How could this book be anything less than great, it has the greatest subject matter, STEVEN SPIELBERG!

In order to write good poetry, you have to be able to compress words, add imagery, employ similes, metaphors, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. Then you must try to come up with a new theme, or a new twist on an old subject, so that in the end, we are left with something breathless and bittersweet--an insight that stays with us and enriches and influences our life. Audrey Baird has done all this in her first book, Storm Coming! (Boyds Mills Press).

There isn't a cliché or hackneyed phrase in the whole book. If you didn't like rainy weather, you will now. You will embrace not only rain, but thunder, lightening, rainbows, puddles, fog, galoshes, wind, drizzle, and clouds.

I am amazed at Audrey's freshness. Take lines like "Churning clouds with heavy eyebrows brush the hills at daybreak...." What an original appropriate metaphor.

"Storm Concert" is spectacular with its comparison to the philharmonic, no reaching for comparisons, no grappling for simile, all of it falls into place so smoothly that it fits like your skin. It is never jarring, never overwritten, never self conscious.

One of the best lines in the whole book is in "Rainy Windows." At the very end. The poem reads; "In the car on a rainy day, the blip-blap, blip-blap of windshield wipers makes everything outside blurry and soft-edged, like dreams just after waking."

LIKE DREAMS JUST AFTER WAKING! Blurry and soft edged. Captured exactly. A powerful line.

In "Thief" we have the storm man slipping through the night with a bag of rain on his shoulder . . . lightning flashes from his fingers!

It is difficult to sell a BOOK of poetry. It is close to impossible if you are a new author and don't have a huge track record. So this is a coup, and it is fine to realize someone is out there sniffing out quality in a publishing world that usually looks for more of the same thing. If it sells in pink, do it in blue.

My only regret is the book has illustrations. I don't like to be told, especially with poetry, what to imagine. I want the words themselves to create the pictures in my mind. Illustrations of poems are interference in our creativity and imagination. Any illustrations. And I found some of these illustrations pedestrian. When you read, you can move away from annoying noises, fighting neighbors, unpleasant scenery, to the quiet of your own hearth or atelier. But you can't move away from annoying pictures in a book-you have to take them with you. That is unfair.

But the heart of the beast is in the poem. And the heart of the poem is Audrey.

About the Author: Judy Delton has published over two hundred books with Dell, Harper, Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday, Dutton, Harcourt, Hyperion, Disney and others. Her Pee Wee Scout series has sold over 7.5 million, and has just come out in Turkish, and in Braille. She has two new novels out with Houghton Mifflin, and regularly publishes a plethora of essays, articles, and literary criticism.

Excellent and informative.

Not only is Pat O'Brien an excellent broadcaster, he knows HOW to tell a story. This book is loaded with sports anecdotes to keep up with your sports fanatic friends. Organized by month so that you can easily find an appropriate story beforehand, O'Brien helps you recall unforgettable moments in sports that will make you sound just like an expert.

This is an excellent book for children of all ages. Fantastic if you are looking for a multicultural book for your child or classroom. I have in fact found several sites on the internet ( one of the sites is that of the publisher Tillbury House)which give address and phone numbers for hundreds of lessonplans for teachers. A book that no elementary classroom should be without. There is actually a sequel call "Talking Walls:The Stories Continue" which I have not gotton my hands on yet.

As a historian specializing in Philip II's reign (and, funny enough, as a hobby author just trying my hand at a historical novel featuring Philip and his relationship to Ana de Mendoza when I discovered this book) I was naturally curious what insights "That Lady" would give on topics historians have always argued about (like the Escovedo affair). And I was pleasantly surprised - it's a wonderful read AND aims at the utmost historical correctness possible without letting that dry up its author's imagination. Straightforward style, absolutely credible characters and strong feelings without kitsch make this book the perfect start for, say, people who saw Verdi's "Don Carlos" at the opera and want to know more about the people featuring in it. Given that research on Philip II is still sometimes recurring to legends and prejudices because the truth simply can't be found out anymore, Kate O'Brien's approach to this period in Spanish history and to Philip's character is as true as any and probably fairer than a professional historian's. So if you are looking for a colourful and psychologically fascinating historical novel - this one's what you've always wanted!

I can't say enough how much I enjoyed this book! I'm always telling people that Sandra Bullock should do a film on this book and play the main character - Nicole Ryan. I just didn't know who to trust in it - who was the good guy or the bad guy. And the end...well you have got to check this one out for yourself. But, make sure to make an appointment to get your nails re-done afterwards. I bit all of mine off! Will someone make a movie out of this one? Please. :-)

Ably edited by Brian K. Robertson, Things Grew Beautifully Worse: The Wartime Experiences Of Captain John O'Brien, 30th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A. is the personal civil war diary of a Confederate officer who had a first-hand perspective of the battles, bloodshed, and gangrene of the Civil War, and who came to languish in Union Prisons with nothing to do save write down his experiences. Heavily annotated for the modern reader's benefit, this slim volume adds a very personal touch to a divisive era in America's history. Things Grew Beautifully Worse is a highly recommended and much appreciated addition to the growing library of Civil War memoirs and eye-witness accounts.

My father was a native of San Francisco. While a very young woman, he gave me "the best book every written about San Francisco." He'd had it for many years, and wanted to share it with me. It was called, "This Is San Francisco." The description of the City, wonderful accounts of famous streets and how their names originated, facinated me. I married, and cherished the book for years. Six months ago, my book was lost. Where, when, I do not know. However; it is gone. Yesterday, upon visiting the San Mateo Library on another matter, I ran the information about "This Is San Francisco" through the coumputer. I believed it to be out of print. To my delight, it had been reissued. I located the book; but did not check it out. I wish to order this book, so that I once again, own, as Dad said: " The best book every written about San Francisco.

If you are looking for info on O'Brien's life AND novels, this book is for you. It may be the single most important source for my Masters Thesis!