Books by Jack Phillips Lowe

What's on the Other Side of the Rainbow?


By Carla Jo Masterson


Illustrated by Omra Jo Fochtman


Harmony Soup, Inc.


ISBN: 1-59975-228-X, 978-1-159975-228-0


Copyright 2006


Children's Picture Book

Feelings. What are feelings?


Where do they come from?


What are they for?

These are the questions answered in this lovely picture book by author Carla Jo Masterson.

The story begins when Mr. Positively, a fantasy, dream-like being who inhabits the rainbow and who could be viewed as God, invites children to follow him through the colors of the rainbow in a journey of self discovery. Love, anger, laughter, shyness, fear, sadness, friendship, joy—these emotions are examined as the children move from one color of the rainbow to another.

The author uses repetition techniques for rhythm and cadence and a combination of rhyme and free verse. The surrealist illustrations in soft pastels create a nice splash across the pages and complement well the serene, almost spiritual tone of the story. This is an unusual book that invites young readers to self retrospection.

What's on the other side of the rainbow? The reader will have to buy the book to find out! Suffice to say it's a magic rule that everybody should know and every child should understand from a young age. A book that isn't only a fun story, but one that leads to parent-child bonding and spiritual growth, What's on the Other Side of the Rainbow? comes highly recommended from this reviewer.

Note: This is a review of the ebook version.

If you are a writer and you want to keep from making mistakes in your writing which make you look foolish may I please be so bold as to recommend "Write Right!" The Revised Edition by expert writer Jan Venolia. This wonderful "desktop digest of punctuation, grammar, and style is indeed something every author should have available every time they write.

If you want to write right, right now then you need "Write Right" by Jan Venolia. You might be surprised that this handy writer's reference has sold nearly half a million copies and has assisted many a writer, write right. I like Write Right! for the punctuation pointers, sentence mechanics, and grammatical guidelines. You will enjoy the information on style, confusing word usage and a jam packed appendix on nearly everything you need to know to write right.

In the Introduction: "Please Read This First" Jan is very careful to help you understand that our language is always changing and with it what is and is not acceptable in writing. There are countless examples of these changes in this book, as well as do's and don'ts to help your writing. As the number one online article author in the World, I cannot thank Jan enough for this book and only wish I had, had a copy much sooner.

If you are a writer who edits their own work and could use a little re-fresher course on the subject, then I highly recommend "Write Right!" to help you write correctly, immediately. This book makes an excellent edition to your reference collection and an awesome book for the writer in your family. Consider it.

There is a firebug out there. This firebug is trying to kill those loved by Shannon Flannery in a mean, sadistic way. Shannon feels like the world is closing in on her and she doesn't know if she is next on this killers list or not. Shannon love animals. She boards horses and trains dogs for search and rescue operations wherever needed. When Shannon awakes to the smell of smoke, looks out, and sees her barns and stables with fire and smoke pouring out of them, she runs to do all she can to save her horses and dogs.

Travis Settler has a young daughter he and his now deceased wife had adopted. Travis wants to find the true birth mother of this daughter. Clues lead him to Shannon's area. Travis is "stalking" Shannon's house when the fire breaks out. Even though he did not want to let Shannon know who he was and what he was doing near her house, he ran to assist in rescuing the animals, beginning a good friendship and giving him the opening to obtain information about Dani, his daughter.

Dani, had gone online to try to find out for herself who her real mother was, alerting Shannon that her daughter was active in this search. Many members of Shannon's family had disappeared or been supposedly killed over the past several years so she was getting frantic to end this killing and find the firebug that was getting too close to her. Shannon had been suspected of killing her former husband but there was not enough proof to arrest her and prosecute her.

Shannon's brothers are very secretive in keeping information from her and she becomes more suspicious as she wonders what they were up to. She wants to build a new farm for her and her animals so she could increase the dogs she could train. Her relationship with her brothers gets very uncomfortable. Eventually she meets Travis but she has no knowledge what he is in the area for and he would not discuss much with her.

I found "Fatal Burn" to be excellent in writing style and in keeping the readers interest solidly into the story. The suspense keeps you on edge and the book has many of the usual twists and turns. It is a page-turner you will enjoy if you like mysteries. I have an interest in most any fire or arson stories I can find. "Fatal Burn" is better than most I have read but it just is not about the fire aspect that makes it so terrific.

The traditional Chinese tale was about a tiger - a tiger and a fox. But, as Donaldson soon discovered, nothing rhymes with "tiger". And as she writes in verse, that had to go.

Silly old Fox! Doesn't he know,
There's no such thing as a...

And so the Gruffalo was born.

Donaldson looks for traditional tales everywhere, especially trickster ones. Most of her picture book stories are based on these, or alternatively on some natural phenomenon which she springs unexpectedly upon us. In Monkey Puzzle Butterfly keeps locating different, highly unlikely animals for the little monkey who has lost his mum, because "None of my babies looks like me"– oh, of course! we exclaim.

She says she finds her verse, which looks so easy, "agonizing" to write. But once the first draft is done, then she enjoys the polishing – the "tweaking". She is widely known, and much awarded, for her rhyming picture books, but now she is writing for slightly older children as well. And again calling on the traditional tales.

Princess Mirror-Belle comes out of the mirror. She looks just like quiet Ellen, but she behaves completely differently. She is imperious, demanding, self-opinionated – just as fairy tale princesses are wont to be. And she makes all sorts difficulties for Ellen.

She make problems for Donaldson too, because the two girls together have to be kept out of the way of Ellen's family (who think Ellen just has an imaginary friend). Donaldson has to devise places where Ellen can believably be alone, or with people who won't report back to her family - a hospital, a friend of a friend's Christmas party, a trip to the beach with grandparents. Most of the incidents involve elements of a traditional princess tale, such as sleeping for years, or a magic golden ball.

These episodic chapters are just the right length for a bedtime story – a genre of which there are too few written at the moment. The Giant and the Joneses is longer, and a continuous story – maybe a good one as a first full read-aloud-at-bedtime novel, or an early read-yourself one.

In this, the giant girl, Jumbeelia, has a fascination with the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. One day she throws some beans over the cloudy edge of the giants' kingdom and, lo and behold, a beanstalk does grow! She descends, and collects three children (the Joneses), a sheep and a ride-on lawn-mower from the miniature land she finds below. Back at home at the top of the beanstalk, she puts them all in the doll's house, and enjoys looking after them – for a while. Eventually she gets bored and swaps them with her older brother. When he isn't seeing how well they can drive a toy truck into a wall he neglects them completely. They must find their way home. The point of view changes between the children and the giants. Donaldson loved Mary Norton's The Borrowers as a child, and this was an influence

Donaldson also calls on her own children's behaviour. One son was a collector. Another had a friend who lived in the wardrobe behind the mirror and could come out through it. She points out that people often want to know what's behind the mirror, but she doesn't know. Possibly everything Mirror-Belle says about her world is true – castles, magic slippers, flying horses, the lot!

She enjoys the sort of fantasy that involves real children in their real world, with just one magic item (like Edith Nesbit's) – "what if?" stories. She's not interested in creating complete imaginary worlds like Tolkien's. It's the delight of what happens when magic comes unexpectedly into our world that fascinates her, just as her ideas fascinate both girls and boys (pity about the pink and purple covers on Mirror-Belle!)

I met "Dr Gruffalo" - her medico husband Malcolm – who acts the Gruffalo in their touring performances. He is the only person I've met to whom the common literary description "twinkly-eyed" actually applies. In Germany they toured with her illustrator Alex Scheffler – he acted as well, doing parts in German. I wish I could see them perform – but on her website http://www.juliadonaldson.co.uk/poems.htm there is a clip of her singing one of her songs. And you'll see what a delight she is too – take a look!

Building your spiritual home…do you do so with sticks and mud or brick and mortar? Do you do so on a weak foundation of sand or a solid base of rock? Nathan Lambshead's book, "Withstanding the Storm" explains how he is building his, wall by wall.

The subtitle of this book is "Becoming the Christian You Were Meant to Be." It is basically a letter from Nathan, describing his struggles to do just that and offering guidance for Christians to follow. Unlike many other books on religion, it does not condemn other beliefs, nor try to sway non-Christians. Its target audience is already Christian…those seeking to build a spiritual home in the soul.

Nathan's foundation is not really rock, but the word of God. His walls are not brick but are Thanksgiving, Worship, Grace and Tithe. His roof is Fellowship. His guidance to readers comes through telling his story and recognizing that some church goers are just going to church, not learning to build their spiritual home through the lessons learned there. There is a difference in being thankful for happiness and being thankful for the lessons gone through to get to happiness. There is a difference in worshipping God and worshipping the church or pastor. There are actual examples from life in this book, a testimonial of Nathan's spiritual house building.

The tone is light and friendly, as a real letter would be. The sequence of unfolding his tale and lessons learned is perfectly laid out. Nathan gets his point across and has written an enjoyable piece. He sees how some might be feeling while sitting in the pew, because he may have felt that same way, and he reaches out in understanding. "Withstanding the Storm" is a heartening yet challenging examination of what might be going on in a reader's own life. Well done.

Withstanding the Storm


by Nathan Lambshead


ISBN-10: 1598864076


Review by Heather Froeschl