Boys Books

Similar to the first reviewer I also know Steve, my wife went through the CSU MFA program with him and is a fellow member of the Minions writing group. Steve's school and open mike readings were something we all looked forward to because we knew we would soon be laughing hard enough to puke. We all hung out at the same bar trading stories and tales with one another, this particular bar was also the birth place of the "Rules of the Buffet" story.
However, I have digressed, Steve's book is full of the wonder, magic, pain, and growth we experience in childhood and teen years that makes us who we are as adults. Our youth leaves an unmistakeable stamp on us that we carry, either as a source of pride or baggage it's our choice, and it's also something we have to come to terms with. Steve illustrates this extremely well in his book. Having grown up in southern New Hampshire not at all like Kansas, I felt the same kinship with Steve's writing I have found during many long nights with Steve himself. I also found myself mourning the end of the book because it left me with no more chapters to read and hoping for another book to come out as soon as possible. Steve's writing is refreshing, sad, and inspiring, I can't recommend this book enough. Long live the Minions and late nights at Surfside.

I am an avid reader and a woman. I lean toward great contemporary fiction written by women these days, not sure why. . . so when someone handed me this hot off the press book, I flinched. I try to read male authors, and while I can glean good writing nods from the best of them, I don't reach for them again years later, Most male books don't become best friends. By best friends, I'm talking, Barbara Kingsolvers' books, Monk's The Secret Life of Bees, The Lady who wrote the Pilot's Wife . . . those books. You know . . THOSE BOOKS (I say this like a drug addict talks about his next hit). They're hard to find. The Guinness Book of Me will. I can't get it out of my head. It smacked with honest, strong writing and for the first time, I felt like I honestly got inside a man's head. Hurrah for Steven Church, his first novel. I'd be willing to bet this book is going to go BIG. Be one of the first to read it. Be the one at your reading club to suggest it. You can't go wrong. Male or Female. I can't wait to give it to my 15 year old son to read. There was "chick lit", right? What's this? "Bro Books?" I loved every single written word in it. And I can only say that about a handful of books I've read.

This book is sensitive. Church has a way of approching the sadness in his life (brother's death, for one) that is simple, but not overly sensitive. But there are enough male-bonding episodes and inevitable scars to make it a guy book. Refreshing, in a sea of chick lit. *And* he gets the girl.

I read this book in just two sittings, it would have been only one, but I have 2 small children. I pick it back up and re-read sections again and again. Steven Church is a fabulous writer. Steven Church makes me wish I could eat dinner with his in-laws and visit Kansas. I love his writing and I can't wait for more. I am buying a copy for my dad, one for my brother, and I am keeping my copy. Steven Church, write more soon.

I read this book (indeed, I became aware of this book) because Steven Church is my husband's cousin (there, full disclosure). I've met him a few times, but I couldn't say I know him. I didn't necessarily want to love this book. But I did, and I devoured it in one sitting.

So why read a memoir of someone who is not your husband's cousin, someone who has never committed a serious crime or slept with movie stars or been present at a Big Moment in History? Someone whose physical scars all come from silly accidents, someone who grew up in Kansas, for goodness' sake? The facts of Steven Church's life would hardly qualify him for a one-page piece in People Magazine.

Read this memoir because it is a true (although maybe not always factual) story. Because it is funny, inventive, touching, real, tough and beautiful. Read it because it will make you want to know Steven Church, because it will make you feel that you do. Read it because his musings about Guinness Book record-holders are as real and intimate and fine as what he tells you about his own battered heart. Read it because it is superbly crafted--WRITTEN, not just WRITTEN DOWN (I do not have the luxury of italics here).

So READ it for all those reasons, but BUY it because someday you will be proud and glad to own a first edition of the first book by Steven Church.

The Hardy Boys book the Number file is highly reccomended because of the exciting and mysterious happenings.I reccomend this book for all ages.It is a very cool book that I think you should read but I reccomend that you read some of the books before it. It is one of many Franklin W. Dixon books and they are all good. This is a great book.

This book is thrilling, andventourus, and houmorous.-New York Times Newspaper.

Great and excenteric- Espn the Magazine

Best novel written by Franklin W Dixon- Time Magazine

My name is Erin Lorenz and I am 12 years old. I started reading the Hardy Boys books when I was 11. The Number File is a great book; it keeps you biting your nails and wondering, especially when the guy says that Frank is dead.All in all, its a good book.

this book should be read by all teenagers considering I think this a "suck you in" kind of book considering one minute you're reading about one thing and the next minute you're reading about another!!I definetly suggest that any teenager that likes mysteries to go get this book

Frank and Joe are soaking up some sun in the Bermuda Triangle and doing a little sleuthing on the side. Their father wants them to check out a shady character named Bernhard Kruger, the suspected kingpin of a big credit card scam. But the brothers are't making any headway - so far Kruger is clean.
When the Hardys spy on Kruger's villa, one of his thugs spots them. Before they know it, they're being tailed by a black sedan and run off the road into the ocean! This is not the act of an innocent man. Their vacation ruined, Frank and Joe resolve to nail Kruger. But he's onto them, and he has other plans - like arranging for the brothers to vanish in the Bermuda Triangle.

This was a great gift for my teenage nephew. At least I think so, he appreciated it but would have prefered a game but he is now forced to read more.

This was a very nice series when I was a kid...spent a lot of time with this set, and owned a LOT of them. Mystery set featuring the Hardy boys who solve mysteries. Your kid will love 'em.

We purchased the Hardy Boys starter set after my 5th grade son had read the first book. He had to read a mystery book for school. He liked it so much we purchased the others.
He just finished the second book in record reading time. Even though these books were written quite some time ago, they still can appeal to kids today.

Books are wonderful. Grandkids are truely enjoying being introduced to these classics. Fast service during the holidays, too.

My 12 year old son loved this series..He was given these as a gift and has read one after the other..The decades old technology, motorcycles, speed boats kept him very interested..The Hardys are a classic that never fails to satisfy..

Harvard Boys tells the story of a father and son's times in Minor League Baseball. No game has brought fathers and sons together more than America's past time, and this is truly evident in this recount. This account is heart felt, genuine, and a great read for any baseball fan.

I liked the book Harvard Boys.

The book brings out the realities of baseball (good and bad). The book illustrates that baseball management people really are not very bright and are poor judges of talent. Baseball management think a pitcher has to throw 90+ miles per hour or they are not a prospect --tell that to Jamie Moyer (he wouldn't even get a looksee tryout today.

In the book Wolff talks about how baseball is a game of rhythm and about being in the groove, yet guys are signed and then cut within days or a week... Players need a chance to settle into the surroundings and get 200 at bats to really be evaluated.

A smart guy like Rick Wolff proves himself in spring training hits .300, does all the right things and yet still gets cut without a legitimate shot. -----That is not logical..

Baseball is run by old school thoughts and practices. Baseball needs to get rid of the good old boy system and update its evaluative techniques. There must be a place in baseball for smart guys from Harvard "who can play".

Bottom line: When the book ended, I wanted to keep on reading....Enjoyable!

When I first picked up "Harvard Boys," I didn't know what to expect. However, I was happily surprised! Despite this being John Wolff's first book, he has proved himself as an incredibly talented writer with a very natural writing style that lends itself to easy reading. I thought the book was very honest, and despite the fact that I have never played in the minor leagues, I found myself relating to his moments of uncertainty as well as moments of triumph. I especially liked all the parts that included Ian Church...I'm a big fan!
A great book - I would definitely recommend it to anyone!

I finished this book in 6 hours. Anything that can shun my A.D.D that long gets 5 stars. However, when I saw the title of this book I thought it was some story of an ivy league fight club in some fraternity basement. I totally did not expect a father/son story of going from Hahvid to minor league baseball. I started reading just for laughs and my feet hurt after 25 minutes standing there. I finally said F it, and shelled out the 20 bucks and rolled home with it. About 5.5 hours later I finished the damn thing. Only get this book if you have a few hours to kill, its one of those books you will not put down till you finish it. The stories in here were not only fired up, but really interesting as well. Funny to hear a harvard grad talk about the struggles/laughs that minor league ball can bring about. The younger Wolf (John) is crazy.

First off, I would like to say I enjoyed this book tremendously. As a former ballplayer myself, I was a little skeptical about how minor league baseball was going to be portrayed. I was afraid this book was going to be a cheap rip-off of the uber-successful movie Bull Durham. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that as I was reading, I felt as though I was living vicariously through John. It was like I was reliving the struggles and joys of having good and bad days at the plate. I really liked the commentaries comparing and contrasting the minor leagues from yesteryear to today. I thought that was a very original touch. Overall, Harvard Boys is an easy, very enjoyable read for everyone who loves the game of baseball and wants to get a sense of what minor league baseball is all about.
-Ian

This wonderfully bound and collected work of art/book covers the acclaimed Hellboy series and movies. The book Hellboy Volume 1 collects the first two story-arcs-Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil-with the original introductions by Robert Bloch and Alan Moore. This is one of the more important collections within the Hellboy series, as the two story arcs along with some bits from BPRD that show how Hellboy was found and discovered, are spread across multiple series and volumes, which can be found here in this book. You get to learn how Hellboy was discovered, and what happens through most of the series that is also covered in the movies. This is like owning everything; the even better part is that there is a volume two that covers the Golden Army saga, and even more of Hellboy's beginnings.

In all this is a high quality book that will make just about every Hellboy fan jump for joy to get their hands on this volume and its companion volume. Hellboy is one of the more fascinating characters to be developed by Alan Moore, and goes back to many of his roots with 2000AD and work that he did previously. There are excellent story lines, wonderful art, sturdy and very durable to tolerate a lot of reading or general book abuse. The story lines are assorted with Hellboy traveling the world solving problems and generally thumping the bad people. What is nice is that these are really collections of many of Mignola's shorter stories, with a continuity to make them all make sense to the reader.

One of the better Hellboy collections out there, well worth getting and holding on to, both volumes make an awesome present or gift to anyone who has any interest in Hellboy at all. This book is a 5 star book, well worth getting, reading, owning, and enjoying.

As a big fan of Hellboy and Mike Mignola, I am glad to see HellBoy getting the deluxe treatment. Beautiful HC done right. A Must for any HellBoy fan!

I've been waiting years for this. Hellboy in hardcover. It's a glorious thing. This oversized volume is beautifully designed. It rivals DC's Absolute series in its presentation.

When Hellboy isn't saving the world from imminent destruction, he's doing a lot of little odd jobs across the world.

And by "odd jobs," I mean brief paranormal cases involving fairies, flying hunters, homunculi, "pamcakes" and disembodied heads. "Hellboy Volume 2: The Chained Coffin and The Right Hand of Doom" collects two volumes' worth of the demon anti-hero's assorted adventures, ranging from a fairy changeling to a devilish plot to conquer the world. All in a day's work.

Assorted short stories take Hellboy all over the world, and confronting many different problems -- a baby kidnapped by the faery folk, underground fiends, the malevolent witch Baba Yaga, a werewolf trapped by a centuries-old curse, the Saint Leonard worm (a dragon), a spectral huntsman followed by berserkers, a Japanese house full of bouncing heads, a seance gone horribly wrong, and the supervampire Varcolac.

And Hellboy heads to the ruined church where he was found -- only to dream of a dying witch, her holy children and a devil that sought the witch's "chained coffin." Turns out it has something to do with Hellboy's own origins. Not to mention an ancient, mysterious drawing provided by a priest of the "right hand of doom" -- which looks suspiciously like Hellboy's own hand.

And two bigger jobs loom over Hellboy -- after losing her fire powers to a strange homunculus, Liz Sherman is slowly dying. To save her, Hellboy sets out to find the homunculus, only to find that his crazed megalomaniac "elder brother" is planning to use Kate to bring a new, vast homuculus body to life.

And a demon (which looks suspiciously like a housefly) sealed into a box is stolen from a secret compartment, and is soon "serving" a human master. Turns out they want to lure Hellboy to that place, in the hopes of stealing the evil, apocalyptic powers that he has already renounced.

Mike Mignola is awesome at full-length graphic novels, but his shorter works are even better -- these are lean, compact little action stories with nothing more or less than they need. And it's sort of nice to see Hellboy's more ordinary cases -- if you can call these ordinary -- with foes like a changeling, a werewolf, the fairies and even a dragon.

Mignola's writing doesn't suffer from the shorter format, especially since he happily adapts some folktales to fit his world (legends, fairy tales, saints). There's wonderfully sick dialogue ("I'VE LOST MY ARRRRRRMMM!" "I'm sorry. Really. But... do you really need it? I mean, you're already dead and we've gotta go...") and some poignant moments (Hellboy musing on his "destiny"). Naturally, also plenty of bloody, horrific moments including a a chapel haunted by werewolves, a vampire that can "eat the moon," and a man turning into a giant lizard.

Hellboy is basically your average investigator in most of these stories -- he goes in, gets the job done and fixes things (occasionally being mistaken for Father Christmas). He's a nice straightforward kind of guy with a gruff manner, but Mignola reminds us at times that he has some unhappier facets ("You know how I live? I never deal with what I am").

And Mignola gives us some glimpses into where the "favorite son" may have come from, and the destiny he is still determined to avoid forever. It's pretty ghastly at times. At the same time, we get the hilarious "Pancakes" story, in which Hellboy's reluctant first bite leads to, ahem, hell-raising results.

"Hellboy Volume 2: The Chained Coffin and The Right Hand of Doom" collects many of Mignola's brilliant briefer stories, with a full range of Hellboy's smaller-scale cases.

Wow, Dark Horse continues the good work with HELLBOY. This second volume, as with the first book, shows us the way this work of art was meant to be enjoyed. The oversized book is handsome, tightly bound and beautifully printed on heavy-stock paper. Sure, the book is expensive but it really is worth every cent. Dark Horse shame larger companies such as Mravel and DC in the presentation, quality and pricing of their product.

Like other readers I was disappointed with the original HELLBOY softcover editions which would fall apart after a few readings due to poor bindings but these new versions are sturdy and will look amazing on your bookshelf. The mistakes of the past have been rectified and the new editions are so different that even old fans will marvel at the way the HELLBOY tales flow across the canvas. The vast pools of black paint now almost resemble liquid velvet. And the reds erupt like pulsating lava. The book throbs in your hands!

Mike Mignola's art has never looked this gorgeous. Absolutely lovely, rich and gothic. Get this baroque horror book now and while away the dark autumn evenings as we head towards All Hallows Eve.

This book was a godsend to me. As a mother of a struggling boy in middle school, I was able to understand what he was going through a little better and was able to help him through his struggles in school. He went from getting D's and F's last year to A's and B's this year and much of that is attributed to the advice that I gathered from reading this book.

I am also currently earning my teaching certificate and plan to use strategies in this book with my future male students.

This book is very well written and deftly handles the positioning of the subject matter. I have a son who started Kindergarten this year and was miserable. This book gave me a lot of perspective on the situation and led me to take a series of productive steps, and made me acutely aware of how critical it is to address negative situations as early as possible - with a clear plan to address the specific problems. In addition, this book has led to many beneficial conversations with close friends about the challenges they are facing with their sons in school.

"Helping Boys Succeed in School" is a guidebook for helping boys in the classroom and in life. Neu and Weinfeld provide a plan with specific strategies and tools teachers and parents can use to help boost boys' reading and writing skills. I have read this and learned things to use with my own boys and in the classroom, as a teacher. This book has added to my repertoire of tricks I use to help my boys succeed in reading and writing.

Neu and Weinfeld show how improving reading and writing skills helps boost a boy's self esteem which carries over to other subjects in school and extra curricular activities. They explain how the current push on reading and writing has negatively effected boys in the classroom and how to make this push a positive, successful experience. Coaches, mentors, multi sensory activities, karate or football, writing about what the boy is obsessed with, using movies, drama, assistive technology, and audio books are a handful of things Neu and Weinfeld touch upon. These ideas work.

There is a chapter on alternative education ideas for when the typical school classroom does not work. In this chapter there is a checklist with Q and A parents can use to devise a successful school model for their children.

Each chapter concludes with comprehensive lists to help you use what you have read - from strategies to help your boy succeed in the classroom to a table reviewing the most common sports for boys in the US which includes things like "physical demands, skill requirements, equipment costs, level of motivation for success etc." This book has given me insight into the importance of mentors and coaches and what to look for in each for the future.

Neu and Weinfeld talk about the "Cracking the Boy Code" which looks at gender stereotypes and how those affect boys. Informative.

A book I will refer to throughout my children's education.

As a parent of a 4-year old pre-kindergartner, this book already resonates with many excellent examples to understand how boys learn best, as well as practical advice for helping boys achieve success in school. Even within the pre-K environment, I've seen several examples of education that caters to girls and discounts the strengths of boys as outlined in the book. This is an excellent guide for parents to clue into the types of education that support learning for boys, as well as what to look for in school curriculums and ways to spot teaching philosophies that will either inhibit or support the education of boys. This book grabbed me with Chapter 1 and I will recommend this to any parent of a boy.

As an educator of 27 years and a Ph.D. student, I read Helping Boys Succeed in School with rapt attention. The practical nature of the book impressed me, and I believe it will prove to be very useful for parents and educators. The vignettes in the book brought me to both laughter and tears. Ideas on channeling boys' interests made me reflect upon creative projects my students have done, while at the same time challenging me to make even the tedious aspects of the curriculum more engaging. I have purchased 11 copies of the book and shared them with parents, who are also praising Helping Boys Succeed in School.

Linda R. Prueter

I am from Orlando and I thought that I had an inside track on Pearlman, and what he was all about. As is the case with many people from Orlando, I know someone who was in business with, and got screwed over by Lou. After reading this book, I realize that I only knew the tip of the highest snowflake, on the tallest iceberg, that was Lou Pearlman. Often in cases like this, an author will try to pinpoint a time or event where the subject took a turn for the worse. Not Tyler Gray, by this omission he underscores the fact that Lou never had any good intentions, and that all of his efforts were driven by greed and deceit. The author has a relentless dedication to detail and timeline, which leads the reader through Lou's upward, as well as, downward spiral. It is truly a crazy tail of someone who had it all (read: NEVER had it all, but made people believe that he did, so that they would give him money) and lost it.

Tyler Gray had a lot of information to work with to unravel the twisted story of Lou Pearlman in "Hit Charade." As one of the contributors to this tome, I realize that I never could have pulled it all together the way the author did. Gray cleverly used Lou Pearlman's "Bands, Brands, and Billions" as a base to discover the truth behind Pearlman's egocentric ramblings and faux rules of success. He shows how Mr. Pearlman's historical review of his career was a series of lies built upon lies. Many of Pearlman's stories were true, however they belonged to his associates and not to his own imaginary life history. Gray had to filter the facts from fiction and he spoke with many people who were involved with various stages of Pearlman's life from childhood to his incarceration. The book examines how Pearlman used Mission Impossible-like scenarios in order to deceive the people who believed in him most, his family, friends, and business associates who suffered great losses (and not just financially). What is even sadder are the stories of elderly investors who lost their life savings to a phoney investment plan that should have been questioned a lot earlier. The successes that Pearlman had with boy bands masked the fact that he was building a house of cards that was bound to crumble sooner or later. Too bad it couldn't be sooner! The book appeals to a wide audience, including those who are fans of boy bands, financial manipulations, and behind the scenes revelations. Personally, when we were growing up, I looked at Lou as the little brother that I never had (we were only children in an apartment building where everyone else had a sibling). I wish that my attempts to keep him in line met with success but he stubbornly had to have it his way.

Tyler Gray has penned a page burner with his new release "The Hit Charade" I found myself glued to his book and ignoring commitments and chores to devour the 278 pages in their entirety. Finally flipping the last page and letting out a big last gasp as the weight of Pearlman's relentless financial piracy sank in and hit me hard in the heart as I felt for Pearlman's victims and their losses. Amidst all of the juggling of figures, and finances, and false fronts, Gray laid the groundwork for the reader to fully realize the poison that came from the bite of this snake in the grass. Tremendous reporting of fact finding amongst the tall-tales of Pearlman from self made Lemonade Mogul/Newsie to riding his fleet of Busted Blimps to Boy Band Impresario. The biggest thing to note reading about the scheming Porkers life's work, was just how easy Gray made it to wrap my head around such a complex ruse that was Pearlman's "Ponzi Scheme", and how easily digestible he kept it all, without the feeling that the complexities of the ins and outs were being dumbed down for ease of consumption. A well crafted thorough walk in the shoes of a scum-bag schemer.

A sometimes eerie read amidst all of the financial turmoil and Wall Street finger pointing happening, as I realized that this gargantuan liar that was Pearlman, squandered so many fortunes in front of the hot-lights and spotlights of media; with nobody the wiser till it was too late. I closed the book scratching my head and wondering how could this happen? How could this be done unnoticed? Who could do such a thing? Gray avoids speculation as to the motives of Pearlman, and delivers the goods so readers can do their own soul searching as to why another human could intentionally murder the financial lives of so many.

It just plain read well. Tyler Gray's "The Hit Charade" took me on a walk around a carefully constructed web of lies and kept the balance while delivering the facts amongst the spins and yarns that fell from the chubby faced fake. In the end, with all of Pearlman's pandering to be dubbed "papa" by his victims the only thing he managed to father were his lies. Take a bow fat man.

One of the more amazing things about Lou Pearlman is that he cheated so many people in so many different businesses for years without facing any real consequences. He swindled everybody from little old ladies to Bank of America. Tyler Gray offers a compelling and chilling tale. If you ever thought the government would protect you from scamsters, this should convince you otherwise. As someone who watched this sordid tale unfold first hand, I'm glad Tyler was able to capture it in a book

I'm always one who loves a good quick read and Gray delivers with Hit Charade. While you may find the topic to be a mishmash of odd subjects - who can understand a ponzi scheme?? - the author's writing style makes it fun and understandable, and in the end it's really more about the man and why and how he bilked thousands of people out of millions. Not to mention the chapters about how Pearlman came to build the empire we know as boy bands....

I read the whole book quickly..within a span of days. Once you start, you dont want to put it down. Whether it's reading about Pearlman's failed blimp business (yes, you read that right) to differing accounts of whether the felon actually wrestled nude with his boy band charges, it's all told in a voice that compels you to turn the page.

We all need to be aware of clergy sexual misconduct and what happened to Tony Lembo is why. So many victims of sexual abuse silently suffer alone. We all need to be aware of this problem as this is the only way we can begin to hold accountable these pedophiles.

To think Father Foley has never been charged and is free to molest more boys is insane. Let us all wake up to this now.

This book is well written and straight from the heart. The abuse is sickening and the method of grooming these boys is just pure evil genius--what kid can resist cruising around watching firemen work? What courage to have brought this out into the fresh air and sunlight, to refuse to keep silent and be a victim one more minute.

This book is easy to read, straight from the heart and interesting. I can't beleive those [...] are still free to violate other young children. I didn't realize people could act that terrible. I would reccomend this book to anyone with a few hours to sit down and read. You will have a hard time laying the book down once you start reading it.

This book was hard to put this book down. Unlike typical expose books on the Catholic Church, Tony tells us that he can't understand the motives behind Father Stephen Foley who assaulted him, or the Catholic Church who covered up years of Foley's assaults on uncountable victims, because that is not the point of "The Hopeville Fire Department." The point of this book was for Tony to tell his story and explain the life of a victim of betrayal and sexual abuse. Tony brings us into his life at an early age and we travel from his Catholic upbringings through his assault, to an adult coping with this horrific memory. He goes further than any media outlet ever can by explaining, in his own words, what's it like to live your whole life with a secret so humiliating, it takes 30 years to confess. I would recommend "The Hopeville Fire Department" to anyone because of its honesty and quick-read quality. This is a topic that everyone should be aware of.

This book touched me deeply. I finished the book in two parts. I'm so glad Tony wrote this book no one really knows what these priest did, only thing we hear is that the church is paying hugh amounts of money. His story blow me away. After reading this book I logged onto Tonylembo.com to find all kinds of media attention on this book. When I realized that this priest is still living the life, driving the same car I was stunned and sick to my stomach. If your children aren't safe with the priests of the Catholic Church who can we trust?

The book The Horizontal Man by Michael Dahl is a really good book! It's about a 13 year old kid named Finn and his uncle Stoppard. Uncle Stop is a mystery writer. Finn and uncle Stop solve several mysteries. They find out who took the Horizontal Man. They also find out who killed Larry.
I liked this book because it's a really good mystery book. Finn stays with uncle Stop because his parents have been in Ice land for 7 years! This is the greatest book ever. So read the book!!!!!!

Finnehan Zwake WAS a normal 13-year-old boy. That was until his parents, archeologists both, went missing after going to Iceland for an expadition. They've been gone, supposed dead, for seven years, during which time Finn has lived with his Best-selling mystery writting Uncle Stoppard. Finn hads grown into an almost normal life, until he discovers the dead body in the basement.
Killers and thieves, stolen gold and excavations, a boy and a nutty writer... culminating in a family secret. But mostly this whet's Finn's tongue for adventure. He won't stop until his parents are home and safe, however many books that may take.
I truly enjoyed this book, it is the start of a series I hope doesn't end any time soon.

This book kept me captivated until the very last page! Finn Zwake and his Uncle Stoppard are just living normal lives, until Finn sees a certain gold statue, The Horizontal Man, in his neighbor Pablo's apartment. The same Horizontal Man that his parents, who were...I mean, ARE archeologists...the same Horizontal Man that they found when digging in Agualar. "You threw up on a Horizontal Man?" asks his uncle when Finn unsuccessfully attempts to explain what has happened. This leads to reminding his uncle that they have loads of gold in their storage room in the basement--which is shared with Pablo, by the way--and they find the gold (which was, just like the Horizontal Man, all from the Agualar expedition) along with something else. A dead body. "Before I saw the dead body, I used to like raisins," claims Finn in the first sentence of the book. From that sentence on, the book is one of the most hilarious mysteries I have ever read. Perfect for fans of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.

Dahl provides some new insight into the traditional young-detective genre with the oh-so-curious Finnegan Zwake. His first mystery is thoroughly drawn and funny. The only jarring detail was that I thought there was one misleading bit and not enough clues to divulge the identity of the murderer. All in all, though, a good debut novel with very interesting central characters.

This is a great book for both kids and adults. I found Finnegan Zwake to be a charming and inquisitive 13 year old who is up for the challenge of a murder mystery. This is very well written, and kept me guessing right up until the very end. Perfect balance of suspense and humor -- I eagerly await the second installment of Finn's adventures!

Graham Salisbury's HOUSE OF THE RED FISH provides a companion novel to UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN, so familiarity with the prior story will lend uniformity and smooth transition to this ongoing tale of Tomi Nakaji. Here it's a year after his father and grandfather were arrested after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and everyone's waiting for another attack. Japanese American Tomi and his family discover new enemies among old friends as they face new challenges.

THE HOUSE OF THE RED FISH pulses with energy, enthralling images, captivating narrative and most of all, empathy for the downtrodden.

THE HOUSE OF THE RED FISH is the house of Tomi, his little sister, Grand'pa Joji, his mom and dad. A flying red paper Fish on top of the house is a Japanese emblem for a happy family in times of peace. They live on the property of the Davis family, home also to Keen who is a bully. Keen also hates Tomi and his
family because they are Japanese.

The narrative takes place in Hawaii just before and after Pearl Harbour, when Japanese-Americans were perceived as the enemy.

After his dad and grand'pa Joji were incarcerated as prisoners of war, Tomi has one goal and that is to retrieve his fisherman father's sampan that was sunk because it was Japanese. A great deal of imagination and creativity must be used in order to bring it back to the surface. Without doubt, Keen will find ways to stop him from reaching his goal. Surprisingly, grand-pa Joji returns, as he was saved by Mrs. Davis and he secretly guides his grandson on how to save the sampan for Keen's dad, whom he hopes will soon be out of the concentration camps that were built for Japanese-Americans.

Tomi, his little sister and all his friends show a sense of camaraderie that one can really feel in Hawaii. In fact, Graham Salisbury's family has lived in Hawaii since the 1800 which makes him well versed in the lingo and the sense of friendship that exists among them.

THE HOUSE OF THE RED FISH conveys a message of understanding the perceived enemy in times of war. He also conveys a sense of pride in one's heritage.

The author's style is entertaining and endearing. We get to root for the good guys and boo for the bullies. Dialogue is fast and witty. Characters are so true to life that you will find yourself cheering for the winners.

Graham Salisbury's foray into a delicate subject is highly recommended.

Lily Azerad-Goldman, Artist and Bookreviewer for Bookpleasures

Here it is, HOUSE OF THE RED FISH, the eagerly awaited sequel to Graham Salisbury's UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN. Readers already acquainted with Tomi and Billy (and their neighbor but "enemy" Keet Wilson) will delight in renewing friendships and going on more adventures in Salisbury's newest novel. HOUSE OF THE RED FISH opens with a brief flashback to September 1941, but the next chapter takes us to March 1943. Tomi Nakaji and Billy Davis, still best friends, are now ninth graders at Roosevelt High. Salisbury makes readers very aware of the ravages of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the way life in Hawaii has changed in the interim for everyone, but especially for Japanese Americans like narrator Tomi and his family. The setting details subtly include many aspects of life in Hawaii during World War II: the boys get stopped, asked for their ID's, and warned that they should also have their gas masks with them; barbed wire fences stretch across the beaches; cardboard must cover the windows of their home each night; curfew is imposed on all residents. The World War II years in Hawaii were rife with prejudice against Japanese Americans--often suspected to be "enemy aliens" (43). However, Salisbury shows how Billy's haole family accept his friendship with Tomi and how Billy himself, paradoxically wise beyond his years yet still charmingly naïve, explains to Tomi why Keet is no longer his friend. Tomi tells us: "It took me a week to force it out of him [Billy]. Keet Wilson turned on me because I was Japanese, and he had been told by his friends at school that white guys weren't supposed to like Japanese guys" (17).

Early in the novel, the boys amble down to the nearby Ala Wai Canal where Papa's sampan, sunk by the U.S. Army one day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, is still visible just below the surface of the muddy water. The boat quickly becomes a symbol of the way life was before the attack ("in the before time"), when Tomi, Papa and Grampa Joji were together before the Army took Papa and Grampa away to U.S. Army prison camps. It also represents Tomi's personal war, which Salisbury adeptly counterpoints with the Big war of the real world. The novel follows Tomi engaging in his battles against the backdrop of the bigger war; we see the young dragon in the making carrying on the traditions of his ancestors; even at the end of the novel, Salisbury leaves Tomi still at war: "How many more battles stood between me and the day Papa would finally come home?" (287)

As Tomi and Billy battle to raise the Taiyo Maru from its muddy prison, their conflict with Keet Wilson and his blatant prejudice against the Japanese crescendos. Salisbury incorporates many details of Japanese culture and values. (Note: Salisbury includes a helpful glossary of Hawaiian and Japanese phrases and words at the end of the book.) The mantra Tomi remembers from his father, "Don't shame the family. Be helpful, be generous, be accepting," shows the importance of this and other values being passed from generation to generation (15). Family treasures such as the "family katana or samurai, symbol of our family's long history" had to be hidden to protect them from being confiscated by the government. Anything deemed "Japanese" could cast suspicion on the family's loyalty to America. Nevertheless, Keet seems to take every opportunity to cast aspersions on Tomi's family, culture, and values.

The title of the novel (and related title of Chapter 29 "The Red Fish") comes from another Japanese tradition: the "Koi-nobori. Carp made of paper looking like kites" hanging from a bamboo pole above Tomi's house for Boys' Day. Tomi tells us: "The four colorful fish streamers" represent the family: "Just below Papa's and Mama's blue and white ones was me--the red fish, a dragon in the making" (134). This tradition is vibrantly depicted on the novel's cover, too. The red splash of the third carp and the red letters of the last words of the title draw the reader's eye to this important part of the predominantly blue and green cover illustration.

HOUSE OF THE RED FISH focuses on themes and positive character traits in other novels by Salisbury: the relationship between father and son, the importance of tradition, and values such as integrity and perseverance. HOUSE OF THE RED FISH includes several father and son relationships; however, it is Salisbury's contrast of Keet and his father's relationship with that of Tomi and Papa that makes the strongest statement. Keet's father seems oblivious to even his most destructive acting out, but readers get strong sense that Tomi's father will someday be proud to see that his son's overriding motivation was to act as his missing father would want him to ("This is all for you, Papa, I thought. All for you.") (213).

Rich discussions could certainly flow in class or small reading groups from issues such as these in HOUSE OF THE RED FISH. Because Salisbury's characters are so believable, so human, middle school readers can relate to their conflicts and see similar situations in their own lives. I highly recommend this book not only to young readers who enjoyed UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN but also to parents and educators who want to point their charges to a well-written, engaging, inspiring, historical novel.

Salisbury's newest book, House of the Red Fish, is a masterful exploration of the nuances of prejudice, touching on many of the issues (honor, courage, friendship, and the bond between fathers and sons) that Salisbury has probed in his earlier work.

The attack on Pearl Harbor didn't only steal Tomi's father and grandfather from his life (they were arrested after the attack). It stole his dream of fishing with his father on his father's boat, the Taiyo Maru, which is sitting now underwater, sunk by the Navy under suspicion that it and its owner might aid invading Japanese forces.

Tomi wants to bring the boat back to the surface and dry it out so that it's ready to sail out to sea when his father returns home from prison. Tomi also wants to make his absent father proud... to carry on the Japanese tradition of sons honoring their fathers.

To succeed, Tomi must persevere in the face of trouble just like the koi-the fish that symbolizes masculinity and strength because it can swim upstream against strong currents.

But it's not easy for Tomi to remain loyal to his family's Japanese heritage or his father's admonitions not to fight, not to shame the family, especially when the red paper koi that his mother raises on a bamboo pole above the roof to celebrate Tango-no-Sekku (Boy's Festival) is destroyed.

Tomi's relationships with his friends, a mix of haole (white), Portugese, Hawaiian, and Japanese boys, ring true to life as they fend off attacks by a white-only gang, and work together to raise Tomi's father's boat from the canal.

In the end, House of the Red Fish is a book about the joy and bonds of friendship, as well as what it truly means to look beneath a person's skin color and speech patterns to understand what he's truly made of.

It's also a story about one boy's struggle to live with integrity in the face of enormous prejudice, while offering eloquent testimony to the courage and loyalty displayed by Japanese Americans during a difficult time in American history.

Sequels are tricky beasties and any author that attempts one is going to have to wrangle with a variety of problems. On the one hand, they have to satisfy their core fan base. The people who adored the earlier book and presumably clamored for a sequel in the first place. Then you have the new crop of readers. This is especially true with children's fiction. Kids grow up and often abandon the authors they loved when they were young (at least through adolescence). In 1994 Graham Salisbury wrote the award winning "Under the Blood-Red Sun". Now, twelve years later, he has come out with a long-awaited sequel, "House of the Red Fish". Fortunately, Salisbury's earlier title is so well-known that the requisite fan-base is already in place and ready. However, there's yet another problem with writing sequels. They have to be able to stand on their own. If you absolutely have to have read the previous book, then your sequel, nice as it is, is going to collapse under its own weight. And weighty books of this nature don't win awards. I, personally, had never read "Under the Blood-Red Sun", so I felt that I was in a pretty good position to determine how well "House of the Red Fish" stood on its own two feet. The advantage to having never read a work by an author like Graham Salisbury is that his talents have a tendency whop you upside the head and leave you wanting more. "House of the Red Fish" is everything an author would want out of a title. Consider this puppy a contender.

Tomi is still dealing with the fact that his father and grampa are interned far from home merely because they are of Japanese ancestry. It's 1943 and America is at war with Japan, many of its white citizens terrified of their Asian neighbors. Living on Honolulu, Tomi and his best friend Billy go to school and try to avoid the nasty bully Keet, who (by awful coincidence) just happens to be the son of his mother's employers. Then Tomi comes up with a crazy plan. It happens while he and Billy are staring at his father's underwater sampan fishing boat, sunk not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor. If Tomi can raise this boat and fix it up, he may have a chance at having it in working condition when his father is finally released from his internment. The only problem is that Keet knows of the plan and will do everything in his power to stop Tomi and his friends. Worse still, raising the boat might mean putting his family's home and livelihood in danger. But when Grampa Joji is released from his imprisonment, Tomi finds an unlikely ally in helping him achieve his goal.

The characters in this book are remarkable. And the best of these, without a doubt, is Grampa. He's a cranky crochety old man with a single-minded tenacity that the reader grows to adore. I personally am going to adopt his standard phrase of "Confonnit" into my own vocabulary. Grampa has a great sense of pride, worth, and history. Salisbury complicates things nicely, however, when he has Grampa repeatedly give some of the family's chickens, eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, string beans, and fish to their landowners, the nasty Wilsons. Salisbury doesn't shy away from complexity. I mean, Billy's pretty straightforwardly super. Ditto Billy's family. But Tomi has his doubts and requisite crises of faith once in a while. And as for villains, Keet is marvelous. By the end of the book you begin to think that if someone doesn't give that punk a swift kick in the butt then you're going to have to do it personally. I did find that the oddest thing about reading this book without having so much as glanced at its predecessor was that I had very little idea of who belonged to what race. Billy's white and Tomi's of Japanese ancestry. Check. Got it. But how about their friends Mose and Rico? Are they Filipino? Of Hawaiian ancestry? It didn't much matter to the story, but it would have been nice to get a little clarification.

As a writer, Salisbury seems to be utterly in control of each and every scene in this book. Yes, it's a little long, but I can't imagine removing so much as a sentence. Everything fits here. The people. The events. And definitely the climax. The tension really escalates by the end of the book too. I kept finding myself nervously counting the number of pages left against how far our heroes were in their plans. I actually found myself hoping that Keet and his lackeys wouldn't show up and that maybe if I read fast enough I could beat them to the end. Not to give anything away, but no such luck. Salisbury's grasp of Hawaiian Pidjin is also superb. I've a friend born and raised in Honolulu (she attended Punahou, Keet's school in this book) who once told me that her mother would severely punish her if she ever heard her daughter utter casual Pidjin words or phrases. I wonder what her mom would have thought of the Glossary of terms in the back then.

Works of historical fiction tend to suffer from a dire fate: They're humorless. Dry dull titles without a spark of wit or whimsy to save their soul. I expected this of "House of the Red Fish", frankly. Somehow 280-some page tomes always look like they'll be deadly serious. How wrong I was. Salisbury's a great writer, yes. But he's so great partly because he lets, for lack of a better term, his boys be boys. When Keet decides to invade Billy's bomb shelter there a wonderful moment where the reader knows what Keet doesn't... that the shelter is chock full of nasty centipedes. Oh, that's good stuff. And the nice thing is that even when the plot is turning dire and our heroes have to raise this boat as soon as they can, characters still play jokes on one another, laugh, and have a good time. The fact that you're having a good time right alongside them just happens to be a nice bonus.

So the good news is that I'm a Graham Salisbury convert. The bad news is that I don't want to wait another twelve years to continue Tomi's story. I comfort myself with knowing that since kids today still read and love "Under the Blood-Red Sun", I'm sure they'll love both this book and any others that Salisbury happens to come out with in the course of his lifetime. It will be worth the wait.