Eric Arnold

Arnold is an American who worked for a year at a winery in New Zealand for the purpose of writing this book. As a first hand account of the actual work that goes on at an estate winery it's quite informative. Arnold writes clearly and accurately about crusher-stemmers, lifting wires, the occupational dangers and back-breaking work that goes into making that glass of wine you enjoy. On the other hand, when not writing about the actual process of making wine Arnold becomes a wise-cracking show more adolescent who can't resist comparing just about everything he observes to some kind of sex act. At first, you smile. But after a hundred pages or so you wonder how the editor ever let this happen. show less

This book was a level 4 non-fiction early reader with illustrations and a few real-life photos. I was looking for an early reader book that might be more appropriate for the boys in my class, but found this book to be a bit harsh in content. I was initially excited to see that almost the whole story was about Mt. Saint Helen’s and what happened before, during and after its explosion, however the more I read the more I thought it might not be appropriate for all early readers. The book show more talked a lot about how animals died and how people were killed in the eruption. It even talked about real people that were killed in the eruption and showed illustrations (which weren’t very good) of their homes being destroyed or cars being buried in ash. While I realize this is a real life fact of volcanoes I felt as though the book centered mostly on the death and destruction and not so much on the science behind volcanoes. I even felt a little worried about volcanoes when I finished reading and didn’t know that it would be a very appropriate book for very early readers. If I did decide to use it in my class, I would add it to my class library so my students could read it on their own at any time. show less

This book tells the story of a real policewoman as she goes through a normal day. It explains all of the things that a police officer does in their communities. This is a great book to read if you are teaching a class about police officers or a unit on community helpers.

Describes the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state in 1980 and provides a simple explanation of how and why volcanoes erupt.