Kids Can Save the Animals: 101 Easy Things to Do

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful Book!.......2005-11-23

This book it great! It will help children learn to be kinder, more compassionate people, while giving them activities to do that are fun! It includes information on everything from saving the whales and rainforests to taking better care of pets. I highly recommend it!

Review for Kids Can Save the Animals! by Ingrid Newkirk.......1997-08-13

This has got to be the best grade-school children's book ever written!!! Newkirk is funny and attention-keeping, while making her points clear. Many childrens' animal rights books nag on and on about the animals dying, and how they need to be helped and aren't getting the help they need...etc. etc. etc. The problem with that is that it doesn't tell the children HOW to help the animals! Each chapter in Kids Can Save the Animals! first explains the problem, tells about what's needed to solve it, and then tells how the individual child can help. It's a must for each and every child about 7 and up. The same book is written for moms and dads, called "You Can Save the Animals! 101 Things You Can Do&quot

Book Description

A hiking legend, Earl Shaffer in 1948 came home from the South Pacific and set out to prove the then-little-known Appalachian Trail--its maintenance largely and necessarily neglected during the war--could be walked in a single continuous journey from Georgia to Maine. This is his own lyrical account of that walk, undertaken also to try to shake off World War II combat, during which he lost his best friend. Illustrated with his photographs during the hike, this book has inspired thousands to attempt similar "thru-hikes." In 1965, he walked it the other way, and, in 1998 at age 79, he did it again...on a trail far different from the one he basically rediscovered at mid-century, one that was more difficult than he liked as he neared his eighth decade. Originally self-published (300 copies), Walking with Spring was first professionally typeset and published in 1983; this is the second printing of a 1996 edition. Only the covers have changed since 1983.

Customer Reviews:

Marching to the beat of a different drummer.......2004-02-16

Earl Shaffer's recounting of the first AT thruhike is a glimpse into history. Perhaps a hundred books have been written about the Appalachian Trail since Earl wrote his. None is more sincere or matter of factly descriptive than Walking With Spring. Earl's life was enigmatic. This book contains hints and clues about this unusual man, the loner, the poet, the man rooted in nature. More than anything, it traces his pioneering journey into the history books as it leads the reader on what in 1948 was an unprecedented quest. At $8.95, it's probably one of today's best literary bargains.

Refreshing and inspiring.......2003-08-17

This is an essential book for anyone who has thru hiked the AT, or is a vicarious thru hiker. Earl Shaffer is the first confirmed person to complete the trail in one season, though a group of boy scouts later claimed they made the entire journey sometime in the mid-30's. Shaffer writes very well, in a phlegmatic, relaxed and spare style. He was an environmentalist and naturalist in an era when few were of the same mindset. As a former WWII GI, he was restless with civilian life and just decided to walk from Springer Mountain to Mount Katahdin. What a pioneer he was, even though he didn't know it!

Schaffer describes many fascinating things about the trail and the physical and mental effects resulting from hiking 2,100 miles. Though the journey took place in 1948, there is nothing dated about the book, except the fact that many shelters have been updated or added, and more towns dot the trail these days. This is a great book for anyone addicted to literature on the beloved Appalachian Trail.

Walking With Spring.......2002-08-06

Earl Shaffer was a laconic, introverted naturalist, and through his journey developed a deeper appreciation for the wilderness and deeper distrust for the modern world. This chronicle of the first thru-hike of the AT is highly factual, and quite literal. Shaffer did an excellent job of describing the varied terrain and geographic route of the trail. He was intensely serious, and at times the book seems a bit dry and too much of a literal account of the journey. Overall, however, the book is certainly one of a kind and a necessary read for anyone interested in the AT.

The first and the best..........2001-11-03

What can you say about the first trail journal on the first solo thru-hike (not counting Myron Avery)? Earl Shaffer is a legend and rightly fully so.

It is interesting to read... especially when you see what troubles he had... and especially the fact that the trail was not as well marked as it is today.

I will be planning my own thru-hike soon - and hope to write (but probably not publish) a journal as half as good as Earl's.

My only complaint - and a minor one at that - is that the book ends with Kathadin. I would have liked to read about his adjustment back to "civilization" after the hike.

Enduring Classic - This First is Best.......2001-08-31

Earl Shaffer was the first person to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail (AT) in one continuous journey in 1948 after getting out of the military following WWII. As he wonderfully describes walking with the Appalachian spring across the mountains, there is much history, adventure and nature to be experienced. We can glimpse backward in time before this famous trail was well-known, when it was thought that no one could hike the entire length in one season. But we also find universal descriptions of what it is like to live outdoors and journey on the trail over the course of a "thru-hike," made today by hundreds each year. This was the first book about hiking the AT, and, after reading many AT books myself, I think it is the best.

Walking with spring: The first thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail

Average customer rating:

Walking with spring: The first thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail
Earl V Shaffer
Manufacturer: Appalachian Trail Conference
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Sports | Subjects | Books

North America | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006ECT5E

Walking with spring on the Appalachian Trail

Average customer rating:

Times and Trail has changed

Walking with spring on the Appalachian Trail
Earl V Shaffer
Manufacturer: E.V. Shaffer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007C6O7Y

Customer Reviews:

Times and Trail has changed.......2005-03-02

Earl brings you back to when The Trail was at its beginnings and took a very different route than it does now. The reader joins him on his "walk with spring" through towns and bushwacking. It is an amazing account of what the trail was like before it became the AT! If you are looking for a reference...this is NOT your book...but if you want to know the real AT beginnings...definitely pick it up!

Book Description

This guide to writing compelling, memorable short stories gives you all the essentials without wasted words. It tells you how and where to get ideas, how to establish and sustain excitement, how to create live, colorful characters, and how to plot, develop and bring home your story. It even includes exercises to help you perfect your story-telling skills. Full of tips and techniques that work, it makes an indispensable, reliable collaborator. You'll find it ideal whether you're studying alone or supplementing a creative or fiction writing course, conference or workshop.

Customer Reviews:

good but not specific to short stories.......2006-04-15

I wanted a book to show me the difference in technique between a short story and novel length. This book didn't help me. If you want an overall view of how to write, this book is simple and arranged well, but I'm not sure why the title empahsis is on short story.

Good Quick Reference Guide.......2006-03-03

Schaum's guide is a good quick reference guide in the same sense a good gourmet cookbook may serve as a quick reference guide for getting a creative meal started. It is helpful in recalling key incredients and in just what portions and in what order they should be presented but as far as a guide to inspire, I must report this guide is NOT! Sadly, what is needed is a chapter entitled, "Ideas!!! And how to put form to them."
I like the book and it is a good quick reference guide and it is well worth the money. In many ways it's format is just right and it can be helpful just don't expect it to prepare you to be the next Hemmingway!

This book is a gem.......2004-01-23

Over the past few months I have collected and read many books on creative writing with a slant towards the art and technique of fiction. All the while I write and read everyday improving my writing and improving my understanding. I can certainly recommend many books that I have recently read and studied and I must say that this book has a welcome place in my library. All of the books on fiction that I have are highly geared toward the novel. I had been struggling to write just one short story with the knowledge and experience imparted from other books. Things just didn't fit. I bought this book with three others not expecting anything special. I started with the book and a page and a half of short story. By the time I finished reading the first chapter, everything was so clear that I put the book down, and, with surprising success, finished my short story. It only took a matter of hours. I am a page and a half into another story told entirely from the omniscient point of view. I would also like to say that many of the books I have include a pre-amble or first section on the struggle of writing well. I have found many of these depressing even when I am shining with hope. The first chapter of this book approaches the subject of writers struggle with interspersed anecdotes of hope and quotes about the struggle and joy of writing from famous writers. If you buy this book for only one reason, let it be the first chapter. It is truly original. The rest of the book goes on to talk about many of the common elements in general creative writing that can be found in any collection. This book freed my style and showed me that I can use un-common technique to make an engaging story of less than 5,000 words.

If this is your first book you also want "Self-Editing For Writers of Fiction", and Sol Steins, "Stein on Writing".

Book Description

The Fastest, Easiest Way to Learn: Schaum's Quick Guides

These concise, quick reference guides are perfect for business people, writers, and students at all levels. Written by top experts, they offer readers the easiest, most efficient strategies to master or learn a new skill. All Schaum's Quick Guides include do's and don'ts for avoiding common errors, handy checklists, and practice exercises for building skills quickly.

Download Description

Quickly and simply, this guide gives you clear, concise explanations--illustrated by dozens of examples--that show you how to write the kinds of essays that will help you succeed in college and the professional world.

Customer Reviews:

A Quick and Superb Guide to Writing Great Essays.......2005-08-03

Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays is a superb reference for learning how to research and write essays. I have assigned this book for the past 5 years, and each year my undergraduates tell me it is the best resource of the class. The book teaches them how to identify a topic, develop a topic question, write a clearly identified thesis statement, and prove their argument through careful use of evidence.

This book also describes how to outline the paper and begin writing, and thus should be required for any class trying to teach students how to construct a research paper. The authors take students through each step of the essay, explaining how to write an introduction, thesis paragraph, the body of the paper, and the conclusion. The authors also teach students how to improve their writing style through carefully constructed paragraphs, sentences and smooth transitions.

The book is clearly and logically organized with many specific examples to help students follow the authors' points. This guide has my highest recommendation for anyone who wants to become a better writer of research papers and essays.

Too Brief--Essay Types NOT Covered.......2004-02-05

I am STILL seeking a general how-to essay book that covers all the rhetorical essay pattern types, even after buying Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays, because this book does not fulfil the promise of it's title, or misleading descriptive information. I received this book yesterday, skimmed through it immediately, and am greatly disappointed.

Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays is only OK as a basic reference guide for grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, with one generic outline. None of its chapters cover the types of essays, such as Compare & Contrast, Persuasive, Descriptive, and so on. This book does not give examples of well written essays, either. Instead, it gives extremely brief example sentences, and occasional paragraph samples only.

One will NOT learn how to write a specific type of essay, which one would expect to from the book title, description, marketing and cover information. I feel incredibly cheated, since returning it for a refund will cost almost half the price of Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays. I would recommend "Elements of Style", "Essays and Themes", or "How to Write Better Essays" instead, as better reference and how-to books on writing essays, with examples, rhetorical essay types and every day applications of essay writing.

Lastly, the book claims to contain exercises for practicing the concepts within, yet there wasn't a single exercise to be found on examination of the actual book. If you already know how to write great essays, and understand the various structure types for essay outlining, then MAYBE this book would be OK as a reference or reminder of a simple concept one has forgotten and needs to look up. Unfortunately, it's claim as a guide to writing great essays is completely false. Save your money.

Amazon.com

Raymond Briggs's loving tribute to his parents has an emotional power that far exceeds its deceptively simple technique. Graphic in format, the book combines vigorous but sensitive illustrations with dialogue that cogently elucidates its characters' personalities. Milkman Ernest meets lady's maid Ethel in 1928. In short order they are married, holders of a mortgage, and parents of a boy--solid members of the English working class, aspiring to more for their son. As they experience the Depression, World War II, postwar prosperity and cultural upheaval, readers come to know them intimately. Ernest is left-wing, unashamedly proletarian, and perennially enthusiastic about the great changes modernity is bringing, from unemployment insurance to highways. Ethel is a Tory, a bit of a snob, and far more realistic about how much actual improvement they can expect and what it will cost. They worry about their adored child constantly, especially after he goes to art school. She gets sick and grows senile in 1970; he dies shortly after her in 1971. It's hard to imagine a reader who won't weep when their son looks at the pear tree in the yard of the house the couple inhabited for 41 years and says, "I grew it from a pip." Plain words and plain people strike a universal chord in this touching memoir. --Wendy Smith

Book Description

Poignant, funny, and utterly original, Ethel & Ernest is Raymond Briggs's loving depiction of his parents' lives from their chance first encounter in the 1920s until their deaths in the 1970s.

Ethel and Ernest were solid members of the English working class, part of the generation that lived through the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century. They met during the Depression--she working as a maid, he as a milkman--and we follow them as they court and marry, make a home, raise their son, and cope with the dark days of World War II. Briggs's portrayal of how his parents succeeded, or failed, in coming to terms with the events of their rapidly shifting world--the advent of radio, television, and telephones; the development of the atomic bomb; the moon landing; the social and political turmoil of the sixties--is irresistibly engaging, full of sympathy and affection, yet clear-eyed and unsentimental.

Briggs's illustrations are small masterpieces; coupled with the wonderfully candid dialogue, they evoke the exhilaration and sorrow, excitement and bewilderment, of experiencing such enormous changes. As much a social history as a personal account, Ethel & Ernest is a moving tribute to ordinary people living in an extraordinary time.

Customer Reviews:

A touching and moving true story.......2005-08-16

It is now a truism that comics are no longer just for children, and we could add here that picture books are no longer just for children either. For over 20 years now, Raymond Briggs has been the master of writing picture or comic style books with the simplicity of a children's book, but that deal with complex, adult issues like nuclear holocaust (When the Wind Blows) or social exclusion and class differences (Gentleman Jim).

Ethel and Ernest is a true story - the biography of Briggs' parents. It follows their story from their first meeting during the depression era through to their deaths in the early 1970s. Unlike a typical written biography, this books doesn't just relate in cold, hard facts the story off their life but presents vignettes - little captured moments that illustrate important aspects of their life together, or its context against the background events of the day: World War 2, the invention of the atomic and nuclear bombs, political changes in England, even the introduction of the motor car. Briggs has also invested himself emotionally in the book - you see his parents joy at his birth, their disappointment ass he ants to be an artist, and you even get a glimpse of a very sad, poignant moment in the last panel as the author looks back on his parents life.

This is the only book I can think of that I have ever shed a tear after reading, but it was so good that I bought a copy for my father and have since given away as gifts a number of other copies. I can safely say that I consider this one of the best books that I own.

Beautiful way to tell a beautiful story.......2001-09-02

The story told in this book is a half-generation ahead of my life and half a world away, but it is one I recognize and feel deeply. The author tells his parents' life story, difficulties and all, with words and especially with wonderful drawings. It is in the style of a comic book, but it is told seriously, with deep emotion and great honesty.

It is a treasure and if you have sympathy for working-class folks or have any desire to develop an emotional connection to them, then this books is for you. This wonderful telling of their lives shows them struggling to build a place for themselves in a very harsh world during the Great Depression and WWII and on through the cultural upheavals of the sixties. They live their lives with courage, pluck, and love.

The story has its heartbreaks and there is deep sadness at times, but these were lives admirably lived and the son should be praised for the way he honored his parents with this book. This book feels like a gift when I read it.

Bravo!

Wonderful!.......2001-06-16

A little treasure! There's not much more a person can say about a little book like this. It's worth buying and having in your possession-read it on occasion to realize what life is all about.

Spot On!.......2001-05-16

Forget A.J.P. Taylor! Nevermind Arnold Toynbee! "Ethel & Ernest" tells the story of 20th-Century Britain through the eyes of a working-class couple. When we study events in world history, we often forget the perspective of ordinary people like Mr. & Mrs. Briggs. I've learned more about modern British history from Raymond Briggs parents than from any established historian to date. Mr. Briggs should get a knighthood for E&E!

Hello ... can I have my copy back ...?.......2000-06-14

Actually, its a pleasure knowing that since I have bought this illustrated book, it has been passed on to friends of friends of friends! I havn't even seen it for a month. No one can resist this book, which is an affectionate yet honest look by the author/illustrator Raymond Briggs, who tells the story of the courtship and life of his mother Ethel and father Ernest, set squarely in a historical period of Britian. The historical detail is amazing - from the comic antagonism of the political attitudes displayed by his mother and father, to the harsh reality of facing World War II on families. But the story is told with such humour and insight, and with such a powerful undercurrent of sadness and love, that it is uplifting rather than depressing.

I noticed another reviewer said this book was hard to catergorise - and that is so. It is not a story with a particular point - the point, if any, is about life.

Average customer rating:

A Domestic Epic

just wonderful

Highly recommended

This is the way to grasp history

This is the way to grasp history

Ethel & Ernest: A True Story
Raymond Briggs
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | England | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

When the Wind Blows

Fungus the Bogeyman (Picture Puffin)

Father Christmas

When The Wind Blows

The Puddleman

ASIN: 0375714472
Release Date: 2001-10-23

Book Description

Customer Reviews:

A Domestic Epic.......2007-06-24

If you care at all about graphic novels (or good storytelling!), and have read Spiegelman's Maus I & II, this is the next book to snap up. Briggs, better known for Father Christmas and The Snowman, demonstrates a novelistic range in this short, but expressive book that traces his parents' courtship, marriage, and death. The book is masterfully developed through short scenes, often in the most mundane moments of life imaginable (trading barbs about politics, marveling at modern inventions, worrying about their son). Even in the midst of war, the couple plods on, preparing tea and fixing up the place, expressing love in these minute domestical details. You really come to know and care about this couple, and the son as well, as he gradually takes his place in the story.

The artwork is immaculate and deserves to be "read" on its own. This is a literal world to inhabit, with every detail remembered and re-created. While many graphic novels have crude, or more expressionistic drawings, Briggs creates a sumptuous tableau of the everyday life as filtered through his unique sensibility. The book ends far too quickly, but it never gets old...I will enjoy reading this again and again over the years.

just wonderful.......2004-11-21

I've never written a review on amazon before but after buying this book recently I felt compelled to say just how wonderful this book really is. Funny, witty and very, very moving, Raymond Briggs manages to capture two characters and their relationship over forty years in a cartoon strip. By the end of the book you feel as if you've known this couple forty years! I highly recommend this book to all ages. It's just wonderful.

Highly recommended.......2002-06-30

A charming, heartfelt and moving story - a lovely memorial to the author's parents (and a reminder of how short life really is).

This is the way to grasp history.......2002-05-22

Raymond Briggs turns his fine artistic repetoire to some of the issues that matter most in this precious book. It is precious because it is simply the lives of ordinary people told in pictures and words with more power than a Hollywood blockbuster. Those who love Briggs for the Father Christams stories will be reminded that this is also the creator of the Tin Pot Foreign General and a domestivated couple facing oblivion in a nuclear war. The messages remain as gentle as ever. If you wish to raise your children as literate, peaceful citizens of the world then this book should find its way through your home... pass it on to others if you can.

This is the way to grasp history.......2002-05-22

Raymond Briggs turns his fine artistic repetoire to some of the issues that matter most in this precious book. It is precious because it is simply the lives of ordinary people told in pictures and words with more power than a Hollywood blockbuster. Those who love Briggs for the Father Christmas stories will be reminded that this is also the creator of the Tin Pot Foreign General and a domesticated couple facing oblivion in a nuclear war. The messages remain as gentle and as strong as ever.
If you wish to raise your children as literate, peaceful citizens of the world then this book should find its way through your home... pass it on to others... if you can.

Average customer rating:

Ethel & Ernest A True Story
Raymond BRIGGS
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPQRI0

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