This is a great book for girls who love to do fun crafts. I rate this book 5 golden stars. You've gotta buy it!!!

This is the perfect activities book for young girls. I bought it as a gift for our neighbor girl and she keeps telling me how much fun she has had been having trying out "her projects."

I wish I had this book when I was a kid! The activities included are creative, intelligent, and they are actually FUN! My two girls, ages 7 and 9, loved discovering new cool activities and then putting their own twists on them.

The activities are great because some can take up a few minutes, and others can take as long as the girls would like the activity to continue. They also got a huge kick out of the illustrations.

Clearly the authors are on to the fact that girls nowadays don't sit at a table and cut out paper dolls for hours on end! I vote for a sequel---more of these great activities for best friends---girls and boys.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I have moved to the Boston area only a year ago, and this book has helped me learn a lot about the life in and around Cape Cod since 1621. The characters seem almost real with all the trials and tribulations they have had to suffer. I highly recommned it to any reader who enjoys historical novels (the best!).

You will forget about the outside world when you read this; nothing but sand, wind, and water. Plus some natural history, local folklore, a few shipwreck tales. Typical Thoreau; he finds beauty, interest, detail in the wilderness. The desolate landscape will help to clear your mind. Highly recommended.

Each year, in preparation for a week's retreat to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I go in search of a book that would be perfect for a sojourn on a desert island. Of course, the Outer Banks are hardly deserted--the locals have printed up Wege's infamous photograph of a packed stretch of Coney Island with the caption "Nags Head, circa 2000 A.D."--but there we are on an island for seven days, my husband experiencing near death in the waves while I read. Sometimes we stop these pursuits and prowl the beach. Mostly we live as if we're the last two people on earth (which is easier in the off-peak season). I've learned that not every book is right for this way of life. The perfect desert island book has to celebrate the place you are in, not transport you. It should offer a tinge of society, because, after all, a human is a social animal, but it should not make you yearn achingly for what has been left behind nor should you be so repelled by it that you will never fit in again when you leave the island (you always leave the island). It should have some narrative sweep to withstand the competition of the seascape. It should make you think, at least a little: you want the stress to wash out to sea, not the little grey cells. Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau is the benchmark by which I've chosen beach material for several years. it is the quintessential celebration of littoral life. If you are on the beach, you appreciate it all the more; if you are not, well, at least you know vividly what you are missing. There is drama, as in the specter of villagers racing to the shore at the news of a shipwreck. There is information, as in what part of the clam not to eat, how the Indians trapped gulls for food, how a lighthouse really works. There is Thoreau's contagious respect for solitude, his occasional crankiness, and that magic trick of his that can suck in high school sophomores and get them through his books without so much as a whimper. There is one flaw to Cape Cod: brevity. It lasts about a day and a half on the Robinson Crusoe plan. This is not to say that it does not withstand re-reading, it does, but at some point after you have committed it to memory, you may wish for the collected works of Shakespeare and move onto the Bard's beach play, The Tempest.

My problem with this book was that I found it somewhat boring. Peggy Court's take on the world was too small-minded and self-involved to hold my interest, and the narrator's tone too smoothly dry and humorless, occasionally flat. I liked the premise very much, but fail to see what all the hoopla's about. This could have been a heartbreakingly dark, hilarious story about all sorts of ideas and themes, but in its execution, it's about nothing much and didn't move me at all. One of the 20 best young American novelists? Out of how many? But I'll read her next one in hopes that her evident skills find a livelier and deeper story.

You know how you read a good book and keep thinking about it long after you've finished? Well, this is one of those books. The line "A Romance" almost deterred me from buying it, but I bought it anyway, and I'm extremely glad I did so. The story-line is unique, the characters are rich, and the profound love that Peggy feels for James is touching and real. This author did an excellent job - her words were a pleasure to read.

The Giant's House is a novel written as a romance - a romance being the notion of love between two people which encompasses one's being, one's existence. The story revolves around two people who suffer from distinct afflicitions - Giantism (an afflicition of the body) and lonliness (an afflication of the spirit). These 2 people - the giant and lonely librarian - develope a romance which fulfills the body and spirit and through this romance they each attain life's meaning and define their own existence. Their relationship is special as is this novel. Ms. McCracken - an ex-librarian herself - writes with meaningful words and a style which encompasses the vitality of romance. However, Ms. McCracken does not write what one may consider "a romance novel." She is not sappy with her words or her notion of romance. She is, however, true to the human condition of love we all yearn and dream of, no matter what ails us - physically or emotionally. A National Book Award finalist - this book is much deserved. We should all read and learn from this book about love, about the individuality of others and, above all, about the human spirituality of romance.