"The Guide to owning Dwarf Rabbits" is a good basic guide to the first time rabbit owner. This book covers topics like Housing, feeding and health. "The Guide to Owning Dwarf Rabbits" is written in an easy to understand style and contains all you need to know for your first rabbit, but is not very in depth for those with rabbit experience.

Run of the mill guinea pig book--it's more of a picture book than an INFORMATION book. It is more appropriate for pre-teens than for all ages, as it is billed as. The text is downright murky at times --if your guinea pig is ill or you don't know what Piggy's behavior means, you won't find that information here. However, the sections on food are very good--what to feed and what NOT to feed--and save the book from being a total loss. Also, the author has some negative personal opinions about Peruvians and Agouti guinea pigs that will DEFINATELY offend those of you who own/breed these WONDERFUL breeds of guinea pigs. (Can you tell I have a definate opinion here?)It's odd to note that on one page she will condem the breeding of Peruvians (because the long hair obscures eyesight and mobility) and yet on another page recommend selling guinea pigs as LAB ANIMALS. Huh? Continuity between the photograph captions and what the text is talking about is also a problem...sometimes you think the captions are for a different book. BUT if you have a kid thinking about getting a guinea pig, the basics are pretty much covered, the section on feeding is very good and the photos can be killer cute...that's all it takes, sometimes

This book is written by two men, one a doctor and the other a jouralist. Some people will find this a fun read, but it is written almost in the format of a novel rather than a history or biography. I think the authors felt the need to make the lives that these men lived and the curiosity and honor with which they chose to do their research needed to be expanded and told in ornate narrative, rather than telling the simple truth. When history is told in such a manner, and the authors tell things that they have no proof of happening (they are merely surmising) the story becomes a story. It is not history. The story of self-experimentation is filled with foolishness, courage, and concern for patients. It does not need to be enhanced by suppositions.

A much better and more recent book on this history of medical research is by Lawrence Altman. That book should be read prior to reading this one, which is unsatifactory in the historical sense.

Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

This is a fine hamster book but for the same price you could get two equally good and thorough hamster books. Two that come to mind are "Hamsters; A Complete Owners Guide" by Barons, and "The Right Way to keep hamsters" by Roy Robinson and David Baglin. For Dwarf hamster lovers there is also "Dwarf Hamsters; A Complete Owners Guide" by Barons. This is a good book and if you are just aching to find an extra bit of hamster knowledge go for it.

The oft told story of Hansel and Gretel - but in this story they are portrayed by little mice and the gingerbread house witch is portrayed by a cat! The illustrations by Laura Lydecker are cleverly done. The illustrations tend to be dark which not only portrays the fright of the children but adds to the suspense of the story. However, the darkness of the illustrations makes the text on a few of the pages a little difficult to read. Overall a very cute rendition of the old story.

This book wasn't bad for the age group it was intended for, but some of the concepts were repeated in an odd way. If I had to choose a book about antonyms, I would definitely explore my options further before I chose this one. The book is not terrible, I just didn't think it was one I would use in the classroom, even with young children.

This book is one of the most widely cited and recommended among anthropologists. People in other disciplines may come away wondering why. The book emphasizes the importance of depth interviewing and Herdt gives much credit to Stoller (a psychiatrist) for his assistance. People trained in clinical interviewing or qualitative depth interviews will give much of the book a "so what's new" response, while those without these backgrounds may find it more illuminating. Regardless, the book is overlong and the esoteric sexual rituals of Herdt's study population become rather repetitious and boring, although the individuals he studied are themselves, vivid and interesting.

This book is a story of a little mouse and her ballet performance. It might be considered a "pop up" book because it has little flaps and pieces that you pull out as part of the story.

If you are familiar with Michelle Cartlidge's little mouse series, then you will probably like this one. My daughters and I collect these books and this one has a cute story and cute illustrations. The ending is particularly good. However, I can't give it 5 stars because I have to say I was diappointed. I didn't like the larger size of this book (the older ones are very small). The bigger size makes it easier for little hands to pull out all the little "pull-outs", but the book is so much bigger (than "Mouse Wedding" or "Mouse's Scrapbook" for example) that it isn't as charming as those older, hard-to-find books. Also, I didn't like how the words in the little pull-outs (the card from the ballet teacher, the program for the performance, etc.) were typed out in this book, so that the typeface matched the rest of the book. In the older books, the pull-outs are all handwritten, so they really looked like miniature cards and notes.

If you haven't bought any of these books before, then you or any little girl will probably like this one very much, as it is a cute book. But if you have some of the older ones, then it isn't as cute as those. (Note: this book isn't for a toddler - they'll probably ruin it. The book is more for the 5 and up crowd. But this book work for you if your toddler doesn't mind letting YOU pull out the notes and letters. Just save it for when she's older).

The Mouse that Snored is a funny picture book by Bernard Waber. You may remember Waber from Lyle, Lyle Crocodile or Nobody's Perfick.

Written in rhyming verse, a bit of the text goes like this:

The quiet man's quiet wife

padded about in slippers.

She never made the faintest sound

not even while zipping zippers.

The quiet of this couple's life (they live in a country house, with a cat and a bird; the bird is named Will and likes to say 'Hush! Be still!") is broken by the arrival of a city mouse who falls asleep in their pantry, and awakens the house with a snoring that trembles the light fixtures and bangs the shutters.

The pictures are very much the same as Waber's general sloppy style, but are humorous and kids will get a kick out of them. The text is easy to follow but sometimes uses words that most kids won't know (tureen, for example).

There are sometimes 5 or 6 panels on a page, like a comic strip. This makes the book inconvenient or perhaps impossible for storytime situations. Kids have to be close up to see The Mouse That Roared. I couldn't see myself reading this book to a group of 4 or more children; they would have a hard time seeing the illustrations.

Children age 4 and 5 love this book, but my two year old son finds the book hard to follow. I think the cluttered sloppy illustration style is the reason. The text is basically simple, and rhyming,with a few difficult words.

This isn't a classic like Lyle, but it's a decent picture book, and funny in places...

This is an ethnography of the Sabarl Islanders of New Guinea, and Battaglia creates the following categories to describe them: Part I is "The Person: Basic Distinctions," Part II is "Relational Personhood" and Part III is "The Person Performed." Battaglia writes using the assumptions of a "perspectivist" ["postmodern," deconstructive," "poststructural"] anthropology, and uses typical postmodern jargon that I personally find grating. I sometimes wondered if the Sabarl were as candid with her as she assumed, as she was 26 when she first arrived at the island, and she seemed a bit naive throughout her book. This book, like most ethnographies, is fascinating to read with regard to opening one's mind to other ways of viewing the world. However, I think Battaglia's observations should be taken with more than a few grains of salt. (But mine probably should be, too.)