I read Molly Saves the Day for the first time when I was 9 years old. I'm now 18, and can never seem to tire of this book. Molly McIntire and her friends Linda and Susan seem more like real people and less like fictional characters in the book. Molly has her fear of swimming underwater, Susan hates canoeing, and Linda cnfides that she's afraid of bugs. Molly shows fear at first in the book, but when her whole team manages to get captured during the color war, she and Susan manage to save the day. I recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of The American Girls Collection--this one is an EXCELLENT read!

Candace

Of all the American Girls, Molly's our favorite and Molly Saves the Day our favorite Molly book. My six year old recognized that Molly, Linda and Susan, while away together at sleep-away camp, each had fears that they were forced to try to overcome. Molly is a very well-rounded character, and the fact that she is somewhat overly competitive (this shows up clearly during the camp color-wars) only makes her more realistic. She is nonetheless very likeable. Beyond Molly's character, however, my daughter simply found the book very exciting.

This was a very inspirational book. It teaches a lot of good things like team work and facing your fears. I read this book in the 5th grade and still love it! I'm in the 10th grade now!

Healthy, natural, and easy. This book puts the fun back into cooking at a time of year when there are so many other things to do. Starting the day with Lemon Blueberry Muffins followed at lunch with Jerssey Corn chowder, convinced me that this is a cookbook that will be always be open when I want my family to have wonderful food while I have the time to participate in their summer fun.

Finally a colorful and tempting cookbook that will be used by
experienced and novice cook alike. The smallest details are
taken care of......the Herbal oils are wonderful as are the vinagrettes. Trying each and every one,will extend far beyond
the summer.

My wife and I enjoy cooking while on vacation, as well as in our backyard during the summer months. We have often felt that without all the cooking tools we have at home, our success while on vacation would be hampered. The authors took special care to ensure that every recipe can be made using only the most basic utensils. The focus on keeping it simple is consistently adhered to--as the book says, as much as we enjoy great food we have better things to do on vacation than lots of preparation. We really appreciate the pantry list--which makes organizing for our summer house adventure effortless. Try the grill-roasted oysters and the heirloom tomato salad. The Aux Delices Orzo Salad is great!! Having sampled author Ponzek's fine food at Aux Delices in Greenwich, Conn. I can tell you we are thrilled to have the insight of a four-star chef translated into simple meals that we can enjoy with minimal fuss. Love it!

I have enjoyed this cookbook so much, that it has become my current favorite hostess gift! The recipes are wonderful, and I appreciate the variety of the suggested menus. Most of all, this book educates the reader with "Chefs Corner" tips and a lengthy explanation of southwestern cooking terms and proceedures. Learning how to properly roast vegetables has given a healthy boost to my repetoire, as well as introductions to other southwestern staples.The pictures are also very appealing~ this is just a delightful cookbook that I would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in colorful, healthy food.

I have used several of the menus, and have received rave reviews from all my guests. Everything I have made was FLAVORFUL,TASTY AND INTERESTING. Many of the recipes easily lend themselves to advance preparation - I prefer to spend time with my guests, and not cooking in the kitchen. There are recipes for all levels of expertise, and my 12-year old daughter has made several of the dishes. The recipes interpret historic Santa Fe cuisine in an innovative contemporary style. I am so happy to have added Summer in Santa Fe to my cookbook collection....

This absolutely gorgeous book immediately brought back memories of an idyllic summer stay I once enjoyed in Santa Fe. While the recipes themselves are quite nice, it is the photography, history of the city, and evocative intros to each section of the book that make this cookbook really stand out. The layout and design of the pages beautifully conjure the city too, with southwestern woodcut borders decorating each page. From the ripe, prettily plated blueberries on the cover, to the darling little boy in the giant sombrero in the fiesta section, this book is truly a feast for the eyes!

A former "diplobrat" who grew up abroad, I identified with Godden's description of a child's first encounter with France. The effect of their foreign adventure on each family member develops along with an excellent plot (not usually Godden's strong point). Even better than the character descriptions is the evocation of French country life at its most seductive -- "next best to being there."

This is one of those books I've bought again and again. It's a beautiful coming-of-age story set in the French countryside. I first read it back when the earth was cooling, and I have no idea what became of that original copy. I bought it again as an adult, loaned it to a friend and never saw it again. I recently bought it yet a third time, a used copy on Amazon, and this one I'm not loaning out.
Greengage Summer is a delicious melange of mystery, romance, travel writing, and character study. I'm surprised it's no longer in print, because I truly think it's a classic. It started me reading everything Rumer Godden's written. I like her writing tremendously, but Greengage Summer is her best.
When Mum is confined to bed in a small French village, her children are left on their own in the pensione. It's mainly the story of the oldest daughter's blossoming toward maturity, but it's more, much more, than what appears on the surface.
Read it, and loan it to a friend - but be sure you get it back!

Like many of the other reviewers here, I first read this book when I was about 13. (I am now in my 40's). A few years ago I was lucky enough to find a copy, but was nervous that perhaps it wouldn't be as good as I remembered...however I enjoyed it at least as much as I did when I first read it! I just gave this book to my 11 year old daughter and am enjoying watching her fall in love with it too. The characters are so fascinating, and the descriptions of the french countryside, the old hotel in which the story takes place, and the food just transport you. You hate to see the book end!
Rumer Godden is a fabulous writer of both adult and childrens' books; this is definitely my favorite.

I like this book from the first page.It is about two bosom buddies,Rory and Derek.They will never do things separately.No matter what happens,they will stick together.That's what I like to have-someone around my age who has the same interests and hobbies like me.But when their neighbour's great niece,Bolivia,comes to their neighbourhood,Rory and Derek swore not to talk to her and also to ignore her.Rory hates Bolivia from first sight but slowly,Derek begins to like her.Then,something that never happened to Derek and Rory happened-a quarrel.Derek decides to go to camp and Rory tries to avoid Derek and Bolivia.Rory slowly learns to like and adore Bolivia.They do a lot of things that Rory has never done like making snowballs with icecream.There are a lot of comical parts which will make you laugh like hell.I won't tell you the whole story.But I bet you will enjoy this book and make it your favourite book.

I like this book. My favorite character is Bolivia, a girl who lives with her relatives because her parents are in Turkey. The reason I like Bolivia is because she is funny. For example, she dumped her drink all over Rory! (Derek and Rory are friends but do not like Bolivia.) I also like Bolivia's talking parrot named "Lucette". I like it when Lucette chases Rory all over the house. I also like their friendship. An especially good part was when Rory and Derek (They have know become friends with Bolivia) have a contest to see who can eat the most pizza! They tie 5 pieces each. At the end they have a surprise party for Bolivia because she is leaving. They all get tee-shirts that say "Bolivia More Than Another Country" It's a great book!

This book was on my reading rendezous list. I read it and it was really good. It's one of
those books where it it is funny, exciting, and kind of weird! It's about these two guys,
Derek and Rory. They're best friends and they plan to do all this fun stuff in the summer but their
their neighbors' great niece Bolivia is coming for the summer and, well, I'll just let you read
the rest. If you are in the middle of trying to find a good book, consider reading this!

I like how each Saddle Club member had a problem. Lisa had a different cabin at camp than her two best friends, Stevie's boyfriend wasn't paying attention to her, and Carole was assigned a horse who has a mind of his own. I can't wait too read "Summer Ride", the next book in line.

This is the time of book you like to read more than once! It was terrific. You really felt like you were at ridiing camp with them. I suggest this to horselovers everywhere!

I think Summer Horse was a great book,because everyone was working together to help Carole find out why Ditto didn't respond to her commands.In the end was good because Carole finally realizes why Ditto did't respond to her commands.

Audio Reality is a worthwhile investment for anyone interested in DIY valve audio. Half of the book is devoted to an examination of 6 amplifier designs created by the author, and includes construction and testing advice, parts lists and schematics. The most interesting of the 6 projects featured are the author's well-known "grounded-grid" preamplifier and his 80W/channel output transformerless power amplifier. Any DIY enthusiast who is looking for something a bit more challenging than usual would find these designs fascinating.
The first half of the book is a series of articles which set out to debunk some commonly held opinions amongst audio enthusiasts. Whilst the author is not totally dismissive of these ideas he is clearly sceptical about most. He does, however, provide sound electrical and engineering justification for his views and confines his harshest criticism for the more extreme "myths".
The only fault I found with the book is the author's style, which is a little self-congratulatory and indulgent at times, however that does not detract from the sound advice and excellent designs.

The book is for anybody who is in search for the "audio-truth" and is willing to make the journey with his/hers own feet, with a nice bag of solid tools to exorcise magicians and witches along the way. The author strives to make you aware of three things: 1) You and you only is the one who has to judge your equipment and be happy with it. 2) You need clear, unambiguos, real-world informations to sharpen your critical mind and be able to choose equipment free of myth and magic. 3) High-end audio does not necessarily mean high-end cost. To me, he made all his points. You may believe that a extraordinary expensive cable is an audio revolution, but if you are honest with yourself, after reading this book you have to ask yourself WHY... Knowledge in the audio arena helps you to have more fun, less fears, and a fuller pocket. The second half of the book is devoted to several tube projects that are interestingly detailed with design choices, but near to impossible to realize if you are not skilled to translate an electric scheme into real parts and wire routings; definately not for the beginners. I would have much liked a wiring and components layout to complement the circuit analisys. These projects are not theorical, Rozenblit actually commercially builds and sells what is detailed in the book, so in more than a way he publicly expose his ideas, engineering style and convinctions to anybody who cares to check... in my opinion much more than can be said of the great majority of competitors. See for yourself.

This book is an exceptional book on audio reality. It really deals with some of the most common myths regarding "high end tube audio". I really loved to see someone tell the tube audio newcomers what it's all about these silver capacitors / cables and all the rest of weired and crazy part selection game.

Although I know that one can have exceptional good sound from a few watts on horn speakers, Bruce Rozenblit is certainly true with his designs when it goes to normal speakers. I have heard the OTL design and must say, that it is a very impressive and excellent sounding amplifier.

Must read for anyone starting to build his own tube audio equipment!

Melanie Martin is back from Italy. She is now done with 4th grade (which I just finished, too!). She, her ever-serious dad, her art-loving mom, her six-and-a-half yr. old brother, Matt the Brat, and her best friend Cecily. She is SOO excited to be traveling again, especially with a friend!

The reason Cecily is going with them is because her mom, who Melanie never really liked, had breast cancer. Later in the book, Melanie realizes that Cecily's mother really isn't so bad after all. But 'Mellie' just is not very sensitive towards her best friend.

Melanie is frustrated with her parents, her brother, and especially Cecily. She is sick of hearing everyone dish out compliments to Cecily. Cecily is a good artist, Cecily looks great in royal blue, Cecily is such a good sport, Cecily says the most interesting things. Mel is pretty upset, as I would be. Not admirable,but quite true. In the end, she has a great vacation and she makes up with her pal.

This book was not perfect, but pretty darn good nonetheless. Written in diary form, this very realistic young girl teaches us Dutch words, info about artists, and how to deal with tough stuff. If you are an 8-10 year old girl who is smart enough to ask questions about breast cancer after reading this book, then pick this up at your local bookstore.

The name of this book might make you think it's just for girls. It;s not. Matt is really funny and it's cool to read about the different countries they visit.

This book is really funny. It made me laugh a lot. I enjoyed learning all about Holland, especially the artists from there like Vermeer, Rembrandt and Van Gogh. I liked seeing a new place through the eyes of a person my age. Melanie's trip reminded me of when I travel with my family (lots of excitement, lots of squabbles). I keep a journal at school, and I liked being able to read somebody else's journal. I hope Carol Weston writes more Melanie Martin books soon. I want to read them all.

Mr. Kahn turns back the clock to the days when baseball was the true American pastime. His anecdotes and interviews about Mantle, Mays, and Early Wynn bring these individuals to life more than any statistics possibly could. His love of his father is written about in such a profound manner that is timeless. In all a classic piece of Americana that hopefully will be read fifty years from now.

Kahn's most recent work, _Memories of Summer_, is a very thoughtfull look to the golden years of baseball, set in the context of Kahn's childhood and career as a journalist. Simply put, it is a must-have for any serious baseball fan, cultural anthropologist, or anyone else wondering how the game used to be and the importance that it played in the lives of fans. Throughout, Kahn manages to capture, quite superbly, the romanticism of the era, focusing specifically on perhaps the very epitome of that romanticism, the bumbling bums of Brooklyn. He very adequately portrays the love affair that so many in Brooklyn had with the team, as well as give an indication of why they are remembered so reverently today. Kahn also laces his story with his interactions with baseball celebrities, including Leo Durocher, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinson. My one drawback is that Kahn occasionally gets somewhat preachy when addressing race and racial discrimination during the time. Obviously, a certain amount of preaching is in order, but in my humble opinion it goes a step too far. Otherwise, however, the narrative that Kahn weaves, beginning in his childhood (the relationship with his father and how that relates to baseball is especially noteworthy) and tracing his career in journalism through newspapers and magazines is wonderful, easy to follow, and extremely well-written. I completely agree with the earlier reviewer who commented on the issue of "turning corners" in the book, and I would add one more - expansion to the West Coast and baseball turning the corner to become a two-coast sport. The reader can't help but feel the sorrow and bitterness that is left following the move of the Dodgers to California. This is a fantastic composition, a true gem by one of America's premier sports writers. Happy reading!

I was fortunate enough to receive a preview copy of this book a few weeks before its release because I was interviewing Mr. Kahn on a radio interview program.

As soon as I started reading, I was hooked. Although I was not alive during the 1950's, I have always been fascinated with baseball during that era, particularly the lovable Brooklyn Dodgers. Kahn's latest book does such a wonderful job of describing what it was like to be around baseball every day in that bygone era.

The easiest interview I have ever done was that one I did with Roger. His love for baseball was evident from the first question I asked him. His insight gained from covering the Dodgers in the 1950's is something every baseball fan could use. In this season of home runs, the average fan is once again starting to appreciate baseball. Roger Kahn will make you appreciate it even more.

I enjoyed this book very much but I am giving it four stars because it has a lot of editing errors that need to be corrected. This is a novel about a young man, Trevor, growing up in the '60s who like so many people during that time hears a different drummer and after following his path through the bohemian Topanga Canyon lifestyle in Southern California and breaking up with his girlfriend as their life-styles and values become increasingly divurgent, heads north to the Monterey Pop Festival and the hippie haven of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.
As Trevor encounters several synchronicities and follows their trail his path takes a spiritual turn and through the use of first LSD and then meditation he opens to a deeper understanding of what is happening during the Movement in SanFrancisco and all over the world during that Summer of Love. He meets a small community of people who are studying with a Master, a type of guru of transcendental spirituality, and they learn that there is a deliberate shift in consciousness that is being encouraged and supported from beings of high vibrational realms. The Flower Power era is NOT a coincidence but a deliberate paradigm shift. The book resonated with me because I grew up during that time and in those very same places and it rang very true to life. The 1960s was a complex, lovely, brutal, exciting and mind-expanding time, a time when many people took quantum leaps in their spiritual, emotional, intellectual and artistic growth. This short, sweet novel expresses some explanations for the climate of that time. It offers insight into how many people were feeling and thinking. The main character, Trevor, is portrayed very realistically and develops from a curious and open-minded young person into a seeking and realizing pilgrim on the path of self-actualization, peace, amd harmony. So many of us trod that same path. The '60s was not the same thing for everyone, my experience was much more political than Trevor's, I took way more LSD and listened to way more rock 'n roll, but my spirit opened up in exactly the same way to a unique vibration that almost seemed to be in the air and the water at the time. If you lived during that time you may enjoy a nostalgic look backward. If that is not your era you may enjoy this lovely window into a part of that experience.
At a time when the world seems to have forgotten how to love, this gentle book can go a long way toward reminding us of the capacity we all share for harmony and unity and peace. It might nudge you into recognizing how much fear you carry around with you and help you lay that aside in favor of love. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...and read this book.

This generally well-executed and hard-to-put-down book is a fictional(ized) reminiscence about What Really Happened according to someone who was at ground zero when the love bomb went off.

That is, I _think_ it's fictionalized. At the very least, author David Rey Echt has changed his name to "Trevor" for the purposes of the narrative. I don't know how much of it is really supposed to have happened. But it doesn't matter, because the novel is true in the most important sense: something really did happen during the Summer of Love, and it wasn't just that a bunch of kids did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex.

Zen master Seung Sahn once remarked to his then-disciple-and-protege Stephen Mitchell that the hippie mind was just a quarter-inch away from enlightenment. You'll find similar views echoed everywhere from Stephen Gaskin and Ram Dass to (more recently) Skip Stone's _Hippies A to Z_ and John Bassett McCleary's _The Hippie Dictionary_. And on my own website I write as follows: "It may be best to regard the hippie movement, on its spiritual side, as a recent example of that perennial underground countercultural mysticism that always seems to swell up, like grass through the cracks in the sidewalk, whenever a dogmatic and/or authoritarian worldview, religious or otherwise, holds cultural sway."

So you may well imagine that I'll be sympathetic to a novel suggesting that at the heart of all of this is a spiritual event that . . . well, I'd better not spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet. But fictional or not, the personal journey described in this book is realistic, and the spiritual advice is sound. (For whatever it's worth, this review is being written by someone who has been known to tote around a battered copy of Stephen Gaskin's _This Seasons' People._) Echt has clearly done his spiritual homework.

What can I tell you _without_ spoiling anything? Just that it follows the travels of a young man named Trevor from Topanga Canyon to San Francisco on a journey of spiritual enlightenment.

I can also tell you that there's some serious mojo in this book (or, more precisely, accessible "through" it, if you know what I mean). There are a few passages that will actually give you the spiritual equivalent of a contact high just from reading them. That's a nice feature, given the aim of the book.

If you lived through this period of time (whether or not you were at ground zero), this book will help to remind you of its real meaning. If not, the first-person narrative will show you what the air tasted like, so to speak. Either way, this text can push you a little further toward mindfulness, if you want it to.

One last thing -- I absolutely hate to Deduct Points For Spelling, so I'm going to pretend I gave it four and a half stars. But the reader should be aware that there are lots of typos and grammatical gaffes that got past the proofreader(s). This doesn't bother everybody, and I don't have any particular problem reading around such things myself. (And I think it's good to be understanding about the fact that, particularly at non-mainstream publishers, authors are often left to proofread their own books.) Nevertheless, if you _do_ care about such things, be warned.

In today's impersonal, sometimes overly materialistic world, reading Messenger from the Summer of Love was like deeply inhaling into a peppermint-saturated mouth. In either case, the experience is invigorating, intoxicating, and creates a sense of renewal for the tired soul. Once I began the journey with David or Trevor (I wonder if they are one and the same), I found myself unable to rest until journey's end.

This book is about the rites of passage of the baby boomer 'sect' that took place during the 60's, at a time when we believed in the possibilities of love and endeavored to change the world. For those of us who lived in California or 'progressive' metropolitan areas at the time, the characters are universal and familiar. The story was engaging enough to cause me to stay up late reading, in spite of an early morning meeting on the following day. It moves at the perfect pace, carrying the reader back in time through well-documented and amply portrayed scenes, invoking group memories.

This was a time when we were experimenting with consciousness-politically, socially and spiritually. Somehow during the ensuing years, we have allowed ourselves to close down, to become afraid. According to David Echt, the author, people are "afraid to let their children play, afraid of how people will react if they smile at a stranger and afraid to be children." He fears that we've lost 'something precious.' I share his fear; yet, I feel this story of remembrance may serve a purpose. Perhaps it will help us reconnect with the collective dream of brotherhood we had when we were younger and less jaded by the world. I highly recommend this book.