Wendy Lawton has done it again! She has drawn me into one of
her historical children's books.

Lawton's ability to weave history with fiction enriches each book she has written in the Daughters of the Faith Series. I was thrilled to reach the end of the book and learn about the fate of the real Mary Chilton and other passengers of the Mayflower. I found it interesting to note that there really was a Francis Billington who nearly blew up the Mayflower.

I think Lawton's descriptive ability is richer in this third book of the series. She has a way of placing you in the country as though you lived there. You can almost smell the salty sea air in Leyden. On board the Mayflower, readers can see "the shimmer of water" and hear "the flap, flap, flap of sails being unfurled..."

Throughout this series, Lawton weaves her faith in God throughout the book much like Mary Chilton and her mother weaved the cloth for their family as they set out for their new home--America.

I thoroughly enjoyed this latest book in the Daughters of the Faith Series and can't wait for the next one.

Between the romance of the Pilgrims' story with which I grew up and the story that our children hear today falls the truth, and I believe Wendy Lawton has shown quite a bit of that truth in her story, Almost Home.

In their quest to escape religious persecution in England and again in Holland, the Pilgrims put their faith in their God to carry them across the waters in a vessel that should have carried no more than half of the number that it brought to freedom. We see this trip through the eyes of Mary Chilton, a 13-year-old girl who must bear the pain of leaving her older siblings behind to go with her parents in order that they all might start a new life. Mary soon finds that that loss is just the beginning, and she struggles to find God's love through trials of sickness, loss, and starvation.

The book includes a glossary that explains the unfamiliar terms which Ms. Lawton uses to take the reader back into the early 17th century; also, an epilogue gives a glimpse of Mary's life as an adult in her new home.

A wonderful, challenging book for young ladies who are interested in history and in strong young female characters.

It's a universal truth that everyone longs to have a place to call home. It's the place where we feel most comfortable and can be ourselves. Thirteen-year-old Mary Chilton longs for the same stability in her life. Mary and her family are looking for a place to call home. In this highly readable and engaging book, Wendy Lawton takes the reader on the journey home through Mary's viewpoint. One of the 102 passengers who traveled from England to the New World on the Mayflower, Mary experiences hardship and joy as she discovers the true meaning of home and family.

The research and vivid details of this book will transport young readers yet teach them something about the early settlers to the New World called America. I recommend this book and encourage you to read it as well then you can recommend it to your friends. It's the perfect recommendation or gift for any library-school or church.

W. Terry Whalin...

This is a great book with a proven model and practical approaches to creating positive change based on customer-driven expectations. Robin Lawton presents a unique approach to looking at customers categorized by the way the customer interacts with your product. The approaches Robin Lawton presents can be used in both the private and public sectors. In the public sector, we are using the model to look at our customers in a different way; to identify which customers to focus on, and to identify and use customer expectations to build successful performance management tools. We have found Rob's methodology not only very useful, but also a model that the whole organization can identify with. By using it, we have become more outcome-focused and customer-centered. In August 1998 the California Council for Quality and Service recognized our department for "best practices" for mastering customer focus in the public sector. This book is a must read for those companies looking for positive change.

While Deming concentrated his thinking mostly around re-engineering the processes we use to deliver our products, Lawton starts us out at the beginning of the product story: What are our customer's needs and what outcomes do we want to achieve. He teaches just the right questions to ask in order for us to gain the understanding, if we are even delivering the right product to meet the needs of our customers! His teachings resulted in our ability to develop just the right strategies to set us up for tremendous success in our business. His business insights are not confined to "for profit" companies. Recently, I used his principles to develop a Christian Education Plan for our Church...and guess what? Participation in adult classes doubled within 3 months! Nobody can afford NOT to read his books and attend his workshops.

Robin Lawton has shared with us a missing link! There are books that discuss how to fix problems, books about the "balanced scorecard", and books about meeting customer expectations. However, none of them seemed able to address a critical question: what objective measure will enable us to track our level of success? By answering that question, this book enahnces the value of all other volumes on six sigma, management, and problem solving. Lawton does so by guidng the reader through a straightforward process. By all means, read the other books - but only after you read this one first!

I knew nothing about Mary Bunyan before I read Wendy Lawton's inspiring book, The Tinker's Daughter. Of course I knew of John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress, and I knew it had been written in prison, but that's where my knowledge ended.

As writers we are told to make the reader hear, see, smell, and touch what's in the story, and Wendy has done just that. She has brought history to life with all the senses and the reader is the beneficiary. I've never really thought about what it must be like to be sight impaired, but Wendy painted such an excellent picture of Mary, who was born blind, that I felt as if I had at one time been blind so I knew exactly what Mary was feeling. How powerful.

Wendy has a delightful way of telling a story bursting with characters and color. In this book she made me understand the myriad of emotions felt, not just by Mary, but by her siblings, father, step mother, and her new gypsy friends.

Mary's struggle to feel like she can do all things herself and not depend on anyone else is one that I have struggled with. If the truth be told, I still struggle with it. I learned much from Mary Bunyan, and was just as thrilled with her acceptance of the Lord as if she was someone dear to me here in 2002.

I read The Tinker's Daughter because Wendy is my friend. I came away from this book a better person and a fan as well as a friend. This is a must read for children and a double must read for adults.

John Bunyan penned Pilgrim's Progress, a Christian classic, in the 17th century, but it is still being read today. What most of us do not know is that he had a daughter, Mary, blind from birth, who is one of his few children mentioned repeatedly by name. Mrs. Lawton speculates that the reason Pilgrim's Progress is so vivid is because of a father's need to describe life to sight-impaired Mary. This makes perfect sense. Lawton has done her homework, making this book authentic, right down to the language, the feelings of someone blind in this century, and the everyday life. If you don't know what a jonguleur is (a traveling minstrel,) you can find out in the glossary, which makes learning history easy for children. History is a story of people, and sometimes authors forget to "tell me a story" while giving details and facts. Lawton is a master storyteller. You can trust the quality of this book, and it is a must for every Christian library catering to children.

In "The Tinker's Daughter," Wendy Lawton does an excellent job of capturing both the experiences and feelings a visually impaired person faces. Her descriptions look at life from a blind girl's point of view and instead of focusing only on the cliche auditory signals most people think of for a blind person, she focuses on Mary's identification of her world by smell as well, even the disgusting smells! Even more so,she nails the two major emotions a visually impaired person struggles with: fear and determination to overcome. She shows the pitfalls of the fierce independence many physically challenged people cling to, yet balances it with the necessity, that it isn't always a bad thing. Mary's ultimate solution is found in the source all of us need to depend on - Jesus Christ. All of these profound thoughts are tucked neatly into a sweet story about the daughter of the historical religious giant, John Bunyon. This book is powerful writing!

This is a very engrossing book and one I could not put down until I finished it.

I normally do not like to read any book written in dialect. In fact, I will quite often go out of my way NOT to read them. I find they tend to slow down the read for me because I mentally try to sound out the dialect as I read. Very distracting.

But Wendy has done a superb job with Minty, and she managed to pull me in right at the start.

I think Harriet Tubman has been an inspiration to nearly everyone, regardless of race, because of her courageous actions once she decided "this is what I have to do!" and I am no exception. To see her story through the eyes of her youth is very enlightening...and heart-breaking.

Well written and well researched. A great read.

Lawton does an outstanding job of putting the reader right in the "Quarter" house for slaves on a plantation in Maryland with the young Harriet Tubman, her family and close friends.

The reader anguishes with Harriet every time her master whips her. We pull for her to return to her family every time she is "hired out" to other slave owners. We rejoice with her when God answers her simple yet profound prayers. And we are challenged when a young girl asks God for the courage it takes to run for freedom.

I knew very little about Harriet Tubman before reading Lawton's book. Now I'll never forget her.

Harriet Tubman didn't just BECOME the major conductor of the Underground Railroad; she paid for that honor with pain and blood; however, through it all, her faith remained and her constant prayer carried her through.

Tubman (Minty, as she was called as a child) helps with the children on the plantation when she is only a child herself, but when the master's plantation hits harder times, she and others find themselves being "hired out" to help the master make ends meet. Minty is torn from her family and is taken to places where she has no protection from cruelty and no one to turn to other than to God. During this time, she realizes the dream of freedom, and she often remembers the story of Moses's call to lead the people out of Egypt.

Lawton's book brings along new insights about a woman with whom most of us are familiar. Tubman's courage is all the more admirable as we read about her childhood because, even in the face of unfair accusations, she does not become bitter; instead, she allows the unfairness she faces to make her stronger in order that she can be used more effectively by God.

The details are vivid; the story is riveting.

Courage to Run is complete with a glossary that details the language of the area and the times and an epilogue that has a short bibliography for those who are interested in finding out more about Harriet Tubman.

This is a beautiful little book, lightweight and about 6 inches square, divided into seven days, Sunday through Saturday. Each day has a two-page spread for the traditional hours of prayer/meditation: midnight/matins, sunrise/lauds, 6 am/prime, 9 am/terce, noon/sext, 3 pm/none, sunset/vespers and 9 pm/compline. Each spread features, on the left page, one or two quotations or poems about the soul, our relationship to nature, etc. These inspirational thoughts come from philosophers, poets, novelists and many others, and the name, nationality and dates of birth and death are given. The right page contains a small picture, usually of a person, with the location identified.

This book is very similar to The Soul Aflame by the same collaborators and published in 2000. This volume is a little smaller, and though the setup is the same, the quotes are different and the pictures here tend to feature natural settings rather than people .

This book is lovely for yourself or as a gift to someone who is troubled or in need of solace or inspiration. It's a way to reconnect with those ideas and thoughts that you used to have but so often get pushed aside when one begins to worry about career, mortgages, totalitarian governments and all the rest.

Find some peace. Find this book.

Please, reprint this book without changing a thing! It was beautiful and simple and somthing I wish I had the opportunity to give each of my friends. Please give me that opportunity again. I have found nothing that compare - intense and stunning photos and passages chosen to match.

Here is what I wrote about it 11/1997:
Saturday... 6AM Prime... "What is going on inside me I cannot tell. In the sky a thousand stars are magnetized, and I am glued by the swing of the planet to the sand... My dreams are more real than those dunes, than that moon, than those presences..." Antoine de Saint-Exupery The words faced a page picturing California's Death Valley, photographed in such a way that you could have entrusted your soul to that place for that moment and lingered in it's powerful and drawing stillness. This book took me for one week, in three hour intervals, through an adventure of the soul. For those who might have found themselves too lost in the daily grind, this book will assuredly take you back to that central part of yourself. Your focus will be turned to a much larger world and a deeper vision of an attainable, tangeable human spirit that might have gotten lost along the way. Presentation-wise, this book is graphically clean; both in typography and photography. It is the first book of all I own, that comes to mind when I think of a gift for someone with whom a share a special bond.

I just wanted to say that this book is THE VERY BEST compilation of wisdom and contemplation that I have ever read outside of the Bible itself. The photographs which accompany the text send your mind to dream-like places, however they really exist on this world! Unfortunately for me, but fortunate for my good friend, I gave my only copy as a gift of love... I am going to get my eager hands (and my mind) on another copy right away! Do yourself a favor & get this book. You will not regret it :-)

...or maybe a bit of both. This is a simply fabulous book that talks about John Peabody Harrington's noble fight to record the dying languages of the dying Southwest Indian cultures -- and his utter lack of understanding when it comes to the needs of humans, particularly his wife. It's got love, sex, drama, linguistics -- what more can you ask for in a book? I've read it over and over, yet I will read it again, I'm sure.

I picked up this book not really knowing what it was about, but as soon as I began reading, I was hooked. This true story was written when the author was in her 70s. She depicts the life of a student of anthropolgy early in the 20th century, and the indiginous people on the west coast whose history she and her famous husband were trying to preserve. More fascinating, however, is the love story which creeps into the narrative almost without the reader realizing it. It is an intimate story of two people who, according to the culture at the time, should never have been together, but who found a simple and profound joy in being together. The author's strength of character shines through this book.

I was married to Carobeths grandson. I disagree with the other 2 reviews. Carobeth was a proud, highly intelligent woman who's special ability to learn language was just what Harrington was looking for. He set her up to record the languages and moved on to the next village. The two of them compiled the only known documentation of many California Indian languages and mythology. True, he was obsessed, but aren't all researchers?

This book is the perfect marriage between process improvement methods and Rob Lawton's Creating a Customer-Centered Culture. Ken has provided a clear roadmap for organizations to get focused on the customer, measure things that the customer cares about, and achieve those results with the least amount of pain and agony.
I have already recommended this book to several of my clients who are starting (or are already on) the journey of using teams, focusing on the customer and improving their organizations. It has everything you need, so it's a great reference book as well.

Ken Miller has hit the nail on the head with The Change Agent's Guide to Radical Improvement. Whether you are a seasoned Change Agent / Quality guru, or somebody who often asks "Why do we do it this way?", you need to read this book. That experience alone will leave you energized and chomping at the bit to identify and begin projects that ACTUALLY DELIVER RESULTS.

Miller has provided us with a comprehensive "How-to" guide for making your organization (corporate, government, education, healthcare, Service) and yourself very valuable. The chapters are well-written, easy to understand and thought-provoking. From the proper diagnosis of a project to the implementation to the wonderful method of tracking results, it is literally the only book you need to drive change through your organization. Since reading the book and attending the author's academy, I've used many new, as well as old tools to more effectively run meetings, solve problems, improve processes and lead planning sessions. The big difference I've noticed with the use of the old tools is that I now use them in the proper situations. Miller also identifies the "Change Agent Body Of Knowledge," the features a person must have to be a successful agent of change.

Read this book. You won't regret it, and you might possibly change the way you approach your work. Appropriate for all levels of the organization, especially management.

If you are a student of improvement, then this book is an "All You Can Eat Buffet" of your favorite foods. It literally takes the best of thousands of quality principles and tools and combines them into one easy to read and use manual.

Ken Miller's book on tools for change agents has failed to find a prominent place on my bookshelf not because of content, but I simply have not been able to put the book away since I first opened it. It reenergized me as a team leader and has contributed greatly to the effectiveness of our improvement efforts.

Chapters are written using examples that are well suited for the subject matter and that the reader can easily relate to. At the end of each chapter are easy to follow tools that will quickly become an indispensable component in your facilitating arsenal. My personal favorites include the techniques for getting more out of brainstorming, and Ken's methods for analyzing projects.

This comprehensive book is a must have for everyone who wants to see their company grow! Before you start your next team initiative do yourself an enormous favor, READ THIS BOOK!

Riding the storm was a great book!! I dont want to give away all the details But I'll say some. There were about five kids that go out on a boat and try to to find an old sunken ship. They go scooba diving and find all kinds of stuff! They also find alot of-woops, dont want to spoil it!!! You Never Know...

I love Dolphins and when I read this book it made me love them even more. It has facts about them and is definitely a great gift. This book is great for all ages!!!!!
I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have read Into the Blue recently and found it to be very enjoyable. I have also read Touching the Waves. They are both very good books for children young and old.

This is an amazing report of an American soldier held captive by the Japaese in the Phippines and the island of Japan itself for three and one-half years after his capture in World War II.
How he could remember the details of brutal beatings, starvation and resulting illnesses is almost beyond belief. His experiences with fellow prisoners runs the gamut from the highest heroism to utter selfishness. Every day he looked forward to freedom, only to be repeatedly disappointed until that memorable day when he met the invading U.S. forces and he knew that he was free ,atlast! The dscription of his home coming is heart wrenching as it was for all of us on our return. This book's contents are enough to make almost anyone swear to never buy another Japanese produced article.

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This account is the best I've read of many books on the POWs of the Japanese. It puts the reader in the gruesome reality of the Bataan Death March and all that followed in Camp O'Donnell and the hellships. The lesson learned is one of survival through almost unsurmountable horrors. Anyone who reads this account will have nothing to complain about. Judy Garofano (garofano@mail.idt.net), Queens, NY

The author, Manny Lawton, was among the small percentage of survivors of the Bataan Death March. He tells the story not just of the last days before the Japanese takeover of Corregidor and of the walk itself, but also of the years of tribulations that the remaining survivors somehow endured. The book is an outstanding account of the little-known story about what took place subsequent the Death March, and is a tribute to the human spirit.

K.G. Lawton's "The Recovery" is a fast, head on dangerous mission thriller. If you like to know the hardware, technology and brain games that make an adventure as real as it is exciting, this story of a not too distant tomorrow is for you. The west is wild again and the mission to recover the key to the resources of our precarious freedom is perilous. Lawton knows his setting and it's fun to follow the action on a map. The characters, good and evil, are real and give the story a true to life feeling. The next book in this trilogy will be worth watching for. Lawton also gives us a bonus of short pieces. Two of them, "The Wolf" and "The Retirement Ceremony", are exceptionally affecting and are alone worth the price of many books I've paid hard cash for." Jack Quinn, Toms River, NJ

WOW! What a great novel. It is a great story that keeps you going, I could not put it down. I want more....

This book is chilling starting with the prologue. If you have any idea of what is going on with the olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah - the thought that what the author delving into could be true, may make you blood run cold. It is a page turner that you will find hard to put down from the first page.