I love the book because the story is funny and very "real" to us: tired Big Mouse looks like this tired Mom some nights. My daughter and I also read this book at bedtime almost every night because the illustrations are the BEST of any book we own. They are gorgeous, full of color -- they splash across the pages, and are so creative, making the Mouse home a magic wonderland. I think my daughter would find it hard to get to sleep in the Mouse home, because it looks like such a fun place to play and explore. This book is a winner!

If you like "corking" or spool knitting, try frame knitting. This is a technique where you loop yarn around two rows of nails on parallel bars of wood. The loops are lifted over the nails just as in spool knitting. The resulting fabric can be used as a scarf or shawl, depending on how wide the frame is made. (You can buy these, but they are a nice wood project for father-mother/son-daughter.) The art teacher in our elementary school had kids make these frames, then knit long swatches of knitting. The resulting wildly colored fabrics were displayed at an open house and were a huge hit. They looked like Mexican serapes and were just stunning. You can use yarn from clearance sales and really have your kids experience the joy of creating handcrafts.

Rarely does a book's title reflect accurately on its contents, as does Phillip Porter's "Jaguar E-type, The definitive history". One's initial impression is of physical presence, for this is a massive work in all respects. Leafing through the book for the first time, one is immediately struck by a sense of awe that this could possibly represent the work of one man. There can be no doubt this is Porter's legacy, for which he laboured long and hard and gave much of himself.

The foreword is written by sportsman Briggs Cunningham, hinting that the car's racing heritage will figure prominently within. This is indeed the case, for fully a third of the content is dedicated to competition. The greater volume of the book, however, deals with the production car, against an historical timeline that begins with its evolution and conception and extends, rather than ends, with the E-type as it continues to exist today.

It is clear that Porter is unabashedly passionate about this greatest of all sportscars, but he masterfully avoids what could have been a eulogy and creates both a powerful reference work and an entertaining read. "The definitive history" brings together a multitude of colourful personalities and anecdotes and weaves these into a framework of facts, insights and specifications. There are literally hundreds of photographs and illustrations, some of which will be familiar to those who have read other books on the subject but the vast majority of which have never been published before.

History and objectivity are often mutually exclusive and if there can be fault found in this work it would be historian's soft disdain for cars which diverged from the pure lines of the Series 1 two-seaters. This, however, does nothing to detract from what is an otherwise magnificient accomplishment. There will be no other comprehensive histories written about the legendary Jaguar E-type, for none could possibly better this one.

Nick Saltarelli 1968 E-type OTS

I don't know what I'd do without this unique reference.

Justin Hartley

I definatly reccommend this book to anyone interested in medieval times or Scotland, or someone who just likes a good story with adventure and a bit a romance. Though, if you are a reader who only likes really fast-paced books, it might not be for you, since while it does have exciting adventure parts, some parts are slower.