Books Reviews - Page 30

Honey, I Love
By Eloise Greenfield
Illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist

Children find joy and love in simple things: taking family rides in the country, sharing laughter with friends, and cuddling with a parent.

This poem, first published in 1978 as part of an anthology, is a gentle reminder, told through a child’s eyes, that love can be found anywhere.

“Renee comes out to play and brings her doll without a dress.
I make a dress with paper and that doll sure looks a mess.
We laugh so loud and long and hard the doll falls to the ground.
Honey, let me tell you that I LOVE the laughing sound.”

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A guide to living with and helping teenagers, this updated version of a 1991 best seller uses humor and compassion to explain teenage behavior, while offering concrete advice for coping with it.

Adolescence is a time to turn away from childhood and parents. It’s an exciting time, but one that leaves the adolescent feeling exposed, vulnerable, and often overwhelmed.

Wolf offers tips for setting limits, dealing with conflict, and controlling behavior. He advises parents to have confidence that they’re doing their best and that their efforts are not in vain.

Upbeat, amusing, and easy to read, this sensible book offers a road map of sorts through a confusing world of teenagers.

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Hip To Knit
Judith L. Swartz
Interweave Press

While many Americans turn to yoga or other relaxation methods to relieve stress and slow down, more and more are picking up the knitting needles. Knitting offers soothing, repetitive, hands-on movement and is not just your grandmother’s pastime; the number of knitters under age 35 rose more than 400 percent between 1998 and 2000, says the Craft Yarn Council of America, and knitting clubs for young professionals, working moms, and teenagers are forming across the country.

Hip To Knit is a collection of quick and easy patterns with simple instructions, for both knitting newcomers or experienced knitters.

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By Karin R. O’Callaghan
Frederick Fell Publishers Inc.

College students can bank on at least two “givens” each fall—classes starting and a flood of enticing credit card offers. Enticing, indeed; the average college undergraduate leaves school about $12,000 in debt, says www.collegecreditcounseling.com, a nonprofit organization established to help consumers in debt.

Money Management for College Students, which presents the financial facts of life in a basic, informative way, should be required reading for every college student. Money Management explains the essentials: money and banking, goal setting and budgets, credit cards, insurance, credit reports, investments, and more. Most important is its message: Financial mistakes now can affect your whole life.

“The book is not intended as the be-all and end-all of money information,” O’Callaghan says. “It’s the basics—enough information to get them thinking and paying attention to their finances before it’s too late.”

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In This Mountain
By Jan Karon
Viking

The latest visit to the fictional town of Mitford, N.C., finds Father Tim Kavanagh struggling with his retirement and his fear of what his wife Cynthia’s latest triumph as a children’s book author means for their marriage.

Readers of the first six books in the best-selling Mitford Years series can count on a joyous vacation with the quirky individuals who populate one of America’s favorite hometowns. New readers are in for a treat from Karon, who delivers what she promises: “to applaud the extraordinary beauty of ordinary lives.”

Like earlier books in the series, In This Mountain, for all the familiarity of beloved characters, presents page-turning situations that keep the reader guessing what will happen next. The residents of Mitford may live the simple life, but they do it with originality, humor, and simple faith.

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America at Bat; Baseball Stuff & Stories
Paul Rosenthal
National Geographic

This colorful scrapbook full of photos and artifacts from the first major traveling exhibition of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is aimed at ages 8-12, but the short narratives, trivia, and quizzes make baseball’s colorful history fun for nearly anyone.

For example, Fred Thayer, captain of the Harvard Base Ball Club in the late 1800s, noticed that fear of getting beaned by the ball kept catchers from playing their best. He used the idea of a fencing mask and created baseball’s first catcher’s mask. The Cincinnati Red Stockings are considered baseball’s first professional team, having originated in 1869.

From Babe Ruth to Jackie Robinson to Mark McGwire to Barry Bonds, America at Bat captures America’s pastime and commemorates its heroes.

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Oceans
By Anita Ganeri
Space
By Carole Stott
Kingfisher

Oceans and Space, part of Kingfisher’s Curious Kids Guides series, answers questions from the oceans to space. To such questions as, “What is a red giant?” or “What’s it like at the bottom of the sea?” Space and Oceans provide bright illustrations and interesting explanations.

For example, the ocean’s salt originates from rocks on land. Rain washes salt into rivers, which carry it to the sea. And stars don’t really twinkle. Their light is “bent and wobbled” by air surrounding the earth, making them appear to twinkle.

And a red giant is a dying star that swells up to 100 times larger than its original size, and emits a red glow, resulting from a surface temperature lower than the center.

Oceans and Space show children—and their adults—that the natural world is extraordinarily fascinating.

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Nearly every child with a pet has followed impulse and dressed the animal in doll clothes, Christmas ribbons, jewelry, or a hat. So when the los amiguitos (little friends) who live in pink houses where chili peppers hang by the front doors put a vest and sombrero on the duck, children everywhere can relate.

But the little friends seem a bit more exotic when they parade their pets down to the church to ask the padre to bless them. Children easily will pick up a few Spanish words from this charming book that teaches them how to count to 10 en español and gives phonetic pronunciations of numbers, the children’s names, and other Spanish words.

This enchanting book will give children a taste of another language and culture while delighting them with a surprise ending.

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The Sahara is Cold at Night (and Other Questions About Deserts)
Jackie Gaff
Kingfisher

Deserts make up about one-fifth of Earth’s land, the largest being the Sahara in North Africa—which is almost the size of the United States. The Sahara is Cold at Night, one of Kingfisher’s I Wonder Why series, is full of fascinating facts about deserts.

For example, a plant called the welwitschia in South Africa’s Namib Desert can live as long as 2,000 years.

Learn why space rovers are tested in the desert, why scorpions have stingers in their tail, how long a camel can last without water, and much more in this wonderfully illustrated, easy-to-read book.

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Just Shy of Harmony
Philip Gulley
HarperSanFrancisco Publishers

Pastor Sam Gardner faces a crisis of faith, Wayne Fleming discovers why his wife ran away, and Jessie Peacock is a reluctant lottery winner in this warm, funny follow-up to Philip Gulley’s 2001 Home to Harmony release.

In Just Shy of Harmony, Gulley once again draws on his experiences in Danville, Ind., and his duties as a part-time Quaker minister to tell a wonderful tale of a fictitious community of colorful characters who share goodness and gossip, controversy and compassion—a real-life microcosm of mankind.

Gulley’s stories get at the heart of the simple joys, stranger-than-fiction humor, and day-to-day drama of small town life and reveal how even the largest of problems inevitably resolve themselves. No wonder he’s been called Indiana’s Garrison Keillor.

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