Sunflowers In The Sand: Stories From Children Of War is the story of war in present day Europe and its poignant and heart-wrenching effects and influences on children caught in the horror of conflict. Illustrated by the artwork of Croatian children, Leah Curtin's informative, engaging, powerful text is a vivid expression of the experience of children in the Balkan conflict telling with a compelling candor what it is like for a child to be trapped in an incomprehensible world of adult hatred, conflict, and horror. Ultimately, Sunflowers In The Sand is a testament to the endurance and resilience of these children who survived the loss of home, family, and their own childhood -- all sacrificed on the altar of war created by political and military leaders in the name philosophies, ideologies, and ethnic hatreds. Highly recommended.

In her heart breaking account of the impact of the Balkan war on children, author Leah Curtin quotes Darija - a thirteen year old survivor living outside the town of Biograd:

"War is nothing like I thought it would be...Tell the children of America that I hope for them, they never learn what war is. It is to be so afraid that you cannot sleep even when there are no bombs. It is to see everything, everything destroyed. I cannot speak of those who are dead ...my heart is still in bandages."

Ms. Curtin - with the help of Patricija Padelin, child psychologist at the hospital in Zadar - chronicles the almost unspeakable violence the children suffered during the course of the war, along with their fears, hopes, dreams and enormous capacity for survival.

In the face of complicated mourning - in one of the stories a boy recounts how he had to choose between betraying his father or grandfather - the children are encouraged to speak about their experiences and to draw and paint images based on how they feel. Some of the illustrations were drawn in refugee camps during and after the war; others during interviews with the children to help them express their experiences.

The result is a moving and illuminating chronicle of the inner lives of children who have been victims of war.

Just as war is the enemy of art, so art is the antidote for war. As the poet Jane Kenyon has said, "We cannot afford to ignore our inner lives, our imaginations, for when we do, we become capable of extreme cruelty and destruction. Tenderness toward existence is what we lose when we lose art."

Ms. Curtin, with the assistance of Ms. Padelin, has taken us into the inferno of war and found, miraculously, war's primary victims taking off the bandages and making narrative and visual art. Ms. Curtin's narrative is interwoven with the children's voices and with their remarkable drawings. Upon being asked to tell his story, a boy named Davor declares "I am as normal as anyone else. It's the world that's crazy, not me." What artist has not felt a similar need to declare him or herself sane!

The most haunting images are perhaps the ones of hearts. In one heart colored orange, there are teeth within the heart and a world outside it where a child is raising her arms to a sky without bombs. In another picture, there is a mouth with a twisted smile that appears to have stitches for lips. Under two dancing hearts the caption reads: "Usually when a child draws hearts, the larger the heart, the more he is in need of love."

My favorite painting is reproduced on the cover of the book: a beautiful blue dove, its wings outstretched, an olive branch in its beak. The bird is flying through the war torn countryside where there are still sunflowers lifting their yellow heads to the sky. But if the viewer looks closely, there is a skull with an open mouth, and just above that image of death there are the instruments of war. This painting was a large mural made collaboratively by fifteen Croatian children who wrote peace messages on the back.

I thought of Picasso's GUERNICA, of course, and along with it the temptation to despair, which any honest depiction of the madness of modern war brings us.

The final and most important achievement of SUNFLOWERS IN THE SAND is Leah Curtin's refusal to embrace hopelessness. By letting the children speak, by empowering them to show through art their own inner lives and resilient spirits, she has in her own unforgettable words instructed us to follow them "and there will be hope for the world."

In her heart breaking account of the impact of the Balkan war on children, author Leah Curtin quotes Darija - a thirteen year old survivor living outside the town of Biograd:

"War is nothing like I thought it would be...Tell the children of America that I hope for them, they never learn what war is. It is to be so afraid that you cannot sleep even when there are no bombs. It is to see everything, everything destroyed. I cannot speak of those who are dead...my heart is still in bandages."

Ms. Curtin - with the help of Patricija Padelin, child psychologist at the hospital in Zadar - chronicles the almost unspeakable violence the children suffered during the course of the war, along with their fears, hopes, dreams and enormous capacity for survival.

In the face of complicated mourning - in one of the stories a boy recounts how he had to choose between betraying his father or grandfather - the children are encouraged to speak about their experiences and to draw and paint images based on how they feel. Some of the illustrations were drawn in refugee camps during and after the war; others during interviews with the children to help them express their experiences.

The result is a moving and illuminating chronicle of the inner lives of children who have been victims of war.

The atrocities inflicted upon civilians - the most vulnerable targets of modern warfare - are nearly unspeakable. The rape of women in Croatia during the course of the conflict has been extensively documented and made public.

Less well known is the sexual savagery directed toward infants, and the brutal torture to which the old were subjected. I hesitate to repeat one child's account of what he witnessed in a church: elderly people tied to pews, begging to be killed, while soldiers cut out their eyes and forced these innocent people to swallow them.

How does one ever forgive such atrocities? Ms. Curtin - a nurse and widely published health ethicist - offers no simple, unrealistic answer. It may not be possible, at least not in these children's lifetimes.

How do children heal then? How do they overcome the impulse to hate not only the soldiers who did these things, but their own neighbors who may carry the burden of the enemy's ethnic identity?

One of the many virtues of Ms. Curtin's book is her insistent answer: the inner, creative life of the children and the need for adults to honor it, to learn from it, to be changed by it.

Just as war is the enemy of art, so art is the antidote for war. As the poet Jane Kenyon has said, "We cannot afford to ignore our inner lives, our imaginations, for when we do, we become capable of extreme cruelty and destruction. Tenderness toward existence is what we lose when we lose art."

Ms. Curtin, with the assistance of Ms. Padelin, has taken us into the inferno of war and found, miraculously, war's primary victims taking off the bandages and making narrative and visual art. Ms. Curtin's narrative is interwoven with the children's voices and with their remarkable drawings. Upon being asked to tell his story, a boy named Davor declares "I am as normal as anyone else. It's the world that's crazy, not me." What artist has not felt a similar need to declare him or herself sane!

In one revealing example painted by a child refugee from Zagreb, a boy's face is surrounded by an exploding city. Drawn in the form of a pastiche, it is impossible to separate the head in the drawing from the bombed landscape surrounding it. The boy's eyes are not the eyes of a child, but of one who has been forced to grow up too fast.

A boy named Hrovje, whose skull had been badly damaged by a grenade while he was rocked to sleep by his grandmother, has had his story juxtaposed with another child's portrait of a woman holding an infant. The anguished face of the woman is reminiscent of the haunted faces painted by the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch.

Some of the stories and illustrations leave a lighter, almost whimsical impression. Kristina dreams of being a dancer in Hawaii and hopes that one day she will appear on the American TV program Hawaii Five O. She seems to be perfectly represented in a drawing made by another child recuperating in intensive care at the hospital in Zadar. A hula dancer with a bright red dress and bouffant hairdo seems a long way from these children's scarred childhoods.

The most haunting images are perhaps the ones of hearts. In one heart colored orange, there are teeth within the heart and a world outside it where a child is raising her arms to a sky without bombs. In another picture, there is a mouth with a twisted smile that appears to have stitches for lips. Under two dancing hearts the caption reads: "Usually when a child draws hearts, the larger the heart, the more he is in need of love."

My favorite painting is reproduced on the cover of the book: a beautiful blue dove, its wings outstretched, an olive branch in its beak. The bird is flying through the war torn countryside where there are still sunflowers lifting their yellow heads to the sky. But if the viewer looks closely, there is a skull with an open mouth, and just above that image of death there are the instruments of war. This painting was a large mural made collaboratively by fifteen Croatian children who wrote peace messages on the back.

I thought of Picasso's GUERNICA, of course, and along with it the temptation to despair, which any honest depiction of the madness of modern war brings us.

The final and most important achievement of SUNFLOWERS IN THE SAND is Leah Curtin's refusal to embrace hopelessness. By letting the children speak, by empowering them to show through art their own inner lives and resilient spirits, she has in her own unforgettable words instructed us to follow them "and there will be hope for the world."

Someone gave me this book when it first came out in 1991. My first sunflower house failed but I tried again and was rewarded with a delightful garden retreat. I had no idea flowers could be so high -- and so sturdy. Then I tried the flower clock and that was an immense success. The rainbow garden worked, too, and by that time I was running out of space. I've never considered myself much of a gardener; certainly everything I try to grow indoors curls up its leaves in abject rejection and withers away! But the projects here worked for me.

This little book is great reading, too. I didn't want to try the Giant's Garden but it sure was fun reading about it. Imagine the largest tomato -- a 6 lbs 8 oz "Delicious" -- or a pumpkin big enough to ride in. The "Cinderella" pumpkin has reached 500 lbs. "Some people pick off all but one ear of corn or one pumpkin," Lovejoy writes, "in order to allow all the growth to go to one, special vegetable."

She has a good word for bugs,"Hosting a healthy population of these friendly critters can make your garden a thriving, pest-free environment."

Plant a kinder-garden, she suggests, and lists plants whose names match each letter: A for aster, B for bachelor's buttons, C for cockscomb, D for daisy......all the way to Z for zinnia.

There's a garden of greens and a butterfly garden and there are faeries and sand castles and even secret notes to be found. In all I'd say this is a book for anyone who's willing to let go a little and enjoy the outdoors in new and luscious ways.

im only 14 yrs old, and emediatly fell in love with this book when i began to read my little sisters teachers copy. i love the ideas about the playhouse made from sunflowers (which i am allowed to make next spring) and the notes about fairies and the flowers. i believe in fairies and im going to buy some of the flowers they say fairies use for hats and plates etc. for my ever growing fairies house. i love flowers and a wild garden with exotic colours and feelings. i garden is the key to happiness and tranquility. this is a marvelous book that anyone could learn to love and cherish forever and ever. thank you.

Let me be upfront about this. I hate to garden. I hate the dirt. Bugs. And my uncanny ability to kill plants. A friend gave me Lovejoy's "Sunflower Houses" and I found myself transformed. I couldn't wait to go out to the garden. It is truly an inspiration to the gardener...and child in all of us. The artwork is delightful, and the writing magical. It's the closest thing to finding a Spring day in prose...

Katie and her grandmother head to the museum on a rainy day and when grandma sits down to rest, off Katie goes to explore quickly getting into trouble. The rest of this story tells of Katie's attempts to clean up the mess she makes when she attempts to gather sunflower seeds from a Van Gogh painting. Mayhew incorporates visits to multiple post-impressionist painters, including more Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne. My 4 1/2 year old son loves this story and others by Mayhew (Katie and the Impressionists, Katie and the Mona Lisa) I think in part because he can identify with how much trouble Katie causes! However, it all comes out ok in the end, which reassures him and he learns a considerable amount about art in the telling of the story...if not any lessons on museum etiquette! A delightful, engaging book for young kids with beautiful illustrations of post-impressionist masterpieces. This books gets frequently requested at bedtime by my son. I highly recommend it. If you're interested in other authors, my son also likes Laurence Anholt's books about Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci. We have also purchased The First Starry Night, by Joan Shaddox Isom, which is gorgeously illustrated, but for some reason he doesn't like that one as much as others...perhaps it's because Van Gogh leaves the little boy in the story in the end.

It's begun to rain, so Katie and her grandma can't finish working in the garden, and decide to go to the museum. As soon as they arrive, Grandma sits down for a little rest, so Katie scampers off to see what interesting and beautiful paintings she can find today. She likes Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh, the way the flowers look full of seeds, all dry and crunchy. Katie reaches into the picture to touch them and knocks over the vase, spilling the sunflowers all over the museum floor. Before she can clean up the mess, and put the flowers back into the painting, she hears giggles coming from the next frame, and that's when all the fun begins..... James Mayhew is back, and those who loved Katie And The Mona Lisa and Katie Meets The Impressionists, are in for another wonderful romp through the art museum, this time with the postimpressionists. Follow Katie as she meets and enlists the help of Breton Girls Dancing by Paul Gauguin, chases a dog into Vincent van Gogh's Cafe Terrace At Night, wreaks havoc with Paul Cezanne's Still Life With Apples And Oranges, and steps into Gauguin's Tahitian Pastorals to go wading at the beach. Mr Mayhew's simple and charming text is full of energy, humor, and fun, and complemented by his marvelously creative and engaging artwork. Little art lovers will enjoy all the silly antics in this charming chain-of-events story, as Katie works to finally set everything right again at the end. Perfect for youngsters 4-8, Katie And The Sunflowers includes a short afterword detailing the postimpressionist period, and further information about each of the paintings in the story. This is a picture book that's sure to peak everyone's interest, and send you and your family to the nearest museum for an adventure of your own.

If you enjoyed the other Katie adventure stories by James Mayhew, you will be happy to add this to your collection. Katie takes children on a trip to the Post-Impressionists' section of the neighborhood art museum. There she travels in and out of paintings by Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. Everytime my niece sees these Mayhew books she wants to know when we are going back to our city's art museum. A recommended book for any library.

In South Africa, Thulani is tired of milking his cow every dayso he exchanges it at the store for a goat. That doesn't work - toomuch trouble so he makes some more exchanges ending up with a pocketful of seeds. As his wife Dora tends the fields of growing sunflowers, Thulani goes back to dozing beneath the hot sun. When the sunflowers drop their seeds & he feeds them to his chickens - ah! amazing things begin to happen & Dora is happy! Lively story & lovely pictures with some good ideas about work & play, labor & results. A treasure! Great gift material...

I read the Swedish translation of the book in the fall of 1997. This was one of the best childrens books I have read for my 7 year old daughter Kimia. We both liked it. I must admit though that I liked the book more than she did. I had no choice but to start translating it to Persian. I just visited www.amazon.com to purchase the English version of the book.

The message in the book in my opinion is that Thulani is not really lazy. It just appears so. The story shows how an apparently lazy person who aimlessly sits in the sun is a wonderful loving individual full of life, energy and ideas. I'd like to see the story as applicable to most of us humans. We are all full of life, energy and ideas. We just have to try. Hopefully, our love, for someone like Dora, will lead us to the right place and time.

Very colorful, and wonderfully written. This book is about a little boy Max and his pig. As you turn each page it takes you through all of the steps in growing a plant from the seed to the final flower. Whats better is that each page has some type of activity like moving tabs, pop up pictures or lift the flap. Overall with few lines to a page it is a wonderful story for all youngsters, and its scientific!

Our Children's Librarian used this book for my daughter's ToddlerTime class the day that we planted sunflower seeds, and all the children LOVED "Max Loves Sunflowers." The bright colors, simple line-drawings and movement on every page captured the interest of all the two-year-olds in the class. I highly recommend this book for youngsters; kids can watch the sunflower "grow" from seed to seedling to a huge plant. Very entertaining, colorful, and fun!

If you read one Jill Marie Landis, you'll know that you have to read all of hers. They all are excellant books.
This series starts with:
1. Sunflower
2. Rose
3. Come Spring
Please read for yourself and enjoy.

I have read all of Jill's books and each one is better than the first. I recently finished the book Sunflower and found it to be her best yet. She is great with her decriptions and storytelling which allows you to feel like the girl in the book. I would have to say that she is the best Historical Romance Author of all time, I highly recommend her. Especially to those who love romance books as I do. Sunflower is a definite must read. I anxiously await her next book coming in June 97.

I absoloutly loved this book. And although St.Anne's Academy was a ficticious place it was based on the Victoria school she attended. I attend the school now and so I found it very interesting to read about what it was like so many decades ago. I recomend this book to everyone!

The Sunflower diary was one of the best books I have read in a long time

I absolutely love this concept book. My preschool children love it too. I have 4 & 5 year olds and this book is a great jumping off point to all sorts of Springtime themes! I have read many of Eve Bunting's books and all are wonderful; I highly recommend them all.

Looking for the perfect book for kids to understand the concept of 'how a seed grows'...? This one is great, and shows the development of the seeds, from beginning to end while bright illustrations show what fun the garden brings home to the little boy who grew his own 'sunflower house' and shared it with others. How one seed can grow into a plant that supplies even more seeds to sow, and bring pleasure not only for one season, but many seasons thereafter that others may enjoy as well.

The Sunflower tells the story of a dying Nazi soldier who seeks out Simon Wiesenthal for forgiveness for his crimes against the Jews so he can die in peace. The story is based on fact from Wiesenthals life. Many famous people wrote essays, which are printed in the back of the book, arguing wether to forgive him or not. But the true value of the book lies in the question what you would do if you were in the same situation.

This is some powerful material. Wiesenthal presents the story of a Nazi begging for forgiveness on his deathbed. Should he as a Jew grant this forgiveness? He deals with all the emotional and spiritual ambivalence he feels over this situation. What would you do? is the ultimate question he asks. Don't read this late at night if you want to get some sleep. I found myself tormented by the issue of forgiveness after reading this tale. I can not answer what I would do because I have never been in any situation as horrible as that. But this is a book that should be read by would be philosophers and moralizers as it features Wiesenthal's heart rending tale and follows it with essays by numerous writers of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. They all must wrestle with this issue. This is a book that should be required reading in universities if not high schools. It might actually provoke students to think. And surely that would be a good thing.

Simon Wiesenthal authored a first rate book, one that should be read by everyone the world over, for it deals with problems that all societies struggle with in trying to achieve peace: forgiveness, justice, and grace. To what extent are we enabled to offer forgiveness on behalf of another, especially when the crimes committed are of almost unspeakable atrocity? Wiesenthal's story is gripping, moving, and haunting, a true encounter that provokes repeated pondering and contemplation. I don't have the 1997 revised version of the book containing the responses of 46 people in a symposium discussion, but I can say that in the original 32 responses, I read very few that contained a cogency and depth equal to that of Wiesenthal's story. While a handful were good, most were evasive. I therefore found the second half of the book to be a disappointment. THE SUNFLOWER, though, is worth getting just to read Wiesenthal's treatment, which is first rate. Philip Yancey also offers some thoughtful comments in a chapter from his book of essays entitled I WAS JUST WONDERING (beginning on page 70 under the title "A Haunting Deathbed Confession".)

With much anticipation, I waited for this book to be released. There has been no general historical monograph of Kansas since Robert Richmond's Kansas, A Land of Contrasts, back in the mid-1970's. Kansas is overdue for a new basic history. My original review of this book gave it 1 star. Since that time I have had the opportunity to read the volume a couple of times and my original comments may have been too harsh. The book does go indepth into areas which have not been addressed by other state monographs, especially with regard to civil rights movements in the 1960's and especially important issues of the last 30 years in the later chapters. Miner's evaluations of recent political changes in the last chapters was also quite thought-provoking. My original argument regarding the organization of this history remains and keeps me from giving it 5 stars. There is an enormous amount of information contained here and it needed, for lack of a better word, more user-friendly organization, maybe even some side-bars where the author could have more freedom to digress in related topics. This volume was meant for a scholarly audience and it will appeal quite well to this relatively small percentage of Kansans and deserves four stars. Whether this book will attract a sizable number of non-scholarly Kansans remains to be seen. This is not meant as a derogatory remark, merely a realistic observation. With regard to its chosen audience, however, it appears to be successful. With regard to illustrations, maps, and graphs, I would have enjoyed seeing more. Why not show off a little bit of Kansas visually? The photographs dept of the KSHS has several hundred thousand images and over 10,000 pertinent maps. Why was this valuable resource underutilized? To address Mr Avid, there is certainly no jealousy involved as I am not a historian nor a college professor and I write about subjects that I have an interest in pursuing. I own every book that Miner has authored and have enjoyed his previous works very much. My expectations with regard to this book were apparently unrealistic-- I was expecting a bigger and better model of Land of Contrasts. This book will help to alter the image of Kansas in a positive way among academics in other states who have an image of Kansas as a flat, dull lifeless place. The details outlined in Miner's book portray a far more complex state of mind than the outside world realizes. That is a good thing.

I am not surprised at Mr. Fitzgerald's remarks regarding Craig Miner's fine new work on Kansas. Fitzgerald, who has published two successful books on "ghost towns" (actually "near dead" towns) in Kansas is a popularizer. His books, while fun to read, are by no means scholarly works. Miner's new book is scholarly, but interesting! Robert Richmond's book is a good survey of Kansas history, but is appropriate for a high school audience. Thomas Isern's book, Kansas Land, is written for a junior high audience. Until Miner wrote this book, there has been no survey of Kansas history that was apporpriate for college students and for scholarly study. Richmond's book has suggesstions for further reading at the end of every chapter. Fitzgerald seems to be underestimating Kansans in the way that they have been underestimated for 150 years, as simple, illiterate people of the land. Read Miner's book, and you will soon find out that Kansans are quite the opposite! Miner's book is written with the erudition that Kansans deserve. This is a fine book, a fitting history of Kansas for Kansans, and for others.
Historians will always bicker about each other's work, sometimes jealously, sometimes with clear reason. I cannot say that Mr. Fitzgerald is jealous, but he certainly did not make his argument with clear reason!

Craig Miner's exhaustive volume demolishes the marginalization of Kansas in the writing of American history. Arguing for the importance of regional history, Miner persuades the reader that Kansas is not a "Great American Desert" historically, but a fascinating land, chockful of colorful characters, dramatic events, and great influence on the rest of the United States.

Given the exhaustive nature of the volume, every reader will find something of interest in Miner's history, from agricultural history to political intrigue. Most Kansas histories simply scratch the surface, citing "Bleeding Kansas" and prohibition as everything interesting about Kansas. Not so with Minor's work. The pro-communist Waldo McNutt shares the stage with the anti-communist Gerald K. Winrod in a story that will remind Kansans of the richness of their history and amaze others with what historical treasures have yet be unearthed in the middle of America.

The final chapter demonstrates what separates Miner from many other historians. A finely woven look at Kansas and its future, the author weaves in cultural allusions from Bob Dylan to Reynolds Price in order to understand the struggle for Kansas' identity. This is a rich work for any fan of American history.