Squish Rabbit [Hardcover]

Squish Rabbit 
Squish is just a little rabbit. But being little can lead to big problems. Sometimes Squish is hard to hear . . . or see. (Which is how he got his name.) And no one notices him. But Squish notices things- especially when someone is about to get into trouble and needs help. Here is little Squish's BIG chance.
  
About the Author;  Katherine Battersby grew up in North Queensland, Australia. In 2010, she won the 2010 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for writing. She lives in Brisbane, Australia. Squish Rabbit is her first book. 

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just a small rabbit in a big, big world., August 22, 2011

By 

J. Prather (IN USA) 

This review is from: Squish Rabbit (Hardcover)

Squish Rabbit is a charming little story about a tiny rabbit, drawn only in black lines, who is feeling low because he's so small. He's so small that nobody listens to him, and sometimes he's hard to see "(Which is how he got his name)". The illustrations are fascinating in their combination of simplistic line drawings and mixed media collage. The result is a wonderful mix that really adds to the story and guarantees that kids will want to peruse these illustrations again and again.

Squish is in search of a friend, and after his attempts to make a pretend friend and to play with some unruly trees don't quite work out, he is about to give up when friendship finds him. He soon begins to feel not quite so small, and the book ends on a delightfully sweet note. Every child can identify with the notion of being small in a world that's just too big, and they are bound to find comfort in the notion that friendship might make things not feel so overwhelming. This is a great choice for any child's personal collection and a wonderful choice for preschool story time.

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!, September 3, 2011

By 

eaks88 This review is from: Squish Rabbit (Hardcover)

Spare, sensitive, and powerful...the illustrations in this book are beautiful, and it is deceptively simple. I read it three times before I felt like I had uncovered the hidden gems tucked away inside this exquisitely sweet book!

 

Grandpa Green [Hardcover]

Product Description

From the creator of the national bestseller It's a Book comes a timeless story of family history, legacy, and love.

 

Grandpa Green wasn't always a gardener. He was a farmboy and a kid with chickenpox and a soldier and, most of all, an artist. In this captivating new picture book, readers follow Grandpa Green's great-grandson into a garden he created, a fantastic world where memories are handed down in the fanciful shapes of topiary trees and imagination recreates things forgotten.

 

In his most enigmatic and beautiful work to date, Lane Smith explores aging, memory, and the bonds of family history and love; by turns touching and whimsical, it's a stunning picture book that parents and grandparents will be sharing with children for years to come.

Review

"An unassuming little masterpiece…the book’s power lies in its rich, allusive artistry.” --New York Times Book Review

 

“It's a rare glimpse into Smith's softer side--as skillful as his more sly offerings, but crafted with honesty and heart.” --Publishers Weekly Starred Review

 

"Visually intriguing and emotionally resonant, this is a book to pore over and talk about. With each subsequent reading, it offers new layers of meaning and visual connections."–School Library Journal Starred Review

“Opening this book is like opening a gate to a secret garden, filled with the treasures of a life well lived. In his portrait of a boy who adores and honors his forgetful great-grandfather, Smith shows us that the things that are meaningful to the ones we love become part of our garden, too.” —Shelf Awareness

“Though this book has lots of adult appeal, it will also be a wonderful bridge to exploring family history with the very young.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Sketched with a finely lined fairy-tale wispiness and dominated by verdant green, the illustrations are not just creative but poignant.” —Booklist

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This review is from: Grandpa Green (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program 

Multi-award winning author and illustrator Lane Smith has hit another one out-of-the-park, or in this case garden. From the very first page, young and old alike will be drawn into the whimsical garden of `Grandpa Green". Told through the eyes of Grandpa Green's great-grandkid, each page tells a piece of Grandpa Green's life via the visual world of his topiary trees, and a few perfectly captured words.

The illustrations are done in a subtle palette of green with light touches of yellow, blue and grey, reminiscent of Margaret Bloy Graham's classic illustrations in Gene Zion's `Harry the Dirty Dog' series. Each page provides a biographic fact from Grandpa Green's life; but what makes this tale so delightful is the symbolic topiary trees. Various perspectives are employed to challenge the visual reader to first see the picture and then understand the symbolic meaning of each topiary. Humor is not only expressed within the trees; but also through the boys attempts to help in the garden.

Teachers will delight in the page by page opportunities for instruction across content areas. From idioms, time-order words, summarizing skills, time & place discussions; to science (plants & animals), health (memory, aging) and social science (family, community, WWII) lessons, `Grandpa Green' is packed full of ideas for exploration in the classroom. This is an outstanding book for elementary age kids; but importantly this is also a book for every adult who longs to remember the magic from their past, and the continuity of their life. 

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TRUE Picture Book, August 25, 2011

By 

Sara M (Houston, Texas)This review is from: Grandpa Green (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program 

This is a very simple book to read, but if you focus only on the words you will miss out on the amazing story the pictures have to tell.
The story is sweet, simple, and sentimental...a great-grandfather who has lived a typical early century life: country childhood, military service in a war, marriage, children, etc. What makes this book wonderful is the emotion the simple text relays and the stunning artwork that portrays Grandpa Green's life's little secrets.
My three and five year old love the whimsical pictures and at the end of the book, I'm fighting back tears every time. Highly recommended!

Pomelo Begins to Grow [Hardcover]

Pomelo Begins to GrowWhat happens as a little one begins to grow? Do parts of the body grow unequally? If the outside grows, does that mean the inside is changing too? Children love it when they begin to grow! But they also have questions and maybe even worry a little too. Pomelo Begins to Grow explores this rich material with playfulness and humor, without undercutting the importance of the questions.
Ramona Badescu was born in Romania in 1980. She arrived in France at eleven and started to write for children at twenty-one. A busy, prolific writer, she currently lives in the wonderful city of Marseilles.
Benjamin Chaud has illustrated an impressive number of picture books and has written at least one as well.

---

Review
Starred Review Pomelo Begins to Grow Ramona Badescu, trans. from the French by Claudia Bedrick, illus. by Benjamin Chaud. Enchanted Lion (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 (48p) ISBN 978-1-59270-111-7
"The young elephant Pomelo is growing up, and this French pair, in their English- language debut, chronicle his doubts and questions, transferring onto his eraser- pink body and round eyes the anxieties that ordinary children have but rarely ex- press. “[Pomelo’s] a little worried that he won’t grow equally all over,” Badescu says, as Chaud supplies vignettes of Pomelo with an oversize ear here and an outsize leg there. When Pomelo “wonders what has to happen on the inside for him to grow on the outside,” Chaud draws a cutaway view of Pomelo full of complex, mysterious machinery. And to demon- strate that growing up involves “having new experiences,” Chaud shows Pomelo eating a hot pepper with fire roaring out of his mouth. Badescu is honest about young childhood’s losses (“But seriously, does growing up mean one has to stop clowning around?”) and encouraging about older children’s joys (“[W]hen your old fears return you are able to laugh at them”). Chaud lavishes as much energy on the verdant backgrounds as on Pomelo; they’re like Henri Rousseau’s tropics. The whole makes for a quirky, delectable treat. Ages 4–7. (Sept.)" -- Publishers Weekly

" [...] Badescu’s endearingly anxious pachyderm mirrors the familiar impatience to grow up, the determination never to act like adults do, and the many other concerns “medium”-sized people face. The author and illustrator demonstrate a brilliant marriage of text and illustration. Chaud’s charming paintings of Pomelo in his landscape of dandelions, strawberries, and smiling potatoes–set simply against oversize white pages–breathe life and humor into Badescu’s big-picture questions, while playing with scale. Youngsters will laugh at the silly depictions of Pomelo as he grows unevenly, while adults will smile at his joyful exploration of a countryside dotted with asparagus trees, broccoli bushes, and sushi flowers as he learns to love foods that aren’t sweet. The imagery may remind some readers of the modern Japanese ultra-cute cartoon style, but the masterful execution–and Badescu’s universal subject matter–makes this a picture book that children will return to again and again." -- School Library Journal 
  

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gentle philosophical book about the implications of a little pink garden elephant's experience of growing, August 25, 2011

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) -This review is from: Pomelo Begins to Grow (Hardcover)

"Pomelo Begins to Grow" is a gentle philosophical book about the implications of a little pink garden elephant's experience of growing. Existential musings of the growing pink elephant combine with highly amusing pictographs to provide the perfect medium for (pre-school and older) self-conscious maturation, or the examined growing life. Many resonating questions are quite simply asked and illustrated, and in good time, Pomelo feels ready to grow into his next big adventure. "Pomelo Begins to Grow" is a wonderful tool for encouraging imaginative. creative questions about the important issues. "Pomelo Begins to Grow" is part of a French children's book series about the same delightful pink garden elephant and his experiences.

YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND!

 

YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND!Today is the day the exuberant Lucy is going to make a new friend! But she finds it's harder than she had thought--she accidentally ruins the giraffe's breakfast and is much too big for the frogs' pond. Just when she's about to give up, an unexpected friend finds her, and loves her just the way she is.

This heartwarming story offers a unique and humor-filled spin on the all-important themes of persistence and friendship.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (September 5, 2011)
• Language: English

The Black Ice (Harry Bosch)

 

From Wikipedia

The Black Ice (Harry Bosch) is the second novel by American crime author Michael Connelly, featuring the Los Angeles detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. In the book, narcotics officer Calexico Moore's body is discovered Christmas night in a seedy Hollywood motel, an apparent suicide. As the L.A. police higher-ups converge on the scene to protect the department from scandal, Harry Bosch inserts himself into the investigation. The trail he follows leads to Mexican drug gangs operating across the border. 

Publishers Weekly

LAPD detective Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, protagonist of the highly praised mystery The Black Echo , returns in a procedural thriller set in and around the drug-trafficking underworlds of inner-city Los Angeles and the wastelands of Mexico. When Bosch arrives at a sleazy hotel room where a fellow officer has committed suicide, he senses that something is awry. Noncommittal superior officers, a diffident widow and tales linking the dead man to a newly created street drug called "black ice" (heroin, crack and PCP rolled into one) send Bosch down a winding trail of forensic impossibilities, brutally violent drug traffickers and an ultimately shocking case of mistaken identity. Award-winning Connelly's second fictional effort is strong and sure. His pacing could be better--too often he conveys the same information twice--but his plot and characters more than make up for a slow start. This novel establishes him as a writer with a superior talent for storytelling.

Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. Michael Connelly's books are definitively within the "hard-boiled urban detective" genre that historically has been highlighted by the work of Raymond Chandler and other great mystery writers. *The Black Ice* is the second in a series of novels with LAPD detective Hieronymous Bosch as the protagonist (the first was *The Black Echo*), and it's definitely a winner. There's murder, intrigue, twists and turns in the plot, and plenty of action, as well.

One thing that Connelly does particularly well is to include geographical/place descriptions in his work. When one reads his descriptions of life in Los Angeles or travels to a bordertown like Mexicali, these places really do seem real and are accurately depicted.

The book is not perfect; as in so many police mysteries, sometimes the clues come just a bit too neatly packaged, and at times this doesn't seem realistic. But then, real police work is probably pretty dull 90% of the time (false leads, endless drudgery, etc.), so streamlining the process for the sake of fast-moving fiction is certainly forgiveable. The other thing that had me rolling my eyes a bit is the obligatory "romantic angle" that seems always to be a subplot in these books. Again, it's kind of a sacred part of the genre, but wouldn't it be interesting if for once Bosch noted the "gorgeous but sad woman" and then went about his business without becoming involved with her?

All in all, this is a terrific book and an absorbing, "can't put it down" read. One last thing: I would recommend that people who wish to read the Bosch novels start with the first (*The Black Echo*) and read them in chronological order, as Connelly is very careful in his novels about maintaining accurate references to what has happened to his protagonist previously.

By 

Douglas A. Greenberg (Berkeley, CA USA)

Best Seller (1987)

Best Seller

• Actors: James Woods, Brian Dennehy, Victoria Tennant, Allison Balson, Paul Shenar
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• DVD Release Date: June 4, 2002
• Run Time: 110 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews

 James Woods is "at his cold-blooded best" and Brian Dennehy shines in "one of the very best roles hes ever had" (Variety) in this "captivating and mesmerizing psychological thriller" (The Hollywood Reporter) in which trusting your partner can be as deadly as trusting your enemy. After years of loyal service, professional assassin Cleve (Woods) has been let go by the corporate empire he helped build. Now he wants revenge in a tell-all book. From different sides of the law and opposing ends of the moral spectrum, Cleve and best-selling author Dennis Meechum (Dennehy) forman unusual partnership. But when Meechum's daughter is kidnapped by Cleve's former employer, Meechum discovers exactly what kind of man he's been partnered with as he's pulled into an explosive confrontation that will leave only one of them standing!