Book Description
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A selection of the History, Scientific American, and Quality Paperback Book Clubs
”The book is well written and quite engaging with its cast of colorful characters.”
—Choice
”Dark Side of the Moon is an elegant contribution to the history of the space age.”
—The Sunday Times
”DeGroot presents a chronicle of exploration, concentrating on the utter uselessness of NASA's lunar missions, boondoggles every bit as myopic and costly as the Cold War that spawned them.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
”DeGroot writes compellingly about the convergence of political, military, and industrial forces that produced the `magnificent madness' of the space agency NASA in the 1960s. . . . A fine writer with a real flair for storytelling has fun with NASA's extravagance and its tendency to look for complex solutions where simple ones would do.”
—The Financial Times
”DeGroot weaves a compelling tale.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
"DeGroot crafts a winning formula: While peeling away layer after layer of the deceptions and spin that sold NASA's lunar program to the funding public, he indulges readers with a nostalgia binge of epic proportions. . . . The author provides lots of philandering-astronaut stories and similar fun stuff to go along with the overview."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Entertaining reading. Anyone interested in a corrective view to the official hagiographies of the space program will find this acid-etched history hard to put down."
—Publishers Weekly
"For fans of real-life political intrigue this is essential reading. . . . DeGroot's stories make excellent reading . . . and he correctly exposes the myths constructed by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that have likely sustained NASA in the post-Apollo years. . . . DeGroot deserves plaudits for painstakingly piecing together the stories that won both the propaganda war and the moon race."
—The New Scientist
”Degroot should be commended for shining a light on the lunar quest. Citing American competitiveness, Degroot argues that the moon landing was primarily a stunt of one-upmanship: the Russians getting into space first with Sputnik had a profound affect on Americans, as politicians and citizens alike became obsessed with beating them to the moon. Never mind the `obscenely huge' cost of a lunar mission and consequent risk to defense, or that sending a man into space was perhaps negligible in terms of science. At the present time, when NASA has scheduled another moon shot for 2018, Degroot revisits the question that should have been fully explored the last time around: Why?”
—Booklist
”DeGroot's wonderful new book,
Dark Side of the Moon, looks at all aspects of the space program and gives us a complete picture of the glorious folly that was the race to the moon. . . . A witty and elegant book about America's desperate gamble for space supremacy. . . . No matter how cynical we might be about the motivation behind the space race, DeGroot makes us appreciate the splendor of the achievement.”
—St. Petersburg Times
“DeGroot's strength in
Dark Side of the Moon is going back and covering the space program from Sputnik through Apollo 17 without the starry-eyed vision most of us had. . . . He leaves practically nothing out, discussing the political, cultural, military and social aspects and the effects on each. It's a complete and serious (with occasional splashes of humor and irony) re-examination of a huge project.”
—Santa Fe New Mexican
"DeGroot has done it again. After writing two of the best books on the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race he has written another intelligent, insightful and remarkably readable history of the space race.
Dark Side of the Moon shines a bright light on America's sprint to the moon."
—Martin J. Sherwin, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography)
"The U.S. victory in the 1960s space race still lies at the heart of American triumphalism. In this fresh, insightful, and irreverent history of the U.S. space program, DeGroot punctures the scientific pretensions of manned space flight more effectively than any writer since Tom Wolfe. DeGroot deftly cuts through the dense mythology crafted by NASA and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to expose politicians' and space enthusiasts' cynical manipulation of public fears and dreams and eagerness to spend enormous sums of public money in the race to the moon. This witty and erudite work not only illuminates key aspects of Cold War politics and culture, it is also crucial for understanding current space policy and misadventures."
—Peter J. Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute, American University, and author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America
"Splendid. . . . Grounded in serious scholarship, covers issues well, has an argument that comes through loud and clear, and is at the same time eminently readable and enjoyable. Drawing on NASA files and documents at the JFK Library in Boston, the manuscript at the same time relies on elements from the popular press, and manages to integrate popular culture with larger issues of policy in a highly effective way. . . . DeGroot has a unique ability to characterize issues in a vivid and vibrant way."
—Allan M. Winkler, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
”Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through myths created by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and sustained by NASA ever since...Exposing the truth behind one of the most revered fictions of American history,
Dark Side of the Moon explains why the American space program has been caught in a state of purposeless ever since Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the surface of the moon.”
—NYU Today
For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck. Boys dreamt of being an astronaut; girls dreamed of marrying one. Americans drank Tang, bought "space pens" that wrote upside down, wore clothes made of space age Mylar, and took imaginary rockets to the moon from theme parks scattered around the country.
But despite the best efforts of a generation of scientists, the almost foolhardy heroics of the astronauts, and 35 billion dollars, the moon turned out to be a place of "magnificent desolation," to use Buzz Aldrin's words: a sterile rock of no purpose to anyone. In
Dark Side of the Moon, Gerard J. DeGroot reveals how NASA cashed in on the Americans' thirst for heroes in an age of discontent and became obsessed with putting men in space. The moon mission was sold as a race which America could not afford to lose. Landing on the moon, it was argued, would be good for the economy, for politics, and for the soul. It could even win the Cold War. The great tragedy is that so much effort and expense was devoted to a small step that did virtually nothing for mankind.
Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through the myths constructed by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and sustained by NASA ever since. He finds a gang of cynics, demagogues, scheming politicians, and corporations who amassed enormous power and profits by exploiting the fear of what the Russians might do in space.
Exposing the truth behind one of the most revered fictions of American history,
Dark Side of the Moon explains why the American space program has been caught in a state of purposeless wandering ever since Neil Armstrong descended from Apollo 11 and stepped onto the moon. The effort devoted to the space program was indeed magnificent and its cultural impact was profound, but the purpose of the program was as desolate and dry as lunar dust.
Customer Reviews:
Inaccurate, biased and sneering.......2007-05-26
The author obviously did not do the basic research required (Apollo 9 did NOT go to the Moon), and obviously has made it his mission to deflate any sense of American accomplishment.
If you want a critical view of the US space program that is honest and not just a hatchet job, try:
...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age
or
The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo
I Wanted to Like This Book.......2007-04-28
It grabbed my attention when I first saw it: an overview history of the US space program, written by a foreigner who presumably didn't grow up with NASA propaganda. It started out strong, with a 50,000' survey of the German WWII-era missile program, then shifts to the American reaction to Soviet space efforts. But the author can't resist showing us how utterly cosmopolitan and sophisticated and ironic he is, especially compared to us uncultured Yanks. In his discussion of the National Defense Education Act, which funded science and engineering students, he snarks that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, received his education under it. So what? So did I, and so did most people I know. Almost no women find space appealing? News to this one. Vending machine suppliers made lots of money selling candy at NASA? So what? NASA employees were as human as the rest of us. DeGroot's main research into everyday life in the US in the 60s seems to come from watching old sitcoms.
Two stars for making me look up some of the early history of the space race, but otherwise you can save your time and money. Wolfe's The Right Stuff covered the fallibility of the astronauts a lot better, and the excellent HBO series From the Earth to the Moon, though extremely pro-NASA, presents varied views, including the effects of the space program on the astronauts' families, with much more impact that DeGroot does.
Utter tripe..........2007-02-18
That pretty much sums up this waste of paper and ink. Deserves a zero star rating.
A Book Filled with Errors, Disdain, and Outright Smears.......2007-01-17
DeGroot seeks not to so much illuminate the history of humankind's greatest technological triumph as to deconstruct it. In a way he is like the revisionist historians who want everyone to believe that American history is just a sorry list of rape, plunder, murder, and lies. There seems to be a kind of preversity in certain people that causes them to look upon greatness and to want to vomit on it. Andrew Chaikin's book on the same subject is far more comprehensive and balanced.
A Superficial, Erroneous, and Embarrassing Book.......2006-12-29
A spring 1999 poll of opinion leaders sponsored by leading news organizations in the United States ranked the 100 most significant events of the twentieth century and the Apollo landings on the Moon muscled itself to a very close second to the splitting of the atom. Probably historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. best summarized the position of many opinion leaders polled: "The one thing for which this century will be remembered 500 years from now was...when we began the exploration of space" (Arlene Levinson, "Atomic bombing of Hiroshima tops Journalists' List of Century's News," Associated Press, February 24, 1999). Not surprisingly, both the development of the atomic bomb and the Apollo program has enjoyed enormous attention as a subject of historical research and writing. University of Andrews historian Gerard J. DeGroot, having already tackled the story of the bomb, turns his attention to the Moon landings in "Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest."
He begins with the appropriate concern that Apollo has taken on mythical qualities, and is remembered with nostalgia for a time long gone. Such a situation begs for an antidote, and apparently DeGroot considers himself just the person to deliver it. Questioning the reasons for the Apollo program, as well as the execution and results of it, DeGroot presents a poorly researched book--based almost exclusively on secondary materials, and then even missing many of the most significant of those works--with an excessively over-the-top thesis that is both indemonstrable and ineffectively argued. While I believe it is appropriate to criticize aspects of the history of space age, responsible criticism grounded in the historical record should always inform it. Unfortunately, this work does not warrant serious consideration.
DeGroot takes exception to the reasons for the space race, arguing that a group of space advocates hijacked the national agenda during the Sputnik crisis of 1957-1958, created a federal agency to accomplish their dreams, and pried national treasure from a range of other more worthy causes to fund trips to the Moon. He sets the stage by characterizing German rocketeer Wernher von Braun as a self-righteous traitor and John F. Kennedy as a dupe. He then weaves a conspiracy of bureaucrats, industrialists, and politicians who promoted space exploration as a means of feathering their own nests. The low point in that discussion revolves around convicted felon Bobby Baker, DeGroot claiming that he had the contract to provide candy vending machines at defense plants. His last sentence about this subject is telling: "And you thought Apollo was a story about heroes" (p. 153). How this relates to the Apollo program is never quite clear since there is no indication of any malfeasance from NASA officials whatsoever.
Most of what DeGroot claims in "Dark Side of the Moon" has been argued before by other scholars, and generally those critiques are more innovative and reasoned. Certainly he is not the first scholar to challenge the necessity of the Moon race. Amitai Etzioni in "The Moondoggle: Domestic and International Implications of the Space Race" (Doubleday, 1964) offered an important critique more than forty years earlier. Pulitzer Prize-winner Walter A. McDougall presented a strikingly sophisticated challenge of the necessity of the Moon race in "...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age" (Basic Books, 1985), arguing that Apollo prompted the space program to become identified almost exclusively with high-profile, expensive, human spaceflight projects of limited value. Others have done so as well. For readers interested in this type of critique of the space program, "...The Heavens and the Earth" is the gold standard.
Other difficulties abound. Ostensibly about the Apollo program, only half of the book actually deals with it. The first seven chapters recite in a not particularly insightful manner the early history of space advocacy, Sputnik, the politics of creating NASA, and the early U.S. efforts to reach space. The rest of the book skips through the unfolding of the Apollo program, and the last chapter carries the human spaceflight story into the post-Apollo era. DeGroot's concluding assertion--"Hubris took Americans to the Moon, a barren, soulless place where humans do not belong and cannot flourish. If the voyage has had any positive benefit at all, it has reminded us that everything that is good resides on Earth" (p. 269)--is the ultimate arm-waving statement in a book filled with them. The issue of hubris in Apollo deserves serious scholarly attention, the apparent barrenness of the Moon has been challenged by scientists, and whether or not humans can survive there for long is very much an unknown. The reference to seeing the Earth anew because of the trips to the Moon is now so obvious as to have become trite. Such assertions, without elaboration and substantiation abound in this embarrassing book. The Apollo epic deserves responsible consideration and reflective analysis, and responsible criticism; unfortunately Gerard DeGroot accomplishes none of this in "Dark Side of the Moon."
Average customer rating:
- Excellent realpolitik from the master of the non-sequitur
- As Exciting As I Remember
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Moon Quest (Choose Your Own Adventure No. 167)
R.A. Montgomery
Manufacturer: Skylark
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ASIN: 0553566210
Release Date: 1995-12-01 |
Book Description
You are part of the first colony of Earthlings on the moon, which you and the other colonists call Luna. You are a student, but you also work two jobs: as a tour guide for visiting Earthlings, and as a research assistant at the geology labs. Life on Luna is full of wonders. You live under a pressurized plastic bubble, where indoor gardens produce food and oxygen. Your instructor at school is a computer-generated hologram, and you download all your textbooks into a tiny computer that you wear on your wrist. Yet you yearn to venture outside the safety of your colony's community to the moon's dark side. The secrets that lie there could advance civilization beyond your wildest imagination -- or destroy it forever.
If you decide to go on the mission to the dark side of the moon, turn to page 98. If you want to act as tour guide to the visiting delegates from Earth, turn to page 35. Consider your choice carefully. You've never been to Luna's dark side before. But being a tour guide for these important Earthlings could mean that you will be present when history is made on Luna.
What happens next in the story? It all depends on the choices you make. How does the story end? Only you can find out! And the best part is that you can keep reading and rereading until you've, had not one but many incredibly daring experiences!
Customer Reviews:
Excellent realpolitik from the master of the non-sequitur.......2002-06-17
An unusually coherent tale from the endearingly wacky R. A. "Anson" Montgomery. The fate of the Earth team visiting breakaway colony Luna is actually involving. I still lament the cancellation of the CYOA series.
As Exciting As I Remember.......2000-06-02
I recently found my C.Y.O.A. books from when I was young, including the first Packard book, Cave of Time. I gave them to my kids, who loved them, and then realized they're still being published. The new titles, like this one, are just as well written and full of tough choices, but they're updated to include more current concerns like computer hacking and genetic engineering. Splendid books for young readers, especially those who don't think they like reading.
Customer Reviews:
Basic Conceptions of Physical Reality.......2005-08-21
The other reviewers have been a little excited and mistated the propositions that this book outlines.
1. Einstein never proposed a "hidden variables" theory, he was against this formulation. It was David Bohm who proposed hidden variables.
2. Einstein's ironic statement was "Does the moon disappear when I'm not looking at it?" This was stated in order to show the absurdity of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which states that there are no particles in the universe until scientists perform experiments; i.e. the experiments themselves 'create' reality ahead of them, creating an illusion that scientists are exploring a reality that is independent of their mental existance.
"Einstein's Moon" is an excellent summary of that small, but important, battle that occured between the realists, lead by Einstein, and the quantum nihilists, lead by Niels Bohr.
The surprising state of affairs today, summed up under the ruberic of "Bell's Inequality" has yet more surprises waiting just around the corner. This is an area of physics and philosophy that can and will produce world-changing results in the very near future.
So, "Einstein's Moon" is excellent reading for anyone who wants to be prepared for the next revolution in man's understanding of the universe!
If I look at the moon does it disappear?.......2005-01-09
If I look at the moon does it disappear?
The Quantum Double Slit paradox: Quantum theory teaches that light is ultimately made up of finite and indivisible quanta called photons.
Common sense dictates that since a photon is indivisible, a single photon can only pass through one slit at a time. Therefore, the photon must pass through slit A or B and then hit the photographic particle screen. If one blocks slit B and measures the results of the photon passing through slit A, the result should match commonsense and since the photon can only pass through one slit the interference pattern can not form; however, when the results of a very large number of these individual events are collected, the familiar interference pattern appears, as if the photon also passed through slit B. This is where the quantum world departs with logic and common sense. The photon acts like it can be at two places at once. It seems light and electrons can behave both like a particle and wave.
Radium 228 demonstrates the concept of the quantum jump. An elementary particle sitting inside the nucleus has too much energy and wants to escape, but no event exists to cause the escape; however, a quantum particle seems to move between two points without occupying the intermediate space in between the two points. This is called the quantum jump. The particle makes a discontinuous leap defying commonsense. At the instant before the leap it occupies a local space and later it is somewhere else. It seems space-time changes shape and the particle emerges in a different topology.
Plank and Einstein claim light existed in discrete packages called quanta. Quanta are so small they are not observable in the large scale world. In large scale light is observed as continuous wave. In thinking about a model for atom, Bohr realized energy of an electron as it orbits the nucleus could not gradually lose energy. Gradual energy loss would mean the electron would collapse immediately into the nucleus and all matter voids out itself. Electrons can not gradually spin inwardedly, they can only jump orbit to orbit. An electron-planet changes its orbit only by losing or collecting a whole quantum of energy.
Heisenburg struggle with the perfect predictable model of the atom and his work in non-communtive matrices formed the uncertainty principle: Error in velocity X Error in position = planks constant, such that, decreasing the error in position increase the uncertainty in velocity and attempting to pin velocity increase uncertainty in velocity. So, if the information about position and velocity is no longer possible to pin down then a prediction about path is impossible. Heisenburg originally believed a path existed but was unknown. Bohr corrected Heisenburg and stated, "the electron does not have a path" meaning that all information about the path was ambiquous. Bohr further introduced the notion of complementarity suggesting Quantum Universe could not be contained within one description.
In an attempt to defend classic determinism, Schrodinger constructed a mathematic wave equation capable of matching the exact calculations by Pauli and Heisenburg's matrix quantum theory. The wave equations turned out to explain hydrogen spectrums perfectly. Born realized Schrodinger incorrected applied the equations as material waves and it turns out the wave equations represented probabilities. The wave function corresponded to the probability of discovering an electron in a region of space. The wave equation predicted where electrons would appear on the screen in the double slit experiment 100 percent. The wave function could not predict the actual position of the electron.
A logic challenge by Albert Einstein, Boria Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen (EPR) would form presenting a logic paradox charging the Copenhagen Intrepretation (disruption or creation as a reason a particle could not be measured) as ambiquous, therefore, concluding the quantum theory was incomplete. The paradox suggests we measure Bs velocity and deduce the velocity of A from it. But since we have nothing to do with A, this means A is in such a state, with this certain velocity. Suppose, we measure Bs position again it is possible to know As position. Both position and velocity are "cards of identity" that have a definite physical existence and the Heinsburg uncertainty principle can not account for this, the theory is incomplete.
John Bell reformulation began as a thought experiment extending work by David Bohm. Bohm's experiment shots two particle opposite direction of each other, at detectors A and B. The resulting measurement is called C.
Every electron has a spin and it can have a value of either up or down. In the detector there is a fifty-fifty chance of up or down, such that, 50 percent register up and 50 percent register down. Pair of electrons initially in a well-defined state fly-off in opposite directions and measurements is done at opposite side of the laboratory. The independent output of A and B is random. The result of Bohm's experiment can be accounted by using conventional Quantum Theory. Bell improved the experiment by changing the angle of the detector and predicted C=- Cos theta where theta is the angle of orientation of the detector. A spin detector can be thought of as a traffic signal. This signal directs up electrons along one route and down electrons along another path. If a second detector is placed after the first, if the second signal is located on the up road, then 100 percent of the traffic will register up. In Quantum mechanical terms the first measurement has forced the state up and repeating the measurement will give the same answer. If theta is 90 degrees then 50 percent of the electrons will go along the up path and at 180 degree up electrons become down. One of the detectors is given a small rotation changing the orientation of the detector and breaks the 100 percent correlation as predicted by Quantum Mechanics.
God Does Play Dice With The Speed Of Light.......1999-03-03
Einstein thought quantum uncertainty would eventually be explained by "Hidden Variables" . Little did he realize those "Hidden Variables" would travel faster than the speed of light. I wonder what Einstein would say about the breakdown of his speed of light constant by those variables?
A very important book, though not a great read........1998-03-06
I found the explanations of the standard modern physics subjects to be mediocre except the part about Bell's Theorem. The significance lies not in the treatment of the subject (Bell's Theorem) but in the fact that Peat has tackled the subject at all. This theorem may prove to be the most important discovery in human history. Experimental proof (I've heard tell that it has been proven.) of local indeterminacy is mind-boggling. Why every science writer worth his salt isn't jumping to come up with a better write up is beyond me. This book is a must read--even for real students of quantum mechanics.
Please Update and Reprint!.......1997-10-29
What a good book! The metaphors for the layman are usually dead-on, although the heart of the paradox of Bell's Theorem is fuzzy, and better handled in "Shroedinger's Kittens". Otherwise, this book does the best job of navigating clearly through the history of the debate over reality.
Average customer rating:
- My Favorite Book
- "Great for 3rd and 4th Graders & A Breath of Fresh Air"
- If you only read one of the series...
- A wonderful series! Realistic fairies come alive before your eyes!
- "I want a squit!" (quote from my twins)
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Firefly and the Quest of the Black Squirrel (The Fairy Chronicles)
J. H. Sweet
Manufacturer: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
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ASIN: 1402208758
Release Date: 2007-07-01 |
Book Description
Inside you is the power to do anything
Anathema Bane has created a curse so powerful that it will not stop until all life on Earth is extinct
Firefly, along with some old and new friends, has been chosen to stop this Perfect Curse. To do so her fairy team must travel long roads, seek help from strange creatures, and, if they are brave enough, enter a place so hidden it can only be found under the light of a Blue moon.
What if you discovered you had magical fairy powers? Meet the girls of The Fairy Chronicles,
otherwise normal girls like you with special gifts. Their extraordinary adventures will change the world!
Magic surrounds us, though we can't always see it. Gnomes add color to the plants in our gardens, doves deliver our good dreams, gremlins occasionally break our things and Mother Nature keeps the balance between the light and the dark. But just because you can't see something doesn't mean it can't hurt you.
Luckily, Mother Nature has blessed some otherwise ordinary girls with an extraordinary gift: in addition to being girls, they have been granted a fairy spirit, each one as unique and beautiful as the girls themselves, each as wild and powerful as their counterparts in nature. Watch Dragonfly zoom by with the speed of her namesake, or witness Firefly use the incredible light that shines within her. Each fairy spirit is a powerful gift granting the girls who use them the ability to do amazing feats. But with power comes responsibility and the fairies might have the hardest of job of all: to protect Mother Nature and us, even though we don't even know they existed. Until now
Customer Reviews:
My Favorite Book.......2007-08-28
Firefly is my favorite fairy. The squit in this book might be a dwarf trick. The squit is named Firecracker and he catches air flies. A spcial kind of blue moon made Blue Moon Clover grow. This clover saves the squirrels and everyone else from a curse. Firefly and her friends go through the woods and find a dwarf and a stag to uncover the clover. I like this book because the fairies have so much fun. We are going camping when it gets cooler because there are less bugs. I read this book twice and I am going to read it again.
"Great for 3rd and 4th Graders & A Breath of Fresh Air".......2007-08-16
This book series kept my kids busy this summer. They read the first two books at least three times each. I was so glad when the next two came out so I could get them to read more books.
I have screened the books carefully, and I am not only satisfied, I am delighted. This is terrific -- nothing but good stuff here. The girls in the books even get along with each other. The nature and garden parts really add to the quality of the experience.
"Firefly and the Quest of the Black Squirrel" is my favorite of the first four in this series, so I am doing the review for it. The girls (who are also the fairies) go camping. They are on their Spring Break and expect to just have a fun time. Then they are sent on an important mission. They meet interesting characters along the way and help solve a pretty big problem. The story flow is excellent, and we are pulled along on the mission with the fairies. I could almost hear what they were saying and I felt as though I was breathing the clean fresh air.
My daughters tell me that they like the fun and excitement. I think they are drawn to this book and the series not only because the books are interesting but because they can identify with the characters. However the girls in the books are not all the same even though they have things in common. One of the characters is getting adopted, another is homeschooled, one of the leaders of a former fairy mission is on a trip with her family, another girl gets into trouble for abusing her fairy power. This adds nice variety and perfectly parallels the variety of fairy spirits with their different gifts and wands. I think my girls also feel empowered when reading these books. It makes them feel like they can make a difference in the world.
The books are labeled for seven and up. I recommend this series specifically for those in third and fourth grade. The length might be a tad short for a high level fourth grader, but the content is very appropriate and will keep them reading. First and second graders would also enjoy the books but might need a little help with the language. Because the books do not contain anything questionable, they would be appropriate to read aloud to even younger children.
I highly recommend this book and the series it belong to as a Breath of Fresh Air.
Teresa Scott-Wright
If you only read one of the series..........2007-07-22
...my daughter and I think it should be this one. Of course we don't know what the future may hold because it looks like there are going to be more of these, but of the first four books, we liked this one best. We are heading camping next weekend because of this story, and we have started spending more time in the backyard and at the park. We found a jumble of ghost leaves fallen from our ash tree. They aren't shaped like hearts like the ones in Firefly's book, but they are still lacy and pretty, and we are using them as bookmarks. We are also looking for the next blue moon. This is helping us connect with nature and we are spending less time as couch potatoes. Firefly leads this fairy mission to help save black squirrels, and a lot of other creatures, from something pretty horrible. We loved her story and can hardly wait to find out what happens next in this series.
A wonderful series! Realistic fairies come alive before your eyes!.......2006-07-31
J. H. Sweet ...
What a treat ...
Writing 'bout fairies,
she can't be beat.
Book one was pure delight;
Book two is "out of sight."
Book three is a kid's dream,
Book four will make them beam.
But wait till you see what's in store;
of fairy books, she has plenty more.
Each of this author's books stands alone as far as storyline, and I discovered something new about fairies and fairy lore in each one. She's a fine writer, so good at her craft that the fairies came alive for me. Interesting storylines, colorful characters in an exciting, entertaining format.
Highly recommended.
"I want a squit!" (quote from my twins).......2006-06-13
I have twin girls and my little "princesses" have turned into "fairies" because of this book. I have heard "I want a squit!" about a hundred times since we read the story. I guess I am going to have to make them out of some material from the hobby store. The way squits are described in the book, I am picturing basketball sized tribbles that are brightly colored and extremely active, popping around and whizzing through the air so I guess a bouncing plastic ball covered with fake fur would do the trick. We have ordered wings and wands too, but I am going to have to get some feathers or silk flowers to simulate the wands of this book because they are all so different.
This story itself is about a group of fairies helping a black squirrel find blue moon clover to heal an illness caused by a goblin curse. Only a Black Stag can find this special clover, which grows only during the most rare type of blue moon. The fairies have to get the location of the Black Stag from a dwarf who keeps that specific secret because dwarves are masters of keeping secrets. The journey is very lyrical as the fairies travel through purple meadows, over rivers, through a Forgotten Forest, and through a white meadow. I would say this is very much like an idyllic fairy tale because fairy tale would be the best way to describe it. It is a good story for both kids and adults because I don't think we ever really outgrow these kinds of stories.
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- Fresh as a Kentucky Mountain Wind
- A Magical Journey with a Girl You'll Never Forget
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Magpie Gabbard and the Quest for the Buried Moon
Sally Keehn
Manufacturer: Philomel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0399243402
Release Date: 2007-03-01 |
Book Description
There are just things a girl turning thirteen has to do if she lives on Gabbard Mountain. Like track down her brother Milo, who went away to High Jerusalem and left his danged foot behind! And why not ride Sir William, the amazing hog, who is faster than a white tornado? Before this girl's done, she faces the Floating Head, outruns Goblins, retrieves miracle water from Green Pond, gives her brother Randall back his grit, and gets those squabbling Sizemores and Gabbards together again. Oh, yes, and along the way Magpie saves the moon . . . and gets herself a beautiful beau! Now this is an original story!
Customer Reviews:
Fresh as a Kentucky Mountain Wind.......2007-05-21
I like fantasies about princesses and British wizards as much as the next person, but it was wonderful to meet up with Magpie Gabbard and follow her breathlessly on her daisy chain of quests through the Kentucky mountains. Though you won't find the word "hillbilly" in the book, Magpie and her clan have a Hatfield-and-McCoy-worthy feud going on with the clan down the mountain. The feud is only one of a number of deftly intertwined plot lines--read this rollicking tale to learn about everything from the the spot on a time-traveling wild boar where the key must be inserted to procedures for handling goblins when they hang around on the porch at night like a bunch of supernatural gangbangers. And then there's the foot: you've got to love a book that starts out, "I mean to visit my brother Milo and give him back his foot." Author Sally Keehn draws on the American tall tale tradition as well as on fairy tale motifs such as the head in the well (who wants his hair combed) and the moon buried in a swamp by goblins. Did I mention that Gabbard honey has teeth-whitening properties, or that Granny Goforth has a prophesying kettle? Face it: we are living in a time when there's a real glut of fantasy on the children's literature market, and many of the books seem to blur together into one big blob of mediocre language and laborious plot construction. But not this book, fortunately--Magpie Gabbard is a standout.
A Magical Journey with a Girl You'll Never Forget.......2007-04-01
This wonderful book starts with one Magpie Gabbard needing to get her brother's foot back to him. She knows she'll have to brave Goblins, the vicious Sizemores, and her mother's wrath. Not to mention a wild hog. This book grabs you from the beginning and NEVER LETS GO to the very end, which is surprisingly moving and completely satisfying. You will do well to buy a copy for every kid you know, and keep one for yourself.
Book Description
Originally published in 1911, The Quest of the Silver Fleece was the first novel to come from world-famous sociologist and civil-rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois. A controversial title of its time, the novel chronicles the complex interactions between Northern financing and Southern politics as it follows the story of free-spirited Zora, child of a Southern swamp, and her romance with Yankee-educated Bles, who will eventually face the opportunity to claim political power through corrupt means. In the middle of it all is the silver fleece, a crop of cotton rich with meaning and symbolism.
In the tradition of other incendiary novels that explore market forces at the turn of the century, such as Frank Norris’s The Pit and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, The Quest of the Silver Fleece was seen as an “economic study” by Du Bois, yet it was also a romantic and otherwordly saga, loosely based on the Greek myth from which it takes its name. Using literary conventions to expose and oppose America’s views on race, Du Bois presents a sprawling and provocative work that continues to engage readers and inspire debate among literary scholars today.
Customer Reviews:
read it.......2001-02-20
Du Bois himself called The Quest "an economic study of some merit." Wow, it sure was an emotionally engaging economic study to read! This book is a page-turner. Du Bois attempts to take his reader into the heart of American neoslavery without using the traditional form of slave narrative. The fictional work of this famed writer of "The Souls of Black Folk," is a penetrating glance into soul of a nation built on dehumanizing labor.
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The Choicemaker (Quest Book)
Elizabeth Howes , and
Sheila Moon
Manufacturer: Theosophical Pub House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0835604926 |
Product Description
The year is 2053. The place is the Tycho Colony--beneath a glass dome on the near side of the moon. It's summer vacation--not that that means a lot; there aren't really seasons here on the moon. What it does mean is that you're making big plans. You'll have a lot of expeditions to choose from, but just remember: much of the moon is uncharted territory. Don't get lost--and don't run too low on your oxygen tank!
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