Review by Professor Donald Mitchell:

My two sons absolutely loved this book. They liked the idea of going ‘where the wild things are’ and the book inspired a lot of play in our house. The book nicely balances the child’s need for imaginative thinking with a sense of limits, and the pleasures of home. The illustrations clearly make this book great, because they provide a launch pad for this imaginary place. This is one of a handful of books that will bond you with your child for the rest of your lives. Don’t miss that opportunity! Unlike some children’s books which are a little boring for the adults to read after the 350th time, I always enjoyed this one because I could think new thoughts each time I read it. I think this is one of the best five books for children.

Review by Lisa Forrest:

My mother first bought this book for my oldest son. It has endured as a beloved favorite to all three of my boys. I think that children can really identify with Max and his thoughts. When he is sent to his room for misbehavior, his imagination helps him to run away to where the wild things are and collect his thoughts. I believe that the author must remember what its like to be a child and feel like no one understands, and not quite understanding yourself. Ruling the wild things helps Max understand that he just wants to feel loved, and helps parents to keep in mind that such outbursts from children are generally cries for attention–for someone to love them best of all. Mr. Sendak understands children! When you read this book it will transport you back to your own childhood and you will remember that lost feeling of being a child. Bravo, Maurice! You are my hero!

Review by M. Allen Greenbaum:

Sandra Boynton’s colorful board book is a bedtime treat! An assortment of expressive animals gets ready for bed aboard a giant boat. Boynton amusingly shows then bathing, dressing, brushing teeth (“With some on top and some beneath, they brush and brush and brush their teeth.”), and exercising together. It closes with the animals settling down for the night: “They rock and rock and rock to sleep.” Graced by Boynton’s well-known illustrations and rhythmic, lullabye-like poetry, this is a great book for infants and toddlers alike. It’s one of those books you’ll keep long after the kid(s) grow up.

Review by :

Tonight while surfing through amazon I stumbled upon Sandra Boynton. Remembering how fond my children were of her board books when they were toddlers, I read a few of the reviews. I laughed and cried thinking about how frequently “The Going To Bed Book” was read in our household and how IMPORTANT it became in our bedtime ritual. Out of curiosity I pulled the old book from our library shelves and went to my kids, now 15, 12 and 9 and began to recite a few lines. *NOTE – I didn’t actually NEED the book in order to do this. To my delight each of them perked up, smiled and began to chant the lines right along with me. They remembered the characters, the words, the way we used to read the story. You see, for them the memories of this book are wonderful as well! Sandra Boynton is gifted at coupling wonderful, readable verse with delightful illustration. Don’t miss this book and don’t hesitiate to purchase others from her collection. We have HUNDREDS of read aloud childrens books in this house. This ranks right up there with the absolute favorites and should be IMHO amongst the first books read to a cherished babe. P.S. Don’t miss “Doggies” either! If you read this one with FEELING they’ll be begging for it time and again!

Review by Nicki Heskin:

At first glance, this book appears to be simply an illustration of a kids song. Some reviewers have complained that that’s all there is..so why buy it. But actually, there is a lot more there if you look.

First of all, while illustrated songs seem like an odd choice sometimes to adults, little kids LOVE them. Invariably, they are the ones my two year old brings to me again and again. They are also the first books that kids are able to memorize. This is important because they like to pull them out when they are playing independently, and model reading on their own. What a satisfying experience for a pre-reader! Plus, for parents for whom it doesn’t come as naturally to bring music into their children’s lives, these sorts of books are a great way to do so.

This book does an excellent job of being really clear with the pictures lining up the words and the body parts. The first line, she gives each body part it’s very own page, so that they can be large and really obvious — the little animal on the page mirroring the same body part as the baby is also very adorable.

When she gets to eyes, ears, mouth and nose, she adds another dimension by putting in item on the page that you can do with that body part — for eyes – books, for ears – baby instruments, for mouth – baby food and sippy cup, and for nose – flowers. So there is a discussion element if you are reading this with your baby and choose to take it.

The back of the book has the last “knees and toes” echo…pretty cute, and also has the whole song written out under a staff with musical notes. My older daughter has taken to grabbing this ‘baby’ book and asking how to pluck it out on her little piano keyboard. So the book can have a second life for that purpose later on.

The pictures of the babies are endearing.. I love their happy little faces. It is worth noting that while the babies are definitely different “shades” — it’s hardly what I’d call multi-cultural, which is a shame because there’s no reason why it couldn’t have been. She did throw in a couple girls.

All and all, if the multicultural issue doesn’t concern you, I’d recommend this highly for your own little on, or for a gift.

Review by K. Creek:

My husband and I were trying to teach out daughter where her eyes, nose, mouth etc were. My husband has never heard this song so it was hard for him to do with our daughter. I found this book and now this is daddy’s book to read. within a week our daughter knows where her body parts are and how to say and she loves reading it with her dad. I would recommend this book.

Review by Kerstin Sjoquist:

The Indigo Dreams series is exceptional: The writing is delightful, the narration gentle and soothing, the music is dreamy and non-intrusive, and the relaxation techniques effective (even on a kid in her 5th decade of life!) Because I create guided meditation CDs for adults, I am extremely familiar with what is in the marketplace. More often than not I’m dissappointed, but I’m happy to say that Indigo Ocean Dreams delighted me. Not only does this CD help the listener to relax, it gently addresses some of the issues that can cause stress (anger, anxiety, poor self esteem, etc.), helping kids to find constructive ways to have more calm in their waking life as well. I’m looking forward to the next CD!

Review by Bonita:

My 10 year old daughter has been going through a tough time…lots of drama related to her friendships and anxiety about the foregoing issues led to pretty severe bouts of insomnia. I ordered these cds based on the reviews, and was so pleased. My daughter listened to them at bedtime, and the first night, slept the entire night through. She was able to relate to the stories, and the positive affirmations were something new to her that she truely embraced. I highly recommend that parents buy this series for their kids if they are struggling with anxiety or social concerns. I listened to them too, and found them helpful as well.

Review by JK8:

The Help is about a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi who becomes interested in the plight of the black ladies’ maids that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreaks of working in white families’ homes, all just before the Civil Rights revolution. That is the story in a nutshell – but it is so much more than just stories.

This is the best book I have read in years! I can’t recommend it enough! It is fabulous and I think they will make a movie out of it. I would compare it to the writings of Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, Truman Capote and even Margaret Mitchell. The story grabs you and doesn’t let you go. You can smell the melted tar on the Mississippi roads, the toil in the cotton fields, the grits burning on the stove. The theme is the indomitable will of human beings to survive against all odds – because of the color of their skin. It is a heart-wrenching account and you will never fondly remember the times of the Jim Crow laws (if you ever did). The pure, down and out bitchery of the white ladies who become dissatisfied with their maids and proceed to ruin their lives is portrayed vividly. The desperation of the maids’ circumstances is truly touching. I have laughed and cried my way through this book and plan to re-read it. I highly recommend this book because it is going to be talked about as the best book of the year.

Review by Karen M. Gallo:

I was lucky enough to come across an advanced reader copy of this book. Set in Mississippi during the civil rights movement, the story is narrated by the three principal characters…Minny and Aibileen, two black maids, and Miss Skeeter, a young, white woman newly graduated from college. The characters are wonderfully developed, as are the historical background and setting. As each character took her turn at narrating, she became my favorite character until the next one took over again.I was torn between not being able to put the book down and not wanting it to end.

Review by Shilom:

My son loves this series so of course I pre-ordered this book for him. It just arrived today and boy did he gush when I surprised him with it after school. I even got a hug and an “I love you!” before he disappeared with it for the remainder of the evening. He’s about halfway through with it already and stopped himself so he would have more to enjoy tomorrow. He rereads them all anyways. I also flipped through it before he came home and chuckled at the parts, the boy reminds me of my own and is probably why he loves this series so much. It is very relatable to kids without being a bad influence. I love the humor and that it keeps my son reading!

Review by T. Szefler:

First of all the whole series of Wimpy Kid books deserves its success. My kids love the books and I also read all of them myself. I think it is a great series of books not only for the children but for their parents as well. And if you pay some attention to the reading you will actually realize that the books are also in a way educational. Greg is actually a very smart kid and the simple drawings are just perfect for demonstrating humour. Another kid’s series that I like for that educational aspect is Why Some Cats are Rascals, Book 2 .

Review by Justin Lee:

I want to be fair to Dan Brown.

Elitist literary critics say that Brown is not a good writer, and that his stories are bland. I personally think that if you manage to genuinely entertain and awe your audiences, then you have accomplished something worthy of reading. I also think that “The Da Vinci Code” was nearly an impossible act to follow. People will have all sorts of crazy expectations for your next book that you won’t be able to fulfill. As such, I write this review as fair as I can, trying to assess it on its own merits, but comparisons are inevitable.

The Lost Symbol isn’t a bad book, but it is a letdown. I didn’t like this one for the same reason I didn’t like Angels and Demons as much. Also, Brown doesn’t advance the story at a good pace. A good two-thirds of the book (I’m not exaggerating, I counted the pages) was filled with variations on such a scene:

Character A: Have you heard of X?

Character B (usually Langdon): Yes, but I thought that was just a myth.

Character A shows or tells B something.

Character B reacts with shock.

Then, insert scenes of people walking from one place to another, being chased.

Then, insert the sentence “Suddenly everything made sense.” At least for the next ten pages.

Repeat.

After reading this, I had to wonder whether Brown is a writer on Lost, where people can’t seem to give straight answers, and where scenes never resolve any questions.

Here’s my advice to Dan Brown:

1. Fire your editor. There were some whole passages, even chapters, that served no purpose other than to inflate your book to an unnecessary size. I don’t mind reading big books, but I do mind reading through unnecessary words. Ch. 69, for example, is unnecessary. If your editor didn’t ask you to take it out, then he should be fired. Sorry.

2. We don’t need to know exactly how every character moves from one location to the next, which turn they took, what street they walked across. If it serves the plot, if the geography is important (as it was in Angels and Demons), then fine. Geography was crucial at certain moments in this book, but many times, the passages when you describe how someone moves from one part of a house to another part, what door they opened and closed, all that is boring and tedious.

3. Don’t write your novel like a screenplay. Whether you’ve done it consciously or not, your short chapters read as if you had in mind exactly what camera shots you expect out of an inevitable movie adaptation. Leave that to the screenwriter. If they can adapt a book like “Naked Lunch,” they can surely adapt your book as well. Write your novel as a novel.

4. Be careful of hubris. You’re in a unique and rare position that, I’m sure, many authors dream of: your books will sell millions by default and you will get a multi-million dollar movie deal without question. Good for you! Some authors handle that well (e.g. J.K. Rowling), some don’t (e.g. Stephen King, Michael Crichton). It’s not that the latter are bad writers, but that they are capable of writing some really bad stuff. Having said that, I’m not saying that The Lost Symbol is bad, just that it needs to lose about 100-pages of unnecessary, repetitive scenes. Speaking of Crichton, the reason I stopped reading him is that he became too formulaic. All his books are about a bunch of mismatched experts going to some remote location and something goes wrong. Formula isn’t bad per se. Rowling is formulaic too. Most of her books revolve around the Hogwarts school year, but she puts enough story in there to make it work. You should do more of that.

5. Know what you’re good at. You know your technology, which makes your book authentic. You also know that your readers are likely to go Google a painting or artist you mentioned and be awed by what you described. That’s great! I bet that also saves you the pain of having to request reprint permissions of artwork and such. Also, since most people don’t know their history, let alone the etymology of words they use everyday, you have literally an endless supply of stories. That’s what you’re good at. I’d say, forget the science stuff. It’s interesting, but, as with Angels and Demons, it’s an awkward fit. I don’t recall there being any modern science in The Da Vinci Code and I was fine with that.

6. Try a recurring character. Langdon is fine, but consider having a character or two that returns in subsequent books. Make them interesting, of course, and don’t make them a love interest.

So, here’s the good news. Dan Brown hasn’t nuked the fridge, at least not for me. Also, now that this book is out in the open, readers are likely to give his next book a much fairer assessment. So, I look forward to reading that, but, I probably won’t be buying it on the first day it’s out.

Review by Garvinstomp:

A quick note on the ranking: I hold 5-star ratings in reserve for the best of the best. The previous Robert Langdon books I would rate at about 4 stars for being fun reads but nothing that would resemble a literary masterpiece. I enjoyed this book significantly less than the other two, hence the two stars.

‘The Lost Symbol’ is not a bad book. While it would certainly rank it 3rd amongst the three Robert Langdon novels it is still an amusing read. I forgive Brown for his weak writing style and I accept that he writes characters that are fairly two-dimensional with little personality outside of that which pertains explicitly to the story. I accept that this novel was going to have the exact same story structure and characters as the previous two. I accept that the relationships between people will be odd. I accept that most chapters will end with a variation on his cheap cliffhanger “And then Robert couldn’t believe what he saw!” I accept all that. And yet, even with all those concessions, this one just left me flat.

When it comes to the writing style I’m not entirely sure if I should be blaming Brown or his editor (or, potentially, his lack thereof-which I guess would be blaming him). The style, while simple, could easily be smoothed out with an editor who was given some room to work. What hurts his prose is repetition of words and phrases over and over and over and over-often on the same page.

Sure, the story structure is an identical match to the first two with all the same types of characters and twists. But here’s the issue, this time is just doesn’t work like it did before. Here’s why:

1. Robert Langdon is officially a moron: He spends more time being lectured to and making wrong guesses than he does solving anything. His inner monologue serves to deliver some interesting asides, but nothing that helps forward the plot. I’m fairly certain he figured out absolutely nothing critical in the last third of the book. He was completely marginalized.

2. The science of Noetics, as used in this book, is a complete throwaway with no bearing on the plot: In A&D the science of matter and anti-matter played a significant role in the overall plot. It’s relation to the Big Bang and religion as well as its overall implementation throughout the story was essential. Here, the Noetics pops up just enough to be annoying once you realize it serves no primary purpose. Also, Noetics is barely a science. Reading this book would make one think it’s far more legitimate than it is. I was fascinated several years ago when I first heard it mentioned. Upon further research one finds that it is more wishful thinking than science and that it has very little actual research and support. Closer looks at studies (the water that has been “loved” is a favorite) show gaping holes, inconsistencies, and a complete lack of scientific method. While it may sound nice it just serves no purpose.

3. The payoff just doesn’t work: Maybe we’re out of major historical secrets to reveal to the world because this one just fizzles out. The build-up of this story often felt like it was stretching. In the previous Robert Langdon novels he finds himself moving between a great many locations surrounded by symbols and puzzles. Here, he spends his time in a handful of buildings, several of which play no role in solving anything but are simply places for him to rest or think. I often found myself turning pages, not to see what happened next, but to see if ANYTHING happened next. The reveals in the first two were very cool. This one gets such hype and then comes the “Really? That’s it. I just read 500 pages to find THAT out? There’s a few hours I’ll never have back.” moment.

I can say, unequivocally, that when the special edition with all the pictures is released I will absolutely not be purchasing it. I just don’t care to ever read this novel again. I learned a few things about history and there were some interesting parts. But overall it was just mediocre, and sometimes that’s worse than being bad.