Easter Books

My three year old liked this book a lot. We were trying to find activities that we could do that would lead up to Easter. This is going to become part of our Easter traditions. The illustrations are a little strange but that seems to be the norm now. Other than that the story is good and does point to the reason for Easter.

The Easter Bunny brought this book to my 3 1/2 year old daughter. We have read this book every night since Easter. It has pictures inserted within the sentences so kids can participate too. Clever idea-love these kind of books!

This is a very intelligent book. You can learn a lot from it.

I've already bought more than one for both my 3 yr old and my 5 yr old. Hours of self-entertainment with over 300 stickers! Encourages artistic expression and enhances imagination as they decorate various eggs illustrated in a number of settings (such as a circus, a ballroom, etc.) Highly recommended for an extended trip.

Reviewed by Sean and Kim Peterson for Reader Views (9/06)

"Esther's Channel" stretches from Silver Lake to Lake Michigan. Many different creatures live in the narrow strip of water. Esther, a young painted turtle, feels that many of the residents don't like her. Sir Elgin, the blue racer snake, Bosco, the bullfrog, Mr. Berig, the great blue heron and Boris, the otter especially bother Esther. Sir Elgin always watches and follows her. Bosco likes to hurl insults. Boris swims past and ignores her. And, she hates Mr. Berig for not saving her mother's life.

Others in the channel make more effort to talk with Esther. Dee Dee the caterpillar is her best friend. Gack, the red-winged blackbird, saved her life the day her mother died. Since then the bird acts as her guardian. Esther's attitude toward him resembles a human teenager's toward her parents.

The discontented turtle still wrestles with what really happened the day of her mother's death. Then she meets Hector, the dragonfly, who encourages her to explore the world beyond the channel. Esther decides to make this journey hoping she will find herself, but Silver Lake turns out to be quite different than what Hector implied. The first creature she meets, Bull Beckett, the bullhead, has been hooked by a fisherman, and Esther offers to pull it out. When she finishes, Bull Beckett rudely warns her to go back to where she came from.

Esther disregards the grumpy fish and continues her journey. She meets Madame Sweeney, an elderly Blanding's turtle. She feels comfort in Madame Sweeney's presence, especially since she knew Esther's mother. She learns that the animals in the channel that she has problems with were all friends with her mother. Madame Sweeney encourages Esther to return to the channel to find out from them what really happened to her mother.

When Esther finally returns to the channel, Gack informs her that the channel is drying up, and she will have to find somewhere else to live. She decides to go to the dam, the same place her mother's life ended so long ago. When she arrives, Gack, Boris, Bosco, Sir Elgin and Mr. Berig are all waiting for her. Gack explains what happened when her mother died and the part everyone present played in that day.

Collier's cast of characters introduces young readers to the animals that live in a channel ecosystem. Their conflicts and misunderstandings reflect those that children witness in a human community. Children will benefit from this fable about loss when Esther learns a powerful lesson about forgiving others and forgiving herself.

This book has kept my 2 year old quiet during a two hour car ride. The story is about the Easter bunny who goes around the forest to distribute Easter treats. The treats are stickers that the child has to find on the two attached pages of stickers and then put them in rabbit's paw. The rabbit even gives a chocolate rabbit to a fox that he meets along the way. There will be a lot of stickers left that the child can stick in the basket on the back cover.

This is an adorable little board book. Makes a great present for a young child for Easter. The illustrations are wonderful.

Extra! Extra! is a creative and interesting look at what the newspapers during the days of Jesus might have reported. These accounts include news, interviews, weather, quotations from the bible, and obituaries that detail the events surrounding Jesus and the founding of Christianity from the day of Jesus' birth through his death to his ascension to heaven. These interesting accounts detail what people of this time would have said and thought about Jesus, his actions, and his religion.

Extra! Extra! is both entertaining and educational. It gives old stories new life and energy. This is the primary aim of this book. With this important bias in mind, this book purposefully describes events in a rather one sided view, from the viewpoint of one of Jesus' modern followers. This viewpoint assumes that Jesus would have been an important story at the time and that most of the accounts about this man would have been generally positive. Of course, neither of these aspects were entirely true at the time, despite Jesus' important contributions both in his founding of Christianity and his contributions to humanity as a whole. Nonetheless, as a new and energetic teaching tool, this book is quite unique and interesting.

Lavish photographs of some amazing things along with some great background about Faberge and Russian Imperial items in general. There is a lot of forgery in this field. Get to know the difference between reproductions and the real thing. 95% of the reproductions are easy to spot with some research and by looking at the "real stuff".

I read the entire series of Laura Hesse books. "Oh my. I don't think I've ever seen any book about horses so cute in my life. A warm, friendly story about children and horses.

I laughed and I cried and I understood everything that author had to say.
The story flows very fast, and I had trouble putting the book down.
This was a great read, from the start to the finish.

If you haven't read this one, you don't know what you've been missing.
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