As an early childhood educator, I found this book to hold the attention of children ages 3-5 years old. The clear and colorful illustrations blend well with the simple text, as a day in the orchard picking apples is embarked upon by several friends. I especially liked the descriptions of the various types of apples and was able to bring those particular apples to my classroom for hands on exploration. I will use this book for many years to come in my classroom and would recommend it to other early childhood teachers.

Like many "first's" in life, I can recall the first time I read Ash Road. It depicted a time, and place, and culture, that was completely different to my own. As a young person, the book moved me to interpret life, and indeed the world, in a new light. From that point on in my educational career, I embraced the idea of reading for "pleasure", an undertaking that has literally changed my life. Thank you Mr. Southall. Now I plan on giving Ash Road as a birthday gift to my sixth grade daughter, who is constantly bothering me to stay up "just a little longer", .......to read.

I recently read Mrs. Harper's book on the fabulous banana slugs of the Pacific northwest. I have to say that I was pleasently surprised by the amount of information contained in such a little book. I am currently keeping banana slugs in the zoological institution where I work and needed a little extra information on their daily lives to provide the best care for them. This book contained information from their breeding habits to nutrional requirements to morphology and everything in between. Alice Harper is definately the Slug Lady and hopefully we will see a updated edition of this book with even more information in the near future. Still, I would definately recommend this book to anyone looking into studying these wonderful yet slimy little creatures.

Tom Griffith's book is an indispensible guide for all would be back packers. His straight forward and friendly approach in giving hints, tips and sound advice while on long or short term travel makes the book appealing and engaging to read. Of particular interest are the chapters on health and safety, finances, male and female solo travel, making friends and dealing with unexpected problems. More informal than many other travel books and more refreshing by far.

This is a very beautiful book. The story of Blessed Kateri, a pockmarked and half-blind orphan from the Mohawk nation, is told through very good writing and wonderful pictures. I have collected almost a hundred books on the Lily of the Mohawks, as Kateri is known. A number of them are for children...some are good, others full of errors, patronizing, sentimental or bigoted. "Blessed Kateri and The Cross in the Forest" outshines all of the children's books in my little collection. There is only one reason I did not give it for stars - the last four years of Kateri's life are condensed into a few short paragraphs. Which may be just as well since this is for youngsters, but these are the years in which Kateri's faith and love truly flourished. But, despite this, it is a truly fine book and I higly recommend it!

It's very informative to anyone not acquainted with the lumber industry, or if you like to read historical books. Having lived in Drain, Oregon (20 miles south of Cottage Grove), I was excited to see names of people I have personally met and pictures of familiar places. Mr. Thoele has done a thorough research job on Bohemia from beginning to end. I ordered this book on May 15, and it has taken almost 2 months to read, so I don't recommend this book for light readers.

This is a story written in diary format by the author who after a year as an exchange professor at Tokyo University spent part of the next year living with native activists fighting the resistance to Japanese logging, and Japanese timber camp managers, on Borneo,the third largest island on earth which lies just north of the Indonesian archipelago in the South China Sea. This is a poignant travel narrative as well as a serious environmental study of the exploitation of third world resources. The true irony of the story of Borneo's rapdily disappearing rainforest, and the local corruption and greed which siphon off most of the profits, while native rights and land uses are obliterated, (sounds like America in the early 19th century!) is that most of the timber shipped to Japan is used to feed Japan's wholesale adoption of American habits: buy it, use it, throw it away, buy another! Much of the wood is being used to make cheap furniture and plywood forms for concrete that are thrown away after several uses. Unlike America's own trees on vast land masses,Japan has little to support such habits. This is really another story which is symptomatic of first world countries exploitation of third world resources - and the hypocrisy of the United States' condemnation of such practices.

A must for anyone who likes trees. I know the author and this is his fourth book on this subject. The pictures are good and informative. The text makes the subject very approachable to anyone who likes trees. It describes how anyone can measure and submit giant trees to various national and local registries. Very interesting!

"Like his first book, Jaguar, Rabinowitz's Chasing The Dragon's Tail is a telling testimony to the difficulties emarked upon in the attempt at large predator conservation. Rabinowitz's books are a must read for anyone interested in habitat preservation and conservation."

The Chimpanzees of the Tai Forest is a fascinating analysis of chimpanzee behaviour based on a fifteen year study in the West African jungle of the Cote d'Ivoire. The authors engage with some of the fundamental questions in regards to the evolutionary relationship between primates, with a specific focus on the affinity between chimpanzees and humans. They combine rigorous scientific data, often in the form of statistical tables, with personal anecdotal descriptions. These lines of evidence are presented together, to create an authoritative and yet picturesque account of Chimpanzee behaviour.
In the first chapter the authors provide an orientation to the Tai Chimpanzee project by situating it within other data from prominent studies of wild chimpanzees of varying duration. In the second chapter the authors explain how the Tai chimpanzee community has gone through many demographic changes but has remained, for the entire study period, within the same area in the Tai forest. In the third chapter, on female life histories, they explain that dominant females have interbirth intervals 26 months longer for male than for female offspring, which results in a higher survival rate for males. In contrast, subdominant females invest 12 months more in daughters, which does not result in a higher a survival rate. In chapter four the authors suggest that at Tai, the males' life history is strongly influenced by their mother's investment. High-ranking mothers invest more in male infants who, as a result, become more interested in acquiring rank and have greater reproductive success than low ranking males. Thus, they suggest that reproductive strategies used by males are influenced by male-male competition as well as female choice. In chapter five the authors document the social structure of the Tai chimpanzees indicating that the inter-population variations of the fission-fusion system is influenced by the demographic factors of community size and adult sex ratio. In chapter six they show how social interactions are distributed within a community with strong associations between its members. This chapter offers a discussion of how chimpanzees show capacities for cooperation, reciprocal interaction and coalition behaviour and how these alliances are created through explicit social strategies. In chapter seven the authors argue that chimpanzees' inter-group aggression possesses several features considered typical for human warfare such as a group enterprise of large coalitions concentrated against neighbour groups. They also suggest that the Tai chimpanzees possess strategies for attack, which involve anticipation of possible outcomes. In chapter eight the authors describe how Tai chimpanzees hunt very regularly and have developed a system of reciprocity in which hunters are rewarded for their contribution which involves a system of individual recognition, temporary memory of recent actions and social enforcement of values. In chapter nine the authors explain that tool use among the Tai chimpanzees, especially in the context of nut cracking, involves elaborate planning and a long term learning phase that can persist for several years. They also discuss how nut cracking and food sharing intermingle in a manner that effects many aspects of social life. In chapter ten the authors review the cognitive abilities of wild chimpanzees and conclude that they show highly developed faculties relating to mental representations, the notion of causality and a theory of mind. They also argue that wild chimpanzees show a more developed understanding of causality than has been shown in captive chimpanzees. In the eleventh and final chapter of the book, the authors put forth a model of evolution of chimpanzees that attempts to account for the presence of their behaviorally similar characteristic to humans. Specifically, they argue that three characteristics, which are common to all chimpanzee populations, select for higher cognitive abilities related to causality and of third party attention. These characteristics are the fission-fusion social system, hunting behaviour in trees and flexible and numerous types of tool use. They propose that these characteristics were slowly elaborated in a synergistic manner that may have begun before the divergence between the chimpanzee and human lineage.
The book documents chimpanzee behaviour in such a way to reveal its striking diversity. In each chapter the authors attempt comparisons between the different chimpanzee populations to delineate the factors in the environment and in the social life of chimpanzees that generate the variations observed across sites. Additionally, they situate their observations within the broader context of research in behavioural ecology and compare their own data with other prominent work on chimpanzee populations. There is frequent reference to important studies by Jane Goodall and Toshisada Nishida.
The authors also adopt a perspective informed by feminist methodology, arguing that the view of chimpanzees as a purely male-oriented society does not reflect the social life of Tai chimpanzees. This is apparent in their discussion of the stronger role of female choice in reproductive strategies in chapter four and in the importance of female friendship discussed in chapter five. Their argument for the Tai chimpanzee society being bi-sexually bonded is also evident in the authors' contention that females have a dominant position in gaining access to meat (Chapter 8) and their discussion of female chimpanzees' greater involvement in territorial defense (Chapter 7).
In the last two chapters of the book a clear agenda emerges. The authors argue against a basic discontinuity between humans and other animal species and do so by portraying the affinity between apes and chimpanzees. To a large extent, this view is also about securing basic rights for chimpanzees. At points, their agenda becomes sufficiently transparent to undermine the authority of their data. This is particularly obvious in the degree of anthropomorphizing in anecdotal accounts throughout the later chapters of the book. However, overall the purity of the authors' intentions redeems them for these momentary indulgences in their own motivations. The authors argue that the limiting factor in the quest for human and chimpanzee identity is their survival. And it is this fight that the authors contend, should be our utmost priority.