Now in a revised and expanded second edition, Grandloving: Making Memories With Your Grandchildren is more effective than ever as a compendium of tips, ideas and suggestions for grandparents to bond with their grandchildren. More than two hundred fun and easy activities drawn from 350 families are presented along with sound advice, helpful suggestions, and inexpensive do-together projects. Whether it something special for family holidays and celebrations, or just a rainy-day or weekend visit pastime, Grandloving will have everything you need to plan and implement a truly memory making event. Enthusiastically recommended for grandparents of any age or circumstance, Grandloving's engaging, "reader friendly" text is enhanced with reminders about child development, an extensive list of resources, helpful logos, and an easy-to-use index.

This book has great information for anyone who works with children ! Of course grandmothers are always looking for ideas and new things to do with grandchildren. Offering specific activities, as well as helpful information, this book is a MUST HAVE for any grandmother. It's also a PERFECT gift for any adult who has grandchildren.

This book covers the gamut when it comes to finding fun things to do with children. Because my new grandson is 800 miles away, I especially liked all of the long-distance grandparenting ideas. I would recommend it to anyone, mothers and fathers as well as grandparents.

Sue Frederick has written about natural products for years. When her daughter was born, she consulted experts about the best ways to keep her healthy. She shares all that's she learned in A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally. She focuses on preventing disease and emphasizes that, while antibiotics can sometimes be very useful, they are not the solution for most childhood ailments. Frederick says that "natural medicine does hold the answers we're looking for."

She begins with breast feeding and the benefits it offers to children's immune systems. She then moves to a discussion of nutrition in general, saying that "the food you feed your child creates the foundation for her future health." Frederick warns strongly against giving children fruit juice, citing the effect all the sugar in it has on juvenile immune systems.

She devotes a chapter to the issue of childhood immunizations, describing each one and emphasizing that parents have the right to choose whether or not to have their children immunized.

Frederick also discusses nurturing, saying that "if your child feels truly loved and knows that you'll always be there for her, that inner peace and sense of security will help strengthen her immunity and ability to fight off illnesses." She includes commentary from a variety of experts, explaining how they've helped their children develop spiritually.

One section of the book is devoted to specific natural remedies for common childhood illness, such as colds, fever, colic, earaches, etc. Frederick then includes a complete discussion of the use of herbs, homeopathy, flower essences, Chinese medicine, and nutritional supplements, all with age-appropriate dosages.

She finishes with a "Child's Materia Medica," which explains how to use various natural remedies, and suggestions for a home health care kit, enabling parents to have everything needed on hand.

Jay Gordon, M.D. writes in the foreword: "Sue Frederick's book has helped me--and would help every doctor, health-care practitioner, and parent--remember one crucial fact: A child's body will heal itself naturally if we stay out of the way and use gentle remedies, wisdom, and guidance." Readers will find that A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally provides all the information they need to keep their children healthy and happy.

I met the author at her booksigning. Although, I don't have children, I believed in her message and intended to give this book to my sister-in-law. It was so good, I kept it for myself. The sections on supplements, homeopathy, and flower essences are so informative and easy to read. Anybody could apply this information to improve their health. I will buy more books to give to friends who have children. This book should be in every parent's library.

This book offers so many insites into raising a healthy and happy child and specifics about what to do to keep your child healthy or get them healthy again if they've gotten sick - and without drugs and chemicals. Like most mothers I do not want to give my daughter unnecessary drugs, but I also hate to see her sick or uncomfortable. These natural remedies WORK and I feel good about using them. It is so great to have someone really help you when you have that horrible feeling of not knowing how to best help your child. This book is like having a trustworthy healer right in your home. Thanks Sue Frederick for your help.

This is great book for learning statistics. The best I've seen so far. Statistics is a subject I hate, but this book has given me hope. I know use it as a supplement for other textbooks. It was a book that was written with the student in mind. I am in a class with an awful stats book now, Statistical Methods for Psychology. But, the Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences text will be a permanent fixture on my shelf and I recommend it often. I will continue to look for textbooks written by these guys. Thanks, you made one of my semesters much better.

OK, here it is: I am a math phobic, have been all my life, as long as I can remember myself! So, when I started studying psychology as a second degree, I was kind of anxious about taking all kinds of statistics courses: it seems that statistics are a major part of any psychology degree, & so it was important for me to learn them well, from the beginning. Well, with this book (which I shopped around for, looking for the best introductory book on the subject) my math-phobia has not disappeared, but is slowly & surely getting smaller & smaller. This is a textbook that guides you, step by step, so you can understand all the basic concepts of statistics, without feeling you're making an effort. Lots of problem-solving & learning checks help, lots of revision at the end of each chapter...the book is organized in an excellent & thoughtful way, perfect for a student who will take the time sto study (it covers almost everything) but who wants to do it in an organized way.

I used an older copy of this book as an undergrad and was asked by a fellow doctoral student what I might recommend for use as a good stats book for the "stat phobic" ... Hands down, I say that THIS is the book to use. I've used thinner stats books that pretend to be cute. But if "cute" is not what you need, and you need to learn the stuff as well as reference the stuff. This is the book for you.

I suppose I ought to update my copy ;-) mine is dog eared!

Need stats? Buy this book to learn. Good stuff!

We are particularly fond of this book because it provides a comprehensive review of universities and colleges based on majors, size, and geographic region. Even if the college applicant has a particular focus with his or her college selection, this book is still likely to open your eyes to possibilities you may have otherwise overlooked. This guide is very useful for its thorough research and inclusion of smaller regional schools that excel in a particular field but do not get the same publicity as the more prestigious national schools.

This book has been a perennial leader in college reference books. And, this edition is no different. It gives you all the information about all the colleges. But, how do you make the right choice? Want the answer? As an education counsellor, I'll tell you what I have been telling many others. The answer is UNDERSTANDING, understanding the REAL purpose of college education --- what our founding fathers, especially education pioneer Thomas Jefferson, said was absolutely critical that college education accomplish for both you and our Nation. I recommend, before you do anything, that you first read the only book about understanding higher education --- "West Point", by Norman Thomas Remick. In it, Thomas Jefferson explains in simple language, through his founding of West Point (hence, the title), the reasons for having colleges in America. It's a heads up that will help you make the right decision and save you from making a big, life-altering mistake down the road by bringing everything into clear focus for you. Once you understand and have a clear perspective, then go on and pour over the college reference books, especially the five-star "Rugg's Recommendations On Colleges".

Most of us know (or think we know)the top schools around the U.S. But if your high school student already has a solid interest in a particular major, this guide will open your eyes to possibilities you never knew existed. Rugg's extensive research finds those smaller regional and private schools which excel in a particular field but do not get the same publicity as the big name universities.

If your child is leery of taking on a campus of 40,000 students or doesn't want to be 2,000 miles from home, this guide will help you find outstanding institutions of all sizes and in nearly every part of the country. Our son will be pursuing some area of computer science, and we found many highly-rated schools in this guide which were completely new to us. What is also interesting is to look at the listings for some majors and see what "name brand" schools are missing from the list. Don't assume that just because a particular college or university is of general high quality that it truly excels in the field your child wants to study!

Give your college-bound child a REAL choice and eliminate much of the guesswork by using Rugg's.

The mystery of our lives. The oddity of memory. The things that make us who we are. Frederick Buechner explores all of these topics in the first volume of his autobiographies, "The Sacred Journey."

Slowly--word by word and line by line, Buechner has won my respect as an author. How he unravels the story of his own life, how he makes the past breathe, gives it life...it has all combined to deepen my esteem for him. He is one of the greatest living authors.

Buechner's honest search for something universal in his story has captivated me. We all stand, in one way or another, in the shadows of our own lives. Alone, we cannot even comprehend the whole of our own journeys. The value of Buechner's excavation of his past is that when others view it, it may help them see the importance of their own journey.

In spite of the author's uncertainness about writing them, I have found Buechner's autobiographies to be of great value. I am thankful for the man's openness, courage and skill (they are fun to read).

I give "The Sacred Journey" my wholehearted recommendation.

I have read The Magnificent Defeat, Godric and the meditation book, Listening to Your Life. I've read other books by Richard Rohr that have blown me away in how they've illuminated Christianity for me but I've never read anything quite so beautiful, so rich with humanity as this slim little volume.

It is rare that words fail me but it seems that anything I could say about this work wouldn't do it any justice at all. It's not about Christianity, it's about looking into your life, listening to all the strangeness, horror and wonder and perchance finding what God might be saying.

and still my words fail. Read this and take the journey yourself. You'll see what I mean.

Do not be misled -- this first of Buechner's four autobiographical works is slim, but there is much to be found here -- much that will make the reader connect with the author and reflect on his or her own life.

A feeling of quiet comes over one during the reading. This is intensely personal, intensely honest writing. I was prompted to examine my own life as directly and intently, wondering why I had never done so before. Truthfully, wondering if I could.

Highly recommended, as are the works that follow.

Peter Simple is the tale of a young British midshipman seeking his fame and fortune on the high seas. Set during the Napoleonic wars, it offers comedy and adventure in an old-school style.

Originally released in serialized form, Peter Simple is a fun, straight-forward adventure novel. It was a best-seller in it's time (1833) and holds up beautifully. I think this will appeal to anyone who ever thrilled to the works of Rafael Sabatini, Bernard Cornwell, or Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel. It's an easy read and great fun !

Frederick Marryat was a sea captain who served under the famous Lord Cochrane. This book was an inspiration to such later writers as Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forster. It is a little like Tom Jones in that it episodic, even picaresque. It is very funny in parts, in a way that O'Brian is not--you get the sense that Marryatt is weaving in incidents and characters from his own naval career. It certainly helps to have read O'Brian for a deep understanding of the culture, but with Marryat you feel at times that you are in touch with the real thing.

Another good book in the Heart of Oak series. This novel was quite the opposite of the last one in the series I read, "The Black Ship". I think both novels give good pictures of how life was on the British sailing ships but in "Peter Simple" the crew seems to have a lot of fun and good times as well as taking their work very seriously. They are able to joke around a good bit and enjoy life. This seems much more realistic to me based on my own experiences at sea. "Peter Simple" is written by an actual man of war captain from the Napoleanic era and so probably portrays a much more accurate picture of life on a British man of war than any of the other similar novels. I really liked the novel. Although some of the coincidences and the ending especially are a little too much like a "ladies romance novel" I still think O'Brian fans would enjoy this novel too. The sea battles and ship maneuvers are every bit as good as O'Brian.

This is a very worthwhile little mystery read, very much like being in Britain in the company of political and government sorts without any special consideration being given to explain the asides to us silly colonials.

Anglophiles might enjoy this more than general mystery readers, and it helps a lot to be familiar with the history of the 50s and 60s in Britain. Even so, the characters are well-delineated and the situations speak for themselves, so fear not.

A SCANDAL IN BELGRAVIA is a very different sort of book, even for an author of Robert Barnard's excellent capabilities. Written in first person, it is narrated in a most engaging and chatty style by a former politician, Peter Proctor, who is (as are most retired politicians) working on his memoirs. But Peter Proctor was not just any politician, to be sure. He didn't rise very high, although he did achieve the status of senior cabinet minister, as well as being an MP for several terms. What sets him apart, however, is that, when his career began in the Foreign Office, in the early to middle 1950s, England was trying to get itself back on the right foot again, after struggling through the War, only to find itself engaged in the massive blunder that was the Suez crisis. Proctor had already resigned his post in the F.O., but was still shocked and unhappy by the brutal death of his friend, Timothy Wycliffe. The bigger mystery is why this death received so little press coverage. Tim's death also causes a monumental 'writer's block' in the mature Proctor, who decides to investigate the still-unsolved crime for himself. The book takes us back and forth in time, as Proctor exercises his memory as well as himself while digging for the facts.

Of course, it was Suez that occupied so much newspaper space, but still, one would have thought that such a shocking death, and one with such a propensity for scandal and gossip, would have rated more than the occasional one sentence it did achieve. For Tim was very open (for that time) about his homosexuality, and that was obviously the motive behind the murder. At that time, such behavior was very much against the law, and was an imprisonable offence. To be sure, Tim was the grandson of a marquess, but still--

Not at all impressed with himself, Proctor is by turns still naïve (cocooned, he calls it), prescient, dogged, and most of all, a man at ease with himself. A man who, thirty-five years earlier, could have a good friend who was homosexual, while still being very hetero himself.

It would appear that a young man, employed as an electrician by the BBC, Andrew Forbes, was labelled as the murderer, but everyone who will speak to Proctor, discounts that possibility. When Proctor travels to the US to, with any luck, confront Forbes, he finds himself believing the story he is told. Tim was alive, although battered, when Forbes left him.

With the help of his children, his researcher, old friends, and others, Proctor pulls away the layers of concealment to expose the perpetrator of the crime. By the time you've made the journey with Proctor, you'll definitely wish for more politicians in his mold, regardless of whether Whig or Tory, Labor or Conservative, Republican or Democrat. I promise you won't soon forget this book, especially the final few pages. Guaranteed to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck!

Robert P. Barnard has written a slew of books. To me, the only thing any one of them has in common with any other one, other than being a very enjoyable reading experience, is the marvelous writing accompanied by a very shart wit. The wit usually presents itself in different ways, depending on the plot and the characters, of course, but it is still ever-present. Hardly surprising, then, that he's won so many awards. They're all well-deserved.

As a 30 year old gay man the topic appealed to me. Which is the murder of a gay man in the 1950's. I was not disappointed. This is a well written mystery and the ending is without a doubt one of the best I have read in years. My hat goes off to Mr. Barnard on a superb job. I hope he continues to write mysteries as good as this one.

Beautiful "coffee table" book. The author's love for the pictorial material in his collection and this book shows at every page. The author is at his best with the "post-Goddard" material and 20th century representations of space flight. Being the proud owner of some of the original, older material, I did notice that a couple of captions for Flammarion and Terzi are wrong but I am just being picky... Enjoy!

Collections are a mirror of the collector's soul, and Ordway's Visions of Spaceflight certainly does reveal one of his passions. He indulged this passion by traveling around the world collecting works of art and books related to space and space travel, ranging from the earliest works around 165 CE to the late 1900s. In college, he studied mining and petroleum geology, later shifting into rocket engineering and writing. He wrote several works with Werner von Braun, served as technical advisor to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and fed his soul by collecting. The book is visually impressive, with reproductions ranging from small to full-page in black and white or in color. The forward was written by Clarke. Ordway's very informative introduction traces his hunt for literature and art and discusses highlights in his various careers. The paintings and other pictures are annotated, giving the reader historical details as well as visual experience. One problem is the brittle binding, which may split if the book is carried around in a book bag; otherwise it is highly recommended for any space enthusiast's collection.

All of the paintings in this volume are dated, the paintings are for the most part not accurate as we see spaceflight today, but their historical value is immense. For example, early paintings of the lunar surface often exhibit sharp peaks on mountains, of course we now know eons of cosmic bombardment smoothly rounded most features. Text at the beginning of this book explain how these paintings were collected over many years, they date from before the 1600's to the 1950's, a fascinating story in itself, and there is also a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. Each painting is accompanied by a caption in this large-format book.

From our perspective today many of these paintings look very quaint, though when they were first published they must have appeared very futuristic. Buy this book for it's historical and art value, not for scientific accuracy.

The experiments in this book are very basic and simple fun activities that are easy to follow and which children -even adults- will enjoy. The book simplifies and explains many fundamental scientific concepts that we encounter daily. The scope of these experiments is very wide , from daily science to weather, chemistry,... which are all implemented with very readily available items. This is a book that will keep inquisitive children motivated and busy for hours, they will especially love the science tricks. The second book : "365 More Science Experiments with Everyday Materials" complements this book. One should get them both!

I purchased this book for the science division of our home schooling studies. It is laid out very well and it's easy to understand.

Using materials most people have around the house you can simply flip to the beginning and follow the headings for ideas.

What can you use straws for? Try out the section on "Clutching at Straws", make an Oboe, balance scale, spear a potato, etc.

Would you like to know other uses for lemon juice? Start on page 36. Keep going- check out soap suds, strings, paper cups, experiments with temperature, etc.

Basically you get it, you could spend many great minutes or hours teaching your kids through hands on learning.

Many of these can be done by an older child with very little help- a perfect solution to the "I'm bored" problem.

Please- turn of the TV, electronic games. etc. and let them use their brains- actively.

This is a wonderful book, one that every household would benefit from.

I've picked up many books which claim to demonstrate science with "everyday materials." Most times the "everyday materials" are not something I keep on hand. Like cheesecloth. Who keeps cheesecloth on hand? But the demonstrations in this book really are simple and really do include basic household supplies. I've used the book with my five year old and have found the demonstrations and explanations to be thorough enough to engage his interest. And I've enjoyed myself too!

"Ralph the Duck", the second item in ABSENT FRIENDS, is my favorite short story. This first-person account by a Vietnam veteran hooks the reader with a funny golden retriever who loves what makes him sick (Think about it). The narrator is a part-time college student, taking one free class a session in partial payment for his job as a security guard. He figures it'll take him sixteen years to graduate.
The story is heavily laced with irony in that the student tests the teacher. The narrator (I couldn't find a name) turns in a paper entitled "Ralph the Duck", which seems entirely inappropriate for an assignment in rhetoric and persuasion (You'll need to read the story several times before you figure out why he felt it met the assignment).
We've all met teachers like the professor. He never wears a suit. He sports khakis and sweaters, loafers or sneakers. Ironed dungarees.
There's lots of sardonic humor. The narrator says, "Slick characters like my professor like it if you're a killer or at least a onetime middleweight fighter."
The story picks up pace when a red-headed co-ed takes some pills during a snowstorm and disappears, and our hero is off to the rescue. The redhead is the professor's "advisee".
Although the story is twenty pages long, it is very sparely written. As I was reading it, I thought to myself, "This would make a really good novel." Apparently Busch did, too. It's called GIRLS. If you can't figure out "Ralph the Duck", read the novel.

RALPH THE DUCK is simply one of the best short stories I've ever read. It is absolute MUST reading for the developing writer, though it may make you feel miserable, as its level of mastery is intimidating. It is simple and unforgettable.

I'm actually sorry Frederick expanded the story into "GIRLS". It works far better as the punch to the stomach it is in short-story form.

This collection of stories will whet your appetite for more from this fine, fine upstate New York writer.

In "From the New World," the first of the fourteen stories in this collection by Frederick Busch, a producer with a liking for Melville encourages a writer to develop a script where people learn things without overhearing them. Busch follows his character's advice: these stories are about loss -- the loss, by sympathetic, everyday people, of a parent, spouse, sibling, or child -- and yet the dimensions of their loss, sometimes even the fact of the loss itself, are only hinted at. The stories are remarkably affecting, the characters are credible and interesting, and the dialogue is right on.