Franklin, the charming emotional turtle graces the pages and stories in this great collection. I do not find Franklin "overly precious" at all.

He has the emotions of a child, and problems of a child. Little ones feel close to him and it leads them through postive problem solving techniques.

My son, who is five, loves the television show and his grandparents bought him the Franklin Classic Treasury. He loves to sprawl out on the floor and look at it while I read it to him. As a result, he truly seems to identify with Franklin's problems.

All children are afraid, or sad at some point. This is an excellent book for a young one. It's a very nature oriented collection for stories.

This great collection of Franklin stories, gives you four wonderful stories in one book!

The titles included in this treasury are: Franklin in the Dark; Hurry Up, Franklin; Franklin Fibs; and Franklin Is Bossy.

Franklin is a wonderful, young role model for readers and listeners. He does not always do what is expected of him, but by the end of the story, he and the reader know what is right.

For anyone new to the Franklin series, this is a great way to become aquainted with some of the best stories. A child's fear of the dark will be eased with the help of Franklin, in Franklin in the Dark. The consequences of fibbing are illustrated in Franklin Fibs.

Paulette Bourgeois has done an excellent job with all the Franklin stories and it is great to be able to get four in one collection.

It is a wonderful idea to make available recordings of great speeches. I hope we have more of this in the future.
In the case of older speeches, the selection is very good, considering the restraints of time, and the readers are uniformly excellent.
As for the modern speeches, it is a marvel of technology that we can hear these speeches as delivered. It is incredible that we can hear the voice of William Jennings Bryan. I can listen to Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" a thousand times and never tire of it! How I wish I could listen to the voice of Patrick Henry! But this selection is too heavily weighted to the modern, and many of those do not deserve billing as the GREATEST speeches of ALL TIME. Also, some of the modern speeches which are included are abridged, e.g. Reagan is cut off in the middle of a sentence, while lengthy and undeserving speeches are played out in their entirety.
Also, with only a few exceptions, the selection is almost entirely American. It is hard to understand why Jimmy Carter's lengthy speech on energy policy is included, while Pericles' funeral oration is not; or why only a small portion of a single Winston Churchill speech is included; why while Bill Clinton's complete 1993 pulpit address, in excess of 20 minutes, is included.
It would be helpful if the complete list of speeches were available to online buyers, as it would be to shoppers in a brick and mortar store.

I have listened to this collection twice now, both times with pleasure. Hearing the acutal voices of Amelia Earhart, Rev. Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and Neil Armstrong made a deeper connection than simply reading their words. The collection showcases different subjects and many times contrasts opposing viewpoints of the ideas. This volume is a fantastic introduction to the moving ideals and sometimes sad truths that have influenced Western Civilization.

Bayport's newest martial arts school is being bullied by a gang. Sound kind of like The Karate Kid? It's not.

Very good book! It has a lot of suspense! Any Hardy Boy lover would love it!

"The Mystery of the Black Rhino" takes the Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe, to Africa where they get involved in smashing an international poaching scheme.
The story lags in the beginning, especially in a ludicrous subplot which has the Boys saving an airliner from crashing.
Once they get to Nairobi, the action is non-stop and carries the reader right along to the rather disappointing and predictable climax.
In spite of its flaws, I enjoyed this book and read it in one sitting.

When I read The Mystery of the Black Rhino, I felt like I was in Africa myself. I even enjoyed getting there. The beginning was so exciting. I could just see Frank and Joe trying to keep that airplane from crashing! Way to go, Hardy Boys! There was a lot of important information in this book, too, about how we should all try to save the wild animals of Africa. I'd like to see another book about the Hardy Boys in Africa

A review by Manch
Frank and Joe Hardy two 17-year-old detectives take a short summer break to L.A. They tan on the beach, play in the sand with friends, and see the number one hit band "The Funky Four." Brian Beat, Jason McDermott, T.J. Eckert, and Terry Solinsky the four in the band perform their best selling hit in front of a packed auditorium filled with screaming fans. As they are partway through with the song a stage light falls from the ceiling and missing him by only inches.

The story unfolds through out the book leaving you hanging at spots were you can't put it down till you find out what is going to happen next. This is one of the best attributes that Franklin W. Dixon has in his Hardy Boys series. Frank and Joe definitely fit the roles give to them not only with the detective work but also as a 17 year old boy that loves to have fun and spend quality time with his friends and so called idols of that time period or setting in the book. Franklin makes these books easy to understand and get a good hold of the characters and their personalities, with one being a jokester and another being more serious and gets the job done when needed. With this story line you are able to some what predict what the ending is going to be. Then right in the middle of when you thought it was right and you can put the book down a curve ball gets sent right in and you have no clue to what is coming next. The book takes you up and down in places that can be boring and others that are awesome in the approximate 150 pages.

If you have definitely read the Hardy Boys before and have a good grip on what they are like and know what to expect this is one you could skip. If you enjoy the mountain or rural adventure of Franklin's books this does not hit par. As for the people that enjoy city adventure, which I tend to dislike, I will recommend this book to you. Good luck reading and hope you in joy this book.

Frank and Joe Hardy go to California on vacation. They go to a concert of the Funky Four.During one of their songs a spotlight falls down in front of the star singer Brian Beat,so the concert has to be stopped.After the concert Frank and Joe go to a arcade,a suspiscioucs looking person comes by,his hat falls off...Brian Beat! But all of a sudden he get's mobbed,but Frank and Joe save him from the mob of people. Brian decides to have Frank and Joe be his bodygaurds.But the there are attacks on Brian's life can the Hardy Boys stop this viscious villiain??????

I did read with great interest John Wilson's novel. It beautifully summarises the findings of John Franklin historians among which the most recent and complete is probably David Woodman's "unravelling the Franklin Mystery".

Why only three stars? maybe because I had already read Woodman's books and Wilson adds little to that. Fiction it is, but sticks very closely to the conclusions to which previous authors arrive. The story puts together all the known clues but, at the end adds not much else.

My greed to learn more was frustrated for instance at how little is described of Peel-Lady Jane strait; this, after all, was the main discovery of the Franklin expedition. It seems difficult to believe that they would not be more excited about it!

Wilson desserves great credit for assembling into a consistent fiction the conclusions of others. I would have wished more colorful and dramatic extrapolations, as one can find for instance in Jules Vernes "les anglais au pole nord" from last century. I would have liked to live the north with Fitzjames.

The Franklin Expedition has fascinated me for years, especially since some of my students created an interactive computer game, "The Mystery of Franklin's Fate," for Science World in Vancouver. I've even thought about writing a novel about it, but now John Wilson has saved me the work--and done a far better job than I could have!

North With Franklin is the journal of James Fitzjames, one of Franklin's captains (some of the early passages are from his real letters). Wilson has the style and attitude just right, and blends his research very effectively into the story. We can see the ships, the men, the terrain. We see the first optimism fade as the ships are trapped in the ice and make no progress in the short summers. The first deaths, from TB, are painfully vivid to Fitzjames; by the end, each death gets only a cursory note, while the captain battles his own mysterious ailments and tries to keep the survivors alive. His journal is a series of letters to his sister-in-law, for whom he clearly feels more than he can admit.

As the years pass and the expedition dwindles to a handful of desperately sick men, Captain Fitzjames comes at least to a clearer understanding of what has gone wrong--not just lead poisoning and scurvy, but a complacently arrogant belief in superior technology.

John Wilson brings the expedition members to life again, each a distinct character (though of course the "people"--ordinary seamen--are seen through the eyes of an officer in a class-ridden society).

The narrative seems so plausible that I half-expected to find the expedition's place-names on the endpaper maps--but whatever names they gave the bays and points vanished with them and their records.

Still, North With Franklin is as close an account of the expedition's fate as we are likely to have, at least until Captain Fitzjames's real journals are found under some Arctic cairn.

Frank's high school trivia team makes the championships, and just then the show's host turns up missing. How likely is that? Other than that, this is a good kids book.

This is a great Hardy Boys book! In it, they're trying to find a talk show host who's been kidnapped. In the process, these friends of theirs are convinced that an exec at the TV station is responsible for the kidnapping, and keep trying to spy on him! :-) It's great! You will not regret buying this book! It even inspired three original characters of my own!

In the beginning of the war, Roosevelt sensed that Churchill even before he became Prime Minister would be important to the war effort. As time went on these men united by a fear of Hitler these men became friends as well as comrades in arms. This book explores there relationship though a rather unique perspective their intelligence departments. It explores how they got their intelligence and what they did with the knowledge that they gained from it. Despite their friendship the used it to advance the agenda of what they wanted for their own countries. At times their intelligence departments actually came into conflict as they both had different hopes and ambitions. As the war progressed these difference became more important.

I found the book very easy to read. Full of information that although I am a WW2 fanatic I have never seen before. I can recommend this book if you want to learn about the relationship of between these two men.

An enjoyable account of the circumstances that brought the two men together, and the relationship that they forged.

Often political friendships form out of necessity and mutual self interest. And that is obvious in this case.

But the fact that the two most remarkable and influential men (in a positive sense) were to forge such an important relationship makes for great reading.

Having read Abe's "Woman in the Dunes" (a masterpiece) already, I was expecting a strange story filled with odd characters and challenging situations. However, I felt that the book wasn't as tightly written as I expected. He changes perspective and has some characters that meld together which are confusing. There didn't seem to be a satisfactory explanation of the character's motivation or actions. There is also a bizarre sexual element that doesn't seem to pay-off. The book is an interesting read, but I would recommend that you read "Women in the Dunes" as it is a far better novel.

The hospital is a labyrinth of human depravity. A man wanders through it searching for his wife, constantly assaulted by odd and insane sights, sounds, and people. Written with mind piercing clarity and description.

This review concerns the original 1949 edition, as well as the revised 1970 edition which is merely a shorter version of the original. The Hardys investigate a group of criminals who are boldly robbing pedestrians in Bayport and other towns. Also, Frank, Joe and Chet go to New Mexico to help Mr. Hardy's cousin Ruth when cowboys start mysteriously disappearing from her ranch. Are the two mysterys connected, well of course they are, but you have to read the book to find out how. The book was pretty good; it was well-written and the setting of New Mexico was used effectively without the book sounding like it was a tour guide. There were a number of interesting characters and a good amount of action. There probably would not be too many Hardy Boys fans that would be disappointed after reading this book.

This book is one of the better written ones in the series as the Hardy boys find the true meaning of the crooked arrow and uses New Mexico well as the backdrop for this mystery.