Your Guide To Books

Ring in the New Year with the best of friends! Hello Kitty and her sweet friends enjoy another year of fun.

Author: Higashi Glaser
Calendar:  32 pages
Company: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.  (2007-08-01)
ISBN: 0810988534
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $7.59
Used Price: $8.85

More: continued here

Skippyjon Jones Doll, 6″ long 6″ long

Author: Judy Schachner
Misc. Supplies: 
Company: MerryMakers  (2005-10)
ISBN: 1579821871
List Price: $8.00
Amazon Price: $3.96
Used Price: $4.56

More: continued here

You won’t understand the premise of this book if you’ve never sung “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” so let’s start there. The carol begins, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer / had a very shiny nose / and if you ever saw it, / You would even say it glows / All of the other reindeer / used to laugh and call him names / They never let poor Rudolph / join in any reindeer games.” If you notice that “all of the other reindeer” sounds suspiciously like “Olive, the other reindeer,” you’ve discovered the source of Olive’s adventures! Olive is a dog. But when she hears this holiday tune, a bit of an identity crisis sets in. She decides she must be a reindeer and heads to the North Pole to see if she can join Santa’s reindeer team.

Olive gets to the North Pole just in time. Comet (the biggest reindeer) uses a piece of extra ribbon to tie Olive to the reindeers’ elaborate harness system. As the sleigh rose high in the sky, “Olive was surprised it was so easy to fly.” (The sight of a dog dangling beneath Santa’s sleigh will reduce readers to charmed giggles.) Despite Olive’s lack of flying ability and the unfortunate mishap caused by the reindeers’ distraction, she, in her inherent dogginess, proves to be useful as both a flute retriever and a cookie smeller.

J. otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh have written and illustrated four splendid books for children: Mr. Lunch Takes a Plane Ride, Mr. Lunch Borrows a Canoe, Monkey Business, and Free Lunch. Publisher’s Weekly’s assessment of the creators’ work in Free Lunch also rings true for Olive, the Other Reindeer: “Seibold and Walsh specialize in street-smart art and convoluted story-lines … Seibold’s illustration style [is] a sort of cubism for the ’90s. His computer-generated, airbrush-smooth characters resemble digital icons, but their asymmetrical quality lends them a hand-drawn warmth. The spreads are abuzz with comical details.” This very silly, endearing book is sure to delight your favorite kids–and adults, too. (All ages)

Author: Vivian Walsh
Hardcover:  40 pages
Company: Chronicle Books  (2007-09-27)
ISBN: 0811857190
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $11.68
Used Price: $11.97

More: continued here

Author: LLC Andrews McMeel Publishing, Andrews Mcmeel
Calendar:  24 pages
Company: Andrews McMeel Publishing  (2007-08-01)
ISBN: 0740766007
List Price: $13.99
Amazon Price: $7.19
Used Price: $8.29

More: continued here

“Dazzling,” (People) “Exuberant,” (Vogue) “marvelously entertaining,” (The Dallas Morning News) Marisha Pessl’s mesmerizing debut has critics raving and heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of this “cracking good read”4 is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway school, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel—with “visual aids” drawn by the author—that has won over readers of all ages.

Author: Marisha Pessl
Paperback:  528 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics)  (2007-04-24) (2007-04-24)
ISBN: 0143112120
List Price: $15.00
Amazon Price: $6.20
Used Price: $3.95

More: continued here

Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk go the blueberries into the pail of a little girl named Sal who–try as she might–just can’t seem to pick as fast as she eats. Robert McCloskey’s classic is a magical tale of the irrepressible curiosity–not to mention appetite–of youth. Sal and her mother set off in search of blueberries for the winter at the same time as a mother bear and her cub. A quiet comedy of errors ensues when the young ones wander off and absentmindedly trail the wrong mothers.

Blueberries for Sal–with its gentle animals, funny noises, and youthful spirit of adventure–is perfect for reading aloud. The endearing illustrations, rendered in dark, blueberry-stain blue, will leave you craving a fresh pail of your own. (Picture book)

Author: Robert McCloskey
Paperback:  64 pages
Company: Puffin  (1976-09-30)
ISBN: 014050169X
List Price: $7.99
Amazon Price: $3.39
Used Price: $0.70

More: continued here

In the fall of 2007 Rolling Stone magazine, the #1 music and culture magazine in the country, will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a one of kind DVD and companion book box set - Rolling Stone, The First 40 Years. The pages of Rolling Stone are the illustrated history of rock-n-roll, pop and counter-culture. Every page of every issue is presented in this affordable complete searchable digital archive. From John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Eric Clapton to Gwen Stefani, Greenday, Inxs, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Eminem - its all here. Every article, photo and contribution by Robert Altman, Cameron Crowe, Kurt Loder, Hunter S. Thompson, Annie Leibovitz, Lester Bangs, David LaChapelle and Anthony DeCurtis is included in its entirety.

Hardcover:  200 pages
Company: Bondi Digital Publishing, LLC  (2007-10-22)
ISBN: 0979526108
List Price: $125.00
Amazon Price: $68.00
Used Price: $122.99

More: continued here

Kim Edwards’s stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love. BACKCOVER: “Edwards is a born novelist. . . . Rich with psychological detail and the nuances of human connection.”
—Chicago Tribune

“Unfolds from an absolutely gripping premise, drawing you deeply and irrevocably into the entangled lives of two families and the devastating secret that shaped them both. I loved this riveting story.”
—Sue Monk Kidd

“Anyone would be struck by the extraordinary power and sympathy of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.”
—The Washington Post

“Kim Edwards has written a novel so mesmerizing that I devoured it. . . . The Memory Keeper’s Daughter has it all.”
—Sena Jeter Naslund

“Kim Edwards has created a tale of regret and redemption, of honest emotion, of characters haunted by their past. This is simply a beautiful book.”
—Jodi Picoult

Author: Kim Edwards
Paperback:  432 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics)  (2006-05-30)
ISBN: 0143037145
List Price: $14.00
Amazon Price: $2.20
Used Price: $0.51

More: continued here

In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart’s answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words “Tiburon, South Carolina” scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily’s beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of–Tiburon, South Carolina–determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily’s story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd’s debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. –Regina Marler

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Paperback:  336 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics)  (2003-01-28) (2003-01-28)
ISBN: 0142001740
List Price: $14.00
Amazon Price: $1.95
Used Price: $0.01

More: continued here

William Golding’s classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, “the boy with fair hair,” and Piggy, Ralph’s chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island’s wild pig population. Soon Ralph’s rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: “He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet.” Golding’s gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition. –Jennifer Hubert

Author: William Golding
Paperback:  192 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics)  (1999-10-01)
ISBN: 0140283331
List Price: $15.00
Amazon Price: $7.96
Used Price: $5.00

More: continued here