Book Description

Back when scientists knew nothing about space travel, back when rockets were new, a group of Russian cosmonauts rode rockets to the edge of space and into earth orbit.These pioneer space travelers were dogs, space dogs of the Soviet space program. For 15 years, space dogs occupied the world stage, blazing trails as the first astronauts.Their flights taught scientists how living beings reacted to rocket travel and tested the equipment that would be used for human space flight.The age of the space dog extended from the first launch in 1951 until the final, record-breaking dog flight in 1966.Some dogs won world-wide fame.Most of them, however, worked and died in obscurity.They were all pioneers of space travel.And no one has ever told their story.Until now. Space Dogs dramatizes the training of the dogs, the harrowing early flights, the tragic accidents, the fame that came to the program after the launch of Laika in Sputnik 2, and the final flights leading up to the first manned flight. Space Dogs includes never-before-published photos from the archives of Novosti, the Russian News Agency. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

With never-before published photographs
Space Dogs: Pioneers Of Space Travel by Chris Dubbs is a fascinating and informative presentation of the canine contributions (and sacrifices) that helped advance space travel technology and accomplishments from 1951 to 1966. From world-famous space dogs, to the animals that worked and died unknown, Space Dogs offers an historical overview of the training, early flights, and terrible accidents that befell these proud and companionate animals. Never-before published photographs from the archives of Novosti, the Russian News Agency, are included. Space Dogs is very highly recommended reading for dog lovers and students of the Space Exploration History. ... Read more

Book Description

Did young Thomas Jefferson like to fiddle?

What sweet treat did he discover in Italy?

Whom did Jefferson send to map the West?

Best-selling author Kenneth C. Davis tells the story of one extraordinary man who shaped our young nation. Besides serving as president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson also made his mark in the fields of architecture, philosophy, and science. In this stellar biography, Davis weaves a smooth, flowing narrative into his trademark question-and-answer format, peppering the text with informational sidebars and compelling quotes. Maps, reproductions from the period, and striking black-and-white illustrations by Rob Shepperson help capture the amazing diversity of Jefferson's talents, as well as the vitality of these revolutionary times.

Reviews (10)

Every Child Deserves This Beautiful Book
This large, gorgeous picture book contains 123 poems perfectly suited for youthful excursions into the land of poetry. You will find many favorites here as well as bountiful opportunity to make new friends. Emily Dickinson, Rachel Field, David McCord, Jane Yolen, Christina Rossetti, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Robert Frost are just a few of the amazing talents that grace the pages of this book. From the very beginning where a qote from Isak Dinesen's "Out of Africa" explains the title of the book, we are swept up in a cavalcade of imagery, sound and experience that is a true delight and feast for the imagination. Not only is this a wonderful introduction to poetry for children it is a giant step forward toward learning about creative visualization and self-expression. It is a fortunate child who learns to evoke response from others through the mastery and selection of words. There is no better way to teach the art than to provide a child with the opportunity to experience the magic first-hand. The splendid illustrations in this book cheerily invite one to venture closer and then become the magic carpet that sweeps one from place to place within the book. The subject matter covers a broad range of topics, humorous and thoughtful, and can serve as a wonderful catalyst to further discussion about poetry and the use of the imagination. After a long and satisfying relationship with this book, may I suggest that you place a special magical pen and a blank tablet of paper in the hands of your child and discover the wonders it has helped to deliver. This book is truly an ambassador to creative expression.

Beyond Mother Goose
This has become my favorite gift of all that I received for our now almost 3 year old twin boys. The illustrations are gorgeous and the poems vary widely in subject matter and flavor. It is a perfect introduction to poetry after Mother Goose. I've been reading it to them from about 18 months on, and they've grown to love it. They know many of the poems by heart. I think it is a book that they will read over and over for years to come. I now give this book out as gifts to other new parents.

Educators Recommend
The Kennedys have done a superb job in selecting the poems for this read-aloud. The titles run the gamut of sweetly simple (Langston Hughes' "Piggy Back"), to the powerful (Georgia Roberts Durston's "The Wolf").

There is something for everyone here. Readers will find old favorites-"The Purple Cow"-as well as a few not-so-well-known but soon-to-be favorites such as William Jay Smith's lovely and lyrical "Polar Bear."

The book is divided into nine, themed sections: Plays, Families, Just for Fun, Birds, Bugs, and Beasts, Rhymes and Songs, Magic and Wonder, Wind and Weather, Calendars and Clocks, and, finally, Day and Night.

Making their appearance are, among others, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joan Aiken, Jane Yolen, Gwendolyn Books, A. A. Milne, and Wallace Stevens.

Jane Dyer, as always, does a magnificent job with the illustrations. There are full-page pictures and spot art throughout, extending and enriching the text. Readers will want to linger over the realistic, charming watercolors.

Highly recommended.

Reviewed by the Education Oasis Staff

A Beautiful Anthology with a Wonderful Variety of Poems
This is a beautiful book both visually and in content. The watercolor illustrations are in the realistic style painted in fine detail. My daughter loves to look at the pictures closely as we read the poems aloud.

The poems selected cover a wide range of topics, themes, and moods. There are funny poems like limericks, serious poems about the seasons, poems about how children sometimes feel (such as the one about the boy who didn't do anything right yesterday, so he's not getting out of bed today) bedtime poems, and poems about child play.

This book was a gift and I love it so much I've since given it to other parents and children to enjoy. Everyone has been enthusiastic about it. When my daughter selects this book (which is often) it's fun for us to browse through the pages and pick poems based on the illustrations or on our mood. We'll say, let's read about sleepytime poems, or let's read funny poems. She never tires of this book. There are hundreds of poems to choose from, but the scope is not overwhelming either.

I give this book my highest recommendation. Every home should have some poetry on the shelf!

Great Book of Poetry For Children (and Parents)
Last night, my not-quite-three-year-old daughter spontaneously recited a couple dozen poems from this book to my wife and me. We were astounded. She's been requesting that we read TALKING LIKE THE RAIN to her day and night since I bought it last month, but we had no idea how deeply the poems had sunken in. What better endorsement can one give to such a book? We plan to buy several more copies as presents for my daughter's friends . . . and their parents.

X.J. Kennedy is a terrific poet as well as a top-notch editor. I highly recommend his own children's poetry books, particularly his irreverent BRATS, as well as his poetry books for adults, which include the excellent DARK HORSES and CROSS TIES. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

OK book about a very bad man.
Kofi Annan is a sick man and a dangerous one at that.Kofi Annan: The Peacekeeper is ironic in that Annan has been indirectly and directly responsible for the deaths of many people due his being asleep at the wheel at the UN, support for Arafar, etc.

Jeff Jacoby recently wrote that he is basically a symptom of UN's sickness.Jacoby noted that just last week, Annanwoke up to a Wall Street Journal column by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, publisher of the influential InstaPundit website, urging that he be replaced by Vaclav Havel, the much-admired former president of the Czech Republic.

In The New York Times, op-ed eminence William Safire reviewed the revelations that link the massive oil-for-food scandal to Annan's own family: Until this year, his son Kojo was getting monthly payments from a firm that had a major oil-for-food contract with the UN -- even though he'd left the company in 1998. The corruption enveloping the UN will not begin to dissipate, Safire wrote, until Annan resigns, "having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations."

Meanwhile, the latest National Review was out, with its cover photo of Annan and the headline, in large red letters: "You're Fired!" An editorial inside insisted that "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not," while an essay by Nile Gardiner, a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, explained why "Kofi's hour is up." With his record, Gardiner observed, "if Annan were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company . . . he would have been forced to resign months ago."

On Wednesday came another call for Annan's ouster, this one from the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has amassed evidence that Saddam Hussein used stolen oil-for-food dollars to underwrite terrorism and suborn at least one senior UN official. It is "abundantly clear" that Kofi Annan should resign, Senator Norm Coleman said. "As long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks, and under-the-table payments that took place under the UN's collective nose."

But odds are the world won't much care about getting to the bottom of the latest UN scandal. UN scandals rarely provoke lasting outrage. There was no global uproar when the brutal regime in Libya was chosen to chair the UN's Human Rights Commission. Nothing happened to the UN after its troops allowed Serbs to slaughter 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Sex scandals seem to erupt wherever the UN goes -- the latest involves charges of rape, child abuse, and prostitution by UN personnel in the Congo -- but they never cause heads to roll in Turtle Bay. Annan himself became secretary general despite his failure, when he headed the UN's peacekeeping operations, to pay attention to warnings of genocide in Rwanda.

Why should anything be different this time? Oil-for-food may be the greatest international rip-off of modern times, it may have strengthened one of the world's bloodiest dictators, but if history is any guide, the scandal headlines will fade from view long before the secretary general does. By week's end, in fact, dozens of governments, including all the permanent members of the Security Council save the United States, had publicly rallied to Annan's support. Scandal or no scandal, he will almost certainly serve out the remaining two years of his term.

Which is just as well. Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned. Better that Annan remain in place as a symbol of UN fecklessness and failure, and a spur to those who can envision something better.

The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states -- essentially the Afro-Asian Third World -- most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights.

Inside the United Nations, there is no difference between a dictatorship or a democracy: Each gets exactly one vote in the General Assembly. The reason the UN indulges vicious regimes like those in North Korea, Syria, and Cuba is that they are members in good standing, and most other governments lack the courage to cross them. The UN cannot be fixed unless that changes -- and that isn't going to change.

Kofi is a bad man.

Needs more depth
Tessitore's biography of Kofi Annan leaves the reader with only very vague insight into the life of the seventh Secretary-General to the United Nations.After only a few pages, it becomes evident that the author himself couldn't possibly have known too much about Mr. Annan.Thus, it was no surprise to learn later that Tessitore had never even had an opportunity to interview with the UN Secretary-General.

As a biography, Tessitore's account left me dissatisfied, since it gave me little detail about the life of Kofi Annan.It would be a perfect option for someone seeking only a very broad understanding of Mr. Annan's background.Considering he had access to scarce information himself, I guess Tessitore did a good job.But this begs the question: Why write a biography on a man you know very little about? ... Read more

Book Description

Just what does a president do? In this companion to the award-winning The Flag We Love, young readers will discover the important part a president plays in our nation. Unique among children's books about the presidents, this concise and fact-filled volume is organized around the duties and roles of the president. Each two-page spread focuses on a president who helped to define one aspect of the presidency. Thomas Jefferson, for example, added to the territory of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase and added a power to the presidency not mentioned in the Constitution. Examples of other presidents in action follow, with every president mentioned at least once, giving a sense of the role they played in our history. ... Read more

Book Description

In One World, every living creature has its place, a right to life and a right to survival. Our love for animals is tempered by human need and self-interest. But is cruelty inevitable? Is it possible for human nature to change? Animal Rights gets to the core of issues which concern even the youngest children. Arlette Lavie's illustrations enhance the text. 7 1/2" x 7 1/2"For children ages 6-16 years. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An excellent reference
Ages 8 and older will find Flag Lore For All Nations an excellent reference which covers the histories of flags in nations around the world. Each small color flag is accompanied by a paragraph of background on the date it first flew and the meaning behind its colors. ... Read more

Book Description

An illustrated guide to the deadly world of espionage.

Agents, double agents and multiple agents are vital to waging war successfully and they often help nations avoid war altogether. Spies have affected the outcomes of wars and crucial battles throughout history.

Spies exposes the secret successes and public failures of intelligence gathering and operations from ancient times to the current war on terrorism.

Using easy-to-follow illustrated case studies and sidebar features, Spies reveals the behind-the-scenes stories of famous spies, international secrets, betrayals and bravery in the long history of spying.

The book describes in exciting detail: - The art of spy tradecraft - Techniques spies use to gather and send secrets - Devices used to steal state secrets - How agents survive in hostile environments - Whether or not spies like James Bond really exist.

Today, sophisticated digital and space-based technology gathers untold amounts of raw data. Yet far from rendering the spy on the ground obsolete, human intelligence is more vital than ever to separate the truth from the deception.

Spies is a factual and fascinating look into a dangerous world where nothing is what it appears to be. ... Read more