To find out where a state of cities chamber of commerce, then one should use this source, i.e.,World Chamber of Commerce Directory June 2001 (World Chamber of Commerce Directory)
by Jan Pierce (Editor). In here one will find out that Michael Gerke is the representative for Winter Area, WI's chamber of commerce. It lists his title, their web address and regular address along with the phone number. It also has a nice part with state boards of tourism, foreign chambers of commerce and their tourist board equivelents. Highly Recommended.

Do you have the courage to enter Angela Carter's quirky realm of magical realism? She is brilliant. BRILLIANT! I love these short stories -- or rather, fairy tales that everyone is familiar with. The stories have very familiar themes, like tragic love stories, werewolf stories and Cinderella-like stories. Of course, Angela added her own ingredients in the stories. There are a lot of elements of sex and a large dosage of magical realism. They are so mind-boggling disturbing that I found myself thinking about them long after I finished reading them. My favorites are "The Lady of the House of Love," "The Snow Child," and "The Werewolf." I marvel at Carter's imagination. She is truly gifted. Her writing style sort of reminds me of Amanda Filipacchi -- a brilliant French novelist. In fact, I wonder if Carter influenced Filipacchi's work. I highly recommend The Bloody Chamber. This isn't for the faint at heart; this is dark literature at its finest!

On hearing that the writing style of Tanith Lee, one of my favorite authors, had derived in part from that of Angela Carter, I hastened to find a good collection and explore the similarities. I read this book, and while I am not going to compare and contrast the two styles, I am going to rave about Angela Carter. In the collection "The Bloody Chamber" she reworks five familiar fairy tales as well as spinning myriad tales from the werewolf theme and a tragic love-story out of the vampire myth. Each of the stories has its own unique perspective that works both as a stylistic trick and as a function of the story, such as having Puss-in-Boots proudly recount his own exploits, or having Beauty lost to the Beast at a game of cards. The stories are written sensually, reveling in their lush usage of language; the opening of "The Erl-King" smells of rotted leaves in October, "The Lady of the House of Love" casts haunted shadows at the reader's feet. One or two read like deconstructions of familiar tales, such as the surreal "The Snow Child" or "The Werewolf," while others are the old stories, stripped to their framework and then refleshed with Angela Carter's rich prose. All are absorbing, seductive, to read; if words are food, then this is highly caloric chocolate of the finest quality. (The bittersweet tint only adds to the flavor.) Enough of my raving; read the book yourself. For my part, I will be scouring my library for more of Angela Carter's work. You can never get enough chocolate.

I first read this book in college and it has become one of my all-time favorites. In this collection of short stories, Angela Carter takes the fairytales, nursery rhymes, and the images and themes they contain and perverts/illuminates them. What is most striking about this collection is Carter's writing style. Her language is simultaneously poetic and profane. The stories are heavy with her purple language, which is what makes them so satisfying to read. In additon to the exquisite language, Carter's re-telling of classic tales such as "Snow White," "Red Riding Hood," "Puss in Boots," etc., never fails to pay off. Carter creates a world in which Red Riding hood is the savvy hunter, not the innocent hunted. These stories make us focus on the overly simplistic (and often slanted) messages we were taught as children when these tales were first presented to us. In particular, Carter makes us question what fairytales have taught us about gender roles, marriage, and sex. For a trip into the fantasic that will make you laugh and make you really THINK, read this book!

I have just finished reading the Chinese Version of the story (which I would rate as 5 stars), and thought, although the English Version is pretty accurate, it somehow lacks the fluency the story should have. Because of the difficulty for foreign people to imagine the situation, readers are not involved in the story as much and is therefore less effective than some books like the Wild Swan. The translation has definitely lost some tastes from the Chinese version. However if you are a foreigner who wants to explore Chinese culture, or a person who does not understand written Chinese very well (like me), this is still the book to read,for this is a book that can endure repeated reading such that one can inevitably find more and more traces of Cao Xueqin's ingenuity.

The attractions of this translation are numerous -- which is fortunate for a book that, in total, weigns in at 2500 pages. Most people will enjoy the stylish prose and exquisite interjections of poetry, but you is urged to read sample pages before investing the full measure of your time. While entertaining and quite appealing, this translatoin has its flaws -- and they have been pointed out by several native Chinese translators. The prose is here littered wtih Briticisms that seem almost anarchronistic at times. Xueqin's cultural and literary references, which profoundly enrich the book, are passed over without even a footnote (though the introduction is illuminating). The careful reader may even feel that they are missing the context and mood of the original book. If your interest in this masterpiece is for its fundamental merits -- storytelling, characterization, beauty of language -- then you will find this a pleasure, and you need look no further. If you wish a deeper sense of the Chinese mood of the work, then the four-volume translation may be more attractive.

This is the first volume of a 5 volume series, and does not stand alone. If you read it, and enjoy it, be prepared to read the other four volumes. The story is difficult to begin with, not for lack of interest, but because of the complexity of Chinese names for the western reader. The book is provided with a useful list of characters for each volume, and after referring to this during the first half of the first volume, all becomes clearer for the remainder of the book.

The story itself is a fascinating picture of life in 18th century China, and portrays the development of a young boy who has otherworldly origins. The western reader needs to view dispassionately the Buddhist theme which pervades the novel, but when read with an open mind, the philosophy underlying the novel is both charming and practical (in its own way).

I found the book addictive, though it has to be said that others of my acquaintance found it too difficult to cope with, and abandoned the story before the end of the first volume. If you persevere, it forms a wonderful introduction to classical Chinese literature, and those similarly addicted will find it leads into many other books of Chinese prose and poetry.

I found Net Ready to be extremely helpful in understanding the critical success factors in migrating to the Internet Economy. Working for a large Investment Bank, I am continually searching for better business processes to manage aggressive deadlines and sensitive client information. The book challenges the reader to look beyond technology as the answer to improve efficiencies and focus on identifying the organizational impediments to E-enabling your business, the authors have coined them their 4 pillars of Net Readiness: leadership, governance, competencies, and technology.

For a non-techie business manager, Net Ready is a great reference for how to migrate your business to the Internet Economy. The in-depth Cisco case study highlights the true business benefits that can be achieved across functional areas of a company. The author's have taken their extensive Internet consulting expertise and married that with real-life implementation experience at Cisco Systems to deliver the premier Internet business transformation reference guide!

I found 'Net Ready' to be an exceptional read and am now keeping it on my desk in clear view as inspiration. The authors go well beyond sweeping generalizations made in other books. In this invaluable resource, specific criteria for success in the E-conomy are identified (the four pillars of Net Readiness) and tools are provided to help in getting started down the right path to being 'Net Ready' (mapping web initiatives to the e-business value matrix, use of the project prioritization matrix, and the Net Readiness Scorecard among others). This book is a literal road map for creating value in the E-conomy. If you are overwhelmed by the fast pace of change going on around you and are struggling with where to turn for help, I highly recommend you turn to 'Net Ready.'

The book offers a comprehensive review of business's critical aspects towards the net in the new economy. At the same time, the book provides hard core advice and guidance so that the reader can establish tangible goals for both the business, and customers. Goals that are to be exploited at a velocity and effectiveness that the new technology can provide. NetReady also emphasizes that we all are at a buyer's market; therefore, our success depends on our ability to implement the new business tools "in the way we do business, shop and live". Net Ready provides in detail the success story of Cisco, which by itself is outstanding.

...and I found it to be well worth the read. The story is well constructed, the characters are quite interesting and the action called for head-and-page turning. The depictions of Black professional and social life in D.C. had me feeling like I had to know these people. I got a little lost in some of the departmental acronyms (I would advise readers to make a note or two) and the mythical references, but overall, the book was a simple pleasure to read.

I hope that Brother Chambers can finagle a movie deal out of this one. If the casting and production quality match the level of the original work, he just might have a major hit on his hands.

I recommend this book for all fiction and non-fiction readers, and I look forward to the next Angela Bivens work. I truly hope that I can soon look back on my first book and feel that it was as well written.

There are many very good African American authors and/or mystery series on the market, but I think Chambers just shot to the head of the class . . . And what a class it is!! His Angela Bivens, FBI agent eclipes Eleanor Taylor Bland's police officer Marti MacAlister; Christopher Darden's Nikki Hill; Grace Edwards' Mali Anderson; Norman Kelley's Nina Halligan; Penny Mickelbury's Carol Ann Gibson; Gary Phillips'Martha Chainey; Valerie Wilson Wesley's Tamara Hayle and Paula Woods' Charlotte Justice. The elite list is even longer when you include Nikki Baker's Virginia Kelley; Charlotte Carter's Nanette Hayes; Nora DeLoach's Mama series; Penny Mickelbury's Gianna Magilione; Barbara Neely's Blanche; and Judith Smith-Levin's Starletta Duvall. All excellent mystery writers. However, Christopher Chambers has written not just a mystery, but a true thriller and an excellent, yet complex, read.

Sympathy for the Devil is a white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat, tightly written romp through the true Washington, DC, elite and underworld dens. Chambers flavors his knowledge of FBI procedure and hierarcy in the city with taste and appreciation for every other element (beyond the federal and city governments) that the Nation's Capitol has to offer. Chambers'insight is to Washington, DC, what Grace Edwards is to Harlem, New York. Beyond the rich texture, Chambers keeps us hanging by our collective finger nails through chapter by chapter trying to get a grip on the many twists and turns and then cold-cocks us with his finale. Don't pass this one up or you'll be way behind by the time the next installment is released in the bookstores!

A high-octane thriller is one of the best ways to describe Christopher Chambers' debut novel, Sympathy for The Devil.

As SYMPATHY opens, we are introduced to FBI Special Agent Angela Bivens, who has just won a sex and race discrimination lawsuit against the FBI. She's anxious and weary to see what type of job the Bureau will hand her after the dust has settled, and when she receives a case that will allow her to be the field agent she's always wanted to be, Angela is happy, but quickly the joy of her new job is erased. Angela's case involves the recent deaths of two black teenage girls and a rash of macabre murders that involve rival gangs. Everyone in the Bureau is quick to blame the deaths on gangs, but Angela has her suspicions.

Though her job keeps her stressed, when Angela meets P. T. "Trey" Williams, an attorney from a well-to-do family, full of connections and looks, Angela tries to find the balance between her hectic job and her blooming love life. Little does Angela know that her love life will interplay with the case she's working on in such horrific ways not even imaginable. Will Angela be able to solve the complexity of the crimes at hand...without being condemned by her FBI bosses, WHILE getting to keep her relationship?

I LOVED this novel, point blank. I enjoyed reading a novel with a strong female lead who used her inner strength to do what she had to do. Chambers' characters are wonderfully drawn out, with crisp dialogue and fast-paced action and suspense. There were a few times where the FBI titles and terminology were kind of heavy, but the excellent writing eradicated those problems. There was a multi-layered complexity to this novel, that may be daunting to some, but once again, the storyline is so tight and intriguing, I think readers will be able to overcome that and realize just how great this novel is.

I would DEFINITELY recommend SYMPATHY to all readers, black, white, or other...and will be on the lookout for new work by Chambers.

Reviewed by Shonie

As a person who has been wanting to learn American Sign Language (ASL) for years, I had no idea where to start.

Diane Chambers' book clearly gives the basics for anyone wanting to learn ASL.

Not only do you learn simple signs, but you learn about deaf culture (I had no idea about "deaf names" versus hearing names). It helped open my eyes to what being deaf was like and gave me the help I needed to communicate with my deaf friends immediately after reading this book!

My only criticism is that the book relies on explanations of some signs (instead of pictures). I would've liked to have seen more drawings of the signs. But I guess that's what a dictionary is for. :o)

This book is extraordinary. It is a straightforward and brilliant celebration of Deaf Culture and American Sign Language! The reader is inspired to journey beyond outdated and didactic methods of learning a new language through simply mimicking illustrations (see review dated November 9, 2000)! (I was disappointed to read that someone who has been "signing for fifteen years" possesses such a superficial understanding of language in general.)

This book truthfully proclaims that its author, a certified sign language interpreter who possesses over twenty years of experience in the field, celebrates such an amazing and unique language by encouraging the reader to embrace creative and thoughtful expression of ideas that is inherent to ASL.

The author further enriches the reader's experience by contextualizing the creative process within a sophisticated, yet comprehesible, backdrop of lingusitic rules and cultural wealth that serve as the very foundation of ASL. I found this book to be refreshing and inspiring. Clearly, the author, through years of experience, training and intensive collaboration with professionals from both the Hearing and Deaf Worlds has succeeded in producing an informative, creative and accessible work that transcends the dividing line. Cheers for Diane Chambers!

Most of us work with or know someone who is hearing-impaired (excepting your spouse, who only pretends to be hearing-impaired). Communicating with that person is of utmost importance if any sort of relationship is to be established and maintained. Unfortunately, after reading most books on sign language, the only thing you'll learn is the signing for "never again." (The last book I read before this on the subject was the most pointless since "How to Learn German" was translated into German.) Diane Chambers has managed to write a book that not only teaches you the basic techniques and grammar of sign language, but also does it in a style that makes it easy to learn and absorb what is being taught. The reader will walk away from this book with purpose and confidence rather than a sense of ennui and the haunting feeling of having just wasted time and money. Chambers also takes the reader into the world of deaf culture, changing our point of view from a spectator to a participant. If you read only one book on sign language, read this one, you'll need no other. And if you want to communicate with a hearing-impaired person, definitely read this one.

This is a really great book. It has many wonderful pictures detailing applications. The book's focus is on a three foot stick, about cane length. Of course, one cannot learn to fight from books alone. However, with help from a fellow martial artist, I was able to understand much of the book after some practice. This will be an interesting read regardless of the art you practice.

This is an outstanding book, filled with many wonderful pictures and explinations. If you already train in Taijutsu you'll be able to understand this book without any trouble, grasping the ideas inside immeadiately.

Hatsumi has provided tons of black and white pictures throughout this book to help you visualize the descriptions and instructions written in the book. All the photos are taken from the same angle and it's very easy to follow the progression of how a technique developes. If you have some background in taijutsu, or another martial art like it, you very easily understand some of teh basic movements that Hatsumi puts together to complete a technique.

I can't comment on how good the book is to individuals who have no prior training, but I wouldn't recommend for anyone to learn martial arts out of a book anyway. If you have some background and are looking to expand your horizons or just have a reference to use during training, this book is worth every cent.

Like other books from Kodansha publishers, this is a very informative book to read, and it avoids repetition of identical moves. Each page is a new technique, and the techniques are grouped in a very logical way. The pictures are extremely clear, the clearest of any stick-fighting book I have seen. If you were going to buy one book on stick fighting, this should be the one!

A master of English prose, Chambers was a senior editor of Time magazine until he resigned, in 1948, to testify against a man he once considered his friend, Alger Hiss. Chambers testified that several years earlier, before World War II, he had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States, and that through the Party he had met Hiss, a fellow Party member and a State Department employee. What's more, Chambers charged that Hiss routinely delivered to him secret U.S. government papers to be given to the Soviets.

        At the time of Chambers' testimony, Hiss was president of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Chambers' charges shocked the liberal establishment. Hiss denied ever being a Communist and denied even knowing Whittaker Chambers. He made these denials in the wrong place, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Thanks in part to the efforts of a congressman from California named Richard Nixon, Hiss was eventually convicted of perjuring himself in his testimony before the House committee and went to jail.

        Witness, Chambers' account of his ordeal, is powerful, wrenching book. Any conservative who reads the first section, Letter to My Children, should become a Chambers admirer for life.

I first read this book because of the recent former soviet Union documents that just came out proving once and for all Alger Hiss was agent for the soviet Union. I am only 22 and therefor didn't grow up during this episode. I was shocked after reading the book that any sane person would believe Alger Hiss wasn't a agent of the Soviet Union. It is trully sad that there are actually people living today that still think Hiss was innocent Altogether I found this book to be a brilliant story of one mans struggle against communism and the media bent on destroying him. Although He had all the evidence backing him up people still refused to believe the truth. This story shows that you should always keep an open mind and not just blindly follow people for pollitical reasons.

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of freedom. We can thank Whittaker Chambers for a small piece of the freedom we enjoy today. His courageous stand in the face of public condemnation makes him a true American Hero.

It's unfortunate that the Left is so earnest and humorless, otherwise they might be able to enjoy the immense irony of the lofty position held by Whittaker Chambers in the Right's pantheon of 20th century heroes. I mean think about it for a second, Chambers, who spent half his life as a bisexual Communist spy, was also a leading light of TIME and the National Review, a friend of Richard Nixon and William F. Buckley, was awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan, and made many conservatives' end-of-century lists, both for this memoir and for his personal influence. That's a fairly interesting resume by anyone's standards.

Chambers would be a heroic figure to the Right even if he had done nothing else but to accuse Alger Hiss of being a Communist spy. This action, so divisive that it still echoes through our politics today, helped to define the Cold War era, forcing people to choose sides--between anti-Communists, on the one side and communists, communist sympathizers and fellow travelers, and Anti-Anti-Communists on the other--and in turn hardening the lines between the sides as the nation headed into a period of prolonged cultural civil war, from which we have still not truly emerged.

But Chambers did not merely attack one man. With his memoir Witness he declared war on Communism and the Soviet Union and explained in no uncertain terms just what the struggle was about--what was at stake, the methods that the other side was using, and the seriousness of purpose which would be required to defeat them--and at the same time he told a life story which somehow managed to unite nearly all of the themes of modernity in one gloriously messy tale of personal degradation and desperation, followed by political and religious redemption and salvation. And to top it all off, not only does the story have all of the elements of a thriller and a courtroom drama, the author just happens to write brilliantly.

Chambers starts the book out with a forward in the form of a letter to his children (available on-line and well worth checking out) which seeks to explain why the book is necessary and why their father gained such notoriety in the first place. It is worth quoting a largish chunk :

Beloved Children,

I am sitting in the kitchen of the little house at Medfield, our second farm which is cut off by the ridge and a quarter-mile across the fields from our home place, where you are. I am writing a book. In it I am speaking to you. But I am also speaking to the world. To both I owe an accounting.

It is a terrible book. It is terrible in what it tells about men. If anything, it is more terrible in what it tells about the world in which you live. It is about what the world calls the Hiss-Chambers Case, or even more simply, the Hiss Case. It is about a spy case. All the props of an espionage case are there--foreign agents, household traitors, stolen documents, microfilm, furtive meetings, secret hideaways, phony names, an informer, investigations, trials, official justice.

But if the Hiss Case were only this, it would not be worth my writing about or your reading about. It would be another fat folder in the sad files of the police, another crime drama in which the props would be mistaken for the play (as many people have consistently mistaken them). It would not be what alone gave it meaning, what the mass of men and women instinctively sensed it to be, often without quite knowing why. It would not be what, at the very beginning, I was moved to call it: "a tragedy of history."

For it was more than human tragedy. Much more than Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers was on trial in the trials of Alger Hiss. Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies. At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it. At issue was the question whether this man's faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another. At issue was the question whether, in the desperately divided society, there still remained the will to recognize the issues in time to offset the immense rally of public power to distort and pervert the facts.

At heart, the Great Case was this critical conflict of faiths; that is why it was a great case. On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time--Communism and Freedom--came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men. Indeed, it would have been hard, in a world still only dimly aware of what the conflict is about, to find two other men who knew so clearly. Both had been schooled in the same view of history (the Marxist view). Both were trained by the same party in the same selfless, semisoldierly discipline. Neither would nor could yield without betraying, not himself, but his faith; and the different character of these faiths was shown by the different conduct of the two men toward each other throughout the struggle. For, with dark certitude, both knew, almost from the beginning, that the Great Case could end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending figures, just as the history of our times (both men had been taught) can end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending forces.

But this destruction is not the tragedy. The nature of tragedy is itself misunderstood. Part of the world supposes that the tragedy in the Hiss Case lies in the acts of disloyalty revealed. Part believes that the tragedy lies in the fact that an able, intelligent man, Alger Hiss, was cut short in the course of a brilliant public career. Some find it tragic that Whittaker Chambers, of his own will, gave up a $30,000-a-year job and a secure future to haunt for the rest of his days the ruins of his life. These are shocking facts, criminal facts, disturbing facts: they are not tragic.

Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy--not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation. That is why this terrible book is also a book of hope For it is about the struggle of the human soul--of more than one human soul. It is in this sense that the Hiss Case is a tragedy. This is its meaning beyond the headlines, the revelations, the shame and suffering of the people involved. But this tragedy will have been for nothing unless men understand it rightly, and from it the world takes hope and heart to begin its own tragic struggle with the evil that besets it from within and from without, unless it faces the fact that the world, the whole world, is sick unto death and that, among other things, this Case has turned a finger of fierce light into the suddenly opened and reeking body of our time.

In 1952, when the book was published, we were only seven years removed from WWII, in which FDR and Churchill had allied the West to the Soviet Union in the fight against Nazism. The great service which Chambers provided in this book, in his journalism for TIME like the imaginative Ghosts on the Roof (1945), and in the Hiss Case, was--along with Winston Churchill in his Fulton, MO speech of 1946, declaring that "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent"--to force home the realization that the war against Communism, though "Cold," was just as much a "twilight struggle" as the war against Nazism had been. For the next four decades the West, basically the United States, would pursue this war with various levels of determination and fecklessness, and would eventually win it, thanks, appropriately, to Ronald Reagan, a near contemporary of Chambers, who had been inspired by him, as reflected in that Medal of Freedom.

The problem for us looking back at Chambers, and it may make readers scoff a little at the heated rhetoric of his prose in Witness, is that the West's victory looks inevitable to us now. Several powerful institutions--like the media, the Democratic Party, and the academy--have a vested interest in portraying the Cold War as a battle in which everyone pitched in to help defeat an enemy which pretty much self-destructed anyway. The memory of the fierce opposition of the Left to the confrontation with the Soviet Union is being gradually erased from the historic memory, and along with it the acknowledgment that as late as the mid-1980's, mainstream intellectuals considered Communism to be a viable alternative to de

I have read this book and this book is very good. It is one of the best books I have read because it is filled with a lot of emotion and insight. The main character, Veronica, faces a lot of obstacles. This book shows you what it means to have no family support and having to make it through and be the best you can be. Veronica has a lot of problems and she moves on and has a better life. The characters in this book jump out and make you want to keep reading and reading. This is a fascinating book for anyone to read.

I liked this book because it reminds me of my mother. Whenever my mom was around 13 years-old her dad would go to clubs. This book should be read by teenagers because it has bad words and little kids should not be reading this kind of book. If I was Vickie I would put my stepmom in jail for beating me up. By reading this book I feel how she felt because of all the beating and cursing of her dad. I wouldn't like to be in her spot because I would probably run away from home. I think she shouldn't forgive her mom because her mom really didn't pay attention to her. I learned to have patience before doing something that you would regret later in life. Veronica had lots of patience because she never argued with her parents instead she kept things to herself.

I have read this book and I think that it is very good. It is one of the most interesting books I have really enjoyed.When I was reading it, it made me feel like I was really in the story. I think that Veronica is a very smart kid to be going to so much home problems and still managed to be in the honor classes. The book is a great way to teach children how lucky you are to have parents who care about you. This book is really good that when I was reading it I felt that I didn't want to stop reading it. I would recommend this book to my friends and family.

I had a beach Babar book as a child, so I bought this to share with my daughter. It is kind of bizarre, so keep in mind that it was written in the 1930's. First, Babar's mother is killed, as was the fate of most classic animal stories. Then, he decides to become more like men, HOW ODD! He wears clothes and walks on his back legs. Any time any of the elephants in this book wear clothes, they gain the instant ability to walk on their hind legs. When he returns to the elephants, he is crowned king, which is unlikely since elephants are matriarchal (they are led by females and grown males are banned from the group except during mating times). Then he marries his cousin, and they live happily ever after. In the spirit of Curious George, who was kidnapped from his home and forced to conform to human ways, this is a charming but very out-dated tale.

Babar first came into my life at when I was 8 and in 3rd grade. I will always remember because that was the happiest grade-school year of my whole life. I was going to private school with a wonderful, sweet teacher and awesome friends. Among all the wonderful things my teacher did with us were some of the neat things in the classroom, some being her supply of story books. Naturally as an animal lover, I grabbed this book during silent reading because I needed some reading material. Tears were streaming down my face as I began to read of Babar's mother's death, and I had tears of joy as some good people take Babar in. I remember being so touched by Babar that whenever someone would mention the word "elephant", I'd get all misty-eyed! It seems funny now but at the time it was quite a dielemma! I was too embarrassed to tell my mom and dad why I was upset so they were concerned! Then my mom went on a trip to California and visited a bunch of garage sales and found some patterns for making little felt Babar and friends dolls. No doubt, Babar had touched my life deep inside. My wonderful childhood was made richer.

Some children's books can be read over and over again, and Jean De Brunhoff's book about Babar, the little elephant is among them.
The copy we have in our house were purchasted in 1988 and has survived 4 kids. Out Marta is the forth one, and at age 6 she still loves to cuddle up with a smile on her face listening to the story of Babar. The very sad part for a six year old is the beginning where Babar's mother dies and Babar runs away. But Babar is lucky and meets an old lady who takes care of him. And the joy is always big in the end when Babar meets his childhood friends and cousins again in the end of the books. And even becomes a king and marries his cousin Celeste.
The book was written in 1939, but is still well worth reading for any child, and should be part of every lucky child's book collection. It will still be read again and again here in Norway, though the pages in the copy we have almost fall apart now (they can always be glued together again though)

Britt Arnhild Lindland