"Abby and Jonah take a trip through the magic mirror and finally end up in Jack and the beanstalk (which happens to be Jonah's favorite story ever)--but things soon start to go wrong, and the children have to try and set the tale right, even if it means trading their dog, Prince, for the magic beans, climbing the beanstalk (three times!), and reaching an amicable settlement with the giants (Magnus and Philippa, who are really quite nice), and the...

"I knew the girl was mine. The one I had been waiting for. But this girl, the right girl, somehow didn't hear me. My barks were not loud enough to reach her. I was not big enough to jump the fence and race to her. She walked steadily on with the three dogs on the leashes, and Gail reached down into the pen. "My goodness, Max, what is all the racket about?" she asked, lifting me up. "Careful, now! You'll make me drop you!" I wiggled and whined in her...

"An excellent biography, notable for its clear, elegant style, its well articulated and well supported musical opinions, and its helpful, detailed paragraph-long descriptions of the arrangements of more than a score of recordings. This is a book primarily about the music, and although it reveals many details of Ellington's life it does so primarily to illuminate his achievement. Collier prefers--I think rightly--the sustained excellence of the late...