Rainforests: An Activity Guide for Ages 6-9

Book Description

North America boasts a surprising number of rainforests, including El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, Olympic National Forest in Washington State, Chugah and Tonga National Forests in Alaska, and the forests in Hawaii, which are home to an enormous variety of plants and animals. Rainforests: An Activity Guide takes kids through the common layers of the rainforest, from the forest floor to above the enclosed canopy. Their journey continues through the different types of rainforests as they are introduced to plants, animals, and people around the world, including those from the temperate rainforests of North America to the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. Rainforest-inspired activities include making a West African yam festival gourd rattle, building a model of an Alaskan totem pole, and creating a Javanese Wayang-kuilt, or shadow puppet. Kids are encouraged to make a difference and become active supporters of the rainforests no matter where they live.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful Walk on the Wild Side.......2003-09-20

A perfect follow-up to Castaldo's book on oceans. Rainforests introduces readers to tropical and temperate rain forests around the world. Activities range from making a fern-print T-shirt to planting a butterfly garden. The closing "Don't Bungle the Jungle" chapter gives kids great ways that they can help save the forests. A wonderful addition to any classroom library.

Book Description

Ritz New York Restaurant Survey & Report, 2000 is the most comprehensive guide to New York restaurants available.

Customer Reviews:

No Questions about it - buy the book!.......2006-03-17

If you are going to spend any time in the country and want to tool around, you'd be a fool not to get a copy of this book for your backpack. I just got home and gave my friend a hug for grabbing this book out the the bargain bin at Borders for me. In several cities I was able to pick it up and quickly flip through to find a map and make my way through the town. Or simply discover something interesting within or nearby my location. It's an absolute must for anybody going into the country. Well put together and concise - 5 stars for sure!

as good as you'll find -- but they need to update it.......2004-02-01

This is really the only comprehensive guidebook to El Salvador that is widely available. The Lonely Planet and Let's Go and other books have chapters on El Sal in their books on Central America, but none of them go into real detail. In fact, I've noticed that most of the guidebooks don't recommend going to El Salvador, or skipping it if you're short on time.

Well, you should go. There is a lot to see and do but it's important to realize that it's different from the other Latin American countries. It's maybe a little less pretty and the people are a bit more hardened from the long guerra civil. This book does a good job providing sociopolitical background and anecdotes from important periods in history. Other than that, it's your basic guidebook, going region by region in the country, detailing sights, hotels, transportation, all that stuff. There are also several pages of decent color photos.

The one problem is that the book is now nearly ten years old. While most of the things are still accurate, a lot has changed. Things like prices and bus routes especially. There are also many different sights, museums, roads and enormous Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises that did not exist when the book was published. Likewise, some things no longer exist. The only way to find out, unfortunately, is to go and discover these things for yourself.

El Sal is not the most tourist-friendly nation in the sense that the infrastructure is not really there to support a heavy flow of tourists. The people are _wonderful_, don't get me wrong (don't think for a second that it's the people's fault), but to give one example, some of the bus routes to tourist sites make absolutely no sense and can be very frustrating to navigate. This is the fault of the government. Likewise, the El Sal government tourism agency could do themselves a big favor by publishing or funding an up-to-date guide.

But this book is as good as it gets.

A Great Help for a Native Absent for 20 Years.......2002-06-10

I found this book quite helpful. I'm a native from El Salvador who had been out of the country for 20 years. I found it a good supplement to other sources of information (e.g., local phone books in El Salvador, people and friends). Although some of the directory information may be dated, most of the facts and directions still hold. It's best to cross-reference the book with a local phone book for more accuracy. Yet, the book is a great trip planning tool. It allows you to pick and chose places and things to do at a pace that not even locals can keep up. It's clear that a lot of good work went into making the book. The level of detail is beyond what any local can know all by himself (e.g., bus routes, mores, festivals, local rituals, etc.). I found the hand-drawn maps most helpful and the history/background informaiton information least helpful. Advisories should apply to all locations outside the central city or popular foreign tourist attractions. Also, the book does not address which locations are most ideal to visit depending on the small universe weather conditions, e.g., heavy rains or dry, hot to extremely hot temperatures. I recommend this book. I've found no other books as helpful as this one but feel that the book and its contents could be much improved, e.g., day-trips, sports events, local festivity schedules, shopping information, entertainment options, ground and non-ground recreational activities, specific coverage and related-activities regarding aviation, boatin, sailing, surfing, fishing, golf, lakes, rivers and bodies of water, etc. (perhaps on future editions, beyond the 2nd). I currently own both of the first two editions. They're both pretty much worn out and it's because they go with me and take me places each time I visit there. I just wish the book were more expansive and provide material for all the other sites that one encounters while going from place to place, yet this would make it too thick and heavy. Also, if you ever go to El Teleferico, please say Hi to Mr. Moon (a local cartoonist) there for me!

The Best Book On El Salvador Travel Ever!.......2000-03-22

For years I looked for a book that would cover travel to El Salvador. I have been married to a Salvadorena for 16 years and have made five trips to the country since 1991. I love El Salvador, its beauty and its wonderful people. You can't travel there without this book! Buy it today!

This book is the best.......1999-07-21

I'm Salvadoran and I'm married to a Jewish-American woman. She bought this book for us to take a tour in El Salvador. Let me tell you, this is the best guide book I've ever read. It's so easy to use and it has ALL the information about this little beautiful country that you need. I even used some of the information on my website, of course with the permission from the authors. Thank you Jeff, Julian and Veronica for making this possible.

Book Description

"In real life–especially off the Florida coast–things can have fatal consequences. Fatal Treasure is a truly compelling read."
–Aphrodite Jones, New York Times bestselling author of Cruel Sacrifice and All She Wanted

When the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha sank off the coast of Florida during a hurricane in 1622, it went down with forty tons of treasure–thousands of silver and gold ingots, enormous grass-green emeralds, thirty-five treasure chests, and other smuggled booty. Three and a half centuries later, the legendary Mel Fisher set out to find it.

In Fatal Treasure, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Jedwin Smith tells the true untold story of the Fisher family's relentless quest to find the Atocha and reclaim her priceless cargo. Combining the rousing adventure of Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea with the compelling personal drama of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Smith captures, as no writer ever has, the romance and suspense of big-time treasure hunting–and the enormous price in lives that the Atocha has exacted from those who would disturb her undersea grave. Drawing on more than fifteen years of exclusive and intimate access to the Fisher family and the divers, Smith tells an unforgettable tale of courage, obsession, loyalty, heartbreak–and a mysterious, demanding ship that still calls to us from the sea.

Customer Reviews:

See also OUR BROTHER'S KEEPER by Jedwin Smith - Great Gift Books for Dad!.......2006-06-10

It is a miracle to me, and highly admirable, that Jedwin Smith was able to finish and sell this book to John Wiley & Sons on a two-book contract, at the same time investigating and writing his incredible Vietnam War memoir, OUR BROTHER'S KEEPER. This is an amazing author, and I highly recommend either or both of his books as great gifts for Dad.

FATAL TREASURE is less a personal and intimate memoir than the author's incomparable OUR BROTHER'S KEEPER. FATAL TREASURE is more an objective biography of Key West treasure-hunter Mel Fisher and his quest for gold, although readers will enjoy the same first-person, fast-paced, adventure writing, since Jedwin Smith was a part of the crew and a close confidant of the Fisher family for 15 years in researching this book. FATAL TREASURE is a part of the Jedwin Smith story, too.

The focus of FATAL TREASURE, however, is on Mel Fisher and his family and the obsessive quest for legendary gold and emeralds lost at sea when the Spanish galleon, Nuestra Senora de Atocha, and her sister ship, the Santa Margarita, sank off Key West in a hurricane in 1622.

Mel Fisher appeared on the scene in Key West three centuries later, in 1969, and became a well-known legend in his own right until his death in 1998, and even beyond that -- who has visited Key West and not visited, or at least heard about, the infamous Mel Fisher Maritime Museum?

FATAL TREASURE is the saga of the treasure-hunter and his family, through triumph (finding treasure) and tragedy (losing his son and daughter-in-law in an explosion at sea that killed five divers). It is a fantastic adventure story.

-- Sherri Caldwell, Humor Columnist & Reviewer at www.RebelHousewife.com
Co-author, The Rebel Housewife Rules: To Heck With Domestic Bliss!

The definitive book on the 'Atocha' treasure hunt...........2005-03-05

A lot has been written on the search for the legendary treasure galleon 'Atocha.' Unfortunately, not much of it makes for very entertaining reading. Too many writers have taken a great story of persistence, tragedy and faith and turned it into a clinical and boring historical tome. This book however by Jedwin Smith is a great look at Mel Fisher and his 16-year quest to find the mother lode. The author helped dive on the wreck numerous times starting in May 1985 and then several years later. It is this intimate familiarity with the cast involved that brings the story closer to home for the reader.
Mel Fisher is profiled here in all his larger-than-life glory; huckster to his investors, devoted father to his family, and dreamer extraordinaire. Beyond just the glory of July 20, 1985 when his divers uncovered the bulk of his $400 million dollar prize, we learn of all the tragedies that led up to that moment. From the loss of his eldest son, daughter-in-law and another diver in a boating accident ten years to the day before. To the loss of others involved in the 16-year search along the way. It also becomes obvious to the reader that Mel uncovered A LOT of "dry holes" off of Key West over the years in his long and arduous search. Frustration and utter despair would've crushed most treasure hunters. And where those failed, a collapse in the financing would've taken over, but Mel Fisher is portrayed as a forever optimist with his famous saying: "Today's the day."
It is easy to see from 'Fatal Treasure' how his infectious dream and optimism motivated others to help him in his ultimately successful quest. Great annecdotes are also provided here by the author including one about how Jimmy Buffett came aboard Mel's boat the day of the big find to perform 'A Pirate Looks At Forty.' He (Fisher) was named 'President in Perpetuity of Key West' because he so embodied the laid back, drop out of the rat race lifestyle. A little known fact presented is that the author's brother along with Fisher's son Kim and others have continued the quest for the even richer stern section of the ship right up into the present day. Although the pictures in this book are in black and white, the reader gets a good feel for the massive amount of gold, silver and emeralds found. It is over-the-top with regard to bringing this fascinating true adventure to life!

A vicarious adventure.......2003-09-03

Reading Jedwin Smith's book, Fatal Treasure, is like going on an exciting and dangerous underwater mission, but with someone else taking all the chances. It is a vicarious experience I'll never forget. This is a wonderful book, a treasure about finding treasure.

Not worth the time.......2003-08-27

Poorly written rehash of better work by others--too much space dedicated to author's many phobias

The Last Great Treasure Hunt.......2003-06-19

Jedwin Smith takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through the hurricane's eye of decades of Mel Fisher's treasures, triumphs and tragedies while searching for the elusive Spanish Galleon, Atocha. Smith, being one of the few journalists who actually kept coming back for more, was caught up in the search and after some personal introspection, proved to have what it takes to be an accepted member of the crew.

Mel Fisher was a 20th century adventurer who loved to explore the sea's tightly held secrets of the past and its many treasures. He was a man who would share his dream with anyone who would listen; those that did, would be offered the opportunity to experience that adventure first hand; if they accepted, they usually got much more than they could have ever imagined.

Although the title, "Fatal Treasure", reveals the worst tragedies Mel and his crew had to endure in the course of their 16-year odyssey, the book also deals in great detail with the mindset of those who would spend their lives probing the depths to make one man's dream their own obsession. As for Mel Fisher's explanation as to why he did what he did, he had a rather simple quip to his most complex vocation. His response would be- "for the fun, romance and adventure"; an attitude and spirit of mind that embraced life and all who knew him.

Customer Reviews:

Quite the best ecology text........2001-06-21

Eugene Odum was the first person to put together plant and animal ecology in a satisfying synthesis, in his Fundamentals of Ecology of 1953.That could have remained the prime textbook for the past five decades, but he eventually tired of producing new editions. Also, he was keen to reach a wider audience, and this is the latest version of the more accessible book that he wrote for the general reader. Two things in particular make the book special. First, Odum focuses on the whole living planet, working down to the level of the individual organisms and populations; most ecology textbooks work from the bottom up, giving a fragmentary view of the overall situation. Second, Odum is almost alone among ecologists in integrating humans completely into his account. The result is a clear and readable book with an urgent and important message for all of us who share the earth.

Book Description

This collection has been inspired by the work of Roger Penrose. It gives an overview of current work on the interaction between geometry and physics, from which many important developments in research have emerged. This volume collects together the contributions of many important researchers, including Sir Roger himself, and gives an overview of the many applications of geometrical ideas and techniques across mathematics and the physical sciences. From the area of pure mathematics papers are included on the topics of classical differential geometry and non-commutative geometry, knot invariants, and the applications of gauge theory. Contributions from applied mathematics cover the topics of integrable systems and general relativity. Current research in experimental and theoretical physics inspired chapters on string theory, quantum gravity, the foundations of quantum mechanics, quasi-crystals and astrophysics. The collection also includes articles on quantum computation, quantum cryptography and the possible role of micro-tubules in a theory of consciousness.

Customer Reviews:

makes a good mousepad.......2002-02-08

This book makes the greatest mousepad I've ever had. Good book.

A fantastic book for those who can understand it........2000-05-27

A great book, about some of the coolest and most cutting edge theories out there. Certainly not for the layman though. Most of the chapters are filled with equation after equation however those with advanced math and a good math program will have lots of fun. This book is the real deal! Read it all and you just might fry your brain! It would get five stars if it was better organized. The best use of this book is for quick reference if you have a specific idea or question about the topics contained and don't or can't get to the internet. Not a must buy but worth the money.

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Foreshadowing Tess

Visit Wessex in the Woodlanders and Savor the prose of Thomas Hardy

NOT PART OF THE "BIG 5" EH...WELL MAKE IT THE "BIG 6!"

Disaster at the altar in the church of Hardy.

Hardy gone berserk

The Woodlanders
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Hard Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Hardy, Thomas | Classics | British | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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A Pair of Blue Eyes (Penguin Classics)

ASIN: 1406943746
Release Date: 2006-11-03

Book Description

Giles Winterbourne and Grace Melbury were virtually promised to one another; now her father has other plans, forcing her marriage to Edred Fitzpiers. His philandering and poverty sour their marriage, and the woodman remains sunk in dogged devotion. The events that follow are echoed in the bewitching but pitiless cycle of the seasons, as the village of Little Hintock is caught up inextricably in the natural world.

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Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the discernment of a somewhat rare power in him--that of keeping not only judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not.

Customer Reviews:

Foreshadowing Tess.......2007-03-28

The Woodlanders is said to be one of Hardy's more descriptive novels and Hardy is also said to have a love for this part of the country. I thought this was a beautiful passage:

"From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with lichen and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than stool. Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between these neighbors that she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from their mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were other tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves--variety upon variety, dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like plush, like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss."

And this description of Winterborne as a wood-god really stood out for me:

"He rose upon her memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god in alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen, as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair of his arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him."

It is said that Winterborne was a creation derived from Hardy's own father.

The book also has the typical Hardy realism and tragedy based on innocence and wrong choices, the unfair position of women, mere chance, or should I say Chance, in keeping with the way Hardy uses it. For me, somehow, the more descriptive nature of the book, while not that descriptive--Hardy is a realist not a romantic, gave the book a hazy, almost somnolent quality that almost distracted from the clarity and meaning of the book. Maybe it was Hardy's intention to have the woods form a kind of shadowy hold over the characters, the readers--there's the strange effect a single tree had on Winterborne's father, and another on Grace. But Hardy's description of the moors in Return of the Native had more power for me. Also, the characters seemed undeveloped to me, especially Grace, who was a main character. Marty seemed more real, though maybe that was intentional as the book ends with her, and poor Grace floated un-fixedly in the non-place between two classes.

I love Hardy's novels and poetry otherwise I may have given it 3 stars. I just read it--it may be I need to ruminate on it for awhile.

Visit Wessex in the Woodlanders and Savor the prose of Thomas Hardy.......2006-12-11

The Woodlanders is the eleventh novel by Thomas Hardy. Hardy takes us to an obscure village in his mythical Wessex. The novel portrays the beautiful Grace Melbury a nubile young miss coddled by her parents; eager for glamour and disdainful of bucolic boredom. Grace is courted by Giles Winterbourne a local rustic but cast him off to wed Dr. Edred Fitzpiers the local doctor. The marriage is a disaster for Fitzper lusts for Madame Charmond. He also has a fling with Suke a local girl.
Fitzpiers flees to the Continent while Grace seeks reconciliation with
Winterborne. The couple hope to wed under a newly passed Parliamentary
law dealing with the right of women to obtain a divorce.
All goes wrong. Accidents occur as chance and fortune always play a part in the Hardy world. The novel does end happily which is rare for Hardy.
Hardy knew the English countryside as it moved from spring to winter.
His description of nature is beautifully written. Hardy also knew the south of England as it was moving from the rural nineteenth century to the modern world of the coming twentieth century.
The Woodlanders is one of the lesser known Hardy novels that is well worth your attention. The story is well told with many interesting and exciting plot developments which will hold the attention. Well recommended.

NOT PART OF THE "BIG 5" EH...WELL MAKE IT THE "BIG 6!".......2005-08-15

The Woodlanders (1887) is one of Thomas Hardy's finest novels, which deals with doomed love in a gloomy rural "partly real and partly dream" country of Wessex.

It is one of Hardy's favorite and if Hardy liked it, I do to, especially since I have never read this novel....I liked The Return of the Native...

THE BIG 6

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD -1874
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE - 1878
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE - 1886
THE WOODLANDERS - 1887
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES - 1891
JUDE THE OBSCURE - 1895

Disaster at the altar in the church of Hardy........2004-07-25

"It would have made a beautiful story," Thomas Hardy said about this novel, "if I could have carried out my idea of it; but somehow I come so far short of my intention."

"I wish you had never thought of educating me," Thomas Hardy's protagonist tells her father at one point in this novel, "because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles" (pp. 232-33). Hardy (1840-1928) wrote his eleventh novel in 1887, before his better-known masterpieces, TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES (1891) and JUDE THE OBSCURE (1895), and a year after THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (1886). Set in the "partly real and partly dream country" of Hardy's Wessex, in the "sequestered" forest community of Little Hintock (located "outside the gates of the world," p. 6), a place where "loneliness is not so very lonely after a while" (p. 83), THE WOODLANDERS is about doomed love, betrayal, and social restraints, and like Hardy's other work, it succeeds as a satisfying story of a romantic disaster in Hardy's cruel universe. The novel tells the sad tale of a woman, Grace Melbury, forced to choose marriage between two suitors of different social statures, Giles Winterborne, a local woodlander with a gentle, virtuous nature, and Edred Fitzpiers, an ambitious doctor and a scoundrel. Influenced by her well-intentioned though meddling father, Mr. Melbury, who only wants his daughter to "marry well" (p. 89), Grace's decision ultimately leads to disastrous consequences and, in the end, to a lonely woman worshipping at a dead man's grave. Once again, we discover the course of love is never happy in Hardy's universe.

Rather gloomy for a Victorian romance novel? Well, yes. But reading Victorian fiction does not get any better than reading Thomas Hardy's extraordinary novels. Returning to Hardy's brooding, melancholy fiction after my first encounter with his novels more than twenty five years ago, I am re-discovering Hardy's brilliant ability to convey familiar, primordial truths through his fiction, making him worth reading again and again.

G. Merritt

Hardy gone berserk.......2003-08-30

Hardy classified THE WOODLANDERS with his Novels of Character and Ingenuity, which category included his very best novels (TESS, THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE, THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE). This 1887 novel is so bizarre, however, that you might feel it belongs more properly with his Romances and Fantasies. In the secluded rustic community of Little Hintock all manner of things are a-brewing: simple Marty South has a thing for cider-merchant Giles Winterbourne, who has been promised for years to marry well-educated Grace Melbury, but Grace's father marries her off instead to philandering Edred Fitzpiers, who has a thing for local wealthy widow Felice Charmond. In this circle of desire all manner of things can go wrong--and, this being Hardy, of course they do. Some of his wildest plot contrivances (including two bizarre scenes wherein the Widow Charmond must convey crucial information to Grace, and Fitzpiers even more crucial information to Grace's father) occur without the redeeming Shakespearean scope of a novel like THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE which allows you to overlook the wackiness. Still, even if this is lesser Hardy, it's still Hardy, so the novel has such poetically gorgeous evocations of landscape and character as to make everything worthwhile in the end.

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The Woodlanders

Manufacturer: Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Badger's moon (The Woodlander series)
Elleston Trevor
Manufacturer: distributed by Two Continents
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Badger's Beech (The woodlander series)
Elleston Trevor
Manufacturer: Charter House Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

All The Rabbits Relations: Woodland (Woodlanders)

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All The Rabbits Relations: Woodland (Woodlanders)
Rh Value Publishing
Manufacturer: Crescent
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0517635666
Release Date: 1987-12-12

Benjamin Badger's Night Shift (The Woodlanders)

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Benjamin Badger's Night Shift (The Woodlanders)
Muriel Miller
Manufacturer: Ramboro Books PLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Bro;Woodlanders
Hardy
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0333581202

Brodie's Notes on Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders (Brodie's Notes)

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Brodie's Notes on Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders (Brodie's Notes)
Graham Handley
Manufacturer: Pan Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0330502484

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How Our Language Grew (How Do We Know)
David Woodlander
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0003154076

Hunting With The Fox Cubs: Woodland (Woodlanders)

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Hunting With The Fox Cubs: Woodland (Woodlanders)
Rh Value Publishing
Manufacturer: Crescent
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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