The Angle Quickest for Flight Review

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(More customer reviews)"The Angle Quickest for Flight", Kotler's first novel, reads as well as any intellectual thriller in the past 5 years. It has everything you could ask for in a mystery: an ancient Kabbalistic text (the Sefer ha-Zaviot) stolen by the Catholic church during the inquisition, fabled archives of hidden knowledge, secret societies and the mad Padre Isosceles hell-bent upon acquiring the Zaviot for the knowledge within. All this, however, misses the true beauty of the book: outstanding character development. Most mysteries suffer from a host of 2-dimensional characters leaving the reader remembering the plot but forgetting who was in the story. Not so in this book- Kotler's characters are so real you will finish being convinced that you knew them at some point in your life. There's a lot of information packed into the beginning of the book as you are introduced to a cast of characters, several parallel plot lines and a brief history of mysticism. As you continue you will find all this tied together in a climax that won't let you put the book down and leaves you wanting more.

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How Dinosaurs Took Flight: The Fossils, the Science, What We Think We Know, and Mysteries Yet Unsolved (Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12 (Awards)) Review

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(More customer reviews)This slim (64 pages) volume carries a hefty price tag, but at this point it's worth it, because there isn't a lot on the market covering the dinosaurs-with-feathers subject (so far as I know). Dr. Xu Xing, who wrote the foreward, is a notable character in the unfolding drama of feathered fossils being found in China.
I consider this book a bit radical in that it runs with the theory of dinosaurs being birds (or was it vice versa?), calling them all dinosaurs: nonavian dinosaurs for the "dinosaurs" and avian dinosaurs for the "birds." It is written in a fairly simple and straightforward manner; I think it is a YA title although I mostly bought it for myself (as a parent having just taken the kids to see the James Gurney's Dinotopia exhibit and activites at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge MA). I think one might want to read it with a child, so that, for example, a younger reader might not end up being teased for insisting that birds are dinosaurs. The theory is out there, it's current, but it's not completely validated yet. I would like to see more well illustrated books on the subject, but this one is a great start.

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How did dinosaurs get feathers? How did they start flying? What use were feathers to dinosaurs that didn't fly? Chris Sloan's 2000 book Feathered Dinosaurs introduced kids to the radical idea that some dinosaurs had feathers and that birds are, in fact, a subset of dinosaurs. In How Dinosaurs Took Flight, Sloan returns to these ancient feathered creatures to introduce kids to the fascinating new finds—including a Tyrannosaur with feathers and a dinosaur with not just two but four wings. The author focuses on the tough new questions scientists are asking right now, the evidence they've gathered, the hypotheses that are developing from the evidence, and the unknowns that remain. This book will be the most up-to-date children's book on this topic on the market.

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Flight of the Goose Review

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(More customer reviews)That FLIGHT OF THE GOOSE is a first novel by Lesley Thomas is the first hurdle the reader must overcome, so rich in detail, research, and technical finesse are the over four hundred pages of this fascinating book. What does become obvious with even the first few pages is the fact that here is a writer who can address significant world environment issues while building love stories - between a remarkably real Inupiat girl and a Swedish scientist, between the world of the spirit and the realm of the universe, and between the mysteries of past traditions with those beings longing to preserve the enormous habitat that is transforming before our grieving eyes - stories that intermingle to create a total experience that simply refuses to end with the closing of the final cover.
Thomas opens her book with a Prologue and with words like the following the reader is assured the presence of an enriching encounter: 'Let me tell what happened, and don't ask at the end what the message is. Whatever is already in us at birth, we find again in stories. We see it in the face of the moon, in the face of our lover, in our own death, in the flight of the goose.' From this point she unravels the Norn's threadball of time relating the changes that are taking place in Alaska in 1971, mixing the daily arduous charges of living with distant echoes of world events that are reshaping the life of our main character (Gretchen/Kayuqtuq). Thomas builds a blindingly realistic love story between the native, orphaned, shamanistic Kayuqtuq with ornithologist, peace advocate Leif Trygvesen and in creating a fully rounded and metaphorically meaningful relationship Thomas resorts to sharing the story from the vantage of both of these unique souls. From this launching point we learn about Eskimo traits and foods and history and manner of survival in a culture that is being eroded by technologic 'civilization', a series of sidebar stories that Thomas always manages to remain centered and focused while expanding the scope of her immensely interesting and important story.
FLIGHT OF THE GOOSE is a novel so rich that deserves to be in the library of everyone who values fine storytelling while simultaneously respecting the threats and conditions of change that are only now being brought to our attention by the environmentalists. To manage to accomplish this service to mankind in as fine a book as this establishes Lesley Thomas as an important author. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 07

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Flight of the Goose: A Story of the Far Northis unique award-winning literary fiction set in the Alaskan Arctic at the birth of the environmental and Native rights movements.Kayuqtuq - the red fox - seeks to gain respect in her village through the outlawed path of shamanism. Her plan leads to tragedy when she interferes with a bird scientist who has come to research oil spills - and evade the draft. Told from their two perspectives, Flight of the Goose is a tale of cultural conflict, spiritual awakening, redemption and love in a time when things are, to use the words of an old arctic shaman, no longer familiar .This is a classic journey of the hero, a coming-of-age tale woven with ecology, adventure and myth. Danger and violence erupt from villains and the wilderness itself. The reader becomes immersed in the lives of indigenous and outside characters in the remote village: witches, missionaries, sport hunters, grandmothers, bush pilots, oil men, evil spirits, bears and geese. Under it all is a universal story of passion - between a man and a woman, community, and love for the Earth. Quotes from shamans and seers from many ancient cultures enrich the text. Lesley Thomas writes from first hand experience. Her books authenticity with its research into Inuit culture, history, wildlife and environmental perils is endorsed by experts; Flight of the Goose is read at Boston University, University of Alaska, shamanic schools, and in book clubs across the world.

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