This story is about a girl who uses her head to help out her father who gets himself in trouble over a donkey. A man gave Katya's father a horse and that horse had a baby with the father's mare, so the guy who first gave the horse wanted the foal, so he took the case to the tsar. The king gives out a riddle to the two men and says whoever answers the riddle gets the foal. The riddle is 'What is the fastest thing in the world, what is the fattest thing in the world, what is the softest thing in the world and what is the most precious?' The other guys asks a neighbour who owes him some money and the father asks Katya. I won't tell you the answer, but I'll say that Katya won. The tsar was interested in these answers and asked the father who told them to him, to which he replied his daughter. So the king asked the father to bring Katya to him, but he said that 'She must come neither on horseback nor on foot, neither naked nor dressed and neither bringing a present nor empty handed.' So she goes to him in the way he asked, and at the end of the book he marries her because she was the most clever person in the kingdom.
This was a nice story based on an old Russian folktale. The pictures are beautiful and colourful with nice traditional, colourful borders surrounding them. I first heard this story in grade 3 or 4 and it was one of those that I remembered to this day. It's one of those odd books you'll find where the girl gets the guy because of her brain, not her beauty. a beautiful story. I recommend.
This book is directed towards girls aged... maybe 6-10 and is a good book to introduce an interest in and passion for science. The first part is arranged like a story as the reader follows a girl through a normal day and this fairy-like science woman named Nora tells us the science behind that part of the day. there are experiments the reader can try for each part of the day Nora describes that allows the reader to interact with the information and better understand it.
The second part introduces different kinds of sciences, with more fun experiments of course. One of my favourite experiments was the 'invisible glue' experiment, which was helping to describe physics and a person's centre of gravity, so you would get a friend to get into a certain position against the wall and watch as they try to move but can't, or you can hold down a friend with a finger, same concept.
And the third part is basically just more experiments.
So as I say, great introduction to science, a fun way to get into the subject. And this book is by no means just for girls. Both of my brothers enjoyed trying out the experiments just as much as I did. I found that this book got me more interested in science than school did because it made it fun and connected it to every day life. It is by no means in depth or lengthy, which I now have some issues with, but as intro books go, this one isn't that bad.
The plot behind this book is basically stated in the title, it's attempting to get rid of the boogeyman stories surrounding marijuana because it's just a plant. This little girl goes around and learns about marijuana, what it is, where it comes from (a plant, grown by a farmer like other plants), a history about it, a doctor's perspective and so on. It isn't promoting marijuana or encouraging children to use it, as I would suppose would be one of the first suppositions to pop into one's head when they hear about a book like this, in fact there's even a part in the book where some guys get arrested for using marijuana. It's purpose is to help educate children on just what marijuana is.
I think this book is beneficial because people fear what they are ignorant of and people abuse the forbidden. As an example, when I was younger, probably around 5 or 6, my grandfather would put a few drops of wine in my sprite at dinner time. Alcohol was never forbidden to me and if I wanted some all I had to do was ask (of course I wasn't given a whole lot, but it's the principle that's important). As a result of this alcohol was never a big deal to me as it was to some of my friends and while they were getting pissed drunk at 13, I would drink an appropriate amount so as to not even get dizzy or abstain all together. The point of the story is that the forbidden is very attractive, and while we all know this, this knowledge isn't put to good use very often. Of course there must be forbidden things, that comes with having even an inkling of some sort of morality, which even the most 'amoral' person is guilty of possessing, but to make forbidden something that need not be so is foolish in my eyes. Marijuana is less harmful than a lot of glorified substances in society that are much more harmful to a person's health. People fear marijuana for reasons that aren't true, or for no other reason than someone told them it was bad, without any basis.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't some tirade on how 'marijuana's so great' or 'kids should all be smoking marijuana' or similar such lines of thought. I believe that all children should have the power of education to help them assess the world and that that education is important is because all children will come into contact with marijuana at one point or another in their lives (some much earlier than others), and I would prefer that they not see it as a big deal. Marijuana is just a plant, a very misunderstood plant, and we should be able to see marijuana as just that, a plant, like corn and tomatoes, not through the jaded perception of society that would have us believe it's some scary boogeyman. You can get more info on the book's website.
This is a documentary about the fairy faith, or the belief in fairies. The narrator takes the viewer around various places in Canada and the UK, talking to people who believe and looking at locations of relevance. Though it isn't the most well done documentary I've seen it is pretty good and it's the only documentary I've seen done on fairies. The film doesn't try to convince the audience of anything nor disprove anything. It attempts to achieve an unbiased perspective, taking in the opinions of those who believe and those who don't (mostly the believers though, as we're looking at the belief, not a criticism of the belief). I think it successfully documents the fairy faith and does a good job of taking seriously subject matter which the majority of western society sees as nothing more than fantasy and idle past time.
I would recommend this to everyone interested in fairies, and anyone with an open mind, because though it isn't asking for the viewer's belief it is asking for the viewer's acceptance of the belief. An iinteresting study.
I think that this is one of the better written books I've had an opportunity to come in contact with, her writing style is just amazing. I mean, no offence, but the plot is not the most fascinating I've come across. It's focus is on a librarian who's trying to translate a book written in some foreign language. Kind of dry sounding. But the author does a phenomenal job at capturing a sense of passion and obsession that one can't help but get drawn in to.
My one complaint about this author in general is that her books are kind of detached from the reader, distant in a way. It's not so much that I don't care about what happens, but that I'm just not given enough information to be able to assess the situation in depth. On the other hand, this quality gives a lot of her books an air of mystery and unpredictability. Like the detachment you feel on a rainy day, where things are kind of surreal and you don't feel quite connected to the world, feeling like you're interacting with the world from another place, not your own body. So while this is a negative, in certain moods I do enjoy it because of that almost dream like approach. Unique to be sure.
This is a retelling of the story donkey skin. A short summery of the book would be; after the death of a girl's mother, her father abuses her out of grief and she runs away, and I think she takes her dog with her (it's been a while since I've read it). She kind of looses herself because of her grief at what her father did in the wilderness and after a while comes to this castle, wearing a deerskin dress, and they take her in and call her deerskin, and there's a prince etc. I won't spoil the ending.
There is an odd obsession with dogs in this book, and the girl (princess) has her own dog and also takes care of the prince's puppies. I don't have a dog or care about them much, so while fascinating, this part of the book didn't really draw me in and dragged on a bit at parts. There was a nice symbolism present and the heroine did regain a sense of herself and an acceptance of herself by the end of the book. Overall not my favourite read, but decent. Worth it if you put in the time, but nothing mind blowing.
Mollie Whuppie is a strong and smart heroine that courageously goes about accomplishing tasks others fear. In this story she and her sisters are lost in a forest and make their way to a giant's house. This giant has caused a lot of trouble for travellers and people in the area because he's so vicious. The giant plans on killing them but mollie outwits the giant to get herself and her sisters to safety at a nearby castle. The king asks mollie to go back to the giant a couple of times to get some things the giant has stolen and each time she's successful one of her sisters marries someone in the king's court. At the end the giant dies and mollie gets engaged to the prince, but doesn't marry him as she goes off to have adventures.
This is a great story with a strong, proactive heroine. Mollie never hesitates, she's always confident and courageous and charges head forward to get things done. This book is great to read out loud as well as there are catchy rhymes that break up the prose, though that's pretty easy to read as well. The pictures were expressive too. A fun book.
