Boys Books

Our son loves this series and has already ordered the 3rd installment due in November

I loved the first two books. I found them to be clever and full of fun. It was age appropriate but maintained an underlining political agenda for the older readers to pick up on. The books touched base on everything from family and friends relationships to growing up and expanding world views. I am excited for the thrid book.

We're really enjoying this series. Once again, Ordinary Boy's brains save the day, with a little help from his friends. There's humor dry enough to make adults happy, and silly enough for kids to enjoy. The bit about time travel was a little tricky for my seven year old to understand, but it didn't detract from the story. We're looking forward to book 3.

My son loved the first book and waited eagerly for this one. He said it was even better than the first book and he's now eagerly waiting for book three.

Believe it or not, i am just turning 13 and im in the middle of reading The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy, Book 1: A Hero is Born and i love it so much! And im so excited to read the second one! And the funny thing is, i have always hated reading, but now i enjoy it. And i owe it all to William Boniface!

Richard Carlson's The Feelings And Imagination Of A Barefoot Boy Still Inside My Head! is a delightful, entertaining, and highly recommended collection of poems and short stories for children ages 9 to 12. The topics of these pieces range from family, falling in love, and imagination, to yelling, bicycles, and kissing. I Loved To Walk On My Bare Feet: When I was a young boy,/I loved life and felt great joy./I untied and my little shoes off I took./At my bare feet I wanted to look./It felt really neat,/Walking on the grass and soil in bare feet./I breathed in the spring air through my little nose,/And in the mud puddles, wiggled my little toes./I would play and daydream./Life was wonderful to me it did seem.

THE FEELINGS AND IMAGINATION OF A BAREFOOT BOY STILL INSIDE MY HEAD by Richard W. Carlson Jr. is just as the title suggests--feelings and imagination, as well as hopes, dreams, and just plain fun wrapped into one book!

His wonderful poems were a treat to read to my children, and the charming hand drawn illustrations caught and kept my children's attention as I read, bringing forth tons of questions about the picture.

Mentioning frogs, wishes, brothers, sisters, yelling, cheating, animals, first kisses, and black eyes, would only scratch the surface of all the comical poems and short stories within the books pages. All of Mr. Carlson's poems and short stories in THE FEELINGS AND IMAGINATION OF A BAREFOOT BOY STILL INSIDE MY HEAD will surely entertain and delight the children, as well as the parents. I know we loved it!

The author, Richard W. Carlson Jr. known to live in an imaginary world of his own as a boy, he now lives in the real world and successfully writes book and poems for children that teach valuable lessons. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Mr. Carlson's vivid imagination runs wild in each fascinating tale. The important lessons, both realistic and proper, are taught in a fun and attention-grabbing manner. They are exactly what the youth of today need, and what they will enjoy reading at the same time. His ability to tell it like a child is something that every child's book writer struggles for. The poems aren't too long, and drug out, nor are they preachy--perfect for the age of children it is intended for.

My favorite poem: I LOVED TO WALK ON MY BARE FEET is about a little boy who loves to look at his bare feet as he walks.

Find your favorite Richard W. Carlson Jr. poem today!

ASTORYWEAVER'S Book Reviews highly recommends THE FEELINGS AND IMAGINATION OF A BAREFOOT BOY STILL INSIDE MY HEAD by Richard W. Carlson Jr. for you and your children....

Many books written for youngsters have a problem. To get the skill to create the work, the author has had to practice . . . and that meant getting older and further away from feelings of the young readers. Richard W. Carlson, Jr. has overcome that problem here in a powerful way, and brought me back in touch with experiences I haven't had in over 45 years. The interesting poems and short stories carry important lessons for the practical and moral development of the reader. The youthful perspective is perfectly captured in the poetic style that successfully mimics what a talented 10 year old might produce while having extra smoothness most of the time. I especially liked the illustrations by Mr. Kevin Carlson. Mr. Carlson has an ability to capture stories, emotions, and situations in simple illustrations that make the point of the stories clearer.

The poems and stories are very short, well-suited for the attention span of youthful readers. One interesting element is that the book contains both poetry about Richard W. Carlson, Jr. as well as fictional versions of the same incidents describing Jeremy Grabowski's Crazy Summer in Stormville. You and your children can enjoy talking about which versions you like better, and what roles fiction and nonfiction play in helping readers.

I generally liked the poems about discovery best. When we are young, everything that happens (even setbacks) is absolutely fascinating. Junk and joy go together just as well as gold and joy.

I also liked the way the short stories took the potential for fright and turned it into potential for fun. Mr. Carlson has an unusually positive attitude that anyone can learn from. Children need more encouragement than criticism, and he carries that point forward rather well.

I suspect that most readers will take even more delight upon rereading the book than upon first reading it. I hope you will take the opportunity to do both. Although written for children, the book has much of the appeal of Who Moved My Cheese? for adults.

"Who lives in your world that's wonderful and so much fun?

You might be the only one!"

Those two lines may be the best encouragement for budding writers that I have ever seen. Be sure you children have the chance to read them.

After you finish this delightful book, I suggest you think about why you no longer find discovery as fascinating as a little boy picking up his first horny toad. How can you recapture that delight and its benefits? How can you be sure that your children and grandchildren delight in discovery even more than you did at their age?

Retain the mind of the three year old . . . and your mind will be always filled with riches.

This was a book of poems and short stories. Mr. Carlson writes really good poems, I liked them all. Some of them were about Jeremy Grabowski's Crazy Summer In Stormville. I thought that was neat. Some were about life in Tucson Arizona. That was cool because I've never been there and it was fun to read about a different place. The short stories were all great. I liked all of them too. I think you will really like this book. Both boys and girls will.

Nathaniel

P.S. Kevin Carlson is Richard Carlson's brother. His pictures are terrific! People are really hard to draw, I know, I try to all the time! He does a really great job!

Author Richard W. Carlson Jr. Brings echoes of maturity to freshly imaginative short stories and poetry in THE FEELINGS AND IMAGINATION OF BAREFOOT BOY STILL INSIDE MY HEAD. The sparkling ingenuous voice of remembered youth sparkles, recapturing the best of childhood and strongest of memories in a startling original record certain to please young readers. The rhythm and rhyme keep the tempo steadily on high, recreating runaway frogs, black eyes, broccoli and walking barefoot with equal vividness. Accompanied by simple, yet skillfully drawn illustrations (by the author's younger brother), this marvelous lark comes highly recommended.

Warm and insightful story of a white boy growing up in a poor black/latino neighborhood in the 60s. Fascinating perspective on the experiences and perspectives of blacks, whites and latinos. Also, a touching story of a boy coming of age, dealing with a best friend who is gay. Open and honest -- addresses issues of drugs, alcohol, gangs, crime, violence and racism but recognizes the good too. He maintains a positive outlook (in the book and in life).

Flying over 96th Street encourages the reader to examine race and relationships. It challenges the reader to look beyond the color of one's skin and examine what happens when you allow yourself to trust and love others who neither look like you or who at first glance seem so different.

A must read for those yearning to explore their relationship with others - and a exceptional message for young people - encouraging them to reach beyond their small circle, embrace and take the risk to love others who "appear" so different.

Flying Over 96th Street is a great read. Tom Webber tells his story in with humor and remarkable powers of observation. As a New Yorker, I loved the details of "El Bario".. But you don't have to be a New Yorker to get into the experience of this young guy who goes "beyond the looking glass" of the white middle class world into another reality-- where HE is the minority...

Even though race and class is rarely (if ever) being discussed nationally, it is a core issue of who we are as Americans. And for those of us who talk about it, it is often just that-- talk. Kudos to the generations of the Webber family who put their neighborhood where their mouth is...

Webber's portrait of New York in the 1950s and 60s is full of vivid description. He captures the sounds and smells of his neighborhood and, more importantly, draws his characters with an empathetic brush. Yet the book is not just an elegy to a time past. Dr Webber deals deftly and incisevely with class, race and prejudice, while never preaching or teaching. Every page is full of delights. It is a deeply touching book that will rank as one of the great New York City memoirs.

Flying over 96th Street is the most moving memoir I have ever read. It tells the story of a white young boy growing up in Spanish Harlem durnig the 50s and early 60s and how he and his new black and Puerto Rican friends grow to appreciate, help, teach, and love each other. It is a totally absorbing account of coming of age and should be read by every high school student in america.

The book shows the defficenceis of England before WW1.

Overall it is the most boring book i have ever read.

There are two movie adaptations of "The Winslow Boy" available, recently starring Jeremy Northam (1999), and anciently starring Robert Donat (1948). But neither is an adequate substitute for the real thing, the full text by Terence Rattigan. In 1988, PBS broadcast a superb production of the full text, starring Ian Richardson and Emma Thompson, but it has not, unfortunately, been transferred to video.

The play concerns a public battle against the government, waged by a father to vindicate his son, expelled from a naval academy for cashing a stolen money order. Although the crusade is exciting, the play is most interesting in what it reveals about the people intimately involved: the members of the Winslow family, their close friends and their lawyer. The resulting insights and realism are among the story's chief virtues.

At first reading, the play may seem a straightforward tale of innocence versus injustice. But on closer inspection, one finds that the boy's innocence is never proved, and that some in the family deny or doubt it. Moreover, even if he is innocent, the harm to members of the family and to the country from pursuing the case might be greater than the harm from letting it drop. Such uncertainty is frustrating, but life is like that. Crusades are often launched for ends whose worth is unclear. The play is wise to develop this point.

Moreover, the actions and motives of crusaders may be a mixture of good and bad. This may make them harder to join, but certainly interesting and instructive to watch. One admires the boldness, determination and persistence of the father, Arthur Winslow, without whose initiative the crusade would not exist. Yet he is rather a sourpuss, often dominating or humiliating others. His daughter and indispensable lieutenant, Kate, is the most attractive member of the family, bright and realistic but emotionally withheld and often blinded by partisanship. Sir Robert Morton, the celebrated advocate who represents the Winslow boy is a supercilious, cold fish, and a brilliant (unscrupulous?) forensic champion. All three make substantial sacrifices for the sake of their crusade.

The author is a master of surprise and reversal. Much of the dramatic excitement comes when esteemed characters behave badly, or disregarded characters greatly please. Perhaps the most beautiful moment in the play is a marriage proposal to Kate by Desmond Curry, an old family friend whom she rather disdains (and the reader discounts). And the mother, Grace Winslow, whose views have been generally ignored, finally makes a powerful case that the crusade, out of pride and stubbornness, is destroying her husband and family for a son who is uninterested in the result.

Another excellence of the play is its treatment of controversy. On the questions as to whether the crusade is justified and worthwhile, for the family and for the country, the author impartially assigns plausible arguments to the various sides, from the characters, the newspapers they quote, or the proceedings they attend.

An outstanding play, with plenty of food for the intellect, the heart and the soul.

I really love this play. A friend gave me a copy and I started reading it on the train and was unable to stop until I had finished reading it! I was able to envisage the characters in my mind and as soon as I finished it, I HAD to go out and rent the David Mamet film adaptation which is also fantastic.

Sir Robert, Catherine Winslow and Arthur Winslow are remarkably well-drawn characters and all of the dialogue in the play is excellent. I really enjoyed this play and highly recommend it!

It is based, substantially, on actual events. Try and see (if you haven't already) the David Mamet film adaption of the play which should be coming to video within a few months. It's a simply beautiful treatment. His most human work yet.

I enjoyed this play immensely and I also enjoyed the David Mamet film as well--a film that I thought was engrossing and a more than satisfying character study.

I liked how the play speaks of something that we sometimes give little regard to in today's society---the importance of and honor in a good and stable reputation. It was very enlightening to read this tale of a family (especially the father) who was in service of maintaining their son's dignity and place in society.

I was also taken by how this quest for honor taxes the family. My favorite scene in the play also begets my favorite line. The scene where the mother tells the father that he should let their son go on with his ife and not stigmatize him by this singular event is very honest and real. And when the mother says, "When he (their son) is grown, he won't thank you for it."-meaning the preservation of his reputation, I thought the whole idea and point of the story was driven home.

An excellent read indeed

This book is full of facts, pictures and interesting things for kids that want to learn more about knights. It is for older kids 8-14 and I think it will be a family favorite for making history fun.

This book is great for 6 and 7 year olds. I gave it to my son with a small playmobil knight set and they entertained him for a long, long time.

I got this book for my birthday from my parents and I love it. It has a cool sword that comes in and out, a pop-up visor, a castle drawbridge that goes up and down. Parts of it are funny and I learned a little more about what it took to become a knight.

I ordered it for my 7 year old son and he loved it. it is very informative and colorfull.

Candlewick Press does an amazing job of enthralling young readers. Their books are beautiful works of art and my sons spend hours enjoying every detail of these amazing books. I don't know how they can put together such a detailed book for such a low price. The Knight Guide is just as enjoyable and lovely as the OLOGY books published by this author.

Hi.. I am a 7th grader.. I read this book a year ago, This book was amazing.. I love The Character's and the reaction toward's one another.. They all seem like good friend's that get a long.. Elaine Moore - is a very talented woman. This is one of my favorite book's to be truthfully honest with you.. This is a very remarkable book.. I think other teen's my age should at least give this book a try.. They'd like it..

This book was amazing. I couldn't put it down until after the third time I read it. I have a lot of favorite parts. One was the dance scene and the others were the football games. this book has inspired me and it will to you if this is your kind of book.

I love how Elaine Moore described the characters . In most books everything always goes right , I don't like that, but this book didn't. it was so funny , espically when they found out she was a girl.

I thought this book was hilarious! It was definitely a very fitting sequel to the first. I am sure that if there are any more sequels, they will be equally funny!

Oh my gosh! This is the best book. It is about a girl whosecretly joins the boys football team. Then they find out somethingshocking! Read this book to find out. All I can say, WOW!

I purchased Gulliver Snip about 6 weeks ago as a bedtime story for my six year old son and four year old daughter. It is a huge hit and has become their favorite story! The illustrations are beautifully done, with one side of the page depicting how Gulliver Snip views his "bathtime adventures" and the other side depicting what is really going on in his home. The rhyme's are very engaging. It is truly a joy to read (over and over again). Highly recommended!

Gulliver Snip is an incredibly creative, well written, and beautifully illustrated children's book. The story crosses the daily topic of a bathing child with a creative blast of adventure on the high seas, as Gulliver sees his bathtub as a clipper ship, sailing the oceans blue. The book makes you laugh, smile, and want to read it over and over. In fact, I wish I was a kid again so I could play the role of Gulliver, creating adventure from the ordinary, having a blast with what is seen as normal from an adult's perspective. (Oh, to be young and innocent again...this whole working world and responsibility is not all it cracked up to be.) The sound and repetition of the writing in the book is harmonious and very catchy, a brilliantly worded story indeed. And I just can't get over some of the illustrations, how deep the rich the color is, and the juxtaposition of the actual bath tub experience with the creative adventures of the mind that Gulliver travels are just a pleasure to watch unfold side by side. Julia Kay has put together a real winner with her first children's book here, and I can see her heart and soul and people close to her in this book. And who wouldn't just get attached to a little red headed boy who is adventurous?!?!?! I have purchased 20 copies of this book and my mother and I are giving it to all of our friends with children and to their grandparents as well. Every family with a child should have a copy of Gulliver Snip. Trust me, you will enjoy the ride and have great reading time with your little ones!

This is a delightful and beautifully illustrated book. The story is imaginative and very appealing to young children. I rank it up there with my favorite Maurice Sendak book "Where the Wild Things Are." This is sure to become a children's classic.

This is a fantastic addition to a library of children's books! It is a fantastic adventure that you and your child can enjoy together (even my jaded 20-something brother liked it!)

You will NOT regret buying this one and it will provide years of enjoyable bedtime stories and keep your child entertained while learning to read!

I feel compelled to say something about this little book because it sort of got to me- in a good way. From a parents perspective it's about a kid who makes a mess in the bathroom...but the way it is written you are really able to see the world through this child's eyes. I don't know if the author meant to make me pause as a parent- and promise myself I would try to remember what it felt like to be a kid, but that was the end result. I guess that is what great children's literature does, though, it takes you some place special- and usually there is a surprise involved. At any rate I was surprised to be so touched by a picture book. I think my kids just thought it was fun.

Even if I didn't read every single "Hardy Boys" book there awesome. I just know because they fight and do boys stuff. I even read more "Hardy Boys" books than school work. I just wish they had a holiday where you read "Hardy Boys", for just one whole entire month (no school no nothing except reading "Hardy Boys").

Holy, man! I've read almost every single Casefile there is and I can list them all in order off the top of my head. I love their books and I think that they're great! The Casefiles are so much more interesting than the blue books. You know that there's always going to be danger and excitment in each book, but you also know that Frank is going to be teasing Joe and Joe is going to do something funny too. That's why I like all of their books.

I just started reading The Hardy Boys--before, I read Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys--but I think this was really good since Nancy Drew got kinda annoying after a while. It was interesting and it kept me reading--in fact, I pretty much read it in one sitting! Good characters and good plot.

I really love these new "Casefiles collector's editions" I've bought them all, and I think that this one is the best so far. In "Beyond The Law," Frank and Joe must help their old friend/enemy Ezra Collig, and clear him of extortion. In "Spiked!" they get involved in a case of murder in Southern Callifornia, and in "Open Season," the boys fight for their lives while on a cross country ski trip in the Colorado Rockies. I really enjoyed all three stories, and would recommend them to anyone.

This is a great series of books together! I espscially love Uncivil War(since the civil war i just love!) Choke hold is very suspenseful. Dixon stops the chapter right when something is happening to Frank or Joe. I just love it!

Having been fortunate enough to personally know Henry Nichols and his family I feel that his father, Hank, did a wonderful job of portraying the love and support that was a part of their everyday lives in the face of the tremendous hardships that were a part of Henry's life. Henry was a brave,interesting and fun young man who showed the world that we can overcome great fears and live our lives to the utmost from climbing mountains to enjoying good food. He attended our daughter's birthday party just days before his accident and we still remember how he stationed himself at the fondue table and had the best time partaking of everything from cheese to chocolate and wanting the recipes !

Henry's life and his family's undaunting spirit would surely be an inspiration to anyone who reads this book.

Henry Nichols has an engaging writing style -- so much so that once you begin reading his book, you have a hard time putting it down. This memoir is more than a tearjerker; it's the story of one family's struggle with -- and ultimate triumph over -- adversity. Mr. Nichols has created a lasting tribute, not only to his high achieving son, but to his courageous family. A "must read" for everyone.

I find it to be an exceptional, moving, revealing story about Henry, his family, and the extreme challenges of dealing with a relentless disease.
From his childhood antics to his humor and his courage, Henry comes across as a wonderful and exceptional human being.
He knew who he was and what he wanted to contribute in spite of the raw deal handed to him. He took the unlikely and risky path of revealing his story about AIDS. The Boy Scout turned Eagle Scout chose to become an AIDS activist, first on home ground and, ultimately, across the world. His story is a tear-jerker. But it also is a testament to how exceptional people deal with exceptional challenges.
An uplifting message at the end helps bring Henry's story full circle. The message provides much-welcomed balance and perspective to an emotional, tragic, heart-wrenching story of a life lived well in spite of it all.

This book leaves a wonderful legacy for Henry Nicols and the entire Nicols family. For those of us who knew Henry and his family, the book does a wonderful job of recalling the love, courage and strength this family obtained from each other and gave to the rest of the world. For those who might not have been privileged to know Henry or the family, the legacy story inspires everyone to make a difference and to change the world in which we live. In my opinion, Henry Nicols embodied great characteristics that would make a wonderful President of our great country and we need that type of leadership now and into our future. I would recommend this book to everyone and will purchase copies to give to my family and friends. Everyone should read this book. Thanks you Hank for writing this story.

It is seldom that I am able to immerse myself in a book for more than an hour at a time. However, last night I laid on the sofa and began to read "Henry for President" and at 12:30 a.m. I had completed it. What a mesmerizing, gut-wrenching and inspirational account of not only Henry's remarkable life but of the amazing strength, love and courage of his entire family. I simply could not put it down! How this family made it through so many years of anguish is incomprehensible but the bond of this family made me long for a more personal relationship with my own children. Each chapter had me thinking I could be a better father and had me wondering how to make up for lost time with them. It also made me realize just how fortunate I am to have four healthy offspring.

Thank you Mr. Nichols, for writing Henry's story and sharing it with the world. I know it will change lives as it has mine.

Can a well-brought-up 16 year old boy from New York City learn enough about sex by studying techniques he finds in a 1920's sex manual to become a gigolo in Rome for a summer or two? Techniques (he points out) that he will eventually employ in achieving an ideal marriage? Andre Schulman, the teenage narrator of Peter Friedman's comic novel IDEAL MARRIAGE, is determined to find out in this witty and often outrageous gem of a coming-of-age novel. The year is 1957 and the book Andre has discovered, hidden in his parents bookcase behind four volumes of the Yearbook of Agriculture, is Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique, written in 1926 by a Dutch gynecologist, Th. H. Van de Velde.

Andre's adventures begin with an unsatisfying date with classmate Eleanor. After briefly contemplating sleeping with Ronda, the alcoholic wife of a friend of his parents, he meets the beautiful Jessica on a Circle Line cruise around Manhattan. She is smart, romantic and, it seems to Andre, is ideally suited to become his future wife. He spends Thanksgiving at her parents' home in Massachusetts and they maintain a long-distance courtship via love letters, culminating in a final letter from Jessica announcing her return to her previous boy friend.

Crushed, Andre pulls himself together sufficiently to date dumpy Doris, an NYU sophomore whose chief attraction is that she has an apartment of her own. Then over spring vacation of his last year in high school Andre lands the perfect job, a sales position in Bloomingdale's pillow department (where better to meet women with beds on their minds?) Here he meets Gloria, 10 years his senior, with whom he finally manages to lose his virginity.

Life for Andre is not all a bed of ...well, beds and bedding. Along the way he faces various challenges that can be harrowing to teenagers: varsity basketball; ballroom dancing lessons; family relationships; dental work; girls on school field trips; college plans; and worrying whether a hydrogen bomb dropped on Wall Street would affect him at East 75th Street (it's the 1950's, remember?). Through it all the author entertains us with Andre's off-beat narrative full of quirky charm.

I loved this book, not just because it is funny and sexy, but because it is actually so innocent.

Peter Friedman's "Ideal Marriage" has the rare combination of humor, love, sex and romance that you just don't find in today's "reality" TV era when watching people eat bugs is considered entertainment.

It's very enjoyable -- even for this mother of two boys who worries that her sons might someday pick up women in the pillow department at Bloomies, just like the book's main character.

This charmer of a debut novel gives us a 16-year-old narrator, Andre Schulman, who is wise and tender beyond his years, but also matter-of-fact and funny-and, like every boy his age, fascinated by sex. In an adolescent fantasy about his dentist's hygienist, he muses that "The possibilities seemed wondrous. Miss Patapov and I might stimulate each other with the air hose and the water squirter, then switch to the electric drill--not with a bur(sic), but a soft toothbrush, feathering it over each other's erogenous zones. We would use heated dental wax, strategically placed, and would trail shreds of dental floss over one another from head to foot..." But unlike most teenage boys, Andre is also captivated by romance, not because it's the key to successful wooing. but because he seems to glimpse that it's as much fun as all the heat and sparks.
Andre isn't exotic, like the teen protagonists in "Life of Pi" or "The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-Time," but you root for him every bit as much as you do for those less familiar fellows-- and after the book ends, you'll wish you could ring him up and find out how he's doing.

Although we find him in New York of the 1950s, Andre Schulman, the protagonist of Ideal Marriage, can just as easily be the kind of sensitive postmodern hero of a twenty-first century romantic fantasy. Polite, courteous and self-conscious, he is the kind of guy who knows freesia when he smells it, and for whom no queer eye is necessary. The kind of guy who notices how the blue of a Forex condom container lights up like a stained-glass window when lit from behind. The kind of guy who eats brussel sprouts while waiting to pour sauce on his Thanksgiving turkey. The kind of guy who dreams of an ideal marriage and falls in love with a girl after meeting her once. The kind of guy who the Bridget Joneses and Carrie Bradshaws of our time mourn as extinct. In this funny and meticulous debut novel, Friedman gives us a glimpse into the neuroses of a teenage boy as eager to learn about sex as about the romance and intimacy that comes with it. Andre's voice is earnest and honest, his eye for sensual detail both lovely and wickedly (if unintentionally) funny--in one instance, he removes his blue toothbrush from its place next to a girl's pink one so that their bristles do not touch, so as not to violate her privacy. His sexual awakening provides a language for his growing consciousness and delight in the world: at one point (trying to decide between Christianity and Quakerism), Andre realizes that both he and the CA members he meets are doing the same thing: "imagining a being that was physically absent." These moments as well as the quiet and at times satiric humor throughout make Friedman's book a pleasure to read and an homage to the confusions, hilarity, overanalysis and essential romance that define what growing up is all about.

In the age of Internet porn, "Girls Gone Wild" videos and Paris Hilton's home movies, it's safe to say that American popular culture has managed to strip the last shred of romance out of sex. Somewhere in our national neurotic jumble of puritanical guilt and secret titillation we lost touch with whatever it is that makes lovemaking something other than an X-rated version of seven minutes of high-impact aerobics. And that's exactly why Peter Friedman's sweet and funny IDEAL MARRIAGE is such a pure pleasure.

Set in New York City in 1957, IDEAL MARRIAGE follows a year in the life of Andre Schulman, a sixteen-year-old boy eager to complete his passage into manhood. Like any sixteen-year-old of any era, Andre thinks about sex. But he is the diametric opposite of Philip Roth's Portnoy. Rather than an obsession with the physical act, Andre exhibits a dedication to a kind of holistic notion of romantic love that includes sex, rather than being dominated by it. It's an attitude that is less naïve than it is sweetly, idealistically practical. Andre wants to get married some day and enjoy a lifetime of romance and sex with a woman with whom he is deeply, passionately in love. Andre is no Boy Scout, and his ambitions aren't driven by any phony sense of morality. He simply has a particular goal in mind.

In his effort to achieve this goal, Andre studies a book he finds hidden "behind four volumes of the Yearbook of Agriculture" on his parent's bookshelf: IDEAL MARRIAGE: Its Physiology and Technique. As it happens, this is a real book, written in 1926 by Dutch gynecologist Theodoor Hendrik Van de Velde. (Go ahead, look it up, ISBN: 0313224420.) The book provides Andre with frank and surprisingly poetic advice on the emotional and physical expression of love. Short passages from the book appear at the beginning of each chapter of Andre's first-person narrative.

Through the narrative Andre reveals himself to be a smart, sensitive, thoughtful and surprisingly mature young man. His flights of neurotic imagination are as likely to find him daydreaming about a romantic encounter with a girl as they are having him ruminating over the possibility of a surprise Russian nuclear attack. He analyzes everything. Even the most miniscule details of daily life attract his slightly off-kilter scrutiny. His inner dialogue, as well as his conversations with friends and family, kept me in a constant grin, periodically interrupted by out-loud laughter.

There isn't a wasted word in this compact confection of a novel. Author Peter Friedman delivers a fine and funny homage to romance, to youth and to the subtle complexities of love in all of its manifestations. Yet, he addresses his subject matter in a manner that won't rot your teeth or leave you worrying about your carb intake. IDEAL MARRIAGE is a guilt-free dessert of a book, a refreshing tonic to an age that accepts getting flashed by a drunken coed during spring break as a romantic encounter. Peter Friedman's IDEAL MARRIAGE reminds us that there's something better. Indulge.

(...)