Guess How Much I Love You

Average customer rating:

For new baby
Good all-around baby book
Don't Like the Message
Family favorite
Wonderful - this really is a very good book

Guess How Much I Love You
Sam McBratney
Manufacturer: Candlewick
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Board book

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ASIN: 076360013X
Release Date: 1996-03-06

Anita Jeram's illustrations are bound to elicit an "aw" from even the sternest of readers; these loving rabbits are expressive, endearing, and never cloying. In turn, Sam McBratney tells a simple bedtime story of sweet familial love with humor, insight, and a delightful surprise at the end. Children and parents will love snuggling up for this one--a treat to be read again and again, just before the lights are turned out. (Click to see a sample spread. Text © 1994 by Sam McBratney. Illustrations © 1994 by Anita Jeram. Permission from Candlewick Press.) (Ages 4 to 8)

DEMEAMING, INSENSITIVE, STEREOTYPING, TOO GRAPHIC - JUST NOT CORRECT.......2007-09-01

Bo Caldwell's sepia-toned evocation of 1930s Shanghai is lovely and physical, and given the built-in drama of its setting, this first novel ought to have the vividness of a classic movie. Yet the characters remain oddly flat while world events swirl around them. Great chunks of historical exposition seem largely undigested, while Schoene's final change of heart fails to ring true. In a sense, however, these shortcomings are beside the point. The Distant Land of My Father is above all a tragic romance, albeit one with an unusual love interest. Schoene is so besotted with Shanghai that his wife and daughter are scarcely as real to him as the city itself. --Mary Park

Emily has a tendency to live with one foot out the door. For her, the best thing about a family crisis is the excuse to cut and run. When her mother dramatically announces they've found a lump, Emily gladly takes a rain check on life to be by her mother's side, leaving behind her career, her boyfriend, and those pesky, unanswerable questions about who she is and what she's doing with her life.

But back in her childhood bedroom, Emily realizes that she hasn't run fast or far enough. One evening, while her mother calls everyone in her Rolodex to brief them on her medical crisis and schedule a farewell martini, Emily opens the door, quite literally, to find her past staring her in the face. How do you forge a relationship with the father who left when you were five years old? As Emily attempts to find balance on the emotional seesaw of her life, with the help of two hopeful suitors and her Park Avenue Princess sister, she takes a no-risk job as a receptionist at her father's law firm and slowly gets to know the man she once pretended was dead.

From the brainy, breezy writer who "writes like a professional comic" (The Onion) and is "hard to stop reading once you start" (USA Today) comes a laugh-out-loud tale that confirms you can recover from your parents, the bad habit of missed opportunities, and men who romance you with meat. When opportunity knocks, it's time to stop running and start living.

Growing up, reconciling your past and looking towards the future with anticipation and a much-needed sense of humor.......2007-05-30

Displaying the same cheerful delivery and bright artwork that Katz used in Where Is Baby's Belly Button? and Toes, Ears, and Nose!, Daddy and Me tells its tale with a simple setup and sturdy flaps to lift on each two-page spread: "I'm helping Dad make something special. First we saw the wood. Where is Daddy's saw?" Two easy-to-grab flaps open to reveal that Daddy's saw is "In the... closet." Pencils, nails, screwdrivers, and a paintbrush are likewise hiding out around the shop, and it's up to Daddy's cherubic, gender-indeterminate little helper to track them down--with some help from the reader, of course, lifting up work gloves, a tool box lid, some paint cans, and a newspaper.

We finally find out what project Daddy had planned (which also explains why a cute chestnut puppy has been helping the helper all along): "At last we are finished. We made a doghouse for Henry! But where is Henry?" Readers get to lift one more flap to find out. (Baby to preschool) --Paul Hughes

Daddy is making a special project. Help him find the tools he needs by looking under the oversized flaps. Working with Daddy is so much fun!

Bonus Content from Frank Portman

Frank Portman (aka Dr. Frank) is not just an author, he's also a musician. We were lucky enough to get a few tracks and a few words from the man behind King Dork, his band The Mr. T. Experience, and the relationship between his book and his music.

"King Dork"
This is the "title track" for my new book. No matter how many times I say that (and I've now said it at least twice by my count) it still sounds strange...Anyhow, I wrote this song for my band, the Mr. T Experience, back in the mid-nineties (you can hear the electrified rock and roll version on the MTX album The Mr. T Experience... and the Women Who Love Them). While I was gingerly, sheepishly exploring the idea of trying to write a book, and not really knowing where to begin, Krista Marino (who was to become my editor at Delacorte) suggested that I try to turn a song into a novel as a way of getting started. I can't remember why I settled on "King Dork" as the song to "novelize," but I started thinking about the narrator/character of this song and after quite a bit of staring at a blank Word document and banging my head against the bar I eventually started typing. I didn't tell anyone at the time, but for months the file entitled "King Dork_(novel)_ms" had only the words "there's no way I can write a whole book, absolutely no way, who am I kidding?" on it. The fact that this did turn into a sort of novel in the end continues to mystify me. So this is an acoustic recording of the song that started it all, in effect. "I'm King Dork and I want you to be my Queen..."

Listen to "King Dork"

"Thinking of Suicide"
The narrator of King Dork, Tom Henderson, has a band and is trying to figure out how to play his guitar and how to write songs. He writes several songs through the course of the book, and I thought it might be fun actually to come up with the songs rather than just alluding to them in the text. The songs were written by me "as Tom Henderson," know what I mean? "Thinking of Suicide" is one of the first complete songs Tom writes. The title comes from an informational pamphlet for troubled teens handed out by the school. He likes the drawing of the girl on the cover. "This would make a pretty good song," he thinks: "all I had to do was give the girl a name and feel sorry for myself while pretending to be her. And figure out some lyrics and chords and stuff." This song, which incidentally ends up echoing through and complicating his family life, his social life, and his psychological life, is the result.

Listen to "Thinking of Suicide"

"I Wanna Ramone You"
This one is a little hard to "set up," but I'll give it a shot. There are three strands all tangled up in this song. Strand A: Tom is doing research on the life and times of his mysteriously deceased father, and part of that involves poring over ancient texts like the Bible and The Catcher in the Rye. It's a long story, but in the course of this research he inadvertently learns that the French verb ramoner (which literally means "to scrub out a chimney") can be used as a sexual metaphor. As a rock and roller, he of course immediately thinks of the Ramones, and, voilà, a new English euphemism for sex is born - I ramone, you ramone, he, she or it ramones... (This is useful to him, as it gives him a much cooler metaphor for sex than any of the other ones available; and it proved useful to the author, i.e., me, as well, for pretty much the same reason.) Strand B: Tom is taking Advanced French, which he describes as "a form of the French language in which only the present tense is used. Primarily employed for telling time and for describing the activities of this one guy named Jean and this other guy named Claude." So in writing his song about the timeless power of love, he decides to include some sophisticated, romantic French phrases in the lyrics. Strand C: He has this pretty big crush on a girl from a neighboring town, so he writes a song about her. (As one does in those situations.) "I Wanna Ramone You" is the result, one of his first full-on love songs.

Listen to "I Wanna Ramone You"

Book Description

Tom Henderson (a.k.a. King Dork, Chi-mo, Hender-fag, and Sheepie) is a typical American high school loser until he discovers the book, The Catcher in the Rye, that will change the world as he knows it. When Tom discovers his deceased father’s copy of the Salinger classic, he finds himself in the middle of several interlocking conspiracies and at least half a dozen mysteries involving dead people, naked people, fake people, ESP, blood, a secret code, guitars, monks, witchcraft, the Bible, girls, the Crusades, a devil head, and rock and roll. And it all looks like it’s just the tip of a very odd iceberg of clues that may very well unravel the puzzle of his father’s death and–oddly–reveal the secret to attracting semihot girls.
Being in a band could possibly be the secret to the girl thing–but good luck finding a drummer who can count to four.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent, excellent voice-- I fell in love with it........2007-09-27

The boy narrating this story has a perfect teenage voice-- funny, a little too smart and self-conscious about it, alternately defensive and searching. I was in love with it after the first page: I handed the book to someone else with instructions to read the first page. She loved it too. I had a hard time getting the book back.

The voice keeps its magic all the way through. I liked the device of using a class assignment of one of those "30 days to a better vocabulary" books to justify the narrator's use of words most teenagers wouldn't use.

The events in the book were nicely balanced between realism and farce. Some plot points were a little larger than life, but nothing too over the top.

Four stars instead of five? Near the end, the book veered off track on the murder-mystery subplot and lost steam. It recovered a little before the very end, but not fully. This was the last ten pages or so: suddenly I just wasn't interested in picking the book up and finishing it.

I feel this book is aimed at people my age (late 30s) more than at teenagers. There's something fishy when I know more than half the bands mentioned in the book. Boomer-resentment and Catcher In The Rye backlash are also Gen X phenomenon, I suspect. It didn't bother me, but I can understand why other reviewers called the book dated.

Beautiful writing, funny, and well worth the read.

Catcher in the Wry.......2007-09-15

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is how my dad died, and what my lousy high school years were like, and how my mother and her aging hippie second husband were occupied, and all that Catcher in the Rye kind of crap, and I feel like going into it, too, if you want to know the truth, so here goes..."

No, KING DORK doesn't start this way, but so large is the shadow of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE that it darn well could. The protagonist, a sarcastic and wry high school dude named Tom Henderson (well, to himself -- he's called "Chi-Mo" among other slanders by the "normal" population of the school), describes himself as a "brainy, freaky, and oddball" kid who's interested in playing in a rock band, creating outrageous titles for songs and albums, and finding out how his father really died.

Tom (self-proclaimed "King Dork") comes from a long and rich literary tradition of precocious teens with good vocabularies and allusions before their years (one reference to Ronald Reagan's "I paid for this microphone" speech was a real giveaway). Still, the reader is willing to go along because Tom is... well... funny. Yeah, it's often immature, geeky teenaged boy humor, but Gen X (as well as Y) should be all over this book -- especially seeing how author Frank Portman goes out of his way to trash the Baby Boomer generation and its (ironically, considering its iconoclastic intents) iconic book, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

The plot rolls along at a leisurely pace, and if readers appreciate it, the reasons will have less to do with what happens and more to do with the wonderful characterization of a persecuted but highly intelligent young rocker and his non-stop wise-guy jokes and asides. Plot developments with girls and especially with the search for how his father died stretch credibility beyond the suspension bridge of disbelief at times, but overall, humored readers will be willing to overlook this. Why? In addition to Tom, there's his fellow-loser best bud, Sam Hellerman; his full-throttle hippie step dad, Little Big Tom; his mysteriously sad, hard-smoking and drinking mom; his vocabulary-destroying English teacher, Mr. Schtuppe; his romantic (OK, mostly lusty antics) interests Fiona and Deanna; and the evil vice principal from Hell, Mr. Teone.

I thought KING DORK was a bit (devil head) prolix (inside joke with the devil head, folks), going around 50 pp too long, but still enjoyed it overall. The punch line, when all is said and done, is that a book made to trash THE CATCHER IN THE RYE ultimately pays homage to it. This means that Boomers, too, may take a shining to the book, even though it is quite "young" in tone. It'll be interesting to see what Portman produces for an encore. Hopefully he doesn't hole up in New Hampshire and get all squirrelly on us...

Very Funny and Smart.......2007-08-29

I enjoyed this book a lot--smart, original and funny. Not a whole hell of a lot happens, but it's all about the characters and writing here. A great talent in Portman. Can't wait to see what he does next. Long live The Chi-Mos!!

Yes, the sex is gratuitous and most unlikely!.......2007-08-26

O.K. so I am 49 years old and the only reason I would not give this book a 5 star is that the sex just doesn't seem real. Admittedly I haven't been in High School for 30+ years but I just cannot believe that dorks do any better today or in the late 80's (when I guess Frank was in school) or the late seventies when I was in school. Why would a girl put herself out for a member of a band that stinks?

The voice if the book is really genius until about the last fourth of the book when the sex gets kind of crazy. Even being female and lots older I know this character...I don't really qualify as a "baby boomer" and I certainly wasn't raised by them but there is enough here that would have anyone laughing...I have definitely met these people.

I, unlike the High School teacher(see the reviews!) that read half the book to sophmores and had to quit, would have read the book through BEFORE I started a read a long with the class! If she could have finished without losing her job there is a lot here for discussion of why so little character development of the girls in the book and also what might have been their motivation. Too bad she had to quit the read...

Read the book but be ready for a disappointing ending...

fizzles...........2007-08-19

I did really enjoy this book for about the first third, even half,of the story. But then, a funny thing happened...I stopped caring. I got sick of our hero. I found his comments becoming repetitious. I guess the author deserves credit for allowing his voice to become annoying. I actually think this book is a bit flipped...I think it's too "normal" for me. "Nerdy" outcast likes girl,has social issues, has family quarrels, etc.etc. Kind of typical, frankly. Still, he's a good writer and this book isn't bad...just not as good as its cracked up to be.

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