North Carolina Wildlife Viewing Guide (Wildlife Viewing Guides Series)

Book Description

Where-to guide to 90 viewing sites of the best locations to watch wildlife including mammals and birds in their natural environment. Offical field guide of the Watchable Wildlife Series.

Book Description

Take these Terror Trips . . . and hope you return! Three hot, talented comic artists adapt these bestselling Goosebumps books into a cool new graphic novel format. JILL THOMPSON, the award-winning creator of The Scary Godmother series, brings her quirky humor and madcap illustrations to "One Day at Horrorland," where a family lost in an amusement park finds the rides a little too creepy, a little too real! JAMIE TOLAGSON, artist on The Crow, The Dreaming, and the Books of Magic series, turns up the juice in "A Shocker on Shock Street,"

Customer Reviews:

Goosbumptastic.......2007-06-27

Goosebumps Graphix is a great read for fans of the origanal and kids that have no idea what it is. as a grown adult (1987 kid) who grew up reading Goosebumps and watching the show, I'd say that Goosebumps Graphix is a perfect choice for a kid like me. I let one of my younger friends (knowed notheing about Goosebumps) borrow it and now its addicted. I just cant wait till they make more.

love it.......2007-04-26

This book has three different stories: One day at Horrorland, Deep Trouble and shocker on Shock Street. All of these stories are based off of R.L Stine books. If you are wanting a good scare without all the blood and gore of really scary books read this one.

Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida's Oldest Roadside Attractions (Florida History and Culture)

Average customer rating:

Weeki Wachee memories
A Lovingly Written Tribute to a Unique Florida Icon.
Underwater Tourist Culture
Loved this book!
Serious kitsch

Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida's Oldest Roadside Attractions (Florida History and Culture)
Lu Vickers
Manufacturer: University Press of Florida
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813030412

Book Description

"Lu Vickers has written a truly delicious, sparkling history of Florida's own mermaid city of Weeki Wachee, one of the greatest oldtime roadside attractions. Her prose is bright, sharp and funny; combined with the illustrations brilliantly compiled by Sara Dionne, it makes for a wonderful, vivacious, superbly researched but never dry saga of the regular girls who transformed themselves into swimming goddesses and the tiny hamlet which got so famous even Elvis came to pay court."--Diane Roberts, National Public Radio correspondent and author of Dream State

"After 37 years at wonderful Weeki Wachee, one third of that time spent underwater, I can honestly say that this remarkable book tells the fascinating history of the spring like it was. Two fins up for Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids."--Bonnie Georgiadis

In the postwar explosion of domestic tourism, Weeki Wachee spring offered the quintessential vacation fantasy, a city of colorful mermaids in a natural crystal spring right off the West Coast highway in a sparsely inhabited Florida. In those early days, the mermaids had to stand alongside the highway to flag travelers down, but once word of their charms got out, travelers headed south to playgrounds in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa found Weeki Wachee a tantalizing detour from the grueling two-lane road connecting vacationland with the work-a-day world to the north. Vickers and Dionne show how that local novelty became a stellar international attraction.

Founded in 1947 by Walton Hall Smith and Newt Perry, Weeki Wachee and its featured attraction, mermaids, combined the allure of pinup girls with the wholesome talents of variety entertainers to create a daily schedule of underwater acts ranging from eating bananas and performing ballet to staging underwater musicals. For nearly 60 years, these mermaids with their underwater talents have attracted crowds of vacationers, film crews, and celebrities. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as interviews with dozens of mermaids and other park employees, Vickers traces the park's rise to prominence. Combined with Dionne's arrangement of 250 photos, the resulting work shows what it was like to be a mermaid at Weeki Wachee in its heyday.

Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids also explores the enduring appeal of the attraction. Once people get past Weeki Wachee's once crumbling, recently restored exterior, they continue to be just as genuinely awed by the mermaids as Elvis was.

Customer Reviews:

Weeki Wachee memories.......2007-09-06

I grew up in a small town just a few miles from the Springs in the 40's and 50's and Weeki Wachee was our old 'swimming hole' where the men of the town would go clean out the 'grass' every summer so we could all swim and play even tho the water was ice cold and we would shiver and shake but refuse to get out and warm up. I remember a lot of the things happening that are included in the book and knew some of the 'mermaids' since I went to school with them and our P.E. teacher was also a mermaid. I spent many summers trying to learn how to eat a banana and drink a grapette under water(I never did accomplish this). This book brings back lots of memories and I think anyone who can 'remember when' would enjoy it and also anyone wanting to see a slice of 'old Florida' would also enjoy this book. I took my grandchildren back to the Springs last summer where we saw the mermaid show twice and once again swam in the icy water. They tried to be mermaids for weeks after and were enchanted with the 'mermaid' idea just as I was back in my day.

A Lovingly Written Tribute to a Unique Florida Icon........2007-07-15

Lu Vickers has captured the history and essence of a very special Florida attraction in this book. This book offers a glimpse into a fascinating place during a very interesting time in Florida's tourist history, where the unusual was the draw. It has obviously been written with great care and attention to detail, and is a beautiful homage to the legacy of Newt Perry's vision & creation. We are very lucky to still have this historical and unique attraction~ perhaps this book will help to further encourage locals and tourists alike to take a trip and visit this special Florida icon. Doing so will help to make the experience of watching such graceful and talented performers available for future generations.
~Marina~MeduSirena~

Underwater Tourist Culture.......2007-07-10

American ingenuity can change a place of natural beauty into a roadside attraction, like Mount Rushmore. Florida didn't have mountains to carve, but it had alligators to put on farms for tourists to see, or Cyprus Gardens for those who want to watch acrobatic waterskiing, or various monkey or ostrich farms. It also had beautiful springs of water so clear it was almost invisible. You could get perfect views of turtles swimming below, or fossils of mastodon teeth on the bottom, but for entrepreneurs, that was not enough. And so, the clear springs near the west coast of Florida became infested with mermaids. In _Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida's Oldest Roadside Attractions_ (University Press of Florida), Lu Vickers has lovingly told the story of a longstanding example of tourist kitsch, accompanied by the photographs compiled by Sara Dionne, who also did research for the book. There are hundreds of photographs here in a lush-looking volume, stills from movies made at the springs, and reproductions of advertisements and brochures. The authors have looked at a wacky place seriously, and told the story of the mermaids with affection and with a larger view to the history and devotion to travel entertainment of the region.

The natural beauty of the springs was appreciated by the ancient Timucua Indians, and by visitors like John Audubon, but commercialism started when the St. Petersburg Springs Corporation bought the land. Newt "The Human Fish" Perry, was the attraction's guiding entrepreneur for decades, putting in an underwater theater, a submerged boxcar-looking room with seats in it and the windows giving a view into the waters. They could see fish, and turtles, but Perry knew they needed entertainment. Somehow, everyday activities became imbued with magic when they were performed underwater. People were amazed to see the swimmers simply eat and drink within the depths. There were an underwater brass band, underwater track meets, an underwater wedding, an underwater fashion show, an underwater beauty contest, and lots of other stunts. The water was so clear that some observers of films of the shows thought that the performers were simply held aloft on wires; bringing fish in didn't work, since the fish would go hide, so bubbles had to be prominent in the pictures.

There were landlubber stars who made their mark at Weeki Wachee. _Tarzan_ with Johnny Weissmuller was filmed in part there. So was _Creature from the Black Lagoon_, taking advantage of local talent and clear waters. Bob Hope, Howard Hughes, and Esther Williams (naturally) all showed up to see the show. So did Elvis, who saw a special show featuring a mermaid holding a placard that read "Elvis Presley's Underwater Fan Club." Introduced to the mermaids afterwards, he was awed by being with the swimmers; he held the hand of one of them, who said afterwards, "I thought he was going to rub my knuckle off, he was so nervous." Times change, and so do fashions, and so do attention spans. The springs have had ecological difficulties. The shows started before a lot of the Florida development boom, before the lawns and fertilizers, which have made algae bloom, making the water murky at times, and leaving a brown scum on the sands of the bottom. Draining a lake nearby caused silty water to enter the springs, clouding them. The resourceful mermaids dreamed up a new show, _The London Fog Mystery with Sherlock Holmes_ and performed close to the glass, until the waters cleared again. The biggest obstacle for the springs has been Disneyworld, whose powerful draw has shut down plenty of other small Florida attractions. Weeki Wachee has barely gotten by at times. It has added and subtracted different attractions, like alligators and birds of prey, and even in 2003 was going to retire the mermaids, who were only putting on irregular shows anyway. That resulted in the successful "Save Our Tails" campaign. Vice President Dick Cheney made a campaign visit there in 2000, and in 2005 the attraction showed up on a list of potential terror targets. There are more important institutions, and more important histories, but the mermaids have provided lots of goofy, touristy fun for decades, and for all its footnotes and references, _Weeki Wachee: City of Mermaids_ delivers curiously oddball entertainment, too.

Loved this book!.......2007-06-03

I absolutely loved this book! It is filled with beautiful, quirky, and amazing photos. The book is full of information and stories that will have you spellbound. My grandaughter and I even shared some bonding time while reading and looking through Ms. Vickers book. We laughed at some of the antics of the mermaids, and we even had our own mermaid beauty contest! Not going to tell you who we picked--have your own mermaid contest.

Lu Vickers has written an amazing book that has everything in it about the Weeki Wachee mermaids. You will love it. Every time you pick it up, you will find more amazing facts. We are planning a visit within the next few weeks to go to Weeki Wachee to see the mermaids for ourselves!

Serious kitsch.......2007-05-14

Mermaids in space suits. Mermaids on a swing set. Mermaids eating a 5-foot hot dog. If you like kooky photographs of bathing beauties then this is absolutely a book for you. It features hundreds of them, each one remarkably clear and full of detail.

But, frankly, they're not the point. As its University Press of Florida pedigree suggests, "Weeki Wachee: City of Mermaids" recounts the serious -- yet never dry -- history of one of America's most funky roadside attractions. Marvelously researched with tons of personal interviews, it tells the sometimes inspiring, often fascinating and always slightly strange tale of how what started as a local novelty grew to be internationally famous, surviving everything from a visit from Elvis Presley to, after one performer nearly drowned, a mermaid strike.

Even better, the book doesn't limit itself just to Weeki Wachee. There's a whole chapter on Wakulla Springs, the Tallahassee-area attraction with a similar homespun past. The author explains how Wakulla storytellers used tales such as that of Henry, the pole-vaulting catfish, to offer "a better brand of natural history than that found in far more sophisticated circles." (I can vouch for Henry. I've seen him jump that pole many times!)

Produced in the same wide-rectangle proportions as a giant postcard, the book is smartly designed and well printed. It's one you'll love to have in your library.

-- By Julie Neal, author of The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World.

Average customer rating:

Mermaid Park
Mermaid Park
Good despite some unbelievable bits
Summer... where are u
Beware of shill reviews.

Mermaid Park
Beth Mayall
Manufacturer: Razorbill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1595140298

Book Description

Sixteen-year-old Amy dreads her family vacation. With her new stepfather in the picture, life feels like one big disappointment . . . until Amy discovers Mermaid Park, an old tourist spot where girls dressed in fabulous costumes perform underwater shows. When Amy sees "mermaids" gliding through the water, she is utterly captivated, convinced that if she could become one of them, the rest of her life could be just as beautiful.

Customer Reviews:

Mermaid Park.......2007-06-19

I picked Mermaid Park up at the bookstore because the cover intruiged me. At first, I wasn't sure whether or not I would like the book. But as I got farther into the book, I loved it. The characters are well developed and they each have their own personality.

The plot has just enough twists and turns to keep you waiting. At first, I thought it would be very predictable but it turned out not to be, especially on the romance side.

If you're looking for a fun summer read, this is the book for you!

Mermaid Park.......2006-06-08

Warning!! This is going to be one of the best books you are going to read. The book is Mermaid Park. The author of this book is Beth Mayall. This book has a bit of adventure and a bit of romance in it. Most of all I think it has a mystery behind this entire book.
The main character in this story is Amy Rush. The thing is that Amy is tired of always being the outsider in her family. She is tired of the distance between her sister, Mel. Nothing in sixteen-year old Amy holds the promise of anything but disappointment until a nightmare weekend at the New Jersey shore with her mother, sister and Tom, her stepfather, and tom leads to a discovery that will change her life. She never really liked her stepfather Tom.
When she was in New Jersey shore she first lays eyes on Mermaid Park. She felt like she stepped into a living, breathing fantasy. Girls dressed in fabulous costumes put on underwater shows. Amy becomes convinced that she could be one of the "mermaids." Over the summer she discovers that reality and fantasy is murkier than it seems.

Good despite some unbelievable bits.......2006-03-24

I found this book to be written well with great description but also thought that several situations were pretty improbable, such as a manatee swimming into the swimming tank and Amy's becoming the mermaid queen seemed a little too convenient. Amy's surprise parentage seemed a little unbelievable as well, although I had guessed that her mother had worked at the park after several clues about her affection for mermaid merchandise.

Despite this, this book is a good read and I would recommend it! It's filled with summer romance, adventures, and all that can come from a teenager living in a new town for the summer without her family. It really makes you thirst for summer.

Summer... where are u.......2006-01-23

First thing, this book totally made be crave summer. It's set at the New Jersey beach, lots of swimming, etc, etc... So reading in the middle of winter (like I did) can either make you crazy, or make you sweetly long for summer. Hopefully the latter.

Moments of gorgeous writing... By the end, the narrator is painfully real, and flawed. And her family is, too. There plot moves fast and is engaging... A few threads don't add up if you look too close, but I was along for the ride, and by the end, couldn't put it down. I kept thinking that it would make a great movie, with Orlando Bloom as Dylan... sigh.

Beware of shill reviews........2006-01-20

I'm really getting irritated by publishers, authors and their friends writing five star reviews for their own books. If you click on the "see all my reviews" button next to almost all of the five star reviews, you'll see that they only have one review. This is no coincidence.
You might also notice that the less than positive reviews for this have a lot of unhelpful votes, too; that's probably the publisher or author at work again. The saddest thing is that I actually liked this book, but I'm not prepared to give it a positive review in the midst of such dishonesty.

Average customer rating:

Leaden prose almost sinks this mermaid
Good but not great
Her second novel makes a splash, but don't call her Betsy Wetsy
Make's you want to become a mermaid!
Visions of mermaids in Weeki Wachee

Swim to Me: A Novel
Betsy Carter
Manufacturer: Algonquin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1565124928

Book Description

It's a fresh start for Delores Walker when she boards a Greyhound bus bound for Florida. Leaving the Bronx far behind, she's headed for sunny Weeki Wachee Springs, frayed roadside attraction in danger of becoming obsolete with the opening of Walt Disney's latest creation, only miles up the road. Always more suited for a life underwater, Delores joins a group of other aquatic hopefuls in this City of Live Mermaids, where she discovers a world of sequined tails and amphibious theme shows that even Disney couldn't dream up. It's in this fantastic place of make-believe and reinvention that Delores Walker becomes Delores Taurus, Florida's most unlikely celebrity.

Bringing together an eccentric assortment of outcasts, poseurs, and underdogs, this wise and poignant novel conjures up a time in America when anything was possible, especially in the Sunshine State. A story of family, chasing dreams and finding your way, Swim To Me will have you believing the impossible—even in mermaids from the Bronx.

Customer Reviews:

Leaden prose almost sinks this mermaid.......2007-10-08

"Swim to Me" was a pleasant escape, but unfortunately not as good as I'd hoped. The story has promise, but never really gets off the ground, sunk as it is by leaden prose. The characterizations are shallow, the setting not evoked as well as it could have been. Some conversations between characters seem natural, but others very much do not. For example, if you were reunited with a family member after two years apart would you sit silently while others in the room discuss business, never exchanging a word with your relative? Some vocabulary is used incorrectly, and the geography is often wrong. A hurricane comes into Tampa from the west, for example, then abruptly turns around and goes back into the Gulf of Mexico.

But what I did like about "Swim to Me" was that it made me remember childhood trips to Weeki Wachee in the 1970s, driving through Tampa and to Orlando. If all you want is a little nostalgia for old Florida, with low literary expectations, "Swim to Me" can fit the bill.

Good but not great.......2007-09-14

Swim to Me is a light-as-air story about members of a mildly dysfunctional family who have to find their way as the family dissolves. Fifteen year old Delores Walker's father Roy walks out one night, and two years later she leaves home to become a mermaid at a tourist trap in Weekee Wachee, Florida; the book follows her adventures and those of her bitter mother Gail, her withdrawn, taciturn father Roy and her bouncy little brother Westie who remains Delores's only real tie to her parents. The story is colorful and dramatic at times and Carter does a good job of showing the delicate family dynamic that Delores has to navigate once her family has disintegrated. She is particularly effective at illustrating a very tense mother-daughter relationship fraught with resentment and a stifling sense of claustrophobia. I've seen mother-daughter relationships like theirs play out in real life and it's not pretty- and Carter captures that push and pull very, very well. I thought that while Delores was someone I wanted to root for, her parents came off poorly. Gail, all sharp edges and envy, was a tough woman to like and Roy barely registered a personality or believable psychology at all. Westie was just a cute cypher- something to give Delores something to hold on to, as though he represented her own innocence and idealism. There is no sweet reunion to be had for the Walker clan but they do all learn to carve out a space for themselves and each other.

Her second novel makes a splash, but don't call her Betsy Wetsy.......2007-09-12

Mermaids are a magical mystery species, appealing to everyone from Hans Christian Andersen to T.S. Eliot (brush up your Prufrock) to Starbucks logo-makers. They have a touch of the siren, the allure of elusiveness. To teenage Delores Taurus, the heroine of Betsy Carter's engaging new novel, mermaids are a practical matter, the crucial element of the job that gets her out of a broken family in the Bronx and into the mermaid tank at Weeki Wachee Springs near Tampa, Florida. (The novel is set in the 1970s, so what may seem kitschy now was unselfconscious popular entertainment then.) After acing her audition to perform in the underwater shows there (including a rippling version of "The Godfather"), the shy, tall girl whose aquatic skills provide her only confidence, gradually discovers that she can succeed on dry land too. In the course of this beautifully crafted novel, Delores makes friends, learns to deal with difficult bosses(the gruff but miltilayered mermaid manager,Thelma Foote and a pointy-toothed, ambitious producer of a local TV news show) and ultimately finds ways to understand her estranged parents and display her fierce affection for her little brother, Westie. As in her first novel, "The Orange Blossom Special," Carter loves her characters and knows how to satisfy her readers with a well-told tale that is both colorful and tender. Highly recommended.

Make's you want to become a mermaid!.......2007-09-02

Swim to Me by Betsy Carter is one of the best pieces of writing I have seen in a long time. It has an excellent pace, the characters are well crafted and the story just draws you in. Delores Taurus, is the central character and she decides to go to Weeki Wachee Springs and become a mermaid after her father leaves the family because Weeki Wachee Springs is the one place she can remember being happy in her childhood. Carter does an excellent job of developing all the characters into people that you care about. I love how each of the characters grow and change over the course of the book.

It is a joy to read something this well written!

Visions of mermaids in Weeki Wachee.......2007-08-02

What a delight this book is! I was transported to the muggy sweltering landscape of Weeki Wachee Springs near Tampa FL by Carter's descriptions of mermaid life. The story of young Delores Walker's transformation into the star mermaid, Delores Taurus, is inspirational. Her decaying life in the Bronx in the early 70's leaves her hopeless and yearning for more. Remembering one very happy moment in her childhood while visiting "the only live mermaid show in the world", she decides to leave her needy mother and little brother to pursue her dream of becoming a mermaid herself. Carter draws us in with exotic characters, each with their own story of how they came to Weeki Wachee, and why they are still there. Little snippets of history come through to remind us of the period (Buicks were big, Nixon was in office), and several references to the just opened Disney World in Orlando point out how different our perceptions of fantasy and reality can be. [...] for a fascinating peek at this institution that has managed to survive in spite of America's shifting views on entertainment. And read this book - you may want to become a mermaid yourself.

Average customer rating:

Great for a young person
A relevant and beautiful short novel
My Sister Sif
Intriguing and hard to put down!
Good fantasy for the younger readers.

My Sister Sif
Ruth Park
Manufacturer: Viking Juvenile
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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

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ASIN: 0670839248

Customer Reviews:

Great for a young person.......2007-07-20

I read this book when I was really young and loved it, it was intelligent and captured my imagination. I ended up reading it more than once

A relevant and beautiful short novel.......2007-07-20

I remember reading this for the first time years ago, and it simply captivated me. The story is one that I enjoyed, but also was a vehicle for a message about what we are doing to the planet. It isn't bitter, callous or harsh in its encounter with the destruction we are causing; rather than telling us what is happening, it SHOWS the damage that can happen without intent and how a beautiful world and people's lives can be hurt. I read this for the first time almost 10 years ago, and the story and the message are still with me.

My Sister Sif.......2007-02-15

I wasn't very impressed by this book. It was colorful and fairly well written, yet somehow, it seemed as lifeless as an artificial flower. It wasn't easy to get into and I lost interest before I'd even got halfway through. The story itself was bizarre, and for the most part, torpid; the casual indifference and bluntness to which we're treated to the sudden appearance of mermen, telepathic dolphins and even dwarves(!) only seemed to make it worse. After fifty or so pages, I skipped straight to the end, only to find more of the same. Heck, I only paid 99 cents for my copy and I still feel ripped off.

Intriguing and hard to put down!.......2007-01-17

I truly love this book. It was one of those books that held my interest the whole way through and was definitely worth the time. This story includes fantasy, adventure, a bit of romance, and a whole new way to look at mermaids. I really recommend it to anyone who loves reading!

Good fantasy for the younger readers........1998-11-29

There was a great cast of characters. I enjoyed the futuristic fantasy. I'm in seventh grade and found this book very intresting.

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