Daisy Comes Home

Amazon.com

Picked on, pecked, and jostled, Daisy the hen is not quite as happy as her Happy Hens market basket might suggest. One evening, fed up with the other pushy hens, Daisy crawls into one of the baskets by the river, and falls asleep. Unaware of the rising river, this put-upon bird winds up floating downstream, past marauding monkeys, snorting water buffalo, and a greedy fisherman. Will Daisy ever make her way back to the home of the little girl Mei Mei and the six happiest hens in all of China? Breaking away from her usual Scandinavian illustrations and stories, Jan Brett embraces the beauty of China in this Story About Ping-inspired picture book. Bamboo poles frame the lavish illustrations of picturesque villages, strangely shaped mountains (Brett incorporates images of the animals into the ranges), and river-life characters. As in The Hat and her many other tales, Brett advances the plot with miniature border details. (Ages 4 to 7) --Emilie Coulter

Book Description

Mei-Mei had the six happiest hens in China. She gave them treats and fresh hay baths, and when she called to them-gu gu gu gu gu!-they all ran to her as fast as they could. But one of the hens, Daisy, was not always so happy. The other hens picked on Daisy and pushed her off the perch every night. Then one day, Daisy is accidentally washed out onto the river in a basket and she soon learns to stand up for herself. When she finds her way home, this plucky little hen is no longer afraid as she bravely takes her place on the roost.

Jan Brett traveled to China to do research for the glorious illustrations in this heart-warming tale of self-esteem and self-confidence.

Customer Reviews:

Review of Daisy Comes Home.......2003-03-25

Jan Brettýs latest book, Daisy Comes Home is a charming book for young children. The story takes place in a rural village in China along the Li River. A young girl named Mei Mei is known for having the healthiest and happiest hens in the village. She carries the eggs from the hens in a basket that says ýHappy Hensý into the village to sell. The story begins by looking back to the time when not all of Mei Meiýs chickens were happy. Even though Mei Mei fed them treats, gave them fresh hay for their beds, and bathed them, the one called Daisy was not happy. The reason being that all the other hens always picked on her and were very mean to her. They always pushed her off of the perch so she had to sleep on the cold, hard ground.
One night, she had had enough of this and found a market basket near the river bank to sleep in. She fell right to sleep and did not notice the river creeping up the bank. The basket floated away, with Daisy in it. She woke up when the basket started tipping and realized that she was had floated away from home. As she traveled down the river, Daisy had to defend herself against a dog, a water buffalo, and red-tailed monkeys. Her ýHappy Hensý basket ran into a fisherman claimed her and took her into the village to sell.
By this time, Mei Mei had looked all day for her lost hen and decided that she must go into town to sell the eggs from the other hens. She carried the ýHappy Hensý baskets into town and arranged her place to sell the eggs. A friend told Mei Mei that a fisherman had carried one of her baskets into town with one of the hens. She rushed off to find her missing hen and told the fisherman that Daisy belonged to her. The fisherman said that he found the hen so he got to keep her. Mei Mei called to her hen and Daisy ran to her upon hearing the familiar call. The girl ran home with the hen as fast as she could.
One would assume that the other hens would be glad to have the missing Daisy back home, but they tried to treat her as they always had. Daisy had learned a lot on her adventure and could now defend herself. She flapped her wings, pecked, and pushed the other hens back; they could no longer push her around. So, she was given a place to perch alongside the rest of them. Now, all six of the hens are healthy and happy.
The beautiful pictures in this book also tell the story. The full spread beautifully depicts the main idea on each page. Not only is the main idea told, but the audience is allowed to peek into something else that is occurring or is about to occur through small windows in two corners of the page. For example, on the page where the Daisy bumps into the fisherman, a small picture of Mei Mei getting ready to go to the market is in the left corner of the page and a picture of the fisherman holding up the hen to sell is in the opposite corner. This cleverly gives the reader something more to think about and he or she follows the main storyline.

This wonderful story would make an excellent addition to a classroom of young students. The gorgeous pictures and charming tale would captivate the minds of young children as they learn about the importance of standing up for oneýs self, the need to be kind to one another, and the importance of looking after those one cares about.

Not a shelf-sitter.......2003-03-11

Jan Brett has woven together intricate illustrations with an exciting story as we float with Daisy the hen down the Li River on an unexpected trip. Daisy's encounters with a dog, a water buffalo, a pack of monkeys and a fisherman are interesting and life-like - no talking animals here! As Daisy and Daisy's owner Mei Mei make their way to the marketplace, the mountainous scenery changes often. Look carefully and you will see the mountains become dragons and snakes, chickens and monkeys. The marketplace illustrations feel authentic and up-to-date and the wonderful colors and hustle-and-bustle feel adds to the story's tension for an exciting reunion! Brett's illustrations are wonderfully layered with Chinese textures and materials from china pattern designs to bamboo screens. Beautifully illustrated and skillfully told, Daisy Comes Home is sure to be one of those favorites that asks to be read over and over again.

Daisy The Amazing.......2002-10-23

Daisy Comes Home was a really good book. I would give this book five stars. There is alot of chinese calligraphy in this book. If you can read the calligraphy, this would be a good book for you. The story was about a runaway hen who is found by the nine year old girl owner. To find out more read this book.

a very "real" story.......2002-08-08

My 5-year-old daughter and I read this with a great deal of delight. The story is exciting, and what makes it very special is its authenticity. Daisy isn't a human-like character, she does only real hen things; Mei Mei isn't a super-clever, cutesy ethnic character, she's a young Chinese girl who loves her hens. Together, they overcome the scary, vulnerable situations they find themselves in just by doing hen and little girl things. All of this with fascinating, rich illustrations of the Li River region of southern China that are also very true to life. A tale for the heart and a treat for the eyes.

Brett's warm drawings are a beautiful embellishment.......2002-04-13

Mei Mei has the happiest hens in China: she pampers them. But hen Daisy is not happy: she faces bullying from the others and when she finds herself lost and away from home, she must remember the attitudes of her fellow hens in order to survive. Brett's warm drawings are a beautiful embellishment.

Lucita Comes Home to Oaxaca: Regresa a Oaxaca (The Mexican American Girls Series)

Average customer rating:

Great Book for My Students Reading in Spanish and English!

Lucita Comes Home to Oaxaca: Regresa a Oaxaca (The Mexican American Girls Series)
Robin B. Cano , and Rafael E. Ricardez
Manufacturer: Laredo Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Nonfiction | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Great Book for My Students Reading in Spanish and English! .......2004-12-14

Actually this is a great book for all students who read either English or Spanish. I enjoyed it and found it very sweet. A little girl gets sent to stay with her relatives in the town she was born in. How does she feel about it?

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Marj Casswell's "A Place to Come Home To" Articulates the High Cost of Settling

A Place to Come Home To
Marj Casswell
Manufacturer: PublishAmerica
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1424149762
Release Date: 2006-11-06

Book Description

Meredith Coopersmith returns to Virginia after 20 years, weighed down with vague dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Her mother is deceased and her aging father remains in the ancestral home, once the center of a thriving four hundred acre tobacco farm, which now consists of one acre of property, surrounded by sprawling development. She wanders into her childhood bedroom and discovers her diary written when she was 10, the year that forever changed her family—and led her to make choices she now regrets. Can she go home again?

Customer Reviews:

Marj Casswell's "A Place to Come Home To" Articulates the High Cost of Settling.......2007-09-05

Humans, even nomads, are settlers at heart. We want a place to come home to, a hearth to warm our hands around, and other humans to love us. Marj Casswell in "A Place to Come Home To" tells a story of these ordinary yearnings and the high price they exact from us.

In the opening frame of the novel a 40-year-old woman returns to her father's house where in her girlhood their rich Virginia tobacco farmland stretched in every direction. Time and change have intervened. Her mother and the land are gone, but six diaries from the year she was ten call out to her when she revisits her old room. The ending frame ripples through the years between ten and now, interpreting her life through the insights gained in her reflection the diaries have brought.

While the opening and closing frames give us a sense of context and the passage of time, the guts and heart of the book lie in the 38 chapters between these frames, as all revealing photographs do. Each chapter begins with an excerpt from these diaries written in the summer of 1956 when everything changed and the gravel pit came. The diary excerpts serve as epigrammatic themes for what lies ahead in each chapter. I read the book twice, and on the second reading, I began to title the chapters to keep better track of the ebb and flow of the book's action and interludes.

"A Place to Come Home To" is both a coming of age story for 10-year-old Meredith (Merri) Coopersmith and a losing of an age. On an intimate canvas Casswell paints the sweeping story of the loss of the family farms and the end of an era. No more will there be a time when the small family farm is a viable way of life.

Both within the Coopersmith nuclear family and extended family we see how land exerts its pull on some and how the pleasures of the city call others. Yearning, hard work, and even strategy cannot save the farm or even the innocence of the community. The gravel pit opens its gaping yaw and swallows up farm land that later will, in turn, be swallowed up by housing developments.

Casswell shows the turbulence inside normalcy. As the world around her changes, the rules around her change, curtailing her adventures on the farm. But her curiosity cannot be held in check. I feared something terrible would happen to Merri in the gravel pits.

Instead, we're shown in delicate and realistic detail the emotional and spiritual development of a young girl facing family and community conflict and dissolution of life as previously known. We are let inside the interior world of her imaginative daydreams and fantasies. Her parents love her and take good care of her, yet in spite of that, she feels the tension present in their marriage and wants to make it better for them in order to stabilize her world. She carries an adult sense of responsibility that alters her childhood, in spite of her Aunt Elizabeth's efforts to give her a childhood without cares back to her.

A thread of settling runs through the book--both the positive and negative conations. Merri's ancestors come to the land as settlers and set up a lumber mill. But, in a kind of fall from Eden, the first settling occurs: "they had to sell off most of the land with trees...because they needed money to live. That's when they went to growing tobacco. Everybody around here was [growing] it," her Uncle Lowell (who carries the spirit of the land) explains to her.

This selling off the resources of the land for cash becomes a precursor for the gravel pit contract that brings evil things into a young girl's world. Each generation has struggled with how to make a living off the land. Arguments have sprung up in each generation. There are those who want to husband and steward the land and those who are just desperate to make a go of it. As a result there's a slow decline of the land, and a sense of decay and struggle, despite the wish to restore what's been lost and the honoring of hard times to save a legacy.

The tension in the Coopersmith marriage between Ted and Ellie springs from these differences, as husband and wife want different things. Ted, working a job in town so he can stay on the farm, is sober and focused on labor. Ellie, a good mother, but a city girl at heart yearning for music, dancing, flower gardens, and good times. She's a city girl transplanted to the country, and the transplant didn't take. She's lonely. Ellie finds her husband boring, but has settled down into the marriage, if restlessly, and after a costly error. In this case she settles for a lack of vibrancy in relationship in order to avoid divorce and dies six years later. And Ted settles into his workshop, a world where there are things he can fix and do something about.

Casswell writes of subtle shifts through thematic explorations more than a novel driven by action and plot. This is a quiet, thoughtful and reflective story punctuated by lyrical passages of the workings of nature and a child's delight in the freedom of exploring the outdoors.

"A Place to Come Home To" gives us a big story in a small package. Its over-riding theme is that time moves on and we must change with the times.

Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

Come and Eat With Us (Discovery Flaps) (Welcome Flaps)

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Come and Eat With Us (Discovery Flaps) (Welcome Flaps)

Manufacturer: Child's Play International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0859537927

Book Description

The way people live is different in many parts of the world. But whether rich or poor, wherever they live, people share the same hopes and dreams and values: kindness, hospitality, love of children. These books, created with and for Oxfam, help us to discover what makes us different and what binds us together.
8" x 8" For children ages 5-8

A Place to Come Home to (Carlson, Melody. Whispering Pines Series.)

Average customer rating:

Charming and captivating!

A Place to Come Home to (Carlson, Melody. Whispering Pines Series.)
Melody Carlson
Manufacturer: Harvest House Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Fiction | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0736900535

Customer Reviews:

Charming and captivating!.......1999-12-07

Melody Carlson has created fascinating, realistic characters and a charming town in Pine Mountain. The best part of her book is that it is the first in a series! I, for one, can't wait for the next book. I especially enjoyed the simultaneous renovation of the town, Maggie's house, and her heart!

Average customer rating:

Come Home With Us (Discovery Flaps)

Manufacturer: Child's Play International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Architecture | Arts & Music | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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Customs & Traditions | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0859537919

Book Description

The Brewster Place story: A dream come true

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The Brewster Place story: A dream come true
Minnie Dubbs Millbrook
Manufacturer: Congregational Home
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006XTLVK

Come Away Home: Hilton Head Is Calling You Home

Average customer rating:

a heart-warming story and perfect gift

Come Away Home: Hilton Head Is Calling You Home
Kat Shehata , and Robert D. Slane
Manufacturer: Angel Bea Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0971784337

Book Description

Based on the screenplay Come Away Home, this heartwarming story chronicles the generational struggles between a young girl and her grandfather. Finding the prospect of spending the entire summer with her grandfather on Hilton Head Island unbearable, Annie stages a daring escape out to sea by taking her grandfather's rickety old boat. Quickly discovering that life on the island may not be as bad as she envisioned when she falls overboard and is rescued by a washed-up local celebrity, Annie develops a greater appreciation for both her grandfather and the island's charm and decides to give the situation another chance. Together she and her new friend Gregg plan a surprise that will make this the most memorable summer of her grandfather's lifetime. Entertaining lyrics to the song "Come Away Home," written by noted Hilton Head songwriter Gregg Russell, further enhance the story and evoke the flavor of the island.

Customer Reviews:

a heart-warming story and perfect gift.......2006-03-03

I bought this book as a gift for a friend's daughter. She told me that her daughter has had her and her husband read it to her every night for the past 10 days. The beautiful illustrations and the heartwarming story make it a wonderful gift and straying from the usual children's books makes it a sure bet that they don't already have 3 copies of it!

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Come to My Place (In My World Series)
Bobbie Kalman
Manufacturer: Crabtree Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0865050627

How to Hide Almost Anything: Or, Come Home, America, and Find Your Treasures Where You Stashed Them

Average customer rating:

useful, and fun
Now where did I hide it?
a book you cant put down
The best and only book of its kind

How to Hide Almost Anything: Or, Come Home, America, and Find Your Treasures Where You Stashed Them
David Krotz
Manufacturer: Collier Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 002080590X

Customer Reviews:

useful, and fun.......2006-06-23

Not only is this information incredibly useful but its also alot of fun to read. I love how it goes from hiding places for little things to large and large things until finally some toungue-in-cheek jokes about hiding a house or hiding a corporation

Now where did I hide it?.......2004-09-20

This book has been around for quite a while;published in 1975.I came across it recently and got a kick out of it.The book is an easy 1-2 hour read.It is not so much a specific how-to book;but it does give examples of the type of hiding spaces that can be easily created by just about anyone;regardless of tools or skills.what is really needed is a bit of ingenuity.
What the hider has to do is think of a cavity that exists or can be created that is large enough to conceal their "treasure".Of course the smaller the object ,the simpler the problem becomes.Another thing to consider is a way to indicate to you that someone has found your spot but hasn't let on.A good example of this is often used in a Western series I read called "Longarm".To tell if anyone has entered his hotel room and may still be there is to insert a matchstick somewhere between the door and the doorjam.Should anyone enter it drops out.There are a lot of good ideas in the book,but I think the author has overlooked some very good and extremely simple ones.Examples I am thinking about are any jar,can,container, box,etc.especially if it also has something else more mundane in it.How about this for example.You want to hide a couple of keys .Why not put them in the middle of a glass jar of nuts and bolts and leave the jar on top of your workbench?Or wrap them in some tissue and shove them into the toe of an old boot?The point being to find a spot that the looker would dismiss as pointless or would mean an endless amount of useless time to search.
You should also give some thought to what you should hide.Particularly if you are a homeowner;you should have a key hidden outside to be there for any family member should they forget,lose,or whatever need to get it.Somewhere as simple as in a cedar tree which doesn't lose its leaves.Under a stone in the garden might be OK someplaces;but maybe a poor choice here in Canada where there might bt three feet of ice and snow when you need it. Anyway, a great little book.As to any others like it;I noticed one by the same title by Michael Connor on Amazon,but I haven't seen it.
After you,ve created your hideaways,your next problem is to devise a method of finding them if you've forgotten where they are.You might discuss the problem with the squirrels who hide nuts;but a coded list might be a better idea.
Good reading,good hiding and good luck.
Oh yeah,one more thing,what happens in the case of your demise,maybe someone will get lucky someday.

m

a book you cant put down.......2001-04-22

I checked this book out of a library when I was in the military at a particularly boring base. I kept checking it out again and again. Its a really FUN book for anyone to read. Now that we have a house of our own, and some property worth worrying about, I want to find this book again to have on my shelf (and make some use of).

The best and only book of its kind.......2000-06-21

How to Hide Almost Anything is a primer/manual for anyone with simple craft skills. It uses illustrations and text to describe literally dozens of places around the home that can be modified or created to hide 'almost anything.' The author has actually done these things, so his advice on fasteners, hinges, camouflage, diversion, and construction are exact and invaluable. Hollowed-out door moldings, fake basement drains, unexpected spaces in walls, stairways, hidden empty spaces behind a wide variety of things you will find or can build and how to disguise them so no one will find them. I've looked for years and haven't found anything like this book. There are a few other books for kids hiding places, but nothing else that could be used for valuable items. The piece-de-resistance is a method for hiding an entire house!

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