The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a strangely funny book written by Roald Dahl. I think Mr. Fox is so smart he could get away with anything he wanted to. The three farmers are mean and extremely stupid! One time, one of the crazy farmers shot off Mr. Fox¹s tail. Ouch! I felt so bad for him. I recommend this book for readers of all ages especially those who have enjoyed other books by Roald Dahl.

I love Roald Dahl's books but my favorite so far is Fantastic Mr. Fox. My favorite part is when Mr. Fox gets away from the farmers and digs his way smack dab in the middle of their storehouses. I also liked it when everyone ate a big feast at the end. By Sarah Amelia

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a fantastic book. It is very funny. Boggis, Bunce, and Bean cannot catch Mr. Fox. Even though the farmers block his hole, he still gets away. I hope I can read it again. Everyone should. Mr. Fox and his family get all the food and the last laugh. They are so clever! By Ian

The part of Fantastic Mr. Fox that I liked best was when the littlest fox was so thoughtful and got carrots for the rabbits because they don't eat meat. I loved this book. You will, too. By Skie

I liked the story of Fantastic Mr. Fox because it was funny and neat. The animal characters were clever and cool. Roald Dahl was a great writer. If you like animals, this book is for you. By Ryan

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a wonderful book. I think everyone should read it. I think the little fox is so considerate because he wants to bring home carrots for the rabbits. I will read it again and again. The animals act just like people and have great personalities. By Abigail

I loved this book and thought it was great when the foxes were stealing all the food and the farmers didn't even know. I also thought it was funny when the farmer was picking his nose and crust was coming out of his ears. The language was terrific. It's got to be nasty to eat goose liver in donuts. By Donny

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl is a fantastic story. It's perfect reading for grades 3-5. I think Mr. Fox is clever the way he fools the farmers. Bunce is disgusting because of what he eats. Read it and see for yourself. By Robert

Mr. Fox is to clever for 3 farmers called Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. These are nasty farmers because they like to kill and they're evil.Mr Fox and his family live in a hole, under a huge tree on top of a hill.
Every night Mr. Fox goes to 1 of the 3 farms to steal something to eat.But doing this caused alot of problems.The 3 farmers wanted to strangle the poor fox to death!What do you think will happen?
I felt bad and good. I feel bad because its a shame that Mr. Fox has to steal food in order to keep himself and his family alive.I felt good because atleast his risking his live, and that shows that he really cares for his family.
I think that the 3 farmers don't have to kill the fox to keep their food safe.I also think that there are other ways for the fox get food.Like hunting for food.I loved this book so much that i couldn't put it down.I couldn't put it down because it was written by my favorite aouther ROALD DAHL.
This book was also funny because it said that Bean never took baths so he had all sorts of junk in his ear,like fly's, gum, and dirt.
I recommend this book to who ever likes funny stories, and to who ever likes ROALD DAHL books.

- Giovani Ruiz.

I'm a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder and fondly remember reading the Little House books when I was a child. I've just started reading the series to my 7-year-old daughter, though, and while she loved Little House on the Prairie, she was far less fond of this one. In fact, although she's usually a good listener, I found her attention constantly wandering as we read this book.

And in all honesty, I could understand why. Laura Ingalls Wilder is without a doubt one of the best children's writers who ever lived, but I think she had barely begun to show her enormous talent when she wrote this book. Although there are wonderful little snippets of family life, and a few hints of the conflicts between the feisty Laura and her more reserved and perfect sister Mary, the truth is, there isn't much of a plot here. And Mrs. Wilder goes on for page after page describing how bullets were made, or butter churned. There are probably children who find that fascinating, God bless them, but my daughter was just bored by it.

I don't think this is a BAD book, but Little House on the Prairie is so much better, so much more interesting that I think if you want to read the series to a young child, that's the place to start, even though this is the first book in the series. This is a book for children who have already fallen in love with Laura and her wonderful family.

This book is about Laura and her family living in the wood in their little wood house. Laura and her big sister Mary always get to do their jobs every day such as helping their mom,but on Sunday is where they don't work ,but just stay home.Everyday Laura's father always go out to killed bear,deer,and lot of food for them to eat before winter come.Laura's dad also went to trade things at a store in the town and everytime he went Laura and Mary always happy because father always bring them present.I would like to recommed this book to kids that are 9-12 who really like to read alot.

This book gives off such a warm cozy feeling. Garth Williams did an excellent job with his drawings! He makes the characters so real. Mrs. Wilder was an excellent story teller. I'm so glad she saw the value to her Fathers stories to pass on to us. You can feel the love the family has for each other. Ma liked all her things to be pretty, her daughters well mannered and taught them how to cook, sew and play. Pa passed on to them his art of storytelling and his love for nature. Both parents taught them hard work. I felt sorry for Laura when she was overlooked in town by the storekeeper who complimented Mary and ignored her. What happy times it was for them. The sugaring off dance, the Christmas with the cousins and the wild creatures that lived amongst them. A must read for people of all ages!

Little House on the Prairie By: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Would you like to live in a covered wagon for a year?

If you like adventures, Little House on the Prairie is for you. It's about a family that is moving to a prairie where Indians show up. You will have to read the book to find out what happens next.

I loved reading this book because it had nice illustrations and I loved the characters. This book is for kids 9-14 who love to read.

"The Big Woods are Getting too Crowded." The Wilder family must sell their cozy house and move away from the big woods. They travel in a covered wagon with their watch-dog Jake running behind them. After some long days of camping and eating only meat and corn-bread, ma, pa, Mary and Laura came into a large prairie. Pa builds a nice log house and a safe log stable for the horses, Pet and Patty. They soon discover that indians are camping very near. Will the indians take all Pa's tobacco? Will they eat all the corn-bread? To find out, read Little House on the Prairie! I recommend this book because it is about life on a wild prairie that holds many suprises! I enjoyed when their dog came to them when they thought he had drowned.

In my opinion: This may be a children's book, but it's just as good if not better for adults. The writing is simple but not insulting. The story itself is captivating. The occurences between the settlers and the American Indians were really amazing. All through the eyes of a little girl.

Laura Wilder had an amazing gift to tell stories and to make an accurate picture of the time she grew up in and of what she thought and felt as a girl. This is not like the show in many respects though. If you only want to read about the exact characters and stories from the show, this may surprise you. Mr. Edwards is not in here much and you won't see characters like Albert or Mr. Oleson in this book. As they live on the prairie, there is no school or store, only a few neighbors a few miles away. Also Indians which only actually show up now and then.

Again it is a story about hard work and family sticking together. Superior to the first book in that you already know alot of the mundane [though very interesting]details of their daily life, and the characters. Now it is full of story. The interactions with wild life alone are astounding as taken for fact. They are not just the amusing tid bits from the first book, but quite dangerous and spellbinding ones.

Fantastic book for anybody. The whole series is great.

This Book is a great book because, it is depended on a true story about the person wrote the book, Laura Ingalls Wilder. So far I have read almost the whole set of these great books and I think that the books were exciting and also fantastic. In this book The Long Winter it was hard for the family to survive a very long winter around 8 months that had hard snow with barely any supplies because of the blizzards. The blizzard made the Ingalls have a hard time because the snow made the train with the supplies to take to their town imppossible to make it there so, they had to use Mary's college money to pay for food and warmth because, in the store they raised the price on everything. My favorite part was when the two men went into the storm and got wheat for the store in the big storm. What got me mad was shopkeeper paid for the wheat but charged so much over the price. But the 2 men stood up and said something so he lowered the price of the wheat and sold the wheat to the costumers for the original price that those 2 men got from the man who sold it to them.

We have just finished reading this fifth book in the Laura series with our five year old daughter - she has loved all of them. I can recall reading this as a child, and the impression of the hunger, hardship, and courage of the Ingalls family stayed with me. I thought it might be a little dark for my daughter, but she really enjoyed it. We heartily recommend the entire series, even for children who are not able to read it independently yet - she started the series two months ago when she turned five, and we have read it virtually every night since (Little House in the Big Woods, on the Prairie, Banks of Plum Creek, etc.). It really is an interesting way to introduce American history, settling of the West, etc., into a child's life, especially a girl's. My younger daugther, 3, enjoys it too, but has a shorter attention span. The two of them play "Laura & Mary" all the time, and have demonstrated via their imaginary play that not just the spirit but the detail of the stories have made an impression. I don't think we have "ruined" it for them by reading it to them before they could read it on their own - I think they will return to these stories later.

THE LONG WINTER by Laura Ingalls Wilder is a non-fiction story which tells about her interesting pioneer life.The book describes Laura's life in the prairies during a winter in the late 1870's. It tells how she and her family survive the long hard winter that year. It talks about how hard it was to find enough food for everyone.The chidren had to keep up with their school lessons at home because the blizzards were so strong that they had to stay inside.I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to about what it was like in other times in history. In conclusion this is a great book to learn what it was like to be a pioneer in the 1870's.

This is the second book published in Laura Ingalls Wilder's (1867-1957) well-read series for children. However, it isn't concerned with the Ingalls family but rather the family of her future husband, Almanzo James Wilder (1857-1949). The story takes place near the town of Malone in upper New York near the Canadian border on the prosperous farm of the Wilder family and depicts the life of a nine/ten-year-old boy about 1866/1867. Besides Almanzo, the main characters are Almanzo's parents, James Mason Wilder (1813-1899) and Angelina Wilder (1821-1905), his brother Royal Gould Wilder (1847-1925), and his two sisters, Eliza Jane (1850-1930) and Alice (1853-1892). In this book, Almanzo realizes that what he wants to be is a farmer. That is what he enjoys and what he excells in. (I really can't understand the comments of the Feb. 14, 1999, reviewer from Toledo, Spain. What was the "misinterpretation of human nature"? This book for children is an account of what happened to the main character as related to the author by her husband!)

Farmer Boy
By Laura Ingalls Wilder
First published in 1933

I read the book Farmer Boy. The main character is Almonzo Wilder. The book is about his farming family in the 19th century. I enjoyed the story because it has so much detail. It shows all of the chores that they did, and all of the food that they ate.
They had to get up at the crack of dawn to do their chores. Everyone in the family did different chores. Some of their chores were sheep shearing, cow milking, feeding chickens, training the calves to plow the field, filling the ice house and making all of their food and clothes.
My favorite chapter was titled County Fair. It was about when the Wilder family went to the fair, and tried to win all sorts of ribbons. They all worked very hard to get ready to go to the fair. They grew pumpkins and make spices. Almonzo's pumpkin won the blue ribbon.
They had everything at the fair. From horses to fair games. Almonzo's father would not let him play any of the fair games because he said "never bet money on another man's game''. Everyone had a great time at the fair.
I also liked when the mother and father went away for a week. The children were on their own. The kids did not do their chores. Instead, they made candy, cake and ice cream. Lucy the pig got some candy, and her mouth got stuck closed. They did their chores at the last minute before father and mother came home.
I would recommend Farmer Boy to a person who needed to do research on the 19th century, or anyone who wanted a book for pure enjoyment. I learned how hard life would be on a farm back in the 1800's, why children disliked school, and why they always were so well behaved. ...

Farmer Boy
By: Alicia

Farmer Boy is about a boy named Almanzo that wanted a colt really bad. He wanted one all through out the book. His father is like a firm and stern person, and Almanzo doesn't think he'll let him have one. Although his father is like that he is a good lesson teacher. He teaches him lots of things like what hardwork is and to be honest. He is a lot like his father. He makes and does the same things as him. One time he brakes his calves and entered his pumpkin in a contest. He also got a pig. When a potato hit him in the eye I hoped he was ok. You should read how Almanzo and his brothers and sisters helped each other, how they worked, and how they played.
I think Laura wanted to tell us that our dreams can come true and to keep believing. I think She wanted to let us understand what respect is and she taught a lot of good lessons in the book. Also what hardwork is and about farm life and how it was back then.
I liked the book because Laura Ingalls Wilder has a good description of her book. It made you want to be there and do it. Also to see if Almanzo's dream or wish would come true. It made me want to read it. Did Almanzo get what he wanted? Do you think his life is easy? What happened when a potato hit him? Did he win the contest? Read it and find out!

There are books that are very well written and interesting, this one is transcendental. The writing itself is above average, though not sublime or groundbreaking, but the imagery presented by this book is simply mindbending. Having never been to Central Montana, I feel like I could find my way around every valley, ranch and town if I were dropped there from the sky. I literally couldn't put this book down... I started reading it and three days later found myself in the interesting position of having to remember where I was, what I was doing before I started reading and wondering just what DAY it was! A book that can do this is sure to rank among those that are read several times over by me, and this one is already gnawing at the edges of my mind again. Oh, sure, McCumber does a fine job of documenting the raw vagaries and subtle joys of ranch life, but it is in the details that his work really shines. I read a review here criticizing his supposed lack of depth regarding the characters... don't believe it. I could meet any one of the members of his book and feel like I knew them well. If you are looking for a book / journal to captivate you and set you down in a different place, this is the book to read.

I love books that help me travel to worlds unknown to me. And, as I live in New York City, ranching is something I know absolutely nothing about. That's why this book by David McCumber, in which he chronicles a year spent as a ranch hand, intrigued me. As he was a 44-year old journalist with no experience ranching, I could easily relate to his trials as tribulations as he learned what it takes to be a cowboy today. He's a straightforward clear writer and he uses his words well to describe even the most mundane tasks that are the daily routines for the people who live and work on ranches.

Basically, it's all about the care and feeding of cows and this includes the baling of hay, an essential job which has its own set of challenges. There's the birthing of the calves and the cleaning of the pens. There's setting up and irrigation system, and fixing miles of fencing. Often the weather is brutal and virtually all the work is outside. There's some horseback riding, of course, but nowadays most of the work is done with various trucks and motorcycles and vans which always need mechanical work, also done by the ranch hands. Mistakes are made often and result in a tongue lashing from the owner who knows everything there is to know about ranching and wants no other way of life.

These are real people that the author meets and he writes about them all with a sense of admiration and I'm glad he also included the history of the White Sulphur Springs area, which he researched as background. The magnificent scenery comes alive, as do his aching muscles. He enjoys it all completely and made it quite real for me. I must admit though, that in spite of his detailed explanations, I didn't understand it all, especially when he described the mechanical aspects of the baling machines or the irrigation system or the fixing of the motor in a truck. However, I had no trouble at all understanding the birthing, branding and castrating process. And I was right there with him as he fixed fences and chased straggling cattle for miles.

I thank Mr. McCumber for writing this book. I learned a lot from it. Now, whenever I hear the word "cowboy", I'll think about the real work that that is his daily grind. I'll think of the harsh and beautiful country. And the simple joy of a job well done. Recommended.

I loved every minute spent reading this book; perhaps because I've always wanted to be a cowboy on a Montana ranch myself. And, oddly enough, hearing horror stories about days spent in blizzards trying to fix fences and birth calves while covered from head-to-toe in cow dung and mud didn't change that feeling one bit! McCumber is a great writer -- captures not only the look of Montana, but the feel of it, too. And the fact he had a fantastic time makes it all the more fun for the reader. Read this book! You'll love it!

If you like Carl Hiaasen's books, you will be delighted to discover author Tim Dorsey and his zany cast of characters. Those of us old enough to remember traveling to Florida with the family for summer vacations in the 1950s and 1960s, before the interstate highways were built, remember the brightly-painted, mom-and-pop motels, complete with shuffleboard courts. Out of this grew Dorsey's second novel, "Hammerhead Ranch Motel." Filled with wacky characters, the Hammerhead Ranch Motel is a sleazy, run-down motel on Florida's west coast. Staying at the motel are the Diaz Boys, a group of cocaine duckpins who survive by sheer luck and their ten thousand stolen zebra-striped beepers; Zargoaz, aka Harvey Fiddlebottom, runs his sweepstakes scam from a motel room; undercover cops running sting operations on other undercover cops. If that's not enough to interest you, Dorsey throws in Serge A. Storms, a guy off his medication and in hiding out from the cops, while watching the silver briefcase containing five million dollars. And if that's still not enough, Dorsey throws in a hurricane! "Hammerhead Ranch Motel" and Dorsey's first novel, "Florida Roadkill" will give you hours of delightful reading and make you think twice when you pass one of the state's few remaining little mom-and-pop motels.

Well, Dorsey did it again! He wrote a novel that made the kids wait for their dinner. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. I'd fall asleep holding it, only to awaken, pick it up, and start reading again!

Tim weaves a tale that hosts characters that I swear I know. Their madcap adventures which trail up and down the Florida interstates and sideroads have kept me laughing time and time again. With each new read, I discover something about each of them I didn't know. Dorsey definitely paints characters who ARE characters. I also recommend reading Florida Roadkill before sinking into Hammerhead Ranch Motel. Although you'll get to know each character at the Ranch, you'll feel like you've met up with old friends if you've read Roadkill first.

I can't wait for Orange Crush. I'm definitely a Dorsey fan. He takes me away from my safe, mundane Floridian existence and immerses me in a darker side of Sunshine that entertains.

Thanks, Tim!

In his sequel to Florida Roadkill, Tim Dorsey kept me up all night turning the pages so fast that I got paper cuts. Serge is back, and with a new and improved Coleman-type character, Hammerhead Ranch Motel quickly recaptures the dark but irresistable humor of the first book. The only complaint I have is that it's harder to follow the characters in this book, but Dorsey manages to get everyone together in the wonderful and unpredictable finale. I'd have to say that as a Florida resident, I love the way this book makes fun of everything corrupt about Florida- very Carl Hiiasen! However, you don't need to be from Florida to appreciate the humor and satire that Dorsey churns out, and everyone will love the eclectic group of characters that spill out of the pages. All the great characters that made it alive throught the last novel are back - Sean and David, Johnny Vegas, and my favorite criminally insane Floridaphile, Serge. Dorsey brings in new characters that are a delight, from bad guys you can't help but love, to the good guys that are, to say the least, a little eccentric. So, buy this book, but don't start reading it unless you have a lot of free time, because you won't be able to put it down.

I was sure I wouldn't like this book, but now I love Joan Johnston. I'm not a full time reader and like a good story that you don't have to read every day to remember. This one kept me reading from start to finish and now I want more of her books. I hope they are this good. Maybe the fact that I have horses and love cutting had something to do with it.

What a great book. It captured my attention from the prologue.

I enjoy books where the characters are strong and opinionated, not wishy washy. The fact that they had an early relationship and have not seen each other in years, just adds to the story. The time spent apart has given them more depth.

The fact that their families have been at odd for years only enchances the story.

Ms. Johnston thank you for writing such a wonderful story.

I found The Cowboy to be a great read. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Trace is everything you want a hero to be - compassionate, romantic, hard driven, understanding. The heroine independent, loving, and giving. They both have a stubborn streak a mile long. The question is which one will give in first.

They have been separated for 11 years and when they come together its explosive. You can feel the sexual tension radiating off of them.

Ms. Johnston has written a superb book filled with strong characters, great dialogue,and humor. Anyone who finds this boring or unromanctic, doesn't know the meaning of the word romance.

First, let me state that all that keeps this book from being a 5 star is the sudden shift into evasiveness at the end. Until then, we are presented with a great stories about the pain (and pleasure) of growing up isolated on a ranch in Montana. Judy Blunt, living up to her name, writes with an eye to detail that brings to life the difficult times and draws you in - ... BR>Though a natural storyteller, the first few chapters show well-written paragraphs that don't quite hold together, but she quickly hits her stride as she relates her stories with a compellingly clear voice. With economy of words, she writes "Already most of what we knew went unsaid" and in that one sentance we get the silence, the isolation of the family and within the family, the yearning for dialogue she does not find. A growing subtext is her realization that tho she loves the land her family and later her husband work, she will never "own" an acre, never be fully herself there. Aside from the relentless work and isolation is the subservient position of most women on ranches (in fairness to ranchers, her mother seems to have had more power and respect than she later has as a wife). ... Blunt is not afraid to present her own faults to death, which is why the shift away from honesty to evasiveness at the end is all the more disappointing. I did not read this because I wanted to hear an account of her marriage breaking up, but after so much honesty and hundreds of pages of her growing unhappiness, the book skips from being unhappy to being divorced in Missoula. What made her finally leave? What did she think when she had the ranch in her rear view mirror? How did she come to the decision to take the kids and was that part of it - getting them out? Did she leave a man or the land? The memoir could easily suggest the land was at fault as much as the man. In a memoir named Breaking Clean, we need to see that break, not just her unhappiness - the title is like an unfullfilled promise. Perhaps it was respect for others' (her kids, her ex-husband's) privacy - or maybe she just chickened out. But she chose to write the memoir, not a novel. What we expect is a book about breaking away, not just the years that explain why she broke away.

Judy Blunt's memoir of life on Montana ranches is a far cry from Willa Cather's portrayals of frontier Nebraska, but there is something of the same spirit in both writers, each strong-willed, independent-minded, and talented in a world dominated by men. Each maintains a love of the open prairie, but while Alexandra Bergson in "O Pioneers!" is able to hold her own and thrive on the land, Blunt is hemmed in and frustrated at each turn, a ranchwife-in-training through girlhood and finally a ranchwife with children of her own. Physically strong and fearless as any man, she uses hard labor as a way to cope with a life-long belief in the fundamental unfairness of being denied opportunities simply because of her gender. In her thirties, she finally leaves the ranch and starts a new life in Missoula as a divorced mother, university student, and writer.

However, her book is not about the break-up of her marriage or her final decision to leave behind the life she'd been living. It is a carefully remembered recounting of her childhood, youth, and early years as a rancher's wife. It's an often turbulent story, where every passage from one stage of life to the next is marked by resistance, dismay, and a sense of deep loss. The people in the circle of her family are captured in fiercely observed detail -- especially her mother and father, her sister Gail, her husband John, and John's parents. The physical world they inhabit is vividly rendered -- the character of the arid, prairie land, the seasonal changes, the extremes of weather, the isolation, and the difficulty of making a living out here against the odds. She also captures the constraints of the social world they inhabit, and she articulates clearly the limited possibilities for personal growth and independence where gender roles and social norms are rigidly observed.

She provides a realistic portrayal of ranch work for men, women, and their children as long days (and nights during calving season) of routine physical labor, and she describes the neverending work of cooking, gardening, child-rearing, putting up food for the winter, trips to town for supplies, doing ranch chores, and pitching in when the men need an extra hand. Meanwhile, the chapters in her book center around the breaks in the routine -- the unexpected events that become the material for "stories," the makings of family lore, local legend, or gossip (as when her newly-wed husband John is observed welding together the broken frame of their old bed).

Among the breaks in the routine, there is an Indian boy who is a student for a short while in her all-white one-room school, the winter of 1964 which maroons her family during a severe blizzard that wipes out much of their cattle herd, a prairie fire fought by the whole community, an older boy in high school who attempts unsuccessfully to have sex with her, a harrowing 50-mile trip to the nearest hospital as her daughter is burning up with a high fever. Blunt also describes well the cultural clash that occurs when kids born and raised in the country find themselves navigating the town-oriented world of high school, with its very different adolescent mores and values.

Blunt is a fine writer and is able to wring suspense and pathos from her material. Starting as she does with the break-up of her marriage and then backtracking to tell her story from the beginning, she makes of the book a real page-turner. While the book might well appear on a list of feminist literature, such a label is too limiting. The story she has too tell is much broader; it is at home with books about rites of passage and coming of age, the West, rural living, ranching, and nature writing. As a companion to this book, I'd also recommend Linda Hasselstrom's "Windbreak: A Woman Rancher on the Northern Plains" and Wallace Stegner's "Wolf Willow," which describes his boyhood on a homestead along the Montana-Saskatchewan border, 50 years earlier and about 100 miles northwest of Blunt's country.

Judy Blunt does not waste words in the same way she would not have wasted water when she grew up and lived on a ranch in Montana. Her descriptions of her youth and early marriage are harsh and sad but also beautiful.

Press Review (NYTimes, NPR) seem to have focussed the oppressive nature of her marriage and the sexism inherant in ranching culture. That's certainly present, but this book is definitely not an expose. Go elsewhere if you are looking for gory details. But there is natural drama (the race through flooded roads to the hospital when her daughter is ill) and beauty (her description of the Missouri Breaks). Her story about her relationship with Ajax the bull manages to be tough and tender at the same time.

I am a big fan of well-written (non-celebrity) memoirs, and this is one of the best I have read in a long time. I would put it up there with Oliver Sack's Uncle Tungsten of last year.