Carolyn Scrace

Marvelous. At least for me, a person who is *not* in touch with her creative powers. I did work through the first dozen instruction pages and do now feel much more competent about my ability to do some of the projects. I can at least make a picture frame for a snapshot now! Some of the other projects, later in the book, are more advanced than I have interest in and some even require investments in materials... but some investments are minimal.

This would make a fantastic gift for the teen girls or middle-aged women on your list, especially if you added a nice set of quality colored pencils and some heavy paper.… (meer)

There are many reasons why I liked the book, “The Journey of a Whale”. The first is how the book describes the migration of a whale during the year. “In this book you can follow the amazing migration of a gray whale.” This creates a timeline to the story, which is easy for a young reader to understand. The book provides to the reader a description of what a whale encounters in the different seasons of the year. It also educates the reader to understand the whale’s habits when moving from one location to the next. When talking about the migration of the whales, the author is very descriptive. Examples of this would be when author writes about the locations whales travel to during the fall season. “When fall comes, whales start swimming toward warmer seas.” “After a female whale has their calf, they start their migration to warmer seas to reach them by winter.” In the end, the book shows a map of the different migration routes for different types of whales. After the maps, there is a glossary titled “Whale Words”, listing all the terms that were in italic print throughout the book, which is simple for the reader to reference, if necessary. These words are in bold print and have definitions at the bottom. For example, one of the terms in the glossary is calf. It is described as, “calf: a baby whale.” There is also an index of all of the terms listed, with the page number referencing where it appears in the story. This book not only informs but also tells the story of the migration of whales. The big idea of this story is to understand the behavior of whales during their migration at the different times of year.… (meer)