When Josh's stepbrother, Jake comes to visit, Josh isn't feeling happy at all. Josh's best friend won't even come to his house anymore, all because of Jake. Jake plays mean tricks on Josh and steals Josh's lomonade business. Will there be peace or war against the brothers? Find out in this great book!

The Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM), developed by Emily Calhoun, is being used extensively in an elementary where I work as curriculum coordinator. The teachers and students report that it's fun, engaging, and well worth the time and energy devoted to it. The expert users find that this model reveals very helpful knowledge about student learning and are able to make targeted instructional decisions as a result. Using students' own language, PWIM builds sight word acquisition, hones categorization skills, develops knowledge and use of phonics, and increases word, sentence, and paragraph comprehension, among others things. I highly recommend this useful book.

This book is great for parents, children, and teachers. It covers butterfly gardening, understanding butterflies, identifying butterflies, and provides a wonderful variety in pictures and information. It is presented in a format that is of interest to all ages. This book needs to go to print again and be widely available. If it doesn't, grab one while you can.

Ms. Kimbrough's first job was at the Marshall Field & Company department store in Chicago. She began in the advertising department in 1923, knowing nothing. Through her eyes and experiences, we learn with her all about the people and inner workings of such a place. Her vivid and amusing style catch you up and make you crave for (as she did) her daily chats with dept. store "heads." During her her 5 years there, she worked on the bimonthly Field's magazine "Fashions of the Hour". Her anecdotes of trying to write copy for it will have you laughing on the floor. Before I tell too much, maybe I should just stop and say: Read it!

The book is beautifully written - a history of Marshall Field and a piece of life in 1920's Chicago. By the way, Charley was the doorman at the Wshington street entrance that she knew since she was a child.

After reading Emily Couric's hugely interesting book I now realise that a good lawyer is worth his or her weight in gold. The secrets of the top legal eagles are laid bare; an LA attorney candidly admits that "flirting ouragously with the judge by batting eyelashes and wearing short skirts" has served him well in the California courts, while a New York litigator fascinatingly reveals his strategy when he represented the man fired for masturbating in his office and won him $2.1M after a jury found his employers liable for failing to protect him from sexually harrassing himself.

It tells you what to do if there is a disaster going on with your boyfriend.Stephanie is in the 8th grade and has fallen in love with a 6th grader. A girl from a snobby group, the flamingoes finds out about it.Will she tell the whole school and laugh Stephanie right ot of the 8th grade, or will she keep it a secret!Read it and you'll find out!

This is one of the most creative selection of short stories I've ever read. She takes current attitudes and stands them on their head. You'll find yourself laughing hilariously and at the same time wiping away a tear.

Compelling as well as useful, THE WANIGAN, A LIFE ON THE RIVER, is a vivid description of the late 19th-century felling of Michigan's pine forests: how it was done; who the workers were; how they lived. Annabel, THE WANIGAN'S 11-year old narrator, is the priggish but spirited daughter of a lumberjack and his assistant-to-the-camp-cook wife. Annabel and Jimmy, the 12 year-old camp chore boy, go along when the year's crop of logs gets shepherded down river toward the sawmills by their fathers' crew. Annabel's mother is cook for the journey; she and Annabel live and cook in the crew's floating kitchen, or wanigan.
The gruelling 3-month journey has a tidy share of griefs and alarms. Annabel must face the fact that a pie-eating raccoon is not a pet to keep in a kitchen, even were this "kitchen" not doubling as her and her mother's sleeping quarters. (Bereft in her one-room waterborne shack, poor Annabel dreams that she has "a castle full of well-behaved raccoons.") Forest fire threaten to leap the river and make ashes of the journeyers, all but helpless in midstream. Murderous log
rustlers are thwarted only by the quick thinking and courage of Jimmy and Annabel. (Unpolished Jimmy, at first disdained by the prim Annabel, is her good friend by journey's end.)
As to lumbering's cost to Michigan, Gloria Whelan's book is neither preachy nor insensitive. Annabel's father, a displaced city man who has seen better days and means to see more, takes on his dangerous job to provide a home for his family. Native of the region Tom Johnson,an Indian, as Annabel calls him (tribe means nothing to her), refers obliquely once or twice to the sadness of the changes he has seen, and goes on logging: it's his living. Annabel's painfully desired new house in Detroit may well get built with boards from trees Tom and her father have helped fell.
Annabel is allowed share Gloria Whelan's sharp ear and eye for nature, speaking of "a crow whose caw was half bark and half cough," of 'strange plants with faces like tiny suns and little hairs growing in a circle around the suns, on each hair a drop of glistening dew.' On her arducous journey toward civilization, she learns to appreciate the soaring of a hawk as much as the thinness of a demitasse, learns to appreciate important virtues in males whom she initially dismissed as 'coarse.' (The dead poet she admires isn't much use when her father is drowining, but a few men who spit tobacco and rub their feet with lard may well be.)
The rough loggers Annabel comes to care for mostly take no thought for tomorrow, and, once the journey is over, little thought for the past, including Annabel. That is not so of her new friend Jimmy, and perhaps some day we may be granted a sequel to THE WANIGAN.
This book, nicely illustrated by Emily Martindale (see her good map, p. 134, before you even begin reading), will be supremely useful in connection with a unit on the Industrial Revolution and westward expansion, on 19th century American history generally, and on Michigan or the Great Lakes in particular, and it is the clearest depiction of the logging industry that I have ever read.

I was wondering what the next ability was and who would display it.

We now learn more of Emily Sayer's life and what lead up to her becoming an outcast from her family. What a feud.

Josh learns from his mother who his father is and Ryder Gerard asks Emily, a second time, to marry him.
Emily, who has supported herself and Josh for sixteen years and is thirty three, is hard headed and independant. [Oh, these dumb women] but it makes the story work.

She does not have any love for the Gerard family but soon finds out that she at least owes them some gratitude. [puts her nose out of joint] Josh is immediately taken with his uncle and wants his mother to try to get along with his fathers' relations.

She is surprised to find out that grandpa and great-grandpa do not have any special powers but boy, wait until Josh get into trouble, a life threatening situation. Boy, was I surprised at Ryder's thoughts of the situation. Fantastic story!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED -- of course Emily marries Ryder for Josh's sake and Josh is in for a surprise on learning a few facts that Ryder knew about her when she was younger.

This book was really funny. The pictures were bright and cute. This is a book designed for parents to read with their kids. The Big Comfy couch is a great place to be! I loved this book a lot.