains and canyons, teaches Clarence to play cards with the boys, line dance, and perform on the washtub in a cowboy band. They eat, nap, and even read stories together. It's a wonderful week. But as his vacation comes to an end, Smoky tells Clarence he's getting too old to work on the ranch anymore, and is going to be sold. Best friends are hard to come by, and Clarence can't stand the thought of never seeing his favorite horse again. So he uses all his bus money to buy Smoky, and together they begin the long ride back to the city. It may take years, but as long as they're together, they have all the time in the world..... Jean Ekman Adams has written a delightful story with a gentle message about loyalty, compassion, and friendship, that won't be lost on young readers. Her simple and engaging text, with its satisfying, happily ever after ending, is beautifully enhanced by her charming, bold, and vibrant illustrations, full of endearing ranch characters, and subtle, humorous detail. Perfect for youngsters 3-7, Clarence Goes Out West And Meets A Purple Horse, is a sweet and entertaining, feel good story, that is sure to put a smile on everyone's face. This soon-to-be classic, is a picture book youngsters will beg to read again and again.

Not only does my daughter thoroughly enjoy Clarence & Smoky & the colorful illustrations, but I like the idea that she's getting fun lessons on compassion, friendship & priorities. Having lived in the big city & now finding myself in "the West," I truly enjoy this book myself. (Or perhaps it's my similar tendencies to pack my favorite snacks & not enough clothes when I travel...)This is one of the few books I don't mind reading 4 times before bed!

I bought this for my little niece, and it is much beloved. It is an amazingly well-designed pop-up book, with vivid, humorous images and pop-up features that work well and stand up to repeated (and repeated and repeated) readings. Highly recommended.

I am buying the 2nd copy of this book for my 2 year old grandson. It is one of his favorite books but due to his age and the fact he looks at this book a lot, it has some torn pop-ups. The pictures and pop-ups are large and colorful and are a good learning tool for a young child because there is not so much on a page that it overwhelms them. I highly recommend this book.

We have most of the SNAPPY books but this is one of our favorites. My 2 year old son absolutely loves all of these books. I would highly recommend the whole set.

I've read some of the stories in this book 4 or 5 times. It's simply as authentic and well-written as it gets. I'm not an old-West fan at all, but a friend let me borrow their copy and now I'm hooked. I'm on my way to Colorado to visit some of the places FitzPatrick writes about. This book is a real treat! And it's beautifully done also - wonderful cover!

I also just finished FitzPatrick's other book, "Red Twilight." It's about his experiences with the Ute Indians. Also high quality and well-written - highly recommend.

Here's a book with atmosphere. You can almost smell the campfire and the Arbuckles' Coffee brewing over it, right alongside the scent of horses, cattle, and sage. "The Arbuckle Cafe: Classic Cowboy Stories" creates its own setting and Val FitzPatrick's style is such that you almost hear the cowboys swapping the yarns around the fire. However, there's far more truth to the tales than the title suggests. Although FitzPatrick, a Colorado native born in 1886, missed trailing the big herds, he began cowboying at age 13 for the K Diamond Cattle Company. At age 14 he began working for the Two-Bar Cattle Company, which was "the goal of nearly every young man in the area." Cowboying left its mark: FitzPatrick learned to appreciate a good tale and how to tell it.

Written by a genuine turn-of-the-century cowpuncher, The Arbuckle Cafe: Classic Cowboy Stories offers modern readers an informative and entertaining window in time to the great roundups, trail drives, humor and hardships of handling cattle in the American west of yesteryear. Also included are pioneer anecdotes of northwest Colorado told with all the drama of tales around a campfire. The stories include: Dogies, Dust, and the Drink; Hired Killers and Winter Underwear; The Great Elk Migration; The Hermit of Yampa Canyon, Riding with Butch Cassidy; Buzzards Don't Talk; The Wild Horse Man; Dirty Cattle Thieves; Tom Horn; Queen Ann Bassett, and more. Of special note is the epilogue: The Demise of the Two-Bar Rooster. The Arbuckle Cafe is highly recommended reading for students of western lore and literature, and anyone who has ever day dreamed of what it would have really been like to punch cows on one of the last frontiers of the American west.

I only know the 2 characters by their German names: Petterson and Findus, and i find ALL of the books in this series to be a joy to listen to and to read. I wanted to offer my American nephew a copy and am completely shocked and dissappointed that you can no longer get a copy of these books...OR must pay $6o.oo and above for a used copy! ????

A farmer named Festus has a cat named Mercury, now "Mercury had a birthday 3 times a year because it was more fun that way".On every birthday he had a pancake pie, but
on one particular
birthday everything went wrong. . . no ingredients to make the pie, no way to get to the store, having to get past an angry bull etc. etc. A lot of laughs and some great pictures.

My son makes us read this book up to 3 or 4 times a day. The illustrations are brilliant. The first time my husband read it he laughed until he had tears in his eyes over the part where Farmer Hiram comes to visit Festus and the resulting misunderstanding as to exactly what Pancake Pie is! I had no idea Nordquist's books were so rare...It really is incredible and the attention to detail is painstaking. I can't believe such books are allowed to go out of print..Publishers should be ashamed. I wanted to buy more Nordquist for my son but this appears to be easier said than done.

THE MUFFIN CHILD is a beautifully written book about loss andlove. Tanya, the protagonist, will steal your heart quietly andcompletely. It is the kind of story that catches up on you as you find yourself turning page after page. And when you get to the end, you'll find yourself reaching for a tissue...and wishing for more. THE MUFFIN CHILD would make a wonderful gift.

The Muffin Child is a novel of unusual beauty and power. On nearly every page, I found a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph that I read aloud to myself -- "It was one of those days that promises no sun, and then just before sundown the sun finds a crack in the clouds and glances over the countryside. The orange light caught the insects floating over the grass." Yes, exactly!

The story of loss denied was real to me. Tanya denies loss, plans for the return of her parents: "She was basking in the heat when the thought came to her to warm up the oven and make muffins for her parents. They would be hungry when they came. They would welcome a plate of hot muffins waiting for them. They would all have muffins and tea -- Tanya, her parents, and the man driving the cart."

But then there is the painful scene in the village when the cruel words and violence of the villagers brings the truth to her mind:

"They were dead. They had drowned. She'd heard the villagers say it. No one had ever come out and said it before. Now it was true.

"She knew it was true because, in a way, she'd known it amost from the beginning, as a kind of cold frightening thought in the back of her mind. In the back of her mind was a place like the well on the farm, when you leaned over its stone rim and looked down and couldn't see anything, but you felt the chill breathing up at you. Tanya had felt the chill ever since the night the river roared over the bridge."

"Now it was true." The cruel words of the villagers made it true.

Milenka, the cow, worried me at first. A cow that provides affection like a pet could easily have been very sentimental. But it didn't turn out that way. Menick carefully kept avoided that trap:

"Then she thought of Milenka. She should milk Milenka. Tanya went out and crossed the barnyard. The dawn was turning purple, with the silver of the moon like a golden weather vane on the top of the barn.

"It was warm inside the barn and it had that smell Tanya loved, the smell of cow and hay. The chickens rusted in their coop, and the geese in their pens lifted their heads and looked. Tanya heard something up in the hayloft -- the barn owl, home after a night's work.

"'Good morning, Milenka,' Tanya said, and as Milenka turned her head, Tanya felt the cow's wet breath on her arms. She reached down and pulled, and Malenka's milk squirted into the pail and smelled sweet."

A warm relationship, but, still, Milenka is a cow to be milked. And the milk makes possible those muffins.

Historical novels are not my favorite kind of reading. Some strike me as mostly "historical" and, therefore, removed from the immediacy of the lives of living human beings. Others seem to me to be modern sensationalism set uncomfortably in another time. Not The Muffin Child. The author brilliantly creates a world that is clearly very old and very distant; but he also creates a young girl who is so alive that she lives both now and then and other characters, selfish, even evil who also live in their own time but in my immediate world as well.

I understand that the final chapters of the book, where the Gypsies become major players, have caused some negative reactions. I guess I can understand that only if one forgets what the villagers do to the Gypsies, who (Anton, the knife sharpener and supposed friend of Tanya) turns out to have done the evil to the disabled child, Nikola, and why Tanya ends up with them. And, of course, the frame of the story -- a mother today telling a story to her rather disagreeable daughter, also named Tanya -- tells us at the end who the Tanya of the story was and brings the two Tanyas together:

"In the middle of the night the cow got out from under the covers. Tanya brought her back in. Milenka smelled like stale chocolate, or like a dog just in from the rain.

"Later, Milenka smelled like herself, like Milenka. The sun rose in the dark and burned the insects floating over the meadow. Tanya looked for the Muffin Child but didn't see her. The grass rustled at her feet, and she could feel Milenka's hide under the palm of her hand."

For the writing alone, The Muffin Child deserves a full five stars (six or more if that were possible). For the insights into loss and love, evil, cruelty, and forgiveness, I'd give it the Newbery Award if it were mine to give

A deceptively simple tale, "The Muffin Child" is a powerful story of loss, with its current of inner strength woven seamlessly through Stephen Menick's vivid and poetic writing style. Anyone who loves the magic of language and complexity of character, will love this book!

I thought that The Saddle Club No. 6 Was a very good book ! IT is a must have for horse and dog lovers. When the Saddle Club flys out to there Friends Dude ranch The Saddle Club has an adventure waiting for them . In the early morning the girls encounter a mysterious rider who the find out is a young girl named Christine . It made me a little angery becasue the girls are so prejudiced twards her but it all turns out good in the end . Also stevies birthday is coming and nobody seems to care. Do lisa and Carole have a surprize? read this book and find out also will stevie be trapped by a rattle snake ? This a really good book and I suggest you read it !!!!!!!!!!!

This book, Dude Ranch, is also one of the Saddle Club series. In one of the previous reviews, I wrote about "Hoof Beat" which is the same series as this book. The characters (Stevie Lake, Carole Hanson, and Lisa Atwood) are also the same. In this book, they go to the west to Carole's friend Kate Divine's ranch. They meet a 'mysterious' rider that goes out every early morning, Stevie is trapped by a dangerous rattlesnake, and her birthday is coming and no one seems to actually care or think about it. Will Stevie get away with the rattlesnake? Who is the 'mysterious' rider every early morning? What about Stevie's birthday? Read this book to find out every answer of these questions! It's really interesting, and I say that you should get this exciting book!!!

A really good one. All of Bonnie Bryants are good, especially the western ones. it was a little sad but GOOD!

"Hell's Bottom, Colorado" benefits from sharp, focused writing and real-life details, which make the stories ring true. Though each story stands alone, there is the connectedness of family saga as we are introduced to distinct, evocative members of this modern-day ranch family. A truly pleasant read.

Pritchett evokes the vivid images of landscape, ranching and families in the West. Set along Rocky Mountains, these stories show the beauty and sometimes messy reality of farming, ranching, and living. When writing in her clear-eyed prose, Pritchett has perfect pitch: all of her charcters and stories ring true. Highly Recommended.

This is an outstanding book! Pritchett' interconnected stories are a matter-of-fact and essential portrayal of the contemporary American West. Pritchett's characters are vivid in spite of (or beause of) her simple prose. Through the characters you get a feel for the beauty and stark reality of raising cattle, and families, in the Intermountain West. A refreshing read among the usual clutter of literature today.

this is a great book, at least in it's original form. i first saw it in the doctor's office. our pediatrician says that it's his favorite kids' book. however, the 2 copies I received from amazon were a shorter version, only 24 pages. in this shorter version, the action ends abruptly with the house in a mess. in the real version (30 pages - the one that's advertised here) there is a final verse in which the animals hurriedly clean the house before the parents come home. make sure you get that one!

My one-and-a-half year old got this book as part of a package which includes The Lady With the Alligator Purse, Miss Mary Mack, and a cassette with singing on one side and music only on the other. She loves all three books, but this one and The Lady With the Alligator Purse in particular. My only complaint is that the music is on a cassette, not a CD, so I can't play it in my car (though I suppose that may be a blessing of sorts), and I can't skip a track easily. Also, I hadn't realized that this is a somewhat shortened version until I read another review at Amazon. I had also felt that it ends a bit abruptly, though my daughter isn't worried about this point in the least. Anyway, great fun for all.

This is a great version of this classic song. A little boy is left in charge of his grandparents' farm and things begin to go wrong right away.

The layout encourages singing along though it's not necessary -- you and your kids will still enjoy these funny and colorful watercolor animals as they joyfully misbehave.

Fun, lively, colorful.

The book is carried by cleverness and puns, which makes it enjoyable, yet light. This is not a book I would treasure or re-read to children, simply because it does not compel me to...it doesn't seem to strike any real emotions. The book is a series of poems with varying lengths, rhythms, and rhyme schemes--and many of the poems are too short to amount to much (to the author's credit, I think she has great ideas, but cuts them off too soon), and some of the poems flow better than others.

A playful work overall that I recommend if you are looking for a little language fun, and not a real story. I look forward to seeing this author's development in future books.

"Ewes/and rams/and little lambs,/arrive in buses, trucks, and vans./They travel far to meet their kin./Each cousin wears a sheepish grin./And as the flock begins to gather,/you will see they're really rather/odd, but in a woolly way./So stay-/each ewe, each ram, each little lambly-/stay and meet this close-knit fambly." Come enjoy the day with Odd Ephram, "...the cousin/that no one talks about./He traded in his woolly coat/and now wears sauerkraut", Aunt Eweginia, Sister Alabaster, "...with fleece as white as snow,/is a Kung-Fu master,/excels at Tae Kwon Do...", and Old Ramses, Little Bo Sheep, Felice, "...her wool is big and puffy./Says Felice,/I'm not obese!/Don't call me fat. I'm fluffy!", Uncle Abe Ram, Woolverton, and the rest of the flock as they brunch and lunch, play baa-dminton, and take a sheep dip in the lake. Lisa Wheeler's whimsical and charming poems are filled with puns, clever wordplay, and irresistibly endearing characters that will delight readers from 3 to 93. Frank Ansley's bold and bright artwork adds to all the fun as he captures each verse with expressive humor and wit. This is a captivating collection that begs to be shared and read aloud. So meet the flock, and enjoy a great day, because as with all family reunions and great books, the fun is over way too soon. "So long...farewool...good-baaa."

"Wool Gathering" has become a favorite book in our home. It unabashedly celebrates a wacky, wonderful sheep family. Each poem introduces readers to a new endearing character. My daughter's favorite is Aunt Eweginia who knits herself nude. You'll have a hard time choosing your favorite! Ms. Wheeler's impressive rhyming verse is enhanced by Ansley's charming illustrations.

This book will have your whole flock laughing out loud!