The Mouse and the Rock:  A Metaphor
580181
Every child, parent and grandparent should have this!  It's deceptively simple; but a richly rewarding outlook to help with life's adversities with a smile.  It helps me daily and I've given copies to my grandchildren.
859466
It's easy to understand the concepts the author is trying to get across.  The illustration is very detailed and goes along with the written words.  I would recommend this book to anyone that is trying to understand this style of art.
3913172
With allusions to "The Wizard of Oz," "Alice in Wonderland," and psychologist/anthropologist C. G. Jung, "Color of Sounds" tells teh story of a blind young girl who rides a vast subway network because "I have a journey to go on. There are some thing I need to find." What follows is a remarkable narrative about internal and external discovery, with some of the most luscious and creative illustrations in recent memory.

The girl disembarks at various subway stops (subway illustrations are always panelled strips running across the middle of a two page spread), and climbs colorfully patterned stairs (often reminscent of M.C.Escher) and arrives at archtypal settings: An apple tree sitting Eden-like in a verdant forest, alongside dolphis and atop a whale, a topiary-adorned maze. Jimmy Liao presents his metaphors on both adult and children's levels. While adults may recognize the symbolic conflicts and issues presented by a maze; for example, children benefit from the explicit text: "Sometimes the street twist themselves into a maze. But if you look hard enough, there's always a way out. Other sections may benefit from discussion at an age-appropriate level. At one subway station, there are four trains going in both directions, all filled with people, and all colored differently. THe girl stands between them, "Which is the right one? It's easy to get lost underground."

At his point, she seems to take her own route, riding a kiddie train (decorated with motifs decorated a la Guaguin, Matisse, and others), then abandons the train to a white swan swimming against a cloudy yet luminescent background (a mystically beautiful and serene illustration). She slowly arrives at her answers. "HOme is the place where everything I've lost is waiting patiently for me to find my way back." She realizes that because she "went forward, step by step, into the dark," used her other sense (listening "for the sound of colors I can't see"; smelling the shapes and tasting "the light and dark," and hoping for someone "who'll sit beside me, sip tea, tell me her hopes for the future, and listen to mine." (Here, the two-page spread depicts her sitting on a green oval-shaped chair, surrounded by four rows of empty chairs in various colors, shapes, and sizes.

Towards the conclusion, the young girl encounters a butterfly, whom she believes may offer the answers to her hopes and dreams:

She'll tale me
to the friend I need to find.
She'll lead me to the place
where all the colors are.

she'll bring me back to the light that I lost,
still glowing here, in my heart.

An enormously colorful mosaic of birds, flowers, eyes, and other motifs surround the now smiling girl, when Liao write "in my heart." It's neither saccharine or precious. While the book may be read at many levels, and it simulatneously present many emotions and moods (fear, comfort, solitude, hope, wonder) the overall effect is an almost staggering visual and narrative display of poetry. The undertones can be dark and may even frighten some children (know your audience), but for othos who have begun their own journies of self- and other- discovery, for those who feel lost or have experienced pain, poor health, or disability, this book highlights the fact and ignites thought of possibility and transcendance.
300844
The book is an extended metaphor or, more accurately, a collection of loose analogies between the Church and Walmart. The analogies are offered up as modern parables with insights relating to the Christian life, the life of a Church, and just human nature in general. Don't be worried about runaway metaphors. The author seems to understand and even acknowledges the limitations of using Walmart as a metaphor. The content would stand on its own as a great read; the metaphor just amplifies the impact with examples that we're all familiar with. Which brings me to what I enjoyed most about the book; it turns every trip to a big-box store into a reminder to live out the mission that we've been called to as Christians. You can be sure that I'll be listening for "The Voice" the next time I'm shopping for cauliflower and underwear.
4793270
The works of Hall, Hofstede, GLOBE, and others have laid an excellent groundwork in the field of intercultural communication. However, their frameworks of viewing culture had limitations, as they were somewhat reductionistic. Gannon and Pillai recognize this and seek to help learners move beyond these limitations. They created a heuristic framework for viewing cultures based upon a action, institution or phenomenon within a number of cultures that are especially rich and representative of each culture. These then become metaphors through which the authors try to unpack key aspects of each culture. What is especially helpful is the authors recognize that even these metaphors are limited in function. Their value is that they provide a lens through which learners can begin a journey of discovery, and the authors encourage learners to move beyond the metaphors as they experience the diversity within these cultures.
2948872
I own many of this author's books on reptiles and plants. I ordered this book because I was curious what he would write about for children. I was not disappointed. He created a complex landscape where reality has many layers. Mythical themes such as the underworld, power animals like the rainbow snake (leave it to de Vosjoli to include a reptile), and a power object underlie the story. In general there is the suggestion that there are more forces at play than meet the eye. It even made me wonder whether the author intentionally used spiders that pluck webs of light to create beings as symbolic of string theory.  A beautiful book that should appeal to a wide age range.
1093590
At the end of the last chapter (before the epilogue) Raymo writes that the "ideal of humans living in harmony with tamed nature ... is a sturdy old myth, and in it we might still hope to combine the Enlightenment, with its confidence in the power of the human mind to make sense of the world, and romanticism, with its belief that all of life is a miracle."

That neatly sums up the main themes of this book, that describes the author's daily walk through the woods to work. The author wanders the path and all the thoughts and associations it provokes, seeking both ends: to make sense of the world, and to celebrate that life is a miracle.

The book does indeed wander. Under T in the index (unusual to find such a good index in a small book), for example, you can find Tao (Way); Technology; Thales of Miletus; Third World; Thoreau, Henry David; Thousand-monkey metaphor; Tibetan Plateau; Timber, harvesting; ...

In part they are connected by Raymo's story of how everything _is_ connected, and how in the particular we can find the universal. That is what he shows as he wanders the path from start to end. He starts with the particular - the names of streets, local history - and ranges in his genial, learned way - through the amazing journey of monarch butterflies, the DNA that shapes and is shaped by life - to the universal - the laws of nature, the mystery that so much is explicable, yet not entirely.

That is where the story touches on its deeper themes. Though he quotes Oscar Wilde, that "the true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible," he warns that "our senses are dulled by the tedium of the commonplace" and tries to remind us, and show us, vividly "that the ordinary is not ordinary at all, that the commonplace is miraculous."

Then The Path is at its best (and best read, not reviewed).
732456
"Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears" is part of a growing literature on children's fears and worries.  Such books are very welcome for parents coping with little worriers.  This book focuses on the fears of Little Mouse, with each feared object or situation depicted in word and picture.  For example, Little Mouse's fear of insects is labeled Entomophobia, and he is shown trapped in a spider's web.  The pictures and design are absolutely beautiful and have great details.  For example, some pages have chew marks from Little Mouse, and there are a few foldout pieces, such as a map with pictures showing Little Mouse's fear of heights.  It's the kind of book that requires a few reads for the audience to absorb all of the details.

However, I found the overall tone a bit confusing.  The pictures are sometimes a bit graphic for children with worries.  For example, the fear of knives pictures shows Little Mouse with his tail cut off and bandaged.  Now for most children, such imagery could be amusing, but if this book is targeting children with actual fears, some of these pictures could actually feed into the worry.  Furthermore, books that target children with worry usually have some coping component concerning.  "Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears" attempts to demonstrate coping by showing that the shadow that scares Little Mouse is actually a girl, who is then shown to be afraid of Little Mouse.  This ending teaches a good lesson but does not really promote coping per se.  The book does encourage children to write their fears in the book, but it doesn't suggest what they can do about these fears.  So overall I don't think I'd recommend this book to parents of children with anxiety concerns.

In that case, would typical children be interested in this book?  Possibly.  Some children might like reading the names of the phobias, and I do think that many children (and adults) will enjoy the pictures.  However, I think that the content simply isn't compelling enough for the average child.  Even though this book is beautifully designed, the tone is a bit off for the target audience.
4465698
I purchased and read this book to a friends 3 year old grandchild.  We both found the book delightful.  With its rhyme and rhythmic flow, this book reminds me a little of The Night Before Christmas. The illustrations are sensitive and thought-provoking. The story nicely weaves together concepts regarding the natural environment along with struggles of the human spirit, (in this case, mousian spirit). Pocketmouse learns about bravery, determination, trust and love as he searches for his lost ancestors in an uncertain and dangerous environment.
I recommend this book for anyone who loves reading real books with children.
1409960
Mousenet is about a ten year old girl.  She and her Uncle invent the world's smallest computer called the "thumbtop."  The mice really need the "thumbtop" to they can communicate with other mouse clans and the Big Cheese.  This is about how a certain team of mice befriend the ten year old girl and try and work on getting "thumbtops" for all mice.  I loved the book! -JB
2043456
Interestingly, I must be one of those few people who did not find the book "Who moved my cheese" useful in a sense, but it's useful to prove a new point about the power of knowledge sharing though.

My analysis goes like this:

i. The book cast the world into the 4 types of people, using 4 different mice who exhibited different characteristics - Hem, Haw, Sniff and Scurry.

ii. However, there are other types that would be even more effective than the model answer in the book.

iii. I proposed the 5th mice named "Share". Share is a positive mice like Haw with one additional characteristic, ie. he like to share his knowledge. It's a fact that the mice stayed in one house. After every trip of locating the cheese, Share would create a simple "Knowledge Portal" in the house where he records the route to the cheese. Occansionally, when Share feels bore, he would add something interesting into his Portal, eg. a counter for the number of trips to the cheese location, draw some nice graphics to decorate the portal, etc.
With Share, the ending of the story in the book would be positively changed and dramatic.

iv. We could come up with many different mice with special capability and that would change the book further, positively and entirely.

Constructively, I must admit that without the book, I wouldn't be able to crystalise my mouse, Share. Thus, even though I don't find the book useful in that sense, I appreciate the 5th perspective and beyond gained as a result of the author writing this book, which might have been one of his objective.
2032076
A wide-ranging work about nature can easily morph into a series of unrelated vignettes, the narrative equivalent of a family album. D.A. avoids this trap by chosing five major topics: adaptation from water to land, flight, silk spinning, relations between species, and supersocieties. The examples within each of these topics are arranged to tell a fascinating story of development.
The overall effect, in both the DVD series of five programs and
the companion book of five chapters, is that you become aware of an interrelated system of mind-boggling complexity.
1530746
In the books choice title, Bickerton describes himself as a trailblazing linguist who finds clues to common humanity in the worlds lowliest languages. The title does a fine job at demonstrating the authors motive. First, Bickerton differentiates himself as a trailblazing linguist as opposed to a desk-dwelling academic one. He offers numerous examples of this distinction as he delights the reader with stories of adventure and rebellion. If theres a shortcut and a dangerous field experiment, the reader is soon following Bickerton as he pursues it.  Second, the common humanity in the title hints toward the journey of developing his linguistic theory, the language bioprogram hypothesis.  The first half of the book lays the groundwork for his eventual revelation for Creole acquisition.  In short, he proposes that Creole languages are created by the children of native Pidgin speakers during the natural language acquisition process. He argues that all Creoles have syntactic similarities and this provides evidence to Noam Chomskys innate claim that humans are born with a Language Acquisition Device.  We observe Bickerton make several attempts to prove this theory by enlisting the same academic institutions he mocks throughout the book.  Lastly, Bickerton uses the term, lowliest languages to ironically refer to the languages of innocent citizens belonging to various underdeveloped communities; he  satirically overgeneralizes the people whove endured prejudice born of colonialism and slavery for the purpose of highlighting its wrongful lowly stature. Bickerton shows great admiration for Pidgin and Creole speakers and exhibits a sincere fascination for their innate ability to invent new forms of communicating.
663276
I enjoy the maxim that the early bird gets the worm, but the second rat gets the cheese.  I am that second rat. That is why when I saw the book title Rat, it caught my eye.  Written by Polish writer Andrzej Zaniewski and translated to English, this book goes into the furry world of the rat.
Zaniewski had been fascinated by them because rats have a close living arrangement with humans.  However we don't appreciate what they do to clean our trash and survive no matter what environment in which they find themselves in.
In Buddhism, the rat is placed high up in the hierarchy of living creatures. The sly and cunning rat is the first to appear before the dying Buddha.  Another legend tells about thousands of rats from the Karai Ma Temple in Bikaner, in the west of India. Those rats are the dead poets who, in their animal incarnation, wait to assume their shape of poet bards.
This book takes you on a journey through the eyes of a rat, and I must admit I was craving a bit of cheese once I was done.
Heck, our biggest American icon is a rat, Mickey Mouse.
4540331
Drawing on the theoretical insights of Emile Durkheim and Erving Goffman, Randall Collins sets out a detailed account of what it is that micro interactions accomplish and the structure of those interactions. In the first portion of the book, Collins lays out his theoretical contribution, presenting a compelling logic of micro interactions. The rest of the book involves applications of that logic.

Successful interactions, for Collins, are ones that produce a number of important outcomes: collective symbols with meaning for those involved, a sense of boundaries uniting those participating in a given interaction and bounding-out those that aren't, developing a sense of norms, and, most importantly, providing what Collins calls "emotional energy". This understanding provides a very specific meaning/purpose to the interactions people have and why they are driven to have them and have them in certain ways.

Collin lays out specific components of a successful interaction. Mutual entrainment is perhaps the most important - that participants are focused on some common locus of attention. In addition, Collins sees embodiment - the actual physical presence to one another in an interaction - as another necessary prerequisite for successful interactions.

While I quibble over some of the requirements that Collins delineates (particularly the need for co-presence for an interaction to be successful) and the elevation of emotional energy to the position of the chief motivation for interaction, the theory itself is of immense utility - both as a synthesis of Durkheimian and Goffmanian lineages of thought and as a more complete formulation of a theory of micro-interactions.
4224882
A collage of beautiful writings that require a unifying synthesis explaining the underlying reason for this shift in focus
2893930
I read about "The Organizational Zoo" on the website of Arthur Shelley. The metaphors make hundred percent sense to me. We did a workshop with students from a technical school in Switzerland. They understood the metaphors / animals quickly and had fun working with them.