My son who is 4 years old, loves this book to be read to him at night. It lets him have a good night sleep and he imagines what the bears are dreaming and he even thinks up stories to add himself.

I purchased this book because I love Mem Fox's stories. My daughter wanted the book because she has a love for teddy bears. She is 3. I wanted to get her a nice story of a bear for bedtime. I hit the jackpot! I read the book and realized that this mother bear is not struggling with a bedtime routine to get the kids into bed. I also realized that the kids are not denying the fact that they are tired. We can all learn from this mother bear that to tell a story with the kids in it as the star is better than anything! It is a wonderful way to get kids and parents to use their imaginations to send them to a place for sweet dreams. This is a winner of a book and my daughter is going to love it!

First of all, my family loves all books by Mem Fox. She is just a gifted author. And Sleepy Bears is one of those that I love to read as much as my almost 3-year old and almost 6-year old love to listen to. Kerry Argent's illustrations are wonderful. One of those bedtime stories that are a must have for your library.

If you and your child (or even if you don't have a child) love the song and story of the Teddy Bear's picnic, then you will adore this book.

The text is pretty straight forward - as well all expect it to be. But the illustrations are just delightful - full colour on every page, teddies everywhere you look and getting into all manner of interesting things. This is what is so charming about this book - the sheer delight of finding a bear and seeing what it is doing - is it eating cake? Climbing a tree? Falling asleep? Avoiding the children in disguise?

It may be a difficult book to find, but it is just lovely, and well worth the effort.

Good book with good illustrations to accompany familiar song.

"If you go down in the woods today You're sure of a big surprise If you go down in the woods today You'd better go in disguise For every bear that ever there was Will gather there for certain because Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic."

This is such a fun book to read to my kids! The rhyming verse has a nice rythem to it, but its the pictures we enjoy the most. They make you feel like you are peeking through the trees at this wonderful picnic! This book is a treasure!

You should buy this book if you have any role in making decisions about your project. It discusses how how manage risks and explains why some corporate cultures discourage risk management, often to their disadvantage. The writing is very clear. This is a quick and informative read.

The collaborative effort of Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk On Software Projects is a hard-hitting guide to braving greater risks for greater rewards in the exciting, challenging, competitive, and rapidly advancing field of software development. From advice on the pros and cons of risk management techniques; to successful value quantification; to tests for risk management and knowing when to go back to basics, Waltzing With Bears is a very savvy guide especially recommended for experienced entrepreneurs who know their specialized markets and want a better feel for when and what would be an acceptable risk in pursuit of marketplace success.

Risk is everywhere, so we cannot avoid it, only manage to deal with it in the best possible manner. In software development, the most valuable projects are always the most risky. Therefore, the decision to go forward with any project must include an honest assessment of the locations of the virtual land mines.
There are two general areas in which risk can be categorized. Some of the risks are known, either precisely or within a range of parameters. For example, the cost per day for each category of worker involved in the project is well-known. This type of risk is not difficult to manage, and most managers have a great deal of experience handling them, so very little of the book deals with them.
The second category are those risks that are largely unknown. These are items like the risk of mission critical software suffering a catastrophic failure to large, unexpected cost overruns. It is this category that is examined in detail in this book. Of course, the boundaries between these categories are extremely subjective and situation dependent. A small company with limited financial resources would consider a smaller cost overrun to be critical than a company more capable of taking a large financial risk.
After the initial explanation that risk management is necessary, the next step is trying to quantify the risks. This involves charts of likelihood of delivery time that resemble normal distribution curves. Using such charts allows any prediction to include some natural 'wiggle room', which eliminates one of the most recurring and frustrating problems. Development managers are commonly asked to give a date for product delivery, and that date becomes fixed in stone. Upper echelons are notorious for hearing only the 'we can deliver on August first' part of the message and ignoring the remaining, 'provided all the planets are in alignment, there is no snow in January and no one takes a day off' part of the message. Expressing the date in a diagram of this form means that it is impossible to see the date without also seeing the estimated range.
The authors have also developed a risk assessment tool called RISKOLOGY, which can be freely downloaded from the companion web site. While the tool is not described in complete detail, there is enough background for you to be able to use it quickly. Chapter 13 deals with the core risks of software projects. The five risks listed are:

* Schedule flaw.
* Requirements inflation.
* Personnel turnover.
* Specification breakdown.
* Under-performance.

None of these risks is any surprise to experienced managers, although including them was necessary and the authors do a good job in explaining them.
Chapter 14 puts forward a process for discovering risks, which is excellent and in the realm of 'how to learn what it is that you don't know.' It is this approach that will separate those who succeed from those who must resort to faking success. The greatest and most dangerous risks are those never considered as possible events. Catastrophe brainstorming followed by scenario analysis is the strategy that the authors put forward.
As a mathematician, I was pleased to see that the concept of probability is used to perform the risk analysis. Probability charts are used throughout the book to demonstrate the concepts and of course this more accurately describes our knowledge of the future. Nothing in life is certain, so the probability limits need to be placed around every event.
The software project without risk is so dull and uninteresting that no one with any talent would go near it. So, if you have talent, gear up by buying this book and plunge forward to take on the enormous challenges of making software that matters to the world.

Edward Bear writes a compassionate and thought provoking tale of one man's journey as he accompanies others on their final journey. The characters are as varied as any group of people, but similiar in their need to make peace with this life before they move on to their next destination.

It is a story that resonates with remembrances of people who have passed and reminders of the power of kindness. It is a great read.

What a delight. I laughed, I cried and didn't want it to end. If you enjoyed "Tuesdays With Morrey", you'll love this too. A great read and would make a good gift, especially for those who take life to seriously.

I found this book to be thought provoking and inspirational. The spiritual thread of the book was woven through an interesting story. I recommend it to those looking for something special and different.

I have been reading Wonderful You to my 4 1/2 year old boy since he was born. It still brings me to tears because it is so beautiful and so true ("I made a wish and you came true and now I love you so."). I didn't know how much it meant to him until he included a reference to it on his mother's day card this year. I believe it reminds him how wonderful he is and how much I love him. I am looking for a similar book for my infant daughter, but haven't been able to find such a simple tale that speaks to and from the heart as this book.

Currently searching for another copy of this book. I bought this book for my daughter when she was 6months old. I read it to her so many times, we memorized it. My daughter is about to turn 8 years old this month and although I've lost the book, I still recite the words: "I'm filled with the wonder of wonderful you and I love you more each day"

I purchased this book for a friend who had just had her first baby, and loved it so much I bought one to save for the child I hoped my husband & I would have one day! As it says in the book, "I made a wish, and you came true, and now I love you so.." It brings tears to my eyes because this book is truly wonderful for every parent and child, but is especially fitting and poignant for us since we waited, and hoped for our baby for a long time! This is a perfect gift for everyone you know who is trying to have a baby,expecting, adopting, or already a parent. My daughter has heard it since she was born, and knows it by heart already. Just receiting the sweet rhyme of the book settles her down, and her little hands can hold it easily. She loves the colorful, fun characters. It truly is a beautiful little book that tells your child just how "wonderful" you think they are. Without a doubt, you should buy this Book!

I read this book to my 25-month-old boy often. I really love the illustrations and the carefree way it relates love in terms my son can understand. It is absolutely my favorite book to read to him!

Great book with wonderful verses and illustrations. Highly recommended!

My husband and I have been reading this book to our baby-to-be since the first week of my pregnancy (we are now at 26 weeks). Of all the books we've read, this is definitely our favorite. It's the perfect way to end our day (we're hoping our little baby boy feels the same way).

Check out barewalls.com for 3 different posters based on illustrations from the book! I just ordered a couple to hang in the nursery.

I am a boy that is the same age as Josh and lives in Idaho. I can identify with the main character and the background of this book that takes place in and near Bozeman, Montana. It is a great book if you want to take an adventure in the mountains of the west with a bear cub and a dog.

This book shows how a boy my age, has the potential to change an old hunting law that states that hunting bears in the spring, when they are mothers with young cubs, is okay. Many cubs are orphaned like the one in this book and usually die because they cannot live on their own yet.

Josh rescues a bear cub that is orphaned by his drunken father while hunting. He cannot stand hearing that the cub will be "disposed of" or sent to a laboratory for experiments. So, Josh runs away with the cub, Pokey and his dog, Mudflap into the mountains until the law is changed and he can keep Pokey. Josh really stirs up everyone by doing this. Local and national news reporters are all hipped up over this story of the boy and the bear.

It's a kind of book that looks at all the different perspectives of the story with characters. Josh McGuier is the main character, Sam & Libby McGuier are Josh's parents, Otis Sinclare is Josh's friend and Deputy Bruster Bingham is the officer that is heading up the search to find Josh. Josh's family is breaking apart because of the death of Josh's brother. Sam McGuier is having a hard time coping with the death and turns to drinking and verbally and physically abuses Josh. Josh is having trouble with the death also, and wishes that his family could be like it was before the accident that killed Josh's brother Tye. Libby McGuier is trying to hold her family together and get some answers from the police. Otis Sinclare and Deputy Bingham are on Josh's side but wants Josh to be home safe and sound.

This book teaches you to communicate with each other and maybe things will work out better. I like the ending but I am not going to give it away. You will have to read it for yourself and go on a adventure with Josh, Pokey and Mudflap.

Reviewer-Middleburgh Student or Wolf Girl
Rescue Josh McGuire by Ben Mikaelsen
This book was a very exciting book. The main characters are Josh and Pokey (the cub). A boy named Josh McGuire has run away to the mountains. He has run away because he doesn't want "his" cub, Pokey to go to a laboratory. Pokey is an orphan because Josh's dad, Sam, shot the mother not knowing it was a mother. His dad calls the warden and the warden says he is coming out to get the cub. So Josh runs away with Pokey and his dog, Mud Flap. He is going hungry and he is freezing. He doesn't want to go home until he can keep Pokey and there is no shooting of bears. The cops are out looking for him and can't find him. I recommend this book to kids that like adventures or books about animals. I liked this book a lot it is very interesting and is a gripping book. When you start it you can't put it down it is and excellent book. I recommend this book to middle school kids because there is some hard reading but easy enough for them.

In Language Arts class, a group of students (including me) chose to read the book 'Rescue Josh McGuire' written by Ben Mikaelson. After we had read the book, we had to write a play about it. We are filming the play today since it is the perfect time of year (snowstorm) and the scenery is just right today, opposed to other days. We thought that the book deserves 5 stars because it is very suspenseful, yet you can predict what's going to happen *sometimes that's a good thing* it's a really good book & we recommend you read it

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is about a bear, a squirrel, an eagle and a little girl fighting to protect a forest from the rumblers.I would recommed it to any one who likes adventure.

Tribe of Star Bear Victoria Mihalyi Let your imagination soar with the novel Tribe of Star Bear. Victoria Mihalyi's first book is an unforgettable reading experience. In the beginning, Tribe of Star Bear is set in a calm forest, where the birds sing their songs. The atmosphere changes to fear and desperation however as the plot unfolds.

Mihalyi's characters are funny and touching. The forest-folk live much as humans do; they even have a community council. The deer dislike mess and disorder and consider it their job to clean up the left-over peach pits, corn husks and nut-shells left behind by the party-going wild raccoons. Almedon is a wise golden eagle. Bohadea is a kind bear who wishes to make anyone ill well. Ollidollinderi (known as Olli) is a funny squirrel who rides on Amber, a lost little girl who wants to be a part of the tribe. As the Warriors of the Rainbow they must stop the Rumblers from destroying the forest. The novel is based on a Hopi Indian legend, which warns that people will have to band together and work with actions, not words to save the earth. The Rumblers, large mean animals, gorge the forest and leave only black wasteland behind. There is no time for anything. The forest folk unite under the title Tribe of Star Bear and try to defeat the Rumblers. They must leave their homes immediately to get advice and use an old bear Song as their guide.

They start out on their search for Istarna, where they will receive advice and magical talismans. Star Bears great-granddaughter is so old her fur is white. I loved the part where the tribe entered Istarna's cave. The author described the gems and diamonds in the cave so clearly I could picture it perfectly in my mind. Istarna gives them advice and magical talismans to help them with their fight. Pudd Wudd Princeling, the witty cat that they meet just before finding Istarna also gives them advice (in the form of tricky riddles). They meet Pudd Wudd while looking for Istarna ."Don't ignore half moon door" and "At a howl in the night, strike with red light" were just two of his many riddles. The enigmas puzzled them and me for awhile.

I found this a great book to read because I can easily relate to the characters love for the forest. I could see the paths leading to each animal's home, the tall old trees, the smell of the morning dew's dampness, and all the deep rich natural colors. The animals love their forest home where they have lived in peace. In my mind's eye I thought of the Rumblers as big heartless machines. I also enjoyed trying to figure out the cat's riddles and how the tribe would defeat the Rumblers. I found this book very imaginative and magical with its flying bears, talking animals and talismans. It left me sad over the loss of some friends but glad that the Tribe defeated the Rumblers.

This book will capture any reader's mind has left me thinking about it since I finished it. Any child or adult would love this book. As the cat would say " Rum tum tum diddle, no time fiddle"- get reading

Tribe of Star Bear Victoria Mihalyi Let your imagination soar with the novel Tribe of Star Bear. Victoria Mihalyi's first book is an unforgettable reading experience. In the beginning, Tribe of Star Bear is set in a calm forest, where the birds sing their songs. The atmosphere changes to fear and desperation however as the plot unfolds. Mihalyi's characters are funny and touching. The forest-folk live much as humans do; they even have a community council. The deer dislike mess and disorder and consider it their job to clean up the left-over peach pits, corn husks and nut-shells left behind by the party-going wild raccoons. Almedon is a wise golden eagle. Bohadea is a kind bear who wishes to make anyone ill well. Ollidollinderi (known as Olli) is a funny squirrel who rides on Amber, a lost little girl who wants to be a part of the tribe. As the Warriors of the Rainbow they must stop the Rumblers from destroying the forest. The novel is based on a Hopi Indian legend, which warns that people will have to band together and work with actions, not words to save the earth. The Rumblers, large mean animals, gorge the forest and leave only black wasteland behind. There is no time for anything. The forest folk unite under the title Tribe of Star Bear and try to defeat the Rumblers. They must leave their homes immediately to get advice and use an old bear Song as their guide. They start out on their search for Istarna, where they will receive advice and magical talismans. Star Bears great-granddaughter is so old her fur is white. I loved the part where the tribe entered Istarna's cave. The author described the gems and diamonds in the cave so clearly I could picture it perfectly in my mind. Istarna gives them advice and magical talismans to help them with their fight. Pudd Wudd Princeling, the witty cat that they meet just before finding Istarna also gives them advice (in the form of tricky riddles). They meet Pudd Wudd while looking for Istarna ."Don't ignore half moon door" and "At a howl in the night, strike with red light" were just two of his many riddles. The enigmas puzzled them and me for awhile. I found this a great book to read because I can easily relate to the characters love for the forest. I could see the paths leading to each animal's home, the tall old trees, the smell of the morning dew's dampness, and all the deep rich natural colors. The animals love their forest home where they have lived in peace. In my mind's eye I thought of the Rumblers as big heartless machines. I also enjoyed trying to figure out the cat's riddles and how the tribe would defeat the Rumblers. I found this book very imaginative and magical with its flying bears, talking animals and talismans. It left me sad over the loss of some friends but glad that the Tribe defeated the Rumblers. This book will capture any reader's mind has left me thinking about it since I finished it. Any child or adult would love this book. As the cat would say " Rum tum tum diddle, no time fiddle"- get reading!

When I was little, my parents (mostly my dad) read this to me all the time and I loved it! It is so sweet and I think every partent should read it to their kids!

I used to read this book to my children when they were very small. It was a reminder to them that everyone needs quiet time. I was hearbroken when it got lost and searched everywhere for it. Now that it is back in print I can read it to my youngest! I would love to get a copy of the original as the illustrations were so peaceful and beautiful.

I love this book. The text is tender and thoughtful (although perhaps a tad on the precious side), the illustrations are sweet but not overly so--Bear comes across as an energetic little guy, even though he is alone. But I do have two suggestions, don't know if anyone from the publisher will read this to hear them! One is to publish it as a board book; the hardback version might not last long with the intended age group. And the other is to publish a "Bear by Herself" version, with a little girl bear, sort of like the two versions of "Once Upon a Potty." ;-) I'm not rabid about being politically correct, but this seems to me to be a book that particularly lends itself to personalization; I think young kids will really identify with Bear.

Flannery O'Connor did not even live to see her 40th birthday; she died, in 1964, of lupus, the same inflammatory disease which had killed her father when she was a mere teenager and which all too soon began to cripple her as well. A graduate of the Iowa State University's journalism and writing program, she had started to write her first stories, poems and other pieces when she was still in high school, and had submitted a collection of six short stories entitled "The Geranium" as her master's thesis in university. (Most of the stories contained in that collection were published individually in various magazines and anthologies around the time of their inclusion in the thesis; the collection as a whole, however, was first published only posthumously in the National Book Award winning "Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor.") Only a few years after having obtained her master's degree, and after a prolonged residence at Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York, O'Connor began to spend time in hospitals and, in due course, was diagnosed with lupus. From that moment on, she focused on her writing even more than she had before - and the result were two novels, two short story collections, several stand-alone short stories, essays and other pieces of occasional prose, as well as a barrage of letters. The majority of that work product, including twenty-one previously unpublished letters, is reproduced in this collection published in the Library of America series; notably, the fiction part also includes, as one piece, O'Connor's master's thesis, "The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories."

A native of Georgia, Flannery O'Connor defined herself as much as a Catholic writer as a Southerner; and she commented on the impact that regional influences on the one hand and her religion on the other hand had had on her writing in the 1963 essays "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" and "The Regional Writer." Yet, while religion (and more specifically, Catholicism) certainly plays a big part in her writing, from the "Christian malgre lui," as she herself characterized the hero of her first novel "Wise Blood" in the Author's Note to book's 1962 second edition, to the "odd folks out" and searching souls populating her short stories, and to her frequent biblical references, it would not do her writing justice to limit her to that realm, nor to that of "Southern" fiction. (No matter for which specific dramatic purpose a writer employed a Southern setting, he would still be considered to be writing about the South in general, and was thus left to get rid off the label of a "Southern writer ... and all the misconceptions that go with it" as best he could, she quipped in her 1960 essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Rather, she added three years later in "The Regional Writer," location matters to an author insofar as any author "operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet," and it is up to him to find that precise spot and apply it to his writing.) Similarly, while her heroes are certainly not the kind of people you expect to meet on your daily errands (or do you?), it would shortchange them were we to succumb to the temptation of merely defining them as some particularly colorful examples of grotesque fiction. For one thing, "[t]o be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man," as O'Connor noted in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." More fundamentally, however, she saw her calling - and that of any Southern author treading the same ground as William Faulkner and trying not to have their "mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down" - as an attempt to reach below the surface of the human existence to that realm "which is the concern of prophets and poets," and to strike a balance between realism on the one hand and vision, poetry and compassion on the other; to recognize the expectations of his readers without making himself their slave.

Thus, the famously unexpected endings of Flannery O'Connor's narratives are more than merely weird plot twists, the encounter between the grandmother and The Misfit in the title story of her first published short story collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) is the result of a wrong turn in the road as much as that of a series of wrong choices, coincidences and essential miscommunications, and the title story of her second, posthumously published collection of short stories "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1965) truly does indicate more than a physical proposition and indeed, a situation applicable to the entire world, as O'Connor wrote in a 1961 letter regarding the initial publication of the collection's title story in New World Writing.

A six-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Fiction and winner of the posthumously awarded 1972 National Book Award for her Collected Short Stories, in her short career as a writer Flannery O'Connor left an indelible mark on American literature, far transcending the borders of her native South. We can only speculate what she would have contributed had illness and death not intervened - and in a time when, as O'Connor wrote so prophetically in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," too many writers abandon vision and instead contend themselves with satisfying their readers' more pedestrian expectations, her contributions would doubtless be invaluable. Alas, we are left with a body of work that fits neatly into this marvelously edited single-volume entry in the "Library of America" series - but the content of this one book alone is worth manifold that of the much ampler output of many a writer of recent years.

The cover blurbs on my old O'Connor paperbacks always refer to the "humor" of her stories. Well, if this is humor, then the reviewers have pretty sick minds.

What you get nearly every time with Flannery is a story that drags you over broken glass and down red-clay roads and introduces you to some people with severe religious issues and sado-masochistic channels for expressing them.

Much is made of Flannery's Catholicism, mostly by ignorant secular reviewers who wouldn't even notice the discrepancy of a crucifix standing behind a black Baptist choir in a Madonna video. But in her fiction, O'Connor's Christianity is a bizarre, doctrineless ooze that characters absorb or battle with, but not in a way that most writers on religion would recognize. Flannery is too clever for that, combining scary medieval flagellent self-denigration with Bible-belt paranoia.

You can't even start talking about American literature until you've read Flannery.

Move over Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Stein, Wolfe and, yes, even William Faulkner. Flannery O'connor is the greatest American literary mind that the 20th Century ever produced. Upon completing this magisterial collection of her work, superbly edited and finely bound by the American Library, the reader will no doubt fall under the spell of Flannery O'Connor just as I did when I first read "Parker's back" upon a whim after browsing listlessly through a bookstore. It took me about a 1/2 hour with a cup of coffee by my side to leaf through the story, and from that time forward I was forever captivated by everything to do with Flannery. The only other reading experience I've had that can even come close to Flannery's bludgeoning me between the eyes with her descriptive pen-hammer was when I first read "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville. And when your a writer who's style and vision lends itself to the bizarre and the grotesque, while all the while maintaining a thoroughly moral underpinning to your work, there is no better company to be in than this greatest of 19th century American writers. Read this woman! You will not go away empty-minded. After being thoroughly entertained, you will only go away much wiser and completely satisfied. I guarantee it.