Preschool Mother, 25 Oct 2008
I started reading this book to my daughter when she turned 3.She loves all the stories of Madeline, so we really enjoy this book! she s even "reading" it by herself some times and saying "In an old house in Paris..."

We love "Madeline". We read them all the time., 22 Aug 1999
I am sitting here with a young lady four years old who is also called Madeline and a large part of her being named Madeline was that I as her father - am "Mad about Madeline" too.

It is the flow and rythmn of the stories plus the beautiful water color illustrations. My four year old's favorite is "Madeline's Rescue". My favorite is "Madeline and the Gypsies" but they are all outstanding. A childhood without one of these books - buy one of the paperbacks if you you are new to Madeline and don't want to buy the complete selection yet- is incomprehensible.

Wonderful for All ages!, 17 Jul 1999
I absolutely love the madeline books. I think you can be any age and still enjoy them. This particular book happens to have all the stories in one fabulous book.

Our first choice EVERY night!, 07 Jan 1999
Our two little girls, three and two years old, LOVE Madeline. Daddy reads them one story each night -- they always get to pick which. For Christmas they got two new books which are still almost unread, since every night they want Madeline! The stories are exciting, but gentle and sweet; they are moral but not preachy. And the poetry is wonderful! Also the stories are not too long for a tired parent's voice at bedtime. But with only two little ones of my own, I wonder how DOES Miss Clavel keep TWELVE little girls in two straight lines?

Excellent, 21 Aug 1998
This is an excellent book for little girls. Our daughter loves it. My only objection is the recommended age range. Our daughter has loved the books and the videos since she was one, and she is four years old now.

Quindlen hits a nerve with One True Thing, which captures an experience seldom dealt with in popular culture. Though the heroine, Ellen Gulden, is a golden girl with two brothers who'll lose her career the instant she steps off the fast track, society concurs with her dad, who says, "It seems to me another woman is what's wanted here."

The book is a mother-daughter tale that should please fans of, say, The Joy Luck Club. It's not flashy, but it has a deep feel for the way children often discover, just before it's too late, who their parents really are. "Our parents are never people to us," Ellen writes, "they're always character traits.... There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat." The mercy-killing subplot isn't gripping, but the palpable sense of deepening family intimacy certainly is. --Tim Appelo

Preschool Mother, 25 Oct 2008
I started reading this book to my daughter when she turned 3.She loves all the stories of Madeline, so we really enjoy this book! she s even "reading" it by herself some times and saying "In an old house in Paris..."

We love "Madeline". We read them all the time., 22 Aug 1999
I am sitting here with a young lady four years old who is also called Madeline and a large part of her being named Madeline was that I as her father - am "Mad about Madeline" too.

It is the flow and rythmn of the stories plus the beautiful water color illustrations. My four year old's favorite is "Madeline's Rescue". My favorite is "Madeline and the Gypsies" but they are all outstanding. A childhood without one of these books - buy one of the paperbacks if you you are new to Madeline and don't want to buy the complete selection yet- is incomprehensible.

Wonderful for All ages!, 17 Jul 1999
I absolutely love the madeline books. I think you can be any age and still enjoy them. This particular book happens to have all the stories in one fabulous book.

Our first choice EVERY night!, 07 Jan 1999
Our two little girls, three and two years old, LOVE Madeline. Daddy reads them one story each night -- they always get to pick which. For Christmas they got two new books which are still almost unread, since every night they want Madeline! The stories are exciting, but gentle and sweet; they are moral but not preachy. And the poetry is wonderful! Also the stories are not too long for a tired parent's voice at bedtime. But with only two little ones of my own, I wonder how DOES Miss Clavel keep TWELVE little girls in two straight lines?

Excellent, 21 Aug 1998
This is an excellent book for little girls. Our daughter loves it. My only objection is the recommended age range. Our daughter has loved the books and the videos since she was one, and she is four years old now.

"I tried to do it all without screaming "I am dying, too", 03 Jan 2006
As the novel opens, Ellen Gulden is in jail, on suspicion of having aided in the death of her mother, a woman who had been experiencing agonizing pain from inoperable cancer. As Ellen reminisces about the five months she spent caring for her mother, the novel develops into much more than the story of her mother's death. Ultimately, it is the story of Ellen's emotional and spiritual coming of age, a positive story of growth and love, not the maudlin tearjerker that one might expect on the basis of plot summaries.

When her father first asks her to come home to care for her mother, Ellen is resentful. She has been out of college only a couple of years, and her career as a journalist in New York is just starting. She resents the fact that she will have to give up her whole life and return home indefinitely--perhaps permanently--believing that her father has not been doing his part to help her mother. Ellen, nevertheless, returns home, and she and her mother begin to know each other in new ways, starting, at first, with their two-person book club and then moving on to a sharing of holiday decorating and cooking secrets. Her resentment of her father increases, as her own relationships, especially with her long-term lover, deteriorate.

As her mother moves to a wheelchair, then to a hospital bed, Ellen is the staunch caregiver, and when her mother's morphine dosage increases and she still begs for an end to her pain, Ellen must decide whether to help her. When an autopsy after her mother's death shows suspicious results, Ellen is jailed, pending an appearance before a grand jury.

The death of Kate Gulden is part of the much larger story of Ellen's discoveries about herself and her new understandings of her parents, her parents' marriage, and how one faces one's inevitable fate. Her ability to make peace with both her mother's death and her changed feelings for her father take place within the context of her arrest and its aftermath, as she comes to a new recognition that life's important questions have no absolute answers. A fine novel which reveals the ambiguities of love and family relationships, the novel stresses the changing roles within families as people face the inevitabilities of life, growth, and death. Mary Whipple

Very moving story, 13 Dec 2000
A well written novel about a successful young woman who somewhat reluctantly puts her career on hold to become carer for her mother who is dying of cancer. This book very thought-provoking and extremely moving. The honesty of the characters sets it apart from the rest and although it is sad it is not depressing at all. I thoroughly recommend that you experience this book.

Excellent book, horrific and creepy. Underworld, hell..., 25 Jul 2000
A view of what happens when you die (might be hell, heaven or something in between). Couldn't put it down

A moving, well-written tale which cannot fail to touch, 18 Jan 1999
Ellen, the protagonist in this story, begins as a hard-nosed, ambitious, selfish young woman who has grown up in the shadow of her academic father. By the end of the story she has developed into a caring, moving character with whom the reader empathises. Forced by her father to give up her job in order to care for her dying mother, Ellen goes through emotions ranging from bitterness and resentment to love and admiration for her suffering mother. Quindlen deals with the subject matter in a sensitive but upfront manner, confronting the fears harboured by many of us that faced with such a tragic situation we would not have the patience, courage or selflessness to care for our parents in their decline. Ellen learns a lot during this period, and not only about herself. When the inevitable happens, she realises that had she not accepted the task of caring for her mother, she would never had known her properly. She had always dismissed her mother's role as homemaker and wife, but she soon realises that there is so much more to her mother, a dimension and a strength which Ellen had never appreciated as a child. This is a sad but very powerful, thought-provoking book which is definitely worth reading. One piece of advice: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU SEE THE FILM - AND THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR MEMORIES RUINED!!

Preschool Mother, 25 Oct 2008
I started reading this book to my daughter when she turned 3.She loves all the stories of Madeline, so we really enjoy this book! she s even "reading" it by herself some times and saying "In an old house in Paris..."

We love "Madeline". We read them all the time., 22 Aug 1999
I am sitting here with a young lady four years old who is also called Madeline and a large part of her being named Madeline was that I as her father - am "Mad about Madeline" too.

It is the flow and rythmn of the stories plus the beautiful water color illustrations. My four year old's favorite is "Madeline's Rescue". My favorite is "Madeline and the Gypsies" but they are all outstanding. A childhood without one of these books - buy one of the paperbacks if you you are new to Madeline and don't want to buy the complete selection yet- is incomprehensible.

Wonderful for All ages!, 17 Jul 1999
I absolutely love the madeline books. I think you can be any age and still enjoy them. This particular book happens to have all the stories in one fabulous book.

Our first choice EVERY night!, 07 Jan 1999
Our two little girls, three and two years old, LOVE Madeline. Daddy reads them one story each night -- they always get to pick which. For Christmas they got two new books which are still almost unread, since every night they want Madeline! The stories are exciting, but gentle and sweet; they are moral but not preachy. And the poetry is wonderful! Also the stories are not too long for a tired parent's voice at bedtime. But with only two little ones of my own, I wonder how DOES Miss Clavel keep TWELVE little girls in two straight lines?

Excellent, 21 Aug 1998
This is an excellent book for little girls. Our daughter loves it. My only objection is the recommended age range. Our daughter has loved the books and the videos since she was one, and she is four years old now.

"I tried to do it all without screaming "I am dying, too", 03 Jan 2006
As the novel opens, Ellen Gulden is in jail, on suspicion of having aided in the death of her mother, a woman who had been experiencing agonizing pain from inoperable cancer. As Ellen reminisces about the five months she spent caring for her mother, the novel develops into much more than the story of her mother's death. Ultimately, it is the story of Ellen's emotional and spiritual coming of age, a positive story of growth and love, not the maudlin tearjerker that one might expect on the basis of plot summaries.

When her father first asks her to come home to care for her mother, Ellen is resentful. She has been out of college only a couple of years, and her career as a journalist in New York is just starting. She resents the fact that she will have to give up her whole life and return home indefinitely--perhaps permanently--believing that her father has not been doing his part to help her mother. Ellen, nevertheless, returns home, and she and her mother begin to know each other in new ways, starting, at first, with their two-person book club and then moving on to a sharing of holiday decorating and cooking secrets. Her resentment of her father increases, as her own relationships, especially with her long-term lover, deteriorate.

As her mother moves to a wheelchair, then to a hospital bed, Ellen is the staunch caregiver, and when her mother's morphine dosage increases and she still begs for an end to her pain, Ellen must decide whether to help her. When an autopsy after her mother's death shows suspicious results, Ellen is jailed, pending an appearance before a grand jury.

The death of Kate Gulden is part of the much larger story of Ellen's discoveries about herself and her new understandings of her parents, her parents' marriage, and how one faces one's inevitable fate. Her ability to make peace with both her mother's death and her changed feelings for her father take place within the context of her arrest and its aftermath, as she comes to a new recognition that life's important questions have no absolute answers. A fine novel which reveals the ambiguities of love and family relationships, the novel stresses the changing roles within families as people face the inevitabilities of life, growth, and death. Mary Whipple

Very moving story, 13 Dec 2000
A well written novel about a successful young woman who somewhat reluctantly puts her career on hold to become carer for her mother who is dying of cancer. This book very thought-provoking and extremely moving. The honesty of the characters sets it apart from the rest and although it is sad it is not depressing at all. I thoroughly recommend that you experience this book.

Excellent book, horrific and creepy. Underworld, hell..., 25 Jul 2000
A view of what happens when you die (might be hell, heaven or something in between). Couldn't put it down

A moving, well-written tale which cannot fail to touch, 18 Jan 1999
Ellen, the protagonist in this story, begins as a hard-nosed, ambitious, selfish young woman who has grown up in the shadow of her academic father. By the end of the story she has developed into a caring, moving character with whom the reader empathises. Forced by her father to give up her job in order to care for her dying mother, Ellen goes through emotions ranging from bitterness and resentment to love and admiration for her suffering mother. Quindlen deals with the subject matter in a sensitive but upfront manner, confronting the fears harboured by many of us that faced with such a tragic situation we would not have the patience, courage or selflessness to care for our parents in their decline. Ellen learns a lot during this period, and not only about herself. When the inevitable happens, she realises that had she not accepted the task of caring for her mother, she would never had known her properly. She had always dismissed her mother's role as homemaker and wife, but she soon realises that there is so much more to her mother, a dimension and a strength which Ellen had never appreciated as a child. This is a sad but very powerful, thought-provoking book which is definitely worth reading. One piece of advice: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU SEE THE FILM - AND THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR MEMORIES RUINED!!

A very good but different way of looking at Anne Frank's life , 02 Aug 2006
I thought that this was a v. original and creative way of looking at Anne Frank's life. It was well set out and was always interesting.

Basically, it is pictures of Anne Frank and things to do with her. It was very good.

moving, 16 Oct 2005
I read this book largely because I wanted more insight. Yet I found myselfmoved to tears. it is a cleverly constructed, beautiful colection which certainly fulfills its pupuse of celebrating Anne's life way before the war or any other horror touched her.
It is hard to reflect on Anne Frank without contemplating the impact of the Nazis and yet this book manages to touch on her life pre-war and during her hiding that she becomes a person who exists seperately - as she deserves.
It moved me to tears as did the diary yet also filled me with hope .

A very great book., 02 Feb 1999
This book has pictures of Anne Frank and her family. She also writes in her diary about how she feels going in to hiding and wearing a yellow star to show she is Jewish. This is a really fabulous book because it talks about how she feels and what it is like when her and her family go into hiding. They went into hiding because Adolf Hitler started preparing Germany for war. They were sending all Jewish people to camps so that they'd starve and freeze to death. I like this book because sometimes I imagine I'm in hiding and that I get lonely and am not able to have boyfriends or have any friends that I could tell secrets or talk to or trust. When Anne Frank talks about how it feels when you are in hiding you could actually feel how she feels.

Preschool Mother, 25 Oct 2008
I started reading this book to my daughter when she turned 3.She loves all the stories of Madeline, so we really enjoy this book! she s even "reading" it by herself some times and saying "In an old house in Paris..."

We love "Madeline". We read them all the time., 22 Aug 1999
I am sitting here with a young lady four years old who is also called Madeline and a large part of her being named Madeline was that I as her father - am "Mad about Madeline" too.

It is the flow and rythmn of the stories plus the beautiful water color illustrations. My four year old's favorite is "Madeline's Rescue". My favorite is "Madeline and the Gypsies" but they are all outstanding. A childhood without one of these books - buy one of the paperbacks if you you are new to Madeline and don't want to buy the complete selection yet- is incomprehensible.

Wonderful for All ages!, 17 Jul 1999
I absolutely love the madeline books. I think you can be any age and still enjoy them. This particular book happens to have all the stories in one fabulous book.

Our first choice EVERY night!, 07 Jan 1999
Our two little girls, three and two years old, LOVE Madeline. Daddy reads them one story each night -- they always get to pick which. For Christmas they got two new books which are still almost unread, since every night they want Madeline! The stories are exciting, but gentle and sweet; they are moral but not preachy. And the poetry is wonderful! Also the stories are not too long for a tired parent's voice at bedtime. But with only two little ones of my own, I wonder how DOES Miss Clavel keep TWELVE little girls in two straight lines?

Excellent, 21 Aug 1998
This is an excellent book for little girls. Our daughter loves it. My only objection is the recommended age range. Our daughter has loved the books and the videos since she was one, and she is four years old now.

"I tried to do it all without screaming "I am dying, too", 03 Jan 2006
As the novel opens, Ellen Gulden is in jail, on suspicion of having aided in the death of her mother, a woman who had been experiencing agonizing pain from inoperable cancer. As Ellen reminisces about the five months she spent caring for her mother, the novel develops into much more than the story of her mother's death. Ultimately, it is the story of Ellen's emotional and spiritual coming of age, a positive story of growth and love, not the maudlin tearjerker that one might expect on the basis of plot summaries.

When her father first asks her to come home to care for her mother, Ellen is resentful. She has been out of college only a couple of years, and her career as a journalist in New York is just starting. She resents the fact that she will have to give up her whole life and return home indefinitely--perhaps permanently--believing that her father has not been doing his part to help her mother. Ellen, nevertheless, returns home, and she and her mother begin to know each other in new ways, starting, at first, with their two-person book club and then moving on to a sharing of holiday decorating and cooking secrets. Her resentment of her father increases, as her own relationships, especially with her long-term lover, deteriorate.

As her mother moves to a wheelchair, then to a hospital bed, Ellen is the staunch caregiver, and when her mother's morphine dosage increases and she still begs for an end to her pain, Ellen must decide whether to help her. When an autopsy after her mother's death shows suspicious results, Ellen is jailed, pending an appearance before a grand jury.

The death of Kate Gulden is part of the much larger story of Ellen's discoveries about herself and her new understandings of her parents, her parents' marriage, and how one faces one's inevitable fate. Her ability to make peace with both her mother's death and her changed feelings for her father take place within the context of her arrest and its aftermath, as she comes to a new recognition that life's important questions have no absolute answers. A fine novel which reveals the ambiguities of love and family relationships, the novel stresses the changing roles within families as people face the inevitabilities of life, growth, and death. Mary Whipple

Very moving story, 13 Dec 2000
A well written novel about a successful young woman who somewhat reluctantly puts her career on hold to become carer for her mother who is dying of cancer. This book very thought-provoking and extremely moving. The honesty of the characters sets it apart from the rest and although it is sad it is not depressing at all. I thoroughly recommend that you experience this book.

Excellent book, horrific and creepy. Underworld, hell..., 25 Jul 2000
A view of what happens when you die (might be hell, heaven or something in between). Couldn't put it down

A moving, well-written tale which cannot fail to touch, 18 Jan 1999
Ellen, the protagonist in this story, begins as a hard-nosed, ambitious, selfish young woman who has grown up in the shadow of her academic father. By the end of the story she has developed into a caring, moving character with whom the reader empathises. Forced by her father to give up her job in order to care for her dying mother, Ellen goes through emotions ranging from bitterness and resentment to love and admiration for her suffering mother. Quindlen deals with the subject matter in a sensitive but upfront manner, confronting the fears harboured by many of us that faced with such a tragic situation we would not have the patience, courage or selflessness to care for our parents in their decline. Ellen learns a lot during this period, and not only about herself. When the inevitable happens, she realises that had she not accepted the task of caring for her mother, she would never had known her properly. She had always dismissed her mother's role as homemaker and wife, but she soon realises that there is so much more to her mother, a dimension and a strength which Ellen had never appreciated as a child. This is a sad but very powerful, thought-provoking book which is definitely worth reading. One piece of advice: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU SEE THE FILM - AND THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR MEMORIES RUINED!!

A very good but different way of looking at Anne Frank's life , 02 Aug 2006
I thought that this was a v. original and creative way of looking at Anne Frank's life. It was well set out and was always interesting.

Basically, it is pictures of Anne Frank and things to do with her. It was very good.

moving, 16 Oct 2005
I read this book largely because I wanted more insight. Yet I found myselfmoved to tears. it is a cleverly constructed, beautiful colection which certainly fulfills its pupuse of celebrating Anne's life way before the war or any other horror touched her.
It is hard to reflect on Anne Frank without contemplating the impact of the Nazis and yet this book manages to touch on her life pre-war and during her hiding that she becomes a person who exists seperately - as she deserves.
It moved me to tears as did the diary yet also filled me with hope .

A very great book., 02 Feb 1999
This book has pictures of Anne Frank and her family. She also writes in her diary about how she feels going in to hiding and wearing a yellow star to show she is Jewish. This is a really fabulous book because it talks about how she feels and what it is like when her and her family go into hiding. They went into hiding because Adolf Hitler started preparing Germany for war. They were sending all Jewish people to camps so that they'd starve and freeze to death. I like this book because sometimes I imagine I'm in hiding and that I get lonely and am not able to have boyfriends or have any friends that I could tell secrets or talk to or trust. When Anne Frank talks about how it feels when you are in hiding you could actually feel how she feels.

A touching love letter to London, 08 Dec 2007
Anna Quindlen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist from America. She grew up reading books set in London but did not get to travel to the 'city of her childhood imaginings' until she was in her forties. This book tells of her visit and her impressions as she trod the very same streets in which many of her literary heroes -- both fictional and real -- had also trod. What results is a touching love letter to literary London.

I have to admit that most of the books that Quindlen namechecks throughout this delightful essay -- for that is what it is, rather than a book -- were unfamilar to me. Sure, I knew their names and the authors -- how could anyone not know Charles Dickens or Elizabeth Bowen or the Forsyte Saga? -- but my tastes tend towards the more modern, namely late 20th century and early 21st century, as opposed to the classics, but this did not diminish my enjoyment of Imagined London.

Of course, I am a resident of this amazing city, and when I first arrived here back in the summer of 1998 I was more intent in seeking out famous buildings (The Palace of Westminster, St Paul's Cathedral) or musical landmarks (Brixton Academy, the Camden pub where Blur used to hang out, the zebra crossing that features on the Beatles Abbey Road album cover) rather than places where novels were set.

But I fell in love with Quindlen's effortless prose. She captures the London I know and love in a way that only a non-Brit could do so -- with fresh eyes and much awe. (I believe that when you worship something from afar you often appreciate it much better than the 'natives' when you finally get to see it in person. I know that I have seen many sights in London that people who were born and bred here have never seen, including some amazing cemeteries and landmark buildings, that are well off the tourist trail.)

Trying to single out just one quote that sums up Quindlen's 'eye' for recognising the distinctive characteristics of this city is difficult, but here's one that resonated with me, having come from an Australian city built on a grid system: "There are countless buildings that seem trapped in the narrow backstreets of the West End or Chelsea, streets designed for one century and trying to make do in another. At Piccadilly there is a warning sign that Jermyn Street, home of the shirtmakers Turnbull and Asser and the perfumier Floris, is 'unsuited for long vehicles'. For someone used to the tidy, slightly boring numbered streets of upper Manhattan, it is a joy to encounter St. James's Street, St James's Place and Little St. James's Street. Every street name seems to have a codicil attached, a cartographic family tree; as Thackeray noted, 'All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads.' Nearby, according to the novelist, is New Gaunt Street, and Gaunt Mews. All this would seem like satire if you did not see it all around you in the city itself."

But what I like most about Quindlin's writing is her unabashed enthusiasm for the city. And the fact she's not afraid to make fun of her own naivety: "I was certain I had no idea how to pronounce many of the words I had learned to recognize with my eyes," she writes. "How in the world did you actually say Cholmondeley or Gloucestershire? It remains a source of shame to me that through much of my girlhood I pronounced the name of the river that runs famously through London with the 'the' fully articulated and a long a after. 'Thames,' one of my high-school teachers finally said, 'rhymes with gems'. As a reader English place names had becomes what Russian surnames had always been: something to register with the mind and the eye but never to venture with the tongue."

Even if you have never been to London, Imagined London will give you a real sense of its history, its architecture, its topography. And if you've read a lot of classics set in the city you'll be particularly enamoured, and probably clamouring to book your flight over! And if you live here or have visited London in the past, you'll enjoy recognising the streets and places mentioned, and maybe find out something about Dickens' birthplace that you didn't know before.

A very fine book, 20 Sep 2006
Anna Quindlen, a former New York Times columnist and a cultivate writer, takes the reader on a literary tour through London.
I found this book not only fascinating but widely enlightening in understanding much more clearly "the city where the imagination found its great home". It is written for anyone with an interest in cultural pleasures and in the history of one of the world's vibrant cities.
The London that emerges from her story is the city of Dickens, Trollope, Galsworthy, Conan Doyle, Lessing and other prominent novelists.
Anna Quindlen felt in love with English literature at an early age and visited London many times in the pages of the books that she read avidly. When she made her first real trip to London in 1995, "it felt less like an introduction and more like a homecoming".
Imagined London was my travelling companion book during a recent stay in London and I was glad to see the literary highlights described by Quindlen in surprising new ways.

Preschool Mother, 25 Oct 2008
I started reading this book to my daughter when she turned 3.She loves all the stories of Madeline, so we really enjoy this book! she s even "reading" it by herself some times and saying "In an old house in Paris..."

We love "Madeline". We read them all the time., 22 Aug 1999
I am sitting here with a young lady four years old who is also called Madeline and a large part of her being named Madeline was that I as her father - am "Mad about Madeline" too.

It is the flow and rythmn of the stories plus the beautiful water color illustrations. My four year old's favorite is "Madeline's Rescue". My favorite is "Madeline and the Gypsies" but they are all outstanding. A childhood without one of these books - buy one of the paperbacks if you you are new to Madeline and don't want to buy the complete selection yet- is incomprehensible.

Wonderful for All ages!, 17 Jul 1999
I absolutely love the madeline books. I think you can be any age and still enjoy them. This particular book happens to have all the stories in one fabulous book.

Our first choice EVERY night!, 07 Jan 1999
Our two little girls, three and two years old, LOVE Madeline. Daddy reads them one story each night -- they always get to pick which. For Christmas they got two new books which are still almost unread, since every night they want Madeline! The stories are exciting, but gentle and sweet; they are moral but not preachy. And the poetry is wonderful! Also the stories are not too long for a tired parent's voice at bedtime. But with only two little ones of my own, I wonder how DOES Miss Clavel keep TWELVE little girls in two straight lines?

Excellent, 21 Aug 1998
This is an excellent book for little girls. Our daughter loves it. My only objection is the recommended age range. Our daughter has loved the books and the videos since she was one, and she is four years old now.

"I tried to do it all without screaming "I am dying, too", 03 Jan 2006
As the novel opens, Ellen Gulden is in jail, on suspicion of having aided in the death of her mother, a woman who had been experiencing agonizing pain from inoperable cancer. As Ellen reminisces about the five months she spent caring for her mother, the novel develops into much more than the story of her mother's death. Ultimately, it is the story of Ellen's emotional and spiritual coming of age, a positive story of growth and love, not the maudlin tearjerker that one might expect on the basis of plot summaries.

When her father first asks her to come home to care for her mother, Ellen is resentful. She has been out of college only a couple of years, and her career as a journalist in New York is just starting. She resents the fact that she will have to give up her whole life and return home indefinitely--perhaps permanently--believing that her father has not been doing his part to help her mother. Ellen, nevertheless, returns home, and she and her mother begin to know each other in new ways, starting, at first, with their two-person book club and then moving on to a sharing of holiday decorating and cooking secrets. Her resentment of her father increases, as her own relationships, especially with her long-term lover, deteriorate.

As her mother moves to a wheelchair, then to a hospital bed, Ellen is the staunch caregiver, and when her mother's morphine dosage increases and she still begs for an end to her pain, Ellen must decide whether to help her. When an autopsy after her mother's death shows suspicious results, Ellen is jailed, pending an appearance before a grand jury.

The death of Kate Gulden is part of the much larger story of Ellen's discoveries about herself and her new understandings of her parents, her parents' marriage, and how one faces one's inevitable fate. Her ability to make peace with both her mother's death and her changed feelings for her father take place within the context of her arrest and its aftermath, as she comes to a new recognition that life's important questions have no absolute answers. A fine novel which reveals the ambiguities of love and family relationships, the novel stresses the changing roles within families as people face the inevitabilities of life, growth, and death. Mary Whipple

Very moving story, 13 Dec 2000
A well written novel about a successful young woman who somewhat reluctantly puts her career on hold to become carer for her mother who is dying of cancer. This book very thought-provoking and extremely moving. The honesty of the characters sets it apart from the rest and although it is sad it is not depressing at all. I thoroughly recommend that you experience this book.

Excellent book, horrific and creepy. Underworld, hell..., 25 Jul 2000
A view of what happens when you die (might be hell, heaven or something in between). Couldn't put it down

A moving, well-written tale which cannot fail to touch, 18 Jan 1999
Ellen, the protagonist in this story, begins as a hard-nosed, ambitious, selfish young woman who has grown up in the shadow of her academic father. By the end of the story she has developed into a caring, moving character with whom the reader empathises. Forced by her father to give up her job in order to care for her dying mother, Ellen goes through emotions ranging from bitterness and resentment to love and admiration for her suffering mother. Quindlen deals with the subject matter in a sensitive but upfront manner, confronting the fears harboured by many of us that faced with such a tragic situation we would not have the patience, courage or selflessness to care for our parents in their decline. Ellen learns a lot during this period, and not only about herself. When the inevitable happens, she realises that had she not accepted the task of caring for her mother, she would never had known her properly. She had always dismissed her mother's role as homemaker and wife, but she soon realises that there is so much more to her mother, a dimension and a strength which Ellen had never appreciated as a child. This is a sad but very powerful, thought-provoking book which is definitely worth reading. One piece of advice: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU SEE THE FILM - AND THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR MEMORIES RUINED!!

A very good but different way of looking at Anne Frank's life , 02 Aug 2006
I thought that this was a v. original and creative way of looking at Anne Frank's life. It was well set out and was always interesting.

Basically, it is pictures of Anne Frank and things to do with her. It was very good.

moving, 16 Oct 2005
I read this book largely because I wanted more insight. Yet I found myselfmoved to tears. it is a cleverly constructed, beautiful colection which certainly fulfills its pupuse of celebrating Anne's life way before the war or any other horror touched her.
It is hard to reflect on Anne Frank without contemplating the impact of the Nazis and yet this book manages to touch on her life pre-war and during her hiding that she becomes a person who exists seperately - as she deserves.
It moved me to tears as did the diary yet also filled me with hope .

A very great book., 02 Feb 1999
This book has pictures of Anne Frank and her family. She also writes in her diary about how she feels going in to hiding and wearing a yellow star to show she is Jewish. This is a really fabulous book because it talks about how she feels and what it is like when her and her family go into hiding. They went into hiding because Adolf Hitler started preparing Germany for war. They were sending all Jewish people to camps so that they'd starve and freeze to death. I like this book because sometimes I imagine I'm in hiding and that I get lonely and am not able to have boyfriends or have any friends that I could tell secrets or talk to or trust. When Anne Frank talks about how it feels when you are in hiding you could actually feel how she feels.

A touching love letter to London, 08 Dec 2007
Anna Quindlen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist from America. She grew up reading books set in London but did not get to travel to the 'city of her childhood imaginings' until she was in her forties. This book tells of her visit and her impressions as she trod the very same streets in which many of her literary heroes -- both fictional and real -- had also trod. What results is a touching love letter to literary London.

I have to admit that most of the books that Quindlen namechecks throughout this delightful essay -- for that is what it is, rather than a book -- were unfamilar to me. Sure, I knew their names and the authors -- how could anyone not know Charles Dickens or Elizabeth Bowen or the Forsyte Saga? -- but my tastes tend towards the more modern, namely late 20th century and early 21st century, as opposed to the classics, but this did not diminish my enjoyment of Imagined London.

Of course, I am a resident of this amazing city, and when I first arrived here back in the summer of 1998 I was more intent in seeking out famous buildings (The Palace of Westminster, St Paul's Cathedral) or musical landmarks (Brixton Academy, the Camden pub where Blur used to hang out, the zebra crossing that features on the Beatles Abbey Road album cover) rather than places where novels were set.

But I fell in love with Quindlen's effortless prose. She captures the London I know and love in a way that only a non-Brit could do so -- with fresh eyes and much awe. (I believe that when you worship something from afar you often appreciate it much better than the 'natives' when you finally get to see it in person. I know that I have seen many sights in London that people who were born and bred here have never seen, including some amazing cemeteries and landmark buildings, that are well off the tourist trail.)

Trying to single out just one quote that sums up Quindlen's 'eye' for recognising the distinctive characteristics of this city is difficult, but here's one that resonated with me, having come from an Australian city built on a grid system: "There are countless buildings that seem trapped in the narrow backstreets of the West End or Chelsea, streets designed for one century and trying to make do in another. At Piccadilly there is a warning sign that Jermyn Street, home of the shirtmakers Turnbull and Asser and the perfumier Floris, is 'unsuited for long vehicles'. For someone used to the tidy, slightly boring numbered streets of upper Manhattan, it is a joy to encounter St. James's Street, St James's Place and Little St. James's Street. Every street name seems to have a codicil attached, a cartographic family tree; as Thackeray noted, 'All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads.' Nearby, according to the novelist, is New Gaunt Street, and Gaunt Mews. All this would seem like satire if you did not see it all around you in the city itself."

But what I like most about Quindlin's writing is her unabashed enthusiasm for the city. And the fact she's not afraid to make fun of her own naivety: "I was certain I had no idea how to pronounce many of the words I had learned to recognize with my eyes," she writes. "How in the world did you actually say Cholmondeley or Gloucestershire? It remains a source of shame to me that through much of my girlhood I pronounced the name of the river that runs famously through London with the 'the' fully articulated and a long a after. 'Thames,' one of my high-school teachers finally said, 'rhymes with gems'. As a reader English place names had becomes what Russian surnames had always been: something to register with the mind and the eye but never to venture with the tongue."

Even if you have never been to London, Imagined London will give you a real sense of its history, its architecture, its topography. And if you've read a lot of classics set in the city you'll be particularly enamoured, and probably clamouring to book your flight over! And if you live here or have visited London in the past, you'll enjoy recognising the streets and places mentioned, and maybe find out something about Dickens' birthplace that you didn't know before.

A very fine book, 20 Sep 2006
Anna Quindlen, a former New York Times columnist and a cultivate writer, takes the reader on a literary tour through London.
I found this book not only fascinating but widely enlightening in understanding much more clearly "the city where the imagination found its great home". It is written for anyone with an interest in cultural pleasures and in the history of one of the world's vibrant cities.
The London that emerges from her story is the city of Dickens, Trollope, Galsworthy, Conan Doyle, Lessing and other prominent novelists.
Anna Quindlen felt in love with English literature at an early age and visited London many times in the pages of the books that she read avidly. When she made her first real trip to London in 1995, "it felt less like an introduction and more like a homecoming".
Imagined London was my travelling companion book during a recent stay in London and I was glad to see the literary highlights described by Quindlen in surprising new ways.

Easy to read chick lit, 15 Aug 2008
I enjoyed this read even though the ending was a little unbelievable.

It was a nice easy read for the train to work - it was an interesting topic, grabbed my attention and the chapters were a good length for a commute!

I have since bought other books by Anna Quindlen and whilst I am not expecting to be swept away by great literature the topics seem to be substantial enough for a good read and thought provoking chick lit.

Boring, bland and unbelievable, 02 Oct 2007
The words "The New York Times Number One Bestseller" emblazoned on the front cover enticed me to buy this book, and the accolades on the back led me to expect great things. What a disappointment.

The story which revolves around the lives of two sisters, one a famous television personality and one a socially-conscious community worker did not grab my attention or seem likely or believable in any way. The characters did not generate enough interest for me to actually care what happened to them, and although I slogged my way through the book hoping it would get better, my only reward for this persistency was an ending that was almost unbearably bad.

I only wish I'd spent my £7.99 on something else, and would advise anyone thinking of reading this book to do just that.


Superficial Satire Overwhelms a Story with an Unsatisfying Ending, 29 Nov 2006

What is it like to be "the most famous woman in America?" What is it like to be her sister? What is it like to be her son? All of those questions make for an intriguing premise for a novel. Unfortunately Rise and Shine settles for developing the premise with all of the depth of a weekly picture magazine. Unless you have never read or thought about celebrities, little that happens will surprise or inform you. The ending is particularly grating in evading the potential for telling a compelling story.

Where Ms. Quindlen (a stylish word slinger) goes wrong is in deciding that she wants to polish her premise with satire of the whole media business, our fascination with celebrities and the more claustrophobic elements of living on the top tier in Manhattan. The satire doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, fails to make us laugh or wince, and keeps the story from seeming like a serious attempt to develop the characters of the two sisters and the people in their lives.

The story basically develops around the complementary relationships of Meghan Fitzmaurice, female host of a morning television show called Rise and Shine, who will remind many of Katie Couric, and her unmarried social worker sister, Bridget, who serves as mother stand-in for Meghan's son, Leo. Meghan is successful. Bridget is not. Meghan lives in the world of unreality and spin. Bridget lives in the gritty world of the housing projects. Their daily lives seldom overlap except for an occasional fund-raising appearance by Meghan to help Bridget's budget and when they happen to appear where Leo is. Into that static relationship a bombshell is thrown when Meghan finds herself no longer the apple of everyone's eye. Meghan retreats and Bridget tries to help pick up the pieces. As all of that occurs, other forces begin to move that derail both lives from their familiar tracks.

In the long run, does it matter? You'll have to decide. I didn't find that the events mattered enough to make me happy I read the book. If the word craft weren't so strong, I would probably have graded this as a two star book.

Preschool Mother, 25 Oct 2008
I started reading this book to my daughter when she turned 3.She loves all the stories of Madeline, so we really enjoy this book! she s even "reading" it by herself some times and saying "In an old house in Paris..."

We love "Madeline". We read them all the time., 22 Aug 1999
I am sitting here with a young lady four years old who is also called Madeline and a large part of her being named Madeline was that I as her father - am "Mad about Madeline" too.

It is the flow and rythmn of the stories plus the beautiful water color illustrations. My four year old's favorite is "Madeline's Rescue". My favorite is "Madeline and the Gypsies" but they are all outstanding. A childhood without one of these books - buy one of the paperbacks if you you are new to Madeline and don't want to buy the complete selection yet- is incomprehensible.

Wonderful for All ages!, 17 Jul 1999
I absolutely love the madeline books. I think you can be any age and still enjoy them. This particular book happens to have all the stories in one fabulous book.

Our first choice EVERY night!, 07 Jan 1999
Our two little girls, three and two years old, LOVE Madeline. Daddy reads them one story each night -- they always get to pick which. For Christmas they got two new books which are still almost unread, since every night they want Madeline! The stories are exciting, but gentle and sweet; they are moral but not preachy. And the poetry is wonderful! Also the stories are not too long for a tired parent's voice at bedtime. But with only two little ones of my own, I wonder how DOES Miss Clavel keep TWELVE little girls in two straight lines?

Excellent, 21 Aug 1998
This is an excellent book for little girls. Our daughter loves it. My only objection is the recommended age range. Our daughter has loved the books and the videos since she was one, and she is four years old now.

"I tried to do it all without screaming "I am dying, too", 03 Jan 2006
As the novel opens, Ellen Gulden is in jail, on suspicion of having aided in the death of her mother, a woman who had been experiencing agonizing pain from inoperable cancer. As Ellen reminisces about the five months she spent caring for her mother, the novel develops into much more than the story of her mother's death. Ultimately, it is the story of Ellen's emotional and spiritual coming of age, a positive story of growth and love, not the maudlin tearjerker that one might expect on the basis of plot summaries.

When her father first asks her to come home to care for her mother, Ellen is resentful. She has been out of college only a couple of years, and her career as a journalist in New York is just starting. She resents the fact that she will have to give up her whole life and return home indefinitely--perhaps permanently--believing that her father has not been doing his part to help her mother. Ellen, nevertheless, returns home, and she and her mother begin to know each other in new ways, starting, at first, with their two-person book club and then moving on to a sharing of holiday decorating and cooking secrets. Her resentment of her father increases, as her own relationships, especially with her long-term lover, deteriorate.

As her mother moves to a wheelchair, then to a hospital bed, Ellen is the staunch caregiver, and when her mother's morphine dosage increases and she still begs for an end to her pain, Ellen must decide whether to help her. When an autopsy after her mother's death shows suspicious results, Ellen is jailed, pending an appearance before a grand jury.

The death of Kate Gulden is part of the much larger story of Ellen's discoveries about herself and her new understandings of her parents, her parents' marriage, and how one faces one's inevitable fate. Her ability to make peace with both her mother's death and her changed feelings for her father take place within the context of her arrest and its aftermath, as she comes to a new recognition that life's important questions have no absolute answers. A fine novel which reveals the ambiguities of love and family relationships, the novel stresses the changing roles within families as people face the inevitabilities of life, growth, and death. Mary Whipple

Very moving story, 13 Dec 2000
A well written novel about a successful young woman who somewhat reluctantly puts her career on hold to become carer for her mother who is dying of cancer. This book very thought-provoking and extremely moving. The honesty of the characters sets it apart from the rest and although it is sad it is not depressing at all. I thoroughly recommend that you experience this book.

Excellent book, horrific and creepy. Underworld, hell..., 25 Jul 2000
A view of what happens when you die (might be hell, heaven or something in between). Couldn't put it down

A moving, well-written tale which cannot fail to touch, 18 Jan 1999
Ellen, the protagonist in this story, begins as a hard-nosed, ambitious, selfish young woman who has grown up in the shadow of her academic father. By the end of the story she has developed into a caring, moving character with whom the reader empathises. Forced by her father to give up her job in order to care for her dying mother, Ellen goes through emotions ranging from bitterness and resentment to love and admiration for her suffering mother. Quindlen deals with the subject matter in a sensitive but upfront manner, confronting the fears harboured by many of us that faced with such a tragic situation we would not have the patience, courage or selflessness to care for our parents in their decline. Ellen learns a lot during this period, and not only about herself. When the inevitable happens, she realises that had she not accepted the task of caring for her mother, she would never had known her properly. She had always dismissed her mother's role as homemaker and wife, but she soon realises that there is so much more to her mother, a dimension and a strength which Ellen had never appreciated as a child. This is a sad but very powerful, thought-provoking book which is definitely worth reading. One piece of advice: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU SEE THE FILM - AND THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR MEMORIES RUINED!!

A very good but different way of looking at Anne Frank's life , 02 Aug 2006
I thought that this was a v. original and creative way of looking at Anne Frank's life. It was well set out and was always interesting.

Basically, it is pictures of Anne Frank and things to do with her. It was very good.

moving, 16 Oct 2005
I read this book largely because I wanted more insight. Yet I found myselfmoved to tears. it is a cleverly constructed, beautiful colection which certainly fulfills its pupuse of celebrating Anne's life way before the war or any other horror touched her.
It is hard to reflect on Anne Frank without contemplating the impact of the Nazis and yet this book manages to touch on her life pre-war and during her hiding that she becomes a person who exists seperately - as she deserves.
It moved me to tears as did the diary yet also filled me with hope .

A very great book., 02 Feb 1999
This book has pictures of Anne Frank and her family. She also writes in her diary about how she feels going in to hiding and wearing a yellow star to show she is Jewish. This is a really fabulous book because it talks about how she feels and what it is like when her and her family go into hiding. They went into hiding because Adolf Hitler started preparing Germany for war. They were sending all Jewish people to camps so that they'd starve and freeze to death. I like this book because sometimes I imagine I'm in hiding and that I get lonely and am not able to have boyfriends or have any friends that I could tell secrets or talk to or trust. When Anne Frank talks about how it feels when you are in hiding you could actually feel how she feels.

A touching love letter to London, 08 Dec 2007
Anna Quindlen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist from America. She grew up reading books set in London but did not get to travel to the 'city of her childhood imaginings' until she was in her forties. This book tells of her visit and her impressions as she trod the very same streets in which many of her literary heroes -- both fictional and real -- had also trod. What results is a touching love letter to literary London.

I have to admit that most of the books that Quindlen namechecks throughout this delightful essay -- for that is what it is, rather than a book -- were unfamilar to me. Sure, I knew their names and the authors -- how could anyone not know Charles Dickens or Elizabeth Bowen or the Forsyte Saga? -- but my tastes tend towards the more modern, namely late 20th century and early 21st century, as opposed to the classics, but this did not diminish my enjoyment of Imagined London.

Of course, I am a resident of this amazing city, and when I first arrived here back in the summer of 1998 I was more intent in seeking out famous buildings (The Palace of Westminster, St Paul's Cathedral) or musical landmarks (Brixton Academy, the Camden pub where Blur used to hang out, the zebra crossing that features on the Beatles Abbey Road album cover) rather than places where novels were set.

But I fell in love with Quindlen's effortless prose. She captures the London I know and love in a way that only a non-Brit could do so -- with fresh eyes and much awe. (I believe that when you worship something from afar you often appreciate it much better than the 'natives' when you finally get to see it in person. I know that I have seen many sights in London that people who were born and bred here have never seen, including some amazing cemeteries and landmark buildings, that are well off the tourist trail.)

Trying to single out just one quote that sums up Quindlen's 'eye' for recognising the distinctive characteristics of this city is difficult, but here's one that resonated with me, having come from an Australian city built on a grid system: "There are countless buildings that seem trapped in the narrow backstreets of the West End or Chelsea, streets designed for one century and trying to make do in another. At Piccadilly there is a warning sign that Jermyn Street, home of the shirtmakers Turnbull and Asser and the perfumier Floris, is 'unsuited for long vehicles'. For someone used to the tidy, slightly boring numbered streets of upper Manhattan, it is a joy to encounter St. James's Street, St James's Place and Little St. James's Street. Every street name seems to have a codicil attached, a cartographic family tree; as Thackeray noted, 'All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads.' Nearby, according to the novelist, is New Gaunt Street, and Gaunt Mews. All this would seem like satire if you did not see it all around you in the city itself."

But what I like most about Quindlin's writing is her unabashed enthusiasm for the city. And the fact she's not afraid to make fun of her own naivety: "I was certain I had no idea how to pronounce many of the words I had learned to recognize with my eyes," she writes. "How in the world did you actually say Cholmondeley or Gloucestershire? It remains a source of shame to me that through much of my girlhood I pronounced the name of the river that runs famously through London with the 'the' fully articulated and a long a after. 'Thames,' one of my high-school teachers finally said, 'rhymes with gems'. As a reader English place names had becomes what Russian surnames had always been: something to register with the mind and the eye but never to venture with the tongue."

Even if you have never been to London, Imagined London will give you a real sense of its history, its architecture, its topography. And if you've read a lot of classics set in the city you'll be particularly enamoured, and probably clamouring to book your flight over! And if you live here or have visited London in the past, you'll enjoy recognising the streets and places mentioned, and maybe find out something about Dickens' birthplace that you didn't know before.

A very fine book, 20 Sep 2006
Anna Quindlen, a former New York Times columnist and a cultivate writer, takes the reader on a literary tour through London.
I found this book not only fascinating but widely enlightening in understanding much more clearly "the city where the imagination found its great home". It is written for anyone with an interest in cultural pleasures and in the history of one of the world's vibrant cities.
The London that emerges from her story is the city of Dickens, Trollope, Galsworthy, Conan Doyle, Lessing and other prominent novelists.
Anna Quindlen felt in love with English literature at an early age and visited London many times in the pages of the books that she read avidly. When she made her first real trip to London in 1995, "it felt less like an introduction and more like a homecoming".
Imagined London was my travelling companion book during a recent stay in London and I was glad to see the literary highlights described by Quindlen in surprising new ways.

Easy to read chick lit, 15 Aug 2008
I enjoyed this read even though the ending was a little unbelievable.

It was a nice easy read for the train to work - it was an interesting topic, grabbed my attention and the chapters were a good length for a commute!

I have since bought other books by Anna Quindlen and whilst I am not expecting to be swept away by great literature the topics seem to be substantial enough for a good read and thought provoking chick lit.

Boring, bland and unbelievable, 02 Oct 2007
The words "The New York Times Number One Bestseller" emblazoned on the front cover enticed me to buy this book, and the accolades on the back led me to expect great things. What a disappointment.

The story which revolves around the lives of two sisters, one a famous television personality and one a socially-conscious community worker did not grab my attention or seem likely or believable in any way. The characters did not generate enough interest for me to actually care what happened to them, and although I slogged my way through the book hoping it would get better, my only reward for this persistency was an ending that was almost unbearably bad.

I only wish I'd spent my £7.99 on something else, and would advise anyone thinking of reading this book to do just that.


Superficial Satire Overwhelms a Story with an Unsatisfying Ending, 29 Nov 2006

What is it like to be "the most famous woman in America?" What is it like to be her sister? What is it like to be her son? All of those questions make for an intriguing premise for a novel. Unfortunately Rise and Shine settles for developing the premise with all of the depth of a weekly picture magazine. Unless you have never read or thought about celebrities, little that happens will surprise or inform you. The ending is particularly grating in evading the potential for telling a compelling story.

Where Ms. Quindlen (a stylish word slinger) goes wrong is in deciding that she wants to polish her premise with satire of the whole media business, our fascination with celebrities and the more claustrophobic elements of living on the top tier in Manhattan. The satire doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, fails to make us laugh or wince, and keeps the story from seeming like a serious attempt to develop the characters of the two sisters and the people in their lives.

The story basically develops around the complementary relationships of Meghan Fitzmaurice, female host of a morning television show called Rise and Shine, who will remind many of Katie Couric, and her unmarried social worker sister, Bridget, who serves as mother stand-in for Meghan's son, Leo. Meghan is successful. Bridget is not. Meghan lives in the world of unreality and spin. Bridget lives in the gritty world of the housing projects. Their daily lives seldom overlap except for an occasional fund-raising appearance by Meghan to help Bridget's budget and when they happen to appear where Leo is. Into that static relationship a bombshell is thrown when Meghan finds herself no longer the apple of everyone's eye. Meghan retreats and Bridget tries to help pick up the pieces. As all of that occurs, other forces begin to move that derail both lives from their familiar tracks.

In the long run, does it matter? You'll have to decide. I didn't find that the events mattered enough to make me happy I read the book. If the word craft weren't so strong, I would probably have graded this as a two star book.

pretty story, 27 Dec 2006
You don't have to be a girl to enjoy this masterpiece. The innocence in the tale is heartwarming, interwined with 19th century romance, with little homilies here and there, it is incomparable. The emotion that Alcott put into the story is obvious and this makes the book really shine.

A Timeless Work Teaches Important Lessons for Today, 19 Aug 2006
Having not read Little Women in many decades, I was drawn back to the book by my love of visiting the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. I plan to re-visit that wonderful home and want to refresh my recollections of Little Women before doing so. By the way, if you have a chance to visit Orchard House, I strongly recommend that you do. Your sense of Little Women will expand.

As I re-read these delightful pages, I found myself comparing Little Women to Pride and Prejudice, that outstanding work that captures human psychology so well. The comparison made me see new depths in Little Women that convince me that Little Women is by far the stronger work.

But my biggest reaction was how modern the views in the book are. Women should have education, access to opportunities to develop their interests and marriage to men who will complement them. People should be concerned about each other and help one another, lest any person's life be harmed or feelings hurt in the process.

I also noticed how complete a community of loving women can be within the same family.

The writing style is beautifully spare. The key point of a chapter may turn on two or three words. And then, everything changes in the twinkling of an eye.

Being a long book, Ms. Alcott has plenty of chances to develop her characters and she does so beautifully . . . allowing Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and Laurie to grow and change as they age.

I also came to appreciate more the scope of the book, taking the young women from teenage years through the first few years of marriage. It's a time period that few books consider. Usually, it's all over when the marriage happens. I like this approach better.

Should you read Little Women? Does the sun rise in the East?

If you haven't read Little Women, you've missed great role models for how to be a parent, spouse and child.

Here's the story in a nutshell: During the Civil War, Mr. March is away serving as a chaplain in the Union army. Mrs. March (Marmee) and her four daughters are at home in the cold north making do on small income with the help of one servant, Hannah. As the story opens, the March family is facing a frugal Christmas. But events soon take an unexpected turn and their hearts are filled with gladness. Jo makes an unexpected and most humorous acquaintance of the Laurence boy (Theodore, known as Laurie) who lives next door with old Mr. Laurance, his grandfather. The two families draw upon one another for strength and friendships grow. Illness intercedes making the two families even more dependent on one another. One by one, the children move into adulthood, deal with their romantic feelings and form their alliances.

The characters of each child are quite different, allowing Ms. Alcott to explore the contrasts by putting them together in various private and social occasions. Meg is beautiful and much admired. She should attract many suitors. Jo is energetic, self-absorbed and talented in writing (the character closest to Ms. Alcott herself). Beth is very kind and yet fragile. Amy is the social climber in the family . . . and the pet. Laurie has an artistic temperament, but finds himself expected to play an heir's role.

You'll long remember with delight the stories of their thespian performances, games, dances and social visits. Although the book makes up a wonderfully detailed novel, the chapters are written almost as stand-alone short stories that pack a powerful punch in their modeling of good behavior.

What a joy!


Amazing Read, 13 Dec 2004
I have just finished reading "Little Women" for English and it is an amazing read for all ages. It clearly and effectively indicates the struggle of women in the 19th century, while making it a funny, exciting and enjoyable read. Jo March, the protagonist, is a character that all women can relate to. She wishes to carry out her dreams while looking after her family. All of her adventures within this novel shows the struggle of a woman who is ahead of her time. This is a novel that I could not put down until the last page and would urge everyone to read it.

Review of Little Women by Jessica Griffiths, 17 Dec 2003
LITTLE WOMEN IS A HEART WARMING STORY OF FOUR SISTERS IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICA.
THE STORY FOLLOWS THE SISTERS OVER A DIFFICULT YEAR IN THEIR YOUNG LIVES, DEALING WITH THEIR FATHER LEAVING TO WAR AND HAVING TO GIVE UP THEIR SIMPLE LUXURIES BECAUSE OF FINANCIAL DIFFICULTY.
EACH GIRL HAS A VERY DIFFERENT AND SPECIAL CHARACTER, BUT THEY ARE ALL BONDED BY THE LOVE FOR THEIR MOTHER, DESPITE THEIR DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITIES.
THIS BOOK EXPRESSES SEVERAL ISSUES OF TEENAGE SOCIETY WHICH ARE STILL EVIDENT TODAY. THE FOUR SISTERS FACE SEVERAL OBASTCLES IN JUST ONE YEAR; HAVING TO ADJUST TO A DIFFERENT LIFESTYLE, KEEPING UP WITH LATEST FASHIONS, THE WANT TO BE ACCEPTED OR THE REBELLION AGAINST BEING ACCEPTED AND THE SELFISH CHILDISH GREED WHICH IS OVERCOME AS A TEENAGER MATURES INTO AN ADULT.
YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY FACE THE SAME ISSUES, AS THEY ARE PRESSURED INTO MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THEIR FUTURE AS AN ADULT.
I WOULD RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR READERS WHO ENJOY READING BOOKS FULL OF SENTIMENT AND WISDOM. AFTER READING IT SEVERAL TIMES IN THE LAST FEW YEARS IT REMINDS ME OF SEVERAL THINGS I SHOULD APPRECIATE MORE- THAT SOUNDS A BIT SOPPY I KNOW!
BUT OVER ALL, LITTLE WOMEN IS A FANTASTIC BOOK, BY A TRULY TALENTED AUTHOR AND I LOOK FORWARD TO READING ITS SEQUELS.

Little Women, 31 Oct 2003
This is a good book, set in the 1800's about four sisters and their mother. Although i like this book, especially Jo and her friend Laurie, i find the other characters all a little bit too perfect. Also, as this book is an old one, Christian ways are shoved down your throat. However, if you can get past the (in my opinion) excess religion and a couple of goody-goody characters with no real faults, this is an excellent book, which is well worth a read. I would recommend it for children rather than adults, so under 13's would probably be best. To all parents of little girls out there - buy this book and give them a chance to read it while they're still young enough to really enjoy it.

Preschool Mother, 25 Oct 2008
I started reading this book to my daughter when she turned 3.She loves all the stories of Madeline, so we really enjoy this book! she s even "reading" it by herself some times and saying "In an old house in Paris..."

We love "Madeline". We read them all the time., 22 Aug 1999
I am sitting here with a young lady four years old who is also called Madeline and a large part of her being named Madeline was that I as her father - am "Mad about Madeline" too.

It is the flow and rythmn of the stories plus the beautiful water color illustrations. My four year old's favorite is "Madeline's Rescue". My favorite is "Madeline and the Gypsies" but they are all outstanding. A childhood without one of these books - buy one of the paperbacks if you you are new to Madeline and don't want to buy the complete selection yet- is incomprehensible.

Wonderful for All ages!, 17 Jul 1999
I absolutely love the madeline books. I think you can be any age and still enjoy them. This particular book happens to have all the stories in one fabulous book.

Our first choice EVERY night!, 07 Jan 1999
Our two little girls, three and two years old, LOVE Madeline. Daddy reads them one story each night -- they always get to pick which. For Christmas they got two new books which are still almost unread, since every night they want Madeline! The stories are exciting, but gentle and sweet; they are moral but not preachy. And the poetry is wonderful! Also the stories are not too long for a tired parent's voice at bedtime. But with only two little ones of my own, I wonder how DOES Miss Clavel keep TWELVE little girls in two straight lines?

Excellent, 21 Aug 1998
This is an excellent book for little girls. Our daughter loves it. My only objection is the recommended age range. Our daughter has loved the books and the videos since she was one, and she is four years old now.

"I tried to do it all without screaming "I am dying, too", 03 Jan 2006
As the novel opens, Ellen Gulden is in jail, on suspicion of having aided in the death of her mother, a woman who had been experiencing agonizing pain from inoperable cancer. As Ellen reminisces about the five months she spent caring for her mother, the novel develops into much more than the story of her mother's death. Ultimately, it is the story of Ellen's emotional and spiritual coming of age, a positive story of growth and love, not the maudlin tearjerker that one might expect on the basis of plot summaries.

When her father first asks her to come home to care for her mother, Ellen is resentful. She has been out of college only a couple of years, and her career as a journalist in New York is just starting. She resents the fact that she will have to give up her whole life and return home indefinitely--perhaps permanently--believing that her father has not been doing his part to help her mother. Ellen, nevertheless, returns home, and she and her mother begin to know each other in new ways, starting, at first, with their two-person book club and then moving on to a sharing of holiday decorating and cooking secrets. Her resentment of her father increases, as her own relationships, especially with her long-term lover, deteriorate.

As her mother moves to a wheelchair, then to a hospital bed, Ellen is the staunch caregiver, and when her mother's morphine dosage increases and she still begs for an end to her pain, Ellen must decide whether to help her. When an autopsy after her mother's death shows suspicious results, Ellen is jailed, pending an appearance before a grand jury.

The death of Kate Gulden is part of the much larger story of Ellen's discoveries about herself and her new understandings of her parents, her parents' marriage, and how one faces one's inevitable fate. Her ability to make peace with both her mother's death and her changed feelings for her father take place within the context of her arrest and its aftermath, as she comes to a new recognition that life's important questions have no absolute answers. A fine novel which reveals the ambiguities of love and family relationships, the novel stresses the changing roles within families as people face the inevitabilities of life, growth, and death. Mary Whipple

Very moving story, 13 Dec 2000
A well written novel about a successful young woman who somewhat reluctantly puts her career on hold to become carer for her mother who is dying of cancer. This book very thought-provoking and extremely moving. The honesty of the characters sets it apart from the rest and although it is sad it is not depressing at all. I thoroughly recommend that you experience this book.

Excellent book, horrific and creepy. Underworld, hell..., 25 Jul 2000
A view of what happens when you die (might be hell, heaven or something in between). Couldn't put it down

A moving, well-written tale which cannot fail to touch, 18 Jan 1999
Ellen, the protagonist in this story, begins as a hard-nosed, ambitious, selfish young woman who has grown up in the shadow of her academic father. By the end of the story she has developed into a caring, moving character with whom the reader empathises. Forced by her father to give up her job in order to care for her dying mother, Ellen goes through emotions ranging from bitterness and resentment to love and admiration for her suffering mother. Quindlen deals with the subject matter in a sensitive but upfront manner, confronting the fears harboured by many of us that faced with such a tragic situation we would not have the patience, courage or selflessness to care for our parents in their decline. Ellen learns a lot during this period, and not only about herself. When the inevitable happens, she realises that had she not accepted the task of caring for her mother, she would never had known her properly. She had always dismissed her mother's role as homemaker and wife, but she soon realises that there is so much more to her mother, a dimension and a strength which Ellen had never appreciated as a child. This is a sad but very powerful, thought-provoking book which is definitely worth reading. One piece of advice: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU SEE THE FILM - AND THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR MEMORIES RUINED!!

A very good but different way of looking at Anne Frank's life , 02 Aug 2006
I thought that this was a v. original and creative way of looking at Anne Frank's life. It was well set out and was always interesting.

Basically, it is pictures of Anne Frank and things to do with her. It was very good.

moving, 16 Oct 2005
I read this book largely because I wanted more insight. Yet I found myselfmoved to tears. it is a cleverly constructed, beautiful colection which certainly fulfills its pupuse of celebrating Anne's life way before the war or any other horror touched her.
It is hard to reflect on Anne Frank without contemplating the impact of the Nazis and yet this book manages to touch on her life pre-war and during her hiding that she becomes a person who exists seperately - as she deserves.
It moved me to tears as did the diary yet also filled me with hope .

A very great book., 02 Feb 1999
This book has pictures of Anne Frank and her family. She also writes in her diary about how she feels going in to hiding and wearing a yellow star to show she is Jewish. This is a really fabulous book because it talks about how she feels and what it is like when her and her family go into hiding. They went into hiding because Adolf Hitler started preparing Germany for war. They were sending all Jewish people to camps so that they'd starve and freeze to death. I like this book because sometimes I imagine I'm in hiding and that I get lonely and am not able to have boyfriends or have any friends that I could tell secrets or talk to or trust. When Anne Frank talks about how it feels when you are in hiding you could actually feel how she feels.

A touching love letter to London, 08 Dec 2007
Anna Quindlen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling novelist from America. She grew up reading books set in London but did not get to travel to the 'city of her childhood imaginings' until she was in her forties. This book tells of her visit and her impressions as she trod the very same streets in which many of her literary heroes -- both fictional and real -- had also trod. What results is a touching love letter to literary London.

I have to admit that most of the books that Quindlen namechecks throughout this delightful essay -- for that is what it is, rather than a book -- were unfamilar to me. Sure, I knew their names and the authors -- how could anyone not know Charles Dickens or Elizabeth Bowen or the Forsyte Saga? -- but my tastes tend towards the more modern, namely late 20th century and early 21st century, as opposed to the classics, but this did not diminish my enjoyment of Imagined London.

Of course, I am a resident of this amazing city, and when I first arrived here back in the summer of 1998 I was more intent in seeking out famous buildings (The Palace of Westminster, St Paul's Cathedral) or musical landmarks (Brixton Academy, the Camden pub where Blur used to hang out, the zebra crossing that features on the Beatles Abbey Road album cover) rather than places where novels were set.

But I fell in love with Quindlen's effortless prose. She captures the London I know and love in a way that only a non-Brit could do so -- with fresh eyes and much awe. (I believe that when you worship something from afar you often appreciate it much better than the 'natives' when you finally get to see it in person. I know that I have seen many sights in London that people who were born and bred here have never seen, including some amazing cemeteries and landmark buildings, that are well off the tourist trail.)

Trying to single out just one quote that sums up Quindlen's 'eye' for recognising the distinctive characteristics of this city is difficult, but here's one that resonated with me, having come from an Australian city built on a grid system: "There are countless buildings that seem trapped in the narrow backstreets of the West End or Chelsea, streets designed for one century and trying to make do in another. At Piccadilly there is a warning sign that Jermyn Street, home of the shirtmakers Turnbull and Asser and the perfumier Floris, is 'unsuited for long vehicles'. For someone used to the tidy, slightly boring numbered streets of upper Manhattan, it is a joy to encounter St. James's Street, St James's Place and Little St. James's Street. Every street name seems to have a codicil attached, a cartographic family tree; as Thackeray noted, 'All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads.' Nearby, according to the novelist, is New Gaunt Street, and Gaunt Mews. All this would seem like satire if you did not see it all around you in the city itself."

But what I like most about Quindlin's writing is her unabashed enthusiasm for the city. And the fact she's not afraid to make fun of her own naivety: "I was certain I had no idea how to pronounce many of the words I had learned to recognize with my eyes," she writes. "How in the world did you actually say Cholmondeley or Gloucestershire? It remains a source of shame to me that through much of my girlhood I pronounced the name of the river that runs famously through London with the 'the' fully articulated and a long a after. 'Thames,' one of my high-school teachers finally said, 'rhymes with gems'. As a reader English place names had becomes what Russian surnames had always been: something to register with the mind and the eye but never to venture with the tongue."

Even if you have never been to London, Imagined London will give you a real sense of its history, its architecture, its topography. And if you've read a lot of classics set in the city you'll be particularly enamoured, and probably clamouring to book your flight over! And if you live here or have visited London in the past, you'll enjoy recognising the streets and places mentioned, and maybe find out something about Dickens' birthplace that you didn't know before.

A very fine book, 20 Sep 2006
Anna Quindlen, a former New York Times columnist and a cultivate writer, takes the reader on a literary tour through London.
I found this book not only fascinating but widely enlightening in understanding much more clearly "the city where the imagination found its great home". It is written for anyone with an interest in cultural pleasures and in the history of one of the world's vibrant cities.
The London that emerges from her story is the city of Dickens, Trollope, Galsworthy, Conan Doyle, Lessing and other prominent novelists.
Anna Quindlen felt in love with English literature at an early age and visited London many times in the pages of the books that she read avidly. When she made her first real trip to London in 1995, "it felt less like an introduction and more like a homecoming".
Imagined London was my travelling companion book during a recent stay in London and I was glad to see the literary highlights described by Quindlen in surprising new ways.

Easy to read chick lit, 15 Aug 2008
I enjoyed this read even though the ending was a little unbelievable.

It was a nice easy read for the train to work - it was an interesting topic, grabbed my attention and the chapters were a good length for a commute!

I have since bought other books by Anna Quindlen and whilst I am not expecting to be swept away by great literature the topics seem to be substantial enough for a good read and thought provoking chick lit.

Boring, bland and unbelievable, 02 Oct 2007
The words "The New York Times Number One Bestseller" emblazoned on the front cover enticed me to buy this book, and the accolades on the back led me to expect great things. What a disappointment.

The story which revolves around the lives of two sisters, one a famous television personality and one a socially-conscious community worker did not grab my attention or seem likely or believable in any way. The characters did not generate enough interest for me to actually care what happened to them, and although I slogged my way through the book hoping it would get better, my only reward for this persistency was an ending that was almost unbearably bad.

I only wish I'd spent my £7.99 on something else, and would advise anyone thinking of reading this book to do just that.


Superficial Satire Overwhelms a Story with an Unsatisfying Ending, 29 Nov 2006

What is it like to be "the most famous woman in America?" What is it like to be her sister? What is it like to be her son? All of those questions make for an intriguing premise for a novel. Unfortunately Rise and Shine settles for developing the premise with all of the depth of a weekly picture magazine. Unless you have never read or thought about celebrities, little that happens will surprise or inform you. The ending is particularly grating in evading the potential for telling a compelling story.

Where Ms. Quindlen (a stylish word slinger) goes wrong is in deciding that she wants to polish her premise with satire of the whole media business, our fascination with celebrities and the more claustrophobic elements of living on the top tier in Manhattan. The satire doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, fails to make us laugh or wince, and keeps the story from seeming like a serious attempt to develop the characters of the two sisters and the people in their lives.

The story basically develops around the complementary relationships of Meghan Fitzmaurice, female host of a morning television show called Rise and Shine, who will remind many of Katie Couric, and her unmarried social worker sister, Bridget, who serves as mother stand-in for Meghan's son, Leo. Meghan is successful. Bridget is not. Meghan lives in the world of unreality and spin. Bridget lives in the gritty world of the housing projects. Their daily lives seldom overlap except for an occasional fund-raising appearance by Meghan to help Bridget's budget and when they happen to appear where Leo is. Into that static relationship a bombshell is thrown when Meghan finds herself no longer the apple of everyone's eye. Meghan retreats and Bridget tries to help pick up the pieces. As all of that occurs, other forces begin to move that derail both lives from their familiar tracks.

In the long run, does it matter? You'll have to decide. I didn't find that the events mattered enough to make me happy I read the book. If the word craft weren't so strong, I would probably have graded this as a two star book.

pretty story, 27 Dec 2006
You don't have to be a girl to enjoy this masterpiece. The innocence in the tale is heartwarming, interwined with 19th century romance, with little homilies here and there, it is incomparable. The emotion that Alcott put into the story is obvious and this makes the book really shine.

A Timeless Work Teaches Important Lessons for Today, 19 Aug 2006
Having not read Little Women in many decades, I was drawn back to the book by my love of visiting the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. I plan to re-visit that wonderful home and want to refresh my recollections of Little Women before doing so. By the way, if you have a chance to visit Orchard House, I strongly recommend that you do. Your sense of Little Women will expand.

As I re-read these delightful pages, I found myself comparing Little Women to Pride and Prejudice, that outstanding work that captures human psychology so well. The comparison made me see new depths in Little Women that convince me that Little Women is by far the stronger work.

But my biggest reaction was how modern the views in the book are. Women should have education, access to opportunities to develop their interests and marriage to men who will complement them. People should be concerned about each other and help one another, lest any person's life be harmed or feelings hurt in the process.

I also noticed how complete a community of loving women can be within the same family.

The writing style is beautifully spare. The key point of a chapter may turn on two or three words. And then, everything changes in the twinkling of an eye.

Being a long book, Ms. Alcott has plenty of chances to develop her characters and she does so beautifully . . . allowing Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and Laurie to grow and change as they age.

I also came to appreciate more the scope of the book, taking the young women from teenage years through the first few years of marriage. It's a time period that few books consider. Usually, it's all over when the marriage happens. I like this approach better.

Should you read Little Women? Does the sun rise in the East?

If you haven't read Little Women, you've missed great role models for how to be a parent, spouse and child.

Here's the story in a nutshell: During the Civil War, Mr. March is away serving as a chaplain in the Union army. Mrs. March (Marmee) and her four daughters are at home in the cold north making do on small income with the help of one servant, Hannah. As the story opens, the March family is facing a frugal Christmas. But events soon take an unexpected turn and their hearts are filled with gladness. Jo makes an unexpected and most humorous acquaintance of the Laurence boy (Theodore, known as Laurie) who lives next door with old Mr. Laurance, his grandfather. The two families draw upon one another for strength and friendships grow. Illness intercedes making the two families even more dependent on one another. One by one, the children move into adulthood, deal with their romantic feelings and form their alliances.

The characters of each child are quite different, allowing Ms. Alcott to explore the contrasts by putting them together in various private and social occasions. Meg is beautiful and much admired. She should attract many suitors. Jo is energetic, self-absorbed and talented in writing (the character closest to Ms. Alcott herself). Beth is very kind and yet fragile. Amy is the social climber in the family . . . and the pet. Laurie has an artistic temperament, but finds himself expected to play an heir's role.

You'll long remember with delight the stories of their thespian performances, games, dances and social visits. Although the book makes up a wonderfully detailed novel, the chapters are written almost as stand-alone short stories that pack a powerful punch in their modeling of good behavior.

What a joy!


Amazing Read, 13 Dec 2004
I have just finished reading "Little Women" for English and it is an amazing read for all ages. It clearly and effectively indicates the struggle of women in the 19th century, while making it a funny, exciting and enjoyable read. Jo March, the protagonist, is a character that all women can relate to. She wishes to carry out her dreams while looking after her family. All of her adventures within this novel shows the struggle of a woman who is ahead of her time. This is a novel that I could not put down until the last page and would urge everyone to read it.

Review of Little Women by Jessica Griffiths, 17 Dec 2003
LITTLE WOMEN IS A HEART WARMING STORY OF FOUR SISTERS IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICA.
THE STORY FOLLOWS THE SISTERS OVER A DIFFICULT YEAR IN THEIR YOUNG LIVES, DEALING WITH THEIR FATHER LEAVING TO WAR AND HAVING TO GIVE UP THEIR SIMPLE LUXURIES BECAUSE OF FINANCIAL DIFFICULTY.
EACH GIRL HAS A VERY DIFFERENT AND SPECIAL CHARACTER, BUT THEY ARE ALL BONDED BY THE LOVE FOR THEIR MOTHER, DESPITE THEIR DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITIES.
THIS BOOK EXPRESSES SEVERAL ISSUES OF TEENAGE SOCIETY WHICH ARE STILL EVIDENT TODAY. THE FOUR SISTERS FACE SEVERAL OBASTCLES IN JUST ONE YEAR; HAVING TO ADJUST TO A DIFFERENT LIFESTYLE, KEEPING UP WITH LATEST FASHIONS, THE WANT TO BE ACCEPTED OR THE REBELLION AGAINST BEING ACCEPTED AND THE SELFISH CHILDISH GREED WHICH IS OVERCOME AS A TEENAGER MATURES INTO AN ADULT.
YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY FACE THE SAME ISSUES, AS THEY ARE PRESSURED INTO MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT THEIR FUTURE AS AN ADULT.
I WOULD RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR READERS WHO ENJOY READING BOOKS FULL OF SENTIMENT AND WISDOM. AFTER READING IT SEVERAL TIMES IN THE LAST FEW YEARS IT REMINDS ME OF SEVERAL THINGS I SHOULD APPRECIATE MORE- THAT SOUNDS A BIT SOPPY I KNOW!
BUT OVER ALL, LITTLE WOMEN IS A FANTASTIC BOOK, BY A TRULY TALENTED AUTHOR AND I LOOK FORWARD TO READING ITS SEQUELS.

Little Women, 31 Oct 2003
This is a good book, set in the 1800's about four sisters and their mother. Although i like this book, especially Jo and her friend Laurie, i find the other characters all a little bit too perfect. Also, as this book is an old one, Christian ways are shoved down your throat. However, if you can get past the (in my opinion) excess religion and a couple of goody-goody characters with no real faults, this is an excellent book, which is well worth a read. I would recommend it for children rather than adults, so under 13's would probably be best. To all parents of little girls out there - buy this book and give them a chance to read it while they're still young enough to really enjoy it.

Fantastic, 27 Jul 1999
Ms Quindlen's commencement speech at Mt Holyoke May 1999 was one of the most to-the-heart speeches I have heard in a long time. Truly, a remarkable speech and one I shall keep for a long time and re-read from time to time. Thank God for her.