As featured on NBC’s TODAY Show! The experts from the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, the independent consumer organization rate the best (and worst) in children’s toys, books, dvds and music. Don’t waste any more money on products that are a waste of your money and your child’s time. Here’s the guide that every parent (and grandparent) should have before they go shopping. Guide includes important child development information, basic gear checklists, product comparisons, best shower and birthday presents for every budget, multicultural products, science toys, educational toys and a full chapter on adapting ordinary products for kids with special needs.

About the Author

Joanne Oppenheim is one of the country’s most trusted and respected child development experts and the author of more than fifty books for and about children including: Read It! Play It!, Choosing Books for Kids, Buy Me! Buy Me! and Kids and Play. Stephanie Oppenheim, a former corporate (more…)

swarovski crystals

Review

Booklist“Brimming over with vital stuff.”London Metro, 10/08“Something you can sink your teeth into.”Nashville City Paper, October 2008“always a treat and a delight…this year’s edition proves no different, and the scope, variety and quality are quite impressive.”USAToday.com “I look forward to this anthology every year, and it never disappoints!”Brick Weekly, 1/22/09 “There’s some pretty sharp stuff in here done by some real worldly cats. The entire book’s a joy to read.” St. Joe Channel “The latest edition in the fine series is a solid anthology made up of articles that discuss a wide range of topics and genres within the subject of music…There are many hits in this three hundred and twenty-seven pages of articles…Yet another good edition in a quality series.”SwampLand.com“Always worthwhile.”

Best music writing is the definitive guide to the year in music writing, an annual feast of essays, missives (more…)

From Library Journal

As accurate and obsessively detailed as www.allmusic.com is, its print cousins can seem somewhat redundant. This well-established entry, now in its third edition, offers biographical and listener’s advisory information on artists and recordings that All Music Guide (AMG) editors Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine have deemed rock an all-encompassing term that includes pop, soul, R&B, rap, and easy listening. Since the last edition (1997), about 3000 album reviews and 400 artist profiles have been added. That makes for a total of 2200 alphabetically arranged artist entries and 14,000 reviews (rated on a scale of one to five stars), most of which are signed. While the contributors cover a remarkable range of new artists from Aaliyah to Weezer, they often give short shrift to those who recorded prior to the 1980s; sometimes, whole bodies of work are ignored in favor of “best of” compilations. Refreshingly, most reviews are free of ro (more…)

Nice Gerdening Decor

Review

USAToday.com’s Pop Candy Blog, PopMatters “I look forward to it every year!”USA Today “[P]ieces examine the music world in a social context, which makes for a challenging, and engaging, read.”USAToday.com’s Pop Candy blog “[Y]ou really should get the book, which is one of my favorite annual compilations.”BooklistOnline “…essential, as usual.”

Best Music Writing has faithfully collected the year-s most compelling writing on music for a decade now, so it-s appropriate this special edition be guest-edited by one of the best-known writers on music and popular culture, Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces, Mystery Train, Like a Rolling Stone, and other groundbreaking excursions into the very fabric of music, America, and beyond. As always, Series Editor Daphne Carr has culled an impressively wide range of essays, profiles, news articles, interviews, creative non-fiction, fiction, book reviews, long-format reviews, blog p (more…)

Amazon.com

This director’s cut of Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, released to coincide with the 40th anniversary of that legendary concert event, has to be one of the most impressive Blu-ray releases of 2009 or any other year–and that’s even before you put the discs in your player. The box is designed to resemble a faux fringe jacket (with an iron-on patch attached), and inside are all manner of shiny bells and whistles, including a lucite paperweight with images from the event, a reprint of LIFE Magazine’s original festival feature, and reproductions of various Woodstock memorabilia, right down to notes left by concertgoers (“Please meet me in front of stage. I have your insulin pills”) and a three-day ticket to the event. And hey, if you’re looking for subtitles in Finnish, Thai, or Polish, you’ve come to the right place.The movie itself now weighs in at nearly four hours long, and is presumably the way director Michael Wadleigh wanted it in the first place. The (more…)

From Booklist

Since the Caribbean’s multifaceted music is usually heard in the U.S. only in such popular forms as reggae and salsa, Manuel and company’s diligent scholarship is much needed. They provide thoughtful descriptions of such overlooked styles as the bachata of the Dominican Republic and the voudou-jazz of Haiti, as well as of the forms of more musically famous islands, such as Jamaica and Trinidad. They discuss such insular cultural manifestations as the salsa vs. merengue conflict in New York City and the Hindu devotional songs of Trinidad’s Indian community. They describe their travels in several rather inaccessible countries, particularly Cuba. They cogently argue how the Caribbean’s historical, political, and social developments shaped its musics. The musical analyses and notation they provide are straightforward enough to interest careful listeners as well as casual fans, and the many helpful discographies throughout the book–not to mention the cool phot (more…)

From Booklist

Since the Caribbean’s multifaceted music is usually heard in the U.S. only in such popular forms as reggae and salsa, Manuel and company’s diligent scholarship is much needed. They provide thoughtful descriptions of such overlooked styles as the bachata of the Dominican Republic and the voudou-jazz of Haiti, as well as of the forms of more musically famous islands, such as Jamaica and Trinidad. They discuss such insular cultural manifestations as the salsa vs. merengue conflict in New York City and the Hindu devotional songs of Trinidad’s Indian community. They describe their travels in several rather inaccessible countries, particularly Cuba. They cogently argue how the Caribbean’s historical, political, and social developments shaped its musics. The musical analyses and notation they provide are straightforward enough to interest careful listeners as well as casual fans, and the many helpful discographies throughout the book–not to mention the cool phot (more…)

Inground Pool Supplies

Review

`extensive introduction is particularly valuable … the paperback price is worth it for the introduction, and the Bjornberg and Tagg essays, alone.’ Allan More, British Journal of Music Education, Vol.18:1, 2001

Why do we enjoy pop songs (or not)? Why do they mean so much to us? What do they mean? Is it the sounds, the rhythms, or the words? Is it the singing, the personae of the stars, or the messages and images that the songs conjure up? Plenty of people have written about pop personalities, the music industry, or about their own tastes, but serious analysis of the songs themselves is still rare. This collection of essays, all previously published in the leading journal Popular Music, brings together key studies by many of the leading scholars studying pop music today. Together they add up to the first substantial anthology to focus on musical “texts.” Collecting a wide range of approaches, and looking at songs by performers as varie (more…)

Dan Coates adds his expert touch to these 70 easy piano arrangements of Alfred’s most requested, top-selling standards and pop songs. Titles include: Amazed * Breakaway * Because You Loved Me * Dance with My Father * How Do I Live * I Swear * Inside Your Heaven * Lean on Me * Right Here Waiting * There You’ll Be * This I Promise You * Thank You * When You Tell Me That You Love Me * You Raise Me Up and more. 256 pages.

(more…)

Baby Safety Monitors

Indie rock music burst onto the scene in the early ’80s with bands like Sonic Youth. A decade later, the music of Pavement, Guided By Voices, and Radiohead brought tons of new converts. Today, indie rock has exploded across all media, from popular TV shows such as The O.C. to numerous commercials and sold-out stadium tours. The poetry and stories in REVOLUTION ON CANVAS, VOLUME 2 range from the hysterically funny to the achingly sad and are written by the biggest names in indie rock today. The Deftones, Fall Out Boy, Armor for Sleep, Motion City Soundtrack, Atreyu, and A Static Lullaby are just some of the bands included in the second installment of this extraordinary and fascinating series.

About the Author

RICH BALLING lives in Fullerton, California.

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