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The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

James Patterson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 58 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Give this book to your high-reading elementary student! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book's targeted age group is clearly mis-assigned. When I first read this book I was disappointed...I wanted something along the same lines as "Maximum Ride". My problem was that I was looking for reading materials for 14-15 year old students. All those nasty little things that the other reviewers are saying, I felt. BUT...

As someone who used to teach elementary, please let me recommend "Daniel X" to you if you have one of those high-level reading students/children who read above level but have a hard time finding appropriate books. Really, this book should have been targeted for 10-12 year-old kids.

I just gave this to my fifth grade daughter. She absolutely loves it! She loves the fact that Daniel can do about anything and thinks it is wonderful that he can conjure up what ever he wants to see. She finds the book exciting and really appreciates the short chapters.

Give this book to your reluctant readers. I think they'll love it.

Editorial Review:

The greatest superpower of all isn't to be part spider, part man, or to cast magic spells--the greatest power is the power to create.

Daniel X has that power.

Daniel's secret abilities -- like being able to manipulate objects and animals with his mind or to recreate himself in any shape he chooses -- have helped him survive. But Daniel doesn't have a normal life. He is the protector of the earth, the Alien Hunter, with a mission beyond what anyone's imagining.

From the day that his parents were brutally murdered before of his very eyes, Daniel has used his unique gifts to hunt down their assassin. Finally, with the help of The List, bequeathed to him in his parents' dying breath, he is closing in on the killer.

Now, on his own, he vows to take on his father's mission--and to take vengeance in the process.

Chosen (House of Night, Book 3)

PC Cast, Kristin Cast

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dark forces are at work at the House of Night and fledgling vampyre Zoey Redbird’s adventures at the school take a mysterious turn. Those who appear to be friends are turning out to be enemies. And oddly enough, sworn enemies are also turning into friends. So begins the gripping third installment of this “highly addictive series” (Romantic Times), in which Zoey’s mettle will be tested like never before. Her best friend, Stevie Rae, is undead and struggling to maintain a grip on her humanity. Zoey doesn’t have a clue how to help her, but she does know that anything she and Stevie Rae discover must be kept secret from everyone else at the House of Night, where trust has become a rare commodity. Speaking of rare: Zoey finds herself in the very unexpected and rare position of having three boyfriends. Mix a little bloodlust into the equation and the situation has the potential to spell social disaster. Just when it seems things couldn’t get any tougher, vampyres start turning up dead. Really dead. It looks like the People of Faith, and Zoey’s horrid step-father in particular, are tired of living side-by-side with vampyres. But, as Zoey and her friends so often find out, how things appear rarely reflects the truth…

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Jeff Kinney

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Editorial Review:

The highly anticipated third book in the critically acclaimed and bestselling series takes the art of being wimpy to a whole new level.

Let’s face it: Greg Heffley will never change his wimpy ways. Somebody just needs to explain that to Greg’s father. You see, Frank Heffley actually thinks he can get his son to toughen up, and he enlists Greg in organized sports and other “manly” endeavors. Of course, Greg is able to easily sidestep his father’s efforts to change him. But when Greg’s dad threatens to send him to military academy, Greg realizes he has to shape up . . . or get shipped out.

Greg and his family and friends, who make the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books a must-read for middle school readers, are back and at their best in this hilarious new installment of the series, which is sure to please current fans while attracting new ones.

Rough Justice

Jack Higgins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Intrigue in the halls of power, blood in the streets— the master of suspense returns with a novel of dark passion and darker deeds.

After almost two score books, Higgins knows how to fire up a thriller,” wrote Publishers Weekly about the author’s latest book, The Killing Ground. “It’s all pure Higgins: almost every shot hits square between the eyes, and all the characters are hard lads indeed.” But none of them harder than the heroes—and villains—of Rough Justice.

Dispatched by the President to report on the state of still troubled Kosovo, his trusted agent Blake Johnson runs into a military man there named Harry Miller, who has the same task from the British Prime Minister. They band together just in time to stop a Russian officer from torching a mosque—or rather, Miller stops him, with a bullet to the forehead.

This action will have considerable consequences, not only for Miller and Johnson and their associates, including Britain’s Sean Dillon, but for a great many people, all the way to the top of the governments of the United States, Britain, and Russia. Death begets death, and revenge leads only to revenge, and before the chain reaction of events is done—from Kosovo to London to Beirut to Ireland to Moscow—there will be plenty of both.

Rich with all the ingredients that have made the author justly admired, Rough Justice is further proof that, in the words of the Associated Press, “When it comes to thriller writers, one name stands well above the crowd—Jack Higgins.”

Geometry

Ray C. Jurgensen, Richard G. Brown, John W. Jurgensen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A good introductory textbook 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This book is not Euclid's "The Elements". The Elements, a compilation of many mathematicians' work, was written for mathematicians and their math-dedicated young disciples. Its opening proposition and complex figure reveals that the reader was expected to have a substantial degree of preexistent geometry knowledge.

To reach high school students who have only completed Algebra I, Jurgensen et al labels some theorems postulates to avoid getting bogged down, but so do the other high school geometry textbooks.

This book fulfills its mission to introduce students to a formal system of mathematically analyzing planar figures and objects. If it is carefully read and digested, every problem, including the most-challenging C and C-starred exercises, is solvable. Problems that require the student to write a half-dozen solution/proof statements, and remember (or refresh themselves by re-reading) material from prior sections, and even prior chapters, are commonly encountered (always for the C-level problems).

A small number of exercises require a dozen or so statements in which a student establishes one line of argument, then introduces another, and finally combines them, which is to say, students must be able to organize their thoughts into coherent streams, and then engage in translating visuo-spatial information into mathematical-language statements.

Is this hard? Yes. It takes not only intelligence, but serious effort to fully benefit from studying Jurgensen. Real math isn't something you breeze through. As a student encountering the material for the first time, you may frequently have to read a passage or statement several times, thinking, "I don't get this," then maybe even sleep on it, and then you'll have Eureka moments, "Oh yes! Why didn't I see this before? This is so obvious."

For anyone who wants to think about pursuing university studies in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences, acquiring diligent, persevering work habits is essential. Mathematics is not social studies. For some students the challenge is enjoyable, for others it is painful and a "waste of time". For teachers who find that their students can only consistently answer A-category problems, hit or miss on Bs, and can't even begin to tackle Cs, this book will probably not be satisfactory.

A larger question is when should Euclidean geometry be taught? Should it be taught at all?

I think it is disruptive, and counterproductive to teach algebra I, leave the subject for a full year to study geometry, then jump back to algebra. The trouble is that the "classical" curriculum of the 19th century only taught one course in algebra and then one course in geometry. But as mathematics education was extended, particularly during the Cold War, geometry held its place as the second course in the timetable, but was followed by additional algebra, pre-calculus and calculus, with insufficient thought given to the utility and efficiency of this particular sequence.

Measures such as focusing on analytical geometry (coordinate) exclusively, or nearly so, or teaching algebra II with trigonometry before Euclidean geometry, have been tried in some schools. I know of two schools that no longer even have a "Geometry" titled class. These and other alternatives seem to be working, according to people who are using them.

One thing I would point out is that most state high school graduation requirements today specify the completion of three mathematics units, and many universities require or recommend such. They DO NOT say "three mathematics courses, including geometry". So, for example, if a student is doing well in algebra, I'd say to him or her, stick with it. Go on to algebra II (preferably with trigonometry), precalculus and calculus. Learn about plane figures and solids from a modern perspective. (I can still remember generating the volume of a sphere using integration, and drawing a nicely shaded 3D sphere and discs thirty-something years ago in my second semester of calculus. I thought, "Wow, this is cool!")

So, I think schools should be flexible in their math curricula, and realize there is not a college or university in the country that will ever look at an applicant's transcript and say, "This student took AP Calculus, but there's no 'Geometry' here. Rejection."

If this book is to be used, I would recommend a couple stratagems. One is to for the student to try to prove its theorems before examining the authors' proofs. It's not hard to cover them up with a sheet of paper. This encourages students to acquire conceptual knowledge through active pursuit.

Secondly, students using Jurgensen or most other popular geometry books should subscribe to hotmath.com, where odd-numbered exercises solutions are presented in a thoughtful way, starting with a hint, then progressively revealing steps as the student feels the need to examine them for more help.

There was initially a mixed reception among educators to Hotmath, with some teachers enthusiastically signing up to provide solutions, while others were discomfited by an external knowledge resource that they felt undermined their ability to maintain traditional authority-control over what their students learned.

The disagreement was resolved. The American Mathematical Society invited Hotmath's president to give a lecture at one of its regional conferences several years ago, which was well received. All the leading textbook publishers got on board, which is to say, they recognized that the college-level promulgation of student solutions manuals starting two decades ago had proven to be heuristically sound, and the principle was applicable to college-preparatory mathematics.

For even-numbered exercise homework assignments, students can usually tackle the neighboring odd-numbered ones, check the Hotmath solutions, then apply the same principles to their homework problems.

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Scott O'Dell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 606 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Scott O'Dell won the Newbery Medal for Island of the Blue Dolphins in 1961, and in 1976 the Children's Literature Association named this riveting story one of the 10 best American children's books of the past 200 years. O'Dell was inspired by the real-life story of a 12-year-old American Indian girl, Karana. The author based his book on the life of this remarkable young woman who, during the evacuation of Ghalas-at (an island off the coast of California), jumped ship to stay with her young brother who had been abandoned on the island. He died shortly thereafter, and Karana fended for herself on the island for 18 years.

O'Dell tells the miraculous story of how Karana forages on land and in the ocean, clothes herself (in a green-cormorant skirt and an otter cape on special occasions), and secures shelter. Perhaps even more startlingly, she finds strength and serenity living alone on the island. This beautiful edition of Island of the Blue Dolphins is enriched with 12 full-page watercolor paintings by Ted Lewin, illustrator of more than 100 children's books, including Ali, Child of the Desert. A gripping story of battling wild dogs and sea elephants, this simply told, suspenseful tale of survival is also an uplifting adventure of the spirit. (Ages 9 to 12)

Cracking the SAT, 2009 Edition (College Test Prep)

Princeton Review

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent review of needed material, but with a few warts 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

When I prepared to take my first SAT, I relied on this book to prepare. Let me first talk about the good aspects of the book:

It demystifies the SAT and takes a "student friendly" approach. That is, it helps convince the reader that the SAT doesn't measure intelligence, self-worth, etc. While this may or may not be true, it relieves one of a significant burden by believing that the test doesn't test anything innate, which prevents the formation of artificial mental barriers or blocks.

The vocabulary list is quite good, as it consists of a short, but sweet list of 200 words that are likely to show up on the SAT (either in passages or in the sentence completions). For such a short list, it sure does get a good number of "hits" on the real thing.

The math refresher is good -- it's not a math textbook in the sense that it will, in vivid detail, teach you the fundamentals of mathematics beginning with "2 + 2 = 4", but it does give you a great refresher of all the topics you (should) have learned. If you're shaky about performing basic algebra, then you don't need an SAT prep book -- you need a basic mathematics book. It also shows how these basic math tools can be applied to the SAT, by showing how to solve several "famous" or "representative" problems to give you a feel of the kinds of problems you'll likely encounter.

The grammar/essay sections are good, too. It goes over the fundamental errror that you'll likely encounter without attempting to write the next great treatise in English grammar. So with the rules in here, you'll feel comfortable answering the questions on the real test.

The best part, by far, of this book is the set of three very accurate, very SAT-ish practice tests. They're slightly more difficult than what you'll encounter on the SAT, but not by any significant margin. The math questions are sufficiently convoluted in wording and the content is great. The passages are of SAT level and the questions are very much in the flavor of the test. The writing/grammar questions are also superb -- any error that you can find on the real test, you'll find in this book on these practice tests. So, all in all, good practice that will demystify the content/format/questions on the test.

Now, for the bad:

Firstly, the reading comprehensions "tips and strategies" are just god-awful. This book explicitly states to "not read the passage and just skim it for the gist". Are you kidding me? That's how you miss out on big points on the reading comprehensions, especially the tone/overall meaning/theme questions. In fact, I was so naive as to follow their advice and got a lower score than I'd deserved (the first time I tried their method and scored 680CR, but when I retook and read through the passages without skimming, I scored a 760.) It's for this that I dock a star -- the section's called "critical reading", not "skim through and hunt for factoids which will invariably be out of context".

The book also doesn't have enough practice tests. The SAT is very much like any intellectual or artistic pursuit -- one's skill is directly proportional to the amount of practice that one has. And if you're using this book as your sole source of preparation, the three tests, while well designed, will run out quickly, and you'll very soon need to buy some more. For this, you can either buy PR's 11 practice tests or the Official SAT Study Guide which has 8 tests created by the ETS (guys who write the SAT). In this case, I'd go with the Official Guide -- no test can be as accurate as one written by the guys at the ETS. Not a huge downfall, especially since most people won't take that many tests, but it's nonetheless a caveat for those aiming for relatively high scores.

All in all, a very light and fairly entertaining read that will get you familiar with the SAT and help you raise your score. But if you're really serious, you're going to need to pair this with another book to provide an alternate perspective (I'd reccomend Barron's), as well as with the Official Guide for practice tests.

Editorial Review:

Cracking the SAT brings you proven techniques from the test prep experts! The 2009 edition includes full-length practices tests and exclusive free access to further review online. In Cracking the SAT, we’ll teach you how to think like the test writers and

· Master specific strategies for answering every question type
· Boost your vocabulary with our exclusive “Hit Parade”— a list of words that appear most frequently on the SAT
· Practice online with an additional full-length test, lessons, and drills
· Get the most out of your prep time with the study plan that’s right for you

We give you plenty of practice problems to help you master our proven techniques. In addition, this book contains 3 full-length, “paper and pencil” SAT practice tests. Our practice questions are just like those you’ll see on the real SAT—but with detailed answers and explanations for every question.

A Potty for Me!: A Lift-the-Flap Instruction Manual

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 72 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great potty training book. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I've used this book when my older daughter was going through potty training. Now we are doing the same for our youngest. I loved how it emphases that it's okay to have a mishap and just to keep on trying and eventually you will say good-bye to the diaper forever.

Almost the same as another book-buy the other 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Our son really loved Karen's "Toes, Ears and Nose" and although I was disappointed with the text in some of the manners books she wrote, I thought I would give this a try. This was the second potty book we bought-the first was "The Potty Book for Boys" which is cute and really enjoyable for our son. I was extemely shocked when we read this and, low and behold- the words in this book are almost exactly like the other book! This was confusing for our son and difficult to explain why this was almost the same. I will never buy one of her books again. Buy the other potty book and you will not be disappointed.

Editorial Review:

Mommy got me a brand new potty!

But I'm not ready yet!

I want to run and play.

Uh-oh, I peed in my pants.

But Mommy says, "That's okay!"

Children will love following along and lifting the flaps to see the child play, sit on thepotty, eat, sit on the potty, sleep, and then sit on the potty...until finally there is success.

Written from a child's point of view, this new potty-training book will help children join in the final refrain, "I'm so proud of me!"

The Outsiders

S. E. Hinton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1529 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Outsiders 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This was an awesome book.....my son read it for school, and my two beagle's really enjoyed the school's copy, so I had to buy another one! :)

THE BEST BOOK EVER!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I LUV THE OUTSIDERS I MEAN WHO COULDNT?! PONYBOY IS AWESOME BUT NO-ONE BEATS MY DARRY. DARRY RUNS THE FAMILY AND IS TOTALLY AWESOME! SODAPOP IS THE BOMB ALONG WITH STEVE! THERE ALL AMAZING I MEAN IT! TIM SHEPARD AND CO. ROCK THEY CAN FIGHT AND SO CAN BUMBLY BOYS! WHEN THEY WON THE RUMBLE I NEARLY FELL OUT MY SEAT! AND POOR JOHNNY AND DALLY TWO OF THE BEST PEOPLE TO WALK THE DARK STREETS. MAN IF I WAS IN THAT STORY ID BE LIKE WORD AND GO DARRY ITS YA B-DAY WE GONNA PARTY LIKE ITS YA B-DAY GET SHAWTY OH OH! BUT SERIOUSLY IF YOUR LOOKIN FOR SOMETHIN TO PUMP YA UP THIS IS IT! SADNESS HAPPINESS AND A GANG OF COOL GOOD LOOKIN TUFF FIGHTIN BAD TO THE BONE HOODS WHO ARE LOOKIN FOR A WAY OUT HEAR YA GO! AND I ALMOST FORGOT- GO STEVE ROCK ON TWO-BIT AND RANDY DONT SWEAT IT! BOB IS FINE! STAY GOLD YALL STAY GOLD!

Editorial Review:

According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser. This classic, written by S. E. Hinton when she was 16 years old, is as profound today as it was when it was first published in 1967.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 508 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Ole Huck 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

You'll notice pretty quickly when you pick this up that Huck doesn't spell too good and his grammar isn't so hot either. But if you look a little more closely, you find that he sure knows how to use the semi-colon, and his sentence structure is picture perfect. Mr. Twain may have decided that he was going to have some fun with his charming narrator, but he sure wasn't going to sacrifice good writing to do so.

The novel, as everyone knows, is a masterpiece, and works splendidly on every level. Plot, character development, theme; everything is here. Anybody reading this review has probably read the book several times and moreover has probably read about it a dozen more so it's pretty certain that my little review is not going to add much. I would, however, like to comment on something which struck me while reading it most recently, which is how richly it evokes middle America of the mid-nineteenth century. In other words, as well as being literature of the first rank, Huckleberry Finn also functions as a thorough and fascinating historical document of a time and place that every year sinks deeper and deeper into our collective memory.

Here he is describing Uncle Silas' place in Arkansas upon seeing it for the first time. "It was one of these one-horse cotton plantations and they all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with . . . some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log house for the white folks--hewed logs with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud stripes been white-washed some time or another; round log-kitchen, with a big, broad open but roofed passage joining it to the house . . . hound asleep there in the sun; more hounds asleep round about . . . outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cottonfields begins, and after the fields the woods."

The first thing that strikes you about this is how . . . impoverished this all is, especially compared to how we live today. And this is a cotton-field owner with a number of slaves! But this was the south: rural, poor, hot, languid. Oh, yes, we are all familiar with the palatial southern mansion from novels like Gone With the Wind; I suspect that most of the South in the 1840s was closer to Huck's description than to Margaret Mitchell's.

Here's Huck's description of the town in which the King and Duke put on their first show: "The stores and houses was most all old, shackly, dried-up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they was set up three or four feet above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed. The houses had little gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpson-weeds, and sunflowers, and ash-piles, and old curled up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out tinware . . . There was generly hogs in the garden, and people driving them out." Charming, eh? Of course, we in our modern twenty-first century aren't immune to such slovenliness. Sometimes, historical descriptions remind us that things don't change much.

Along with his brilliant observations of humanity and the human habitat the novel also contains breathtaking descriptions of nature, especially the Mississippi River. There's heavy timber on the Missouri side, mountains on the Illinois side, the lights of St. Louis: "We run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly always in the dead water under a towhead . . . Next we slid into the water and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we sat down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee-deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywhere--perfectly still--just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a cluttering, maybe. The first thing you see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line--and that was the woods on t'other side." How wonderfully evocative this is; how it makes one ache to experience such things!

Again, the novel is so much more than this. I'm not going to bother with the theme and the plot and the characters--what else is there to say?--but I can not finish this without giving an example or two of the wonderful humor contained in here. Here's the charming Huck after sneaking into the circus under the tent: "I ain't opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in wasting it on them." And when the King and the Duke run on hard times: "First they done a lecture on temperance, but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then, in another village, they started a dancing-school; but they didn't know no more than how to dance than a kangaroo does, so the first prance they made the general public pranced in and pranced them out of town . . . "

Oh, how rich this is. Rich and funny and lovely and hilarious. Read it for the pure entertainment contained in here, if nothing else.

Editorial Review:

A seminal work of American Literature that still commands deep praise and still elicits controversy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of the novel. The changes, deletions, and additions made in the first half of the manuscript indicate that Mark Twain frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational book than the one he finally published.