opposite

The Opposite of Love: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)
$15.00
The praise on the back of this book from Marian Keyes mistakenly led me to believe this would be in the same vein as Marian - ie, extremely hilarious. I was wrong, this is quite a serious and dramatic storyline involving depression, heartbreak, death and aging. It's quite well written and attempts to give a glimpse into the life of a young woman working in a high profile law firm. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't what I was expecting. It's like getting Tolstoy to review "The Nanny Diaries" - a weird mix.

LeapFrog Tag Junior Book: The Backyardigans Opposites
$10.99
This is a great book. I would not knock the book down to a one just because it is not compatible. The focus is the book and this book is great at teaching opposites. My two year old daughter loves her reader and this book and my five year old son uses her junior reader instead of his older reader. Great buy.

The Opposite Field: A Memoir
$25.00
Although this memoir centers on a father's relationship with his son, through baseball, it's far more than that. To save the Little League he winds up managing one of the teams, and the league, and the park. It becomes a number of narrative threads: his son, his Nicaraguan wife, a troubled stepson as well, his feisty and vivid mother, who is mayor of Portland.

The story needs the reader's full attention, since Katz leaps back and forth in time and location, in mood and in characters. The push-pull relationships, and rivalries, are just as personal in his dealings with other coaches, with league players' parents, as they are with his extended family. The personal troubles he observes, or confronts, get to be far darker than what you'd expect from a book ostensibly about Little League. It's fortunate that the author's prose is direct and terse, because the story is really something of a saga, a wide-screen story of all the people and worlds he encounters as a young and middle-aged man.

It's a much larger story than its cover would suggest, and all of it in 300 pages or so. It's remarkable and forthright, and well worth the reader's time.

Opposites Simple Puzzle Pairs
$13.99
eeBoo OPPOSITES Simple Puzzle Pairs. Up & down, big & little, match the opposites. Once a critical mass of words is recognized, preschoolers love to engage in word play. The elder person may select a puzzle piece with a bluebird flying up with the word UP. The tot searches for the one on which the bluebird flies DOWN, and assembles the puzzle pair. This play encourages critical thinking skills. Ages 3+