I like this book because it is sad.The children work hard everyday in the fields and then they build a barn for their dad.One of thegirl's taught their dad how to say yes or no with his hands and head.

Barn by Debby Atwell is about a barn but tells us about our sense of continuity, what we value, what spiritual and basic forces bring us together. The paintings are like the flicks of life and lifetimes going by and give us a space and time to view it all. Good for kids but it's in my adult collection too.

Thank you Debbie Atwell for this special book. I have always loved barns but now we can see how barns love us back.

The history of "Barn" is fascinating and the telling from Barns' perspective is terrific! I found this book at my local library but love it so much I'm purchasing it for my collection.

I would encourage all readers, young and young at heart to take a look at this exceptional work.

Hank is humorous and entertaining. Sometimes, hilarious. You just might have to stop reading for a minute to have yourself a good laugh. This book is good reading for boys, ages 8 and up. Girls will like it, too.

I'm reading a book named The Case of the Vampire cat.Its a really good book ,beacause it is a mystery.Because it has mystery in it you are wondering what is going to happen next,and when hank gets lost you are wondering if he get out.It is really a good book so I think you should read it.

IS MARY D CAT A REAL LIVE VAMPIRE? THIS BOOK HELPED MY MIND EXPAND ON THE FICTION WORLD.JOHN ERICKSON REALLY HAS A REAL GOOD WAY OF ELABORATING. SLIM TOOK HANK&DROVER TO A CAKE HOUSE(A HOUSE WHERE COW FEED IS KEPT.)THERE DROVER AND HANK MET A CAT NAMED MISS MARY D.CAT. THAT CAT ALWAYS HAD A SHORT TEMPER.DROVER AND HANK KEPT PESTERING THE CAT. THEN THEY LEFT TO GO FEED THE COWS ON TOP OF A VERY STEEP HILL.HANK WAS MAKING FUN OF A COUPLE OF COYOTE BROTHERS AND THEN SLIM TURNED A HARD LEFT AND HANK FLEW RIGHT OUT OF THE CAR. HE WAS A REALLY IN TROUBLE.THIS WAS A REAL GOOD FOR ALL AGES.

Banal and boring; he may be a cowboy... but he isn't a poet.

Unlike any other voice of his generation, this cowboy poet-playwright philosopher is an amazing wordsmith. His stance is as hard as his words, & his use of unexpected humor is always jarring & endearing. A major-league writer & a pure pleasure to read.

Red Shuttleworth's poems transports us to a place not yet computerized, not yet virtualized. Red's westscapes--from Nebraska to British Columbia to Nevada--are actual, accessible places, where the past pales into the present, storybook legends of gunslingers juxtaposed between forever and now. Many of the historical poems--researched in diaries, letters, and interviews--detail the twilight years of outlaws who outlived the Wild West only to be pensioned on the small change of their own myths: Cole Younger on the county fair circuit; Frank James selling pebbles from Jessie's grave, Bat Materson hocking guns to cover bets; Wyatt Earp broke on a deathbed in Hollywood. The incongruous reckonings of these men are not bittersweet but rather the last acts in lives fully lived. The robberies were just pranks, wonderful whoop-de-doo in the rollicking whirligig of youth. Some poems make connections between the outlaws of yesteryear with the outlaw country-western singers of today. Waylon and Willie are nothing less than a new breed of gunslinger, grit-mythic honky tonk heroes--spontaneous, excessive, existential, ever-young. Red's own heartland is found in the anecdotal narratives describing the western places he's lived. They are lyric explorations of domesticity, lingering idylls of "mending barbwire" and "spraying thistles" on a Sunday afternoon--a pastoral place where the closet neighbors are coyotes, where his son bronc-rides sheep, and his daughters call to screech owls. This is a settled place full of romantic possibilities, a good place to raise and family and romance a wife, an Americana "drunk with dusk," a land where "every wrinkle deepens," and the truest thing you know "whistles out of the Dakotas." Red's voice is western spare and idiosyncratic. His love poems to his wife Kate remind us how the best pleasures come from everyday epiphanies--"a mended jacket, framed snapshots of my girls, a bottle of Power's Irish whiskey." The grit-myths of Western Settings showcase thirty years of publications in journals and chapbooks, giving us a glimpses of a life lived for the moments to be had.

Is there anything GOOD about ranching, except seeing baby grass erupt in the spring and hearing the birds? The ranchers I knew when I lived in SD (1987-90) didn't leave piles of afterbirth and dead calves lying around for weeks at a time, although they existed. I don't know where they were, but of all the time I spent on ranches, they were never apparent. And, none of the people I knew lived within 1/4 mile from a highway. Why would a rancher keep breeding a big Charolais bull to little Angus heifers if it's going to tear them apart to deliver, or deliver calves that have to be sawed in pieces to get them out? I grew up on a farm with cattle, but I must be missing something here.
I realize this was a diary, but it became very tedious reading what with doing basically the same thing day after day.

As I approached the end I thought, "If I have to read about feeding cattle or fixing fences one more time, I'm going to scream!" But these are major elements in ranching and, and this is a diary of one year in a rancher's life, so they must be included.

Hasselstrom keeps a candid diary of a year in her life as a woman rancher and spares nothing from castrating steers and the dead pile to doctor visits and a fur-trader rendezvous re-enactment vacation.

This is a family ranch owned by her father who lives just down the hill, but by now he sees his daughter as an equal partner. During the winter, her father heads to Arizona. She and her husband wonder if they will have enough feed for the winter, they struggle through snow to feed the cattle, they worry about the cattle not on the home farm, and are saddened to see the toll that a winter takes. In spring, calving dominates their lives which is complicated when a late April snowstorm catches them without cattle feed. During the spring they mend fences, sort cattle, and watch coyotes play with mice.

However, her life is not all ranching. She is constantly writing about her struggle to maintain her writing work which flares and sputters but never completely stops. She also gives writing workshops and campaigns for environmental causes. Hasselstrom is also very open about her past, a failed marriage, her step-children, her decision not to have children, and her relationship with her husband. She allows us to follow the ebb and flow of her marital relationship from the claustrophobia of back to back snowstorms and the fears of a looming surgery, to planting the garden together and the anxiety she experiences when she can't help her husband outside.

Although it contains many crises, this is not a compilation of the best and worst of a ranch life, but the honest daily activities of a ranch year involving cattle, humans, and nature. This will strike a chord of authenticity for anyone who has ever cared for cattle.

This book is about people living strenuous lives in an environment of extremes -- drought and prairie fires in summer and fierce cold and blizzards in the winter. And there seem to be no moderating seasons in between.

The author, a writer, poet and environmentalist, has returned in mid-life to the South Dakota ranch where she grew up. Here she lives with her husband, a Hodgkin's-survivor, helping her parents make a living by raising cattle. The year is 1987.

Forget the Cartwrights. This is a book about real ranch life -- the endless hard work, the human and financial cost, the losses and disappointments that become almost routine.

Only a stoic acceptance of forces far beyond one's control seems to keep these people facing one day after the next. There is also the redemptive power of work itself, whether fence mending, working cattle, or putting up food supplies for winter.

Add to this an appreciation for the beauty of one's surroundings. Hasselstrom often stops to record the stark pleasures of life observed on the plains -- carpets of wildflowers on the pasture slopes, migrations of birds, the appearance of deer and coyotes.

And there are the starker observations of weather. Each day's high and low temperatures are noted, and brief descriptions of cloud cover, the many varieties of snowfall, wind, rain, and the unrelenting sun and heat. There are sub-zero winter days with wind chills below -50, and one summer morning that dawns with a low of 90 degrees.

Although she denies feeling isolated (a highway passes by the ranch, and they are only miles from a small town), there is a sense of lives lived without much contact with other people. Horses, pets, and even wildlife provide the social environment. You understand the appreciation she articulates when her rural community gathers for the end-of-summer county fair.

And to know people is to know adversity and vulnerability -- there are frequent brushes with death. An uncle on a nearby ranch suffers a heart attack. The members of a family from another ranch are seriously injured in a car accident.

The author herself is trampled by her horse. Her husband undergoes tests for cancer and is hospitalized for surgery. Her husband's spirited teenage son, from a previous marriage, spends a few summer weeks with them and then is gone again, the house suddenly filled with an unwelcome quiet.

It is a compelling book that leaves you in wonder, with feelings welling up at the end that make you reluctant to part from these very real people whose daily lives you have come to know so intimately. Far from the farm I grew up on, I relived something of that demanding life as I read this book and was also helped to see it with new eyes.

This book is not a bad book. It is sort of wildly thought out and not really down to earth. I really like how the author encorporated solid gospel principles into it though. It's one of those books that you decide you aren't really fond of it but you cant put it down because its a bit intreguing. I would recomend this book to a younger teen.

The Book of Mormon Sleuth
By: C.B. Anderson
When you read this book you might think it is pretty dumb. But after you start reading it you will think that it is pretty good. This story has it all; it has humor, fiction had some non-fiction.

The main character is Brandon. He is a teenager that lives in Utah and loves to play soccer. Brandon or Bran has five brothers and sisters. The oldest is Shauna, he has an older brother Jeff and he has a younger sister that is called Meg. But the other two do not play any certain roll but they are Danny and Kerrisa. But they all play some roll in this action packed book.

While their dad is working at a college in Orem, Utah he goes and decides to do research at his Aunt Ella's dairy Farm. While they are at the farm his Aunt decides to make use of it and starts teaching Bran everything that he needs to know about the Book of Mormon. She gets him up every day at 6:00 am teach him about a One Hundred year old Book of Mormon. After Fore weeks she gives it to him. This is where the story get Interesting.

While on the Farm this in crazed lunatic is after Bran's Book of Mormon. This mans name is Dr. Anthony. He steals it once but the police dog catches him. When the police take him to the court house he escapes. And all of a sudden three states are after him. And to make it worse his parents want to go on vacation. While they are on vacation he is determined to keep it safe with him.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I can honestly say that I would recommend this book to any body.

Usually the Hank books are delightful for all ages, so I was very disappointed with this latest book. THE SADDLEHOUSE MYSTERY seemed a bit disjointed, as we jumped from wierd Jake looking for Madagascar to the saddle thief. It would have been better if Little Alfred had been included in the story, as those stories tend to be the most endearing and interesting.

This book was as good as any other hank book. Like with any good book I suggest u read it.

This large picture book had some interesting photos of true cowgirls, but mostly it was just old 1950's artists' reditions. Not really what you might hope for. Like the cover? That is pretty much the entire book. Really no inforamtion about true American cowgirls, just some over used pictures.

Full of great pictures and stories of rebel girls and women who wanted to go where their interests and talents took them. Brave and daring with remarkable athletic skills these "gals" were not only pioneer athletes, but genuine living liberated women.
Wish this was taught in the public school system.

The jacket blurb compares this book to McPhee's "The Survival of the Bark Canoe." While Klinkenborg tries manfully to achieve something like McPhee, he doesn't make it. He comes close at times, but only close and that not often enough.

From Klinkenborg I got only glimpses of the places and people living a life I know next to nothing about. He took me to the edge of the field, but not up close enough to understand what they are doing and why. A few times he describes machinery or processes well enough for me to see them, but most of the time he drops names with only the barest description, leaving me in the middle of nowhere. In contrast, when I finish one of McPhee's many books, I feel like I could BUILD the canoe, pick the oranges, or pilot the ship.

Klinkenborg does better with the people in the story, many of them family of his, and those parts were fine. But the heart of the story is in its title, and I was left wanting much more than I received.

Klinkenborg knows this topic is off the beaten track. No puns, metaphors or euphemisms intended, it is literally a book about the production of hay in the vast fields of Minnesota and Iowa. His fascination perplexes no one more than the author's relatives, who make a living at it and observe his enthusiasm for the work with benign bemusement. Of course in the process of learning the family trade, Klinkenborg learns something about his own heritage, but he presents this as mere incidental observations, like an old friend waved to at the end of a row just before turning the combine around to get back to business. The writing is superb. I'd give it a 10, but he does tend to go a tad overboard with loving descriptions of the machinery.

i hated i

The journal of Anthony Glass was written during his expedition of the Texas frontier during 1808-1809, and was masterfully edited by Dan Flores in 1985. Glass produced an animated journal recounting his experiences, while Flores offered scholarly interpretations and utterly thorough annotations. Flores' painstaking work providing comprehensive endnotes, provides the reader with the necessary tools to better comprehend Glass's journal.

Yet another fine piece of scholarship from Dan Flores. Like his editting of the Freeman and Custis journals of their exploration of the Red River, this one gives us a rare glimpse of the earliest days of the Near Southwest.

This review concerns the original 1931 edition. Nancy, Bess, George and Bess and George's cousin, Alice head west to spend the summer at a ranch in Arizona. Unfortunately, this is pretty much all that the book is about. The reader gets 203 pages of the girls' adventures during the numerous times that they are either lost in the wilderness or stuck there during storms. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. A feeble attempt to make the book interesting by adding a couple of mysteries, one concerning Alice and the other concerning an orphan girl being mistreated by her guardian, falls flat because the mysteries are just a sidenote to the escapades of Nancy and her friends. I didn't read the revised edition published in the 1960s; however, the stories are similar. The revised edition has an added mystery concerning a ghost horse which may make it more interesting, but typically the writing style used in the books published from the late 1950s on is so horrible that the books are just plain awful. So I don't have much faith that the revised edition is any good either. Only buy this dull book if you're looking to complete your set.

This story starts when Nancy and her "chums" visit an Arizona ranch. They meet a girl on the train whose father has disappeared. Once they reach Arizona, the find an orphan girl living in a remote cabin with a cruel guardian. And then people at Shadow Ranch report a ghost horse is running around at night. Could the three mysteries be related? Find out when you read THE SECRET AT SHADOW RANCH. Only Nancy Drew could solve this one - and you know she will! It's worth the extra money to buy this reprint instead of the 1960's version...this is the original text as it was in the 1930's.

This particular Nancy Drew book is very good, wonderful for horse lovers also! It is about horses, and there is a ghost horse that has been walking around and Nancy is trying to find out why!