Seat Reviews

This book is a great resource for projects in art for children. You could say that I was the test subject for a lot of what's in this book. Willard was my grandfather. This book is a treasure that every elementary school teacher should have. My grandfather would take me to the university to work on projects and then put them in the book. What fun that was. Share this book with your children as my grandfather enjoyed it with his son and grandson.

We used this book as a textbook for my Elementary Education Art Methods & Materials class. It is jam-packed with projects to do with children. Highly recommended.

In The Joyful Child: A Sourcebook Of Activities And Ideas For Releasing Children's Natural Joy, Peggy Jenkins presents a system of positive self-programming through parent or teacher directed activities ranging from games, songs, and stories to puppetry, art, music, and movement. This very highly recommended, "user friendly" compendium of information and references will enhance any classroom, home schooling, or parent-child efforts to nurture and develop a child's ability and skills to enjoy and learn from their life experiences.

I MUST HAVE THIS BOOK! This parenting manual thoroughly illustrates the definition of and the source of joy. It enlightens parents to the concept that our children can and should be joyful and that we will become more joyful ourselves in the process. It examines many personalities and methods to appropriately love, nurture and support each. Included, is a very full, but simple and effective list of activities that any loving parent can and will engage in with their child/children. Words cannot express enough how thankful I am to have found such a 'Joyful' Parenting help.

I love this book. It has been a great resource for me as a parent of two small boys and I have recommended it to many friends. I liked the easy to read format. As a mom on the go, I can quickly flip to the section I want to read at the moment and use the fun activities. I know a few teachers in my area that keep this book in the classroom.

This is an excellent book for all parents that wish their child to be fully prepared for school. The book is easy to read as the writing is clear and direct to the subject. Every pre-school teacher should review this book and take the contents to heart.

"There's more to this life than we know," Norman Dubie observes in his poem, "A Grandfather's Last Lesson" (p. 103), a theme he has explored in his poetry for more than 34 years. Born in Vermont in 1945, Dubie is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He has been a poet at Arizona State University at least since the 1980s, when I was a student there, and he is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist. Although he has published twenty books of poetry since 1968, he has been curiously silent for the past decade. THE MERCY SEAT includes poems collected from seventeen of Dubie's previous books, and nearly 100 pages of new poetry. This 165-poem collection is divided into Dubie's 1967 to 1990 poetry (pp. 7-298), and his 1991 to 2001 poetry (pp. 299-398).

Dubie has been called a "poet's poet." Although he is not an easy poet, Dubie is one of our country's finest. His poetry is complex and dreamlike, painting a picture of life that is both wretched and blissful. His subjects range from Randall Jarrell (p. 18), Chekhov (p. 87), Thomas Hardy (p. 107), Coleridge (p. 148), Einstein (p. 150), Meister Eckart (p. 194), and Thomas Merton (p. 265), to a "dark cat" stalking fireflies, "sometimes falling/ On her back, sometimes her jaws working/ Very fast" (p. 17). Dubie's poetry is also rich in sensual imagery: "Later, in a dark room, both of us speckled, middle-aged, and soft/ I dragged my mouth like a snail's foot up your leg and body/ To your mouth. We both shivered" (p. 146). For anyone who appreciates poetry at the top of its form, THE MERCY SEAT should not be missed.

G. Merritt

For anyone interested in poetry, not just contemporary poetry, but the history of poetry, this book is absolutely essential. Mercy Seat covers almost the entire span of Dubie's career. For whatever reason his first book, Alehouse Sonnets, is absent from this collection. Despite this the reader is given a very valuable gift.
Dubie speaks with a voice that is both ancient and new. It's as if he has always been here, yet just arrived. Beyond these comments though let the book speak for itself.

I use the activites with my elem. students when we have a few spare minutes. My students like the variety of activities and I like the fact that there isn's anything I need to do in advance.

I am currently student-teaching in a fourth grade class. The activities in the book are both challenging and enjoyable for the students. I am using many of them as supplements to required curriculum.

You can't replay the early years of a child's life. Any parent or teacher who wants to do the right thing with young children, will want this book. Reading it is like taking a very enjoyable and enlightening child development course.

A must-have book for parents and those who work with young children. Talks about how language develops, how kids learn to read and write, learning styles, science and nature...just about everything about how kids learn. Even includes activities to do with children. And, if you want to learn more about a topic, or read a book with your kids, The Parents' & Teachers' Guide reviews books on each topic. A fabulous resource!

Wow, this is just an awesome book for any parent, grandparent, caregiver, teacher... It was an "impulse buy" and turned out to be the best child activity book I have ever seen. As a former professional, college educated stay-at-home mom, I wanted to move beyond "Candyland" and "Go Fish" and have more fun with my kids. This book provides a wealth of information that makes having fun with them a lot of fun for me!

There are 14 chapters, after the introduction. Each CHAPTER provides a background on the topic, helpful information, many ideas and projects to try, sidebars with even more information and ideass, and a very extensive "resources" section with additional books, websites, relevant games, music and more. Chapters include Instant Fun, Playing around with Photography, Mind Snacks: Recipes for Kitchen Learning, The Junior Geographer, celebrate the Senses, and so on. The book provides a very well rounded experience without being "preachy". It isn't a "learning book" and doesn't teach skills, so to speak, but a child can't help but learn and grow from the activities listed. Most activities are free or require a very small investment.

Each chapter is a treasure. For example, the first chapter, Instant Fun, makes waiting with kids actually fun. There are 30 "instant games" (for example, picking out someone walking by or a fellow patient in a waiting room and making up a creative story about them, turning your hand into a puppet with instructions, things to do while waiting for a meal in a restaurant, etc.), five different ways to keep busy while travelling, 13 different quick pencil games (such as one of you draws a squiggle and then you and your child take turns completing it into a picture, dot games, a game called "scrambled sentences, etc.). There are 4 sidebars in this chapter with even more ideas for instant fun. And finally, there are 13 references for more information, books, catalogs, games, etc. Each idea or game is at least a paragraph long--it isn't simply a list of run of the mill ideas. For my family, this chapter alone is well worth the price of the book.

And each following chapter is just as chock-full of information, ideas and projects. A previous reviewer stated it was a good book to get out of a rut and I couldn't agree more. The back cover shows a review from Working Mother magazine that states, "The beauty of this guide is that most games call for nothing more than two people and two brains." I couldn't agree more.

PLAYING SMART is a treasure trove of clever ideas. Using the simple and familiar, Susan K. Perry shows us how we can turn the most ordinary experiences into opportunities for creativity, learning, and fun, teaching children to begin a lifelong love of education and imagination. A walk becomes an adventure into biology and nature as well as a chance to make up stories about people, to notice change in daily surroundings. The backyard is filled with learning how to grow edible and decorative plants with an aesthetic appreciation of their variety and arrangement, along with respect for other living creatures. Cooking with your children, you can both learn about nutrition, health, and safety, fostering good habits that will serve them well in our fast food and junk food culture. Waiting in line and long car rides become openings for psychological sharing and excursions into the imagination.

Nearly all of the ideas in this book can be used by adults to stimulate their own creativity and get out of their daily ruts. I especially appreciated the sections of doing dreamwork and personal journaling with children. I frequently recommend this book to parents and teachers.

~~review by Joan Mazza, author of Dream Back Your Life; Dreaming Your Real Self; and 3 books in The Guided Journal Series with Writer's Digest/Walking Stick Press.

If you are even thinking about riding Saddle Seat you should own a copy of Saddle Seat Equitation. It explains everything from proper hand and foot position to how to go about riding patterns and showing your horse.

I am just gettting into showing my horse and I found this book to be so helpful. It not only let me know how to ride my horse so I am able to compete it let me know what i should bring so I could make any preventable mistake. Most of all I liked that it let me know that mistakes do happen and with the help from reading I now know how to correct and prevent my mistakes. Most of all it let me know that riding is all about fun the way that it lights up a childs face even when they have placed last. The reminder that you are not only riding the tack but the horse made me think about how my horse feels so am more intuned with his thought. I recomend this book becasue I believe it will help you out in ever aspect of riding even it you don't ride saddleseat equitation!

Others may write reviews with details of the characters of the book, but I think that this book is more than the sum of its parts. The book is fascinating, the characters are more than likeable (except one) - that is, we all know all of these people. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hated putting it down at night; but I couldn't wait to finish it so that I could loan it to others. All in all, I think the theme is that we can never know the effect we each individually have on someone else. Whether we sit beside someone for just a few moments and speak only one sentence or we are best friends for a lifetime, we do exert some influence. Similarly, they influence us. Sounds a bit simple, but it truly is profound to realize the possibility of the influence we have, one-on-one.

Would you die for a stranger? In light of the horrible events of September 11, 2001, this question has been asked over and over again. Everyday people have been heroes as well as those who have occupations where saving a human being is often an everyday occurrence.

IN THE SEAT BESIDE ME, Nancy Moser explores this question and much more via the survivors of a tragic airplane crash and the lessons they learn from those who died who were sitting next to them.

Sun Fun Airlines flight 1382 to Phoenix has been delayed because of snow. As the airplane sits on the tarmac being de-iced, several of the passengers begin to talk to those sitting next to them.

Merry Cavanaugh is a young wife and mother who wants more. She has a friend in Phoenix who is footloose and fancy-free and she is looking forward to spending some time partying with her and forgetting her real life for awhile. Imagine her shock when her husband and young daughter join her on the flight as a surprise.

George Davanos is going to Phoenix to kill himself. His wife of many years died of cancer seven months previously and he is still so grief-stricken that all he wants to do is join her. The man sitting next to him is a man who has just received a new awakening in his spiritual life. He is on a business trip, taking the place of a co-worker who has a wedding to attend.

Schoolteacher Tina McKutcheon is traveling to Phoenix for some fun in the sun and a break from her boyfriend and her students. She is so tired of surly teenagers. When she spots a teenage girl entering the plane she looks at her decides she wants anyone BUT her to sit next to her. Of course, she doesn't get her wish and instead teenager Mallory sits next to her and starts up a conversation.

Sonja Grafton is on the plane because she pulled a dirty trick on a co-worker, causing her superiors to select Sonja to go to the convention in Phoenix. She would rather just relax on the way to Phoenix and not talk to anyone. Her seatmate, Roscoe Moore, has different ideas.

Plastic surgeon Anthony Thorgood is a pompous, arrogant man who thinks he is so much better than anyone else. When he sits next to a rather large, unkempt woman he makes several preconceived observations of her.

When the plane crashes into a bridge and then into a river on take-off, there are only five survivors. Those five survivors, Merry, George, Tina, Sonja, and Anthony, are forced to take another look at their lives. In addition, who was the mysterious man -- dubbed a hero by the media -- who passed a lifeline to others not once, not twice, but a total of four times before disappearing in the icy water?

In addition to the survivors, playing a significant role in the story is reporter Dora Roberts who had been scheduled to be on that same flight in order to be with her mother in Phoenix who was to undergo surgery. Just before she's to leave, her mother calls with the news that her surgery has been cancelled as she apparently has been miraculously cured. Of course Dora just figures that the doctors had been wrong initially. But instead of being a victim of flight 1382, she writes about it.

One of the words one could use to describe THE SEAT BESIDE ME is intense. It is also fast-paced and a quick read which is ultimately uplifting as lessons are learned and the characters learn what is truly important in their lives.

Evangelistic Christians are the targeted readers of this book. Others may find this book more than just a little bit "preachy" and feel that with the focus of the book being as it is, that the author is mainly "preaching to the choir." But as a more liberal Christian myself, I still found the story compelling and worthwhile. I only bristled one time, and that was when one of the minor characters was criticized for her Buddhist faith. I believe it would have been more effective for the book to leave out this aspect rather than risk turning off anyone who is sympathetic to those of other faiths. That reservation is rather small, and can be overlooked in view of the "bigger picture." I read the book in a day, and that is high praise indeed for someone who is normally a slow reader. My recommendation is for readers to keep an open mind and enjoy the story itself, for the lessons the characters learn are very worthwhile and speak to everyone

This is a superb book. I couldn't put it down. Extremely well written and a must have for anyone interested in football from the fans point of view.

I can't recommend this book stronger. For Manchester United fans it's the opportunity to follow a year with the side from the untainted by the PLC view of the supporter. For Reds abroad, it serves as the perfect reminder of home. For non-United or those not football supporters it's a chance to understand what we go through. Well written and personal, Paul and Linda have created a book you'll want to dip into time and time again.