If you need to read about Puerto Rico or are doing research, this should be your first stop. This book is the most comprehensive and well documented book ever written on the legal situation of Puerto Rico. Anybody who has anything to do with the island needs to read this book first.

This was a book that painted pictures with wonderful clearity. I always wondered if there was a sequel to this book. I had heard another one was in the works, DAY OF THE MINOTAUR? I loaned the book out and never got it back, but I will find it again and re-read it many times.

Written for young people. grades 4-8, this is an interesting biography for Frances Hodgson Burnett fans of all ages. She was the Danielle Steel of her day, crossing the Atlantic 33 times. Her comings, goings, and divorces made front-page news in The New York Times and in other newspapers. This biography, which School Lihrary Journal says "reads like a good novel," offers many quotations from Frances and her friends, plus photos and illustrations from her books and plays. This review is written by the author--can you tell? For a slide-illustrated lecture call 561 965-4155

An absolutely astounding work. Ghost Dance is so intricately detailed,yet, expertly delivered, that I suspect this writer has published many other works under a different name. It is an emotional roller coaster, nail-biting, edge of your seat dark thriller that is impossible to put down. It suggests at the end that a sequel is in the works, God I hope so.

This was a fascinating and intriguing book. It focuses on the 6 (which is now recently 5) major labels and their international/global market share. It focuses on Warner, Sony, EMI, BMG, MCA and Polygram; and how these transnationals BY FAR dominate the whole music industry worldwide. An oligopoly exists in the music industry. These transnationals have expanded globally as they realized that music is a GLOBAL business. Here is the 1997 worldwide market share: MCA=5.6% BMG=12.1%, Warner=13.1%, Sony=14.5%, Polygram=16.7%, EMI=15.3%, and the indie labels=22.8%. So, the majors control 77% of the world market! Wow! "Because they control so much of the entertainment industry, the oligopolist firms are able to prevent smaller, specialist firms from surviving in popular music niches...As small firms make considerable inroads into the market, large firms respond by absorbing them through merger or joint venture..." ...I have many, many books on the music business, but this book is definitely one of the best. It takes an intriguing look into the global aspect of the music industry in which these majors dominate. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the music business!

An interesting novel about the inhabitants of a large Victorian household. It features a pair of over-bearing parents who are dominiating this mysterious home's occupants. The conversations revolve around the makings of successful marriages. It is significant that the white males of the story are always attempting to boss the women around, as if they had no choices to make in any matters at all. An extraordinary work by a feminist novelist of genius.

I'm beginning to become addicted to these little neglected treasures that the NYRB Press is reissuing. Not only are the editions themselves little marvels (with beautiful and well-chosen color covers and gorgeous paper stock), but whoever is making the choices for which books are reissued has near-infallible taste.

A HOUSE AND ITS HEAD, like so many of Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels, reads something like a modern updating of a Greek tragedy: most of the novel is told through dialogue, there is a kind of chorus that comments on the action of the principal characters, and the plot involves murder, incest, and familial cruelty. Yet for all these borrowings Compton-Burnett paradoxically remains wonderfully sui generis: no one else has ever mastered her capability for evoking such extreme subtlety in manners that the merest cruel nuances can become evoked (if one reads carefully enough). She is also a master plotter: just when you think you've caught up with the characters' schemes, she allows the other characters in the novel to make similar realizations, and then jumps even further ahead. This is a real page-turner as well as a subtle commentary on Edwardian manners and moral monstrousness.

If The World Were Blind... is an especial picturebook written by Karen Gedig Burnett and illustrated by Laurie Barrows for the purpose of teaching young readers about judgement and prejudice. Every two-page spread of the book is initially colored black, with only people's words and thoughts as well as main text standing out. Every two-page spread then folds out into a long mural twice the length of the open book, which brings the words in darkness to vibrant, colorful life, showing the people of all shapes and sizes who are thinking or saying the words that were printed on darkness before. While the foldouts make If The World Were Blind... more delicate than an ordinary picturebook, it is much sturdier than a pop-up book, and the format soundly drives home the book's conceptual message - that if people were not so quick to judge based on what they see at first glance, then everyone could learn and accept more from one another. "If the world were blind it wouldn't matter if someone were/short or tall, large or small, had an athletic body or a potbelly, perfect teeth or a toothless smile.../...it would matter only that they were / honest and fair." Very highly recommended for school and community library collections.

For anyone who wants to learn more about "The Secret Garden" and its author--where the original garden really was, how an English robin differs from an American robin, how to make a nesting station for birds in your garden, what "oatcakes" and "doughcakes" are and how to make them (along with other recipes from the book), how to plant a miniature secret garden, how to make a windchime from keys like the one that unlocked the Secret Garden, and lots more! Wonderful gift. Tasha Tudor illustrations.

Katie's Rose: A Tale Of Two Late Bloomers provides young readers ages 5 and older (along with their parents) with an enduring message of acceptance and support in a graphic manner enabling them to understand and appreciate the uniqueness in each child and the individualization of the talents and abilities. That like every rose, every child will bloom in it's own time and in it's own shade. Karen Burnett's has a superb gift for storytelling that is wonderfully augmented by Laurie Barrows as an artist in this superbly crafted and presented picturebook story with its inspiring, insightful moral.