Customer Rating: 
Summary: A great way to learn and highly entertaining.
Comment: The Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is located in Angel Canyon, (Southern) Utah. This oversized book reads like an interactive bedtime story for children and is utterly delightful. The sanctuary receives around 20,000 tourists each year. This book entertains children and gives a virtual tour of all the animals living on the sanctuary. Since many of the animals living at the sanctuary have been rescued from bad people or are survivors of disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, readers learn how much care goes into helping them. The book helps children understand why some animals are nervous, shy, or scared of humans. It also explains how people can help care for animals.
As children read or listen to the stories, their eyes and imaginations are tantalized with large, colorful photos of animals found on every page. A couple of the back pages tell how kids can help the animals in their area.
***** All-in-all, I found this to be an exceptional book, perfect for any time of the day or night. Though great for bedtime, I believe it would perfect for class time as well. Teachers should seriously consider picking up a copy to determine whether they could fit this in their class schedule. It is well written with simple, easy to understand, words. Best of all, kids will learn from an early age how to act around and care for animals. Kids will read about all types of animals from plucky duckies to bunnies, from cats to dogs, from horses to pigs, and many more. In a word, "Bunnyreffic!" *****
Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Animal's BEST FRIEND
Comment: I really like this book. It is a wonderful way to educate kids (and adults will enjoy it as well) about love, compassion, and respect for animals.
We need to teach our kids while they are young, to treat animals the way that they themselves would want to be treated.
What we sow in our children today, animals will reap tomorrow.
So if we want to end animal abuse, animal cruelty, animal murder (euthanizing healthy animals) etc, in the future, it will ONLY happen, if we teach our kids TODAY, that animals are living, breathing, feeling, loving, soul-filled children of God, just like we human animals are.
Trust me when I say that getting this gift for your child (or a fellow adult) will be a gift that keeps on giving and giving......because this book is about love, compassion and living in peace with, and taking care of, our animal friends.
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Two paws up!
Comment: Animals are a huge part of our society; but, far too often, they are mistreated and cast aside. Luckily, there are sanctuaries across the nation who provide these particular animals with lifelong homes where they can live in peace and harmony with loving caregivers, and fellow animals. Nora Lee Kelsey takes us behind-the-scenes of one of these particular sanctuaries - Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.
Over the years, southern Utah's Best Friends Animal Sanctuary has become one of the biggest animal sanctuaries in the nation. Home to dogs and cats, along with the less typical rabbits, horses, ducks, pigs, sheep, and many more, Best Friends makes a difference in the lives of animals on a daily basis. While many visit the location each year, others don't always have the means or time to make the trip. With Kelsey's LET'S GO VISIT BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SANCTUARY, readers have the opportunity to do just that - from their very own homes!
Laden with gorgeous color photos, LET'S GO VISIT BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SANCTUARY takes readers on a trip to Horse Haven, the Bunny House, Feathered Friends, Cat World, and Dogtown. At each stop, you have the opportunity to meet and greet with some of the residents of each area, learning their likes and dislikes, and glimpsing bits and pieces of what they do on a daily basis. After the trip is said and done, some of the Best Friends residents provide readers with tips on what they can do to help animals - even going so far as including websites you can visit.
I have loved Best Friends Animal Sanctuary ever since I learned about it more than ten years ago, so I was thrilled when I learned that Nora Lee Kelsey had taken the time to pen a gorgeous book about the location. The many pictures bring the animals to life; while the information packed onto each and every page provides the reader with enough facts to become a Best Friends Animal Sanctuary wiz! Perfect for animal lovers to read at home with their families, or as an instructional tool in the classroom, LET'S GO VISIT BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SANCTUARY is a necessity for all. I could not have imagined a more perfect book. Two paws up!
Erika Sorocco
Freelance Reviewer
Customer Rating:
Summary: Colorful and informative
Comment: This colorful, friendly book is designed as a tool to help children, ages about five to eight (my guess), to learn about animal sanctuaries, animal shelters, and, in a subtle, gentle way, about the ugliness of animal abuse. I can easily imagine this book being used in a classroom of first-graders or second-graders.
The Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is an enormous refuge, for abused animals of all species, located in Utah. This book basically explains the nature and purpose of that sanctuary and, by extension, the nature and purpose of animal shelters and sanctuaries everywhere. The book, which is fifty-two pages long, accomplishes this by providing a verbal and photographic tour of the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, describing the animals there, giving you the stories of how they ended up there, and how the animals are cared for, while they live there. I appreciated how the photographs and the text definitely emphasized the animals. The book did not end up being a piece of promotional literature, that glorified the one facility, as if they were the only facility engaging in the support and caring of animals that have been abused or neglected.
Most of the book, if you calculated the area covered by writing versus photographs, is dedicated to beautiful photographs, with the written explanations and captions being smaller. However, the writing is clear, concise, and worded in ways where children are going to understand the ideas, without feeling that they are being talked down to. The writing also does a nice job of giving children enough information about how animals are sometimes mistreated or neglected, without getting so graphic that the children might be traumatized. The tone of the writing is that it assumes that children will usually care about, and sympathize with, animals, and I see that as accurate.
The photography is also fairly balanced, in that it does not portray the animals at the sanctuary as a collection of perfect specimens of petdom. It shows, and talks about, some of the difficulties that a potential adoptive family might face if the animals were brought into that family. I will that the photography is done in such a way that many children will likely, after seeing this book, want to bring a pet into their home. There appears to be a large number of highly photogenic animals at the sanctuary, or else the photographer did an excellent job of being patient and catching the animals at their best.
As I stated above, this book is meant to introduce us to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, as well as to a series of books, with the same photographer, writers, and source material, but aimed at different topics.
There is a section, near the end of the book, that describes different kind of projects, for children and school classrooms to do, to help local animal shelters and sanctuaries. I really like that this section was included, as I can see children understanding and appreciating the book a lot, and immediately wanting to know what they can do to help. The section was done well, as all of the ideas mentioned are very feasible projects for a classroom or a school to do.
I am hoping, and suggesting any who might read this, who is connected to this series, that future topic for books include:
A description of good animal care, especially from a child's point of view.
A discussion of what children can do, if they believe that animals are being abused or neglected.
If I had a list a flaw, there is one small omission. When the book describes how people come to own dogs, it describes pet stores and "puppy mills" (not favorably) and animal shelters (favorably), but makes no mention of puppies obtained from responsible, caring breeders. I can imagine a child, whose family owns a dog obtained from a good breeder, wondering if his or her family obtained their pet in a good way or a bad way. That is a small point, that a teacher or parent could easily explain, but the book could have easily mentioned it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: WONDERFUL BOOK AND A GREAT TEACHING TOOL. A JOB WELL DONE!
Comment: This work hits on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Animals have played a very important part of my life for over sixty years now and they are just as important to me now as when I received my first puppy when I was about three years old. My wife and I have been very involved with our local humane society for many years now. That being said....
This work takes the reader for an inside look at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary located Southern Utah. Thousands of animals have been helped through this organization and Ms. Kelsey has given us a child's eye view of its workings, mission, needs, and indeed, delights. The book is designed to be read to children, and more specifically, is ideal for groups of children, although it is an absolute delight for the adult reader also. The photographs are quite professionally done and are works of art themselves. The author's easy style, humor and obvious enthusiasm for her subject shine through on ever page. She takes us on a verbal tour, supplemented by wonderful photographs, through this great organization. The author takes great pains in explaining the socialization process of these animals, stressing not only their physical needs, but emotional as well. This is a bit different than some of the works in this genre. We are given a peek at the different areas of this sanctuary, the bird house, horse area, pigs, dogs, cats, et al. Some individual stories of these critters are told as well as the source for many of the animals helped here.
This book is certainly designed for the class room. Its easy reading style and humor will be appreciated by the children. Each page is full of useful information and the photographs are well coordinated. Many questions are asked which are ideal for taking the children into a discussion. The author has also provided pages full of ideas for class projects, given some great web sites for further research, and above all, has infused an enthusiasm into her work which is rather contagious. Volunteerism is stressed here and the point is well made that everyone can do their little share to change what has become almost a national tragedy. Now don't misunderstand that statement. This is not a "sad puppy book," something that I find difficult to read to younger children. Everything here is upbeat and positive while still being quite truthful about the plight of these unwanted animals.
A WORD OF CAUTION: I am retired now and spend most of my days acting as a substitute teacher in local schools. We live in an area, Southern Missouri, which is more or less the puppy mill capital of the known universe. This is something my wife and I have fought for years and years. The author is quite harsh, and well she should be, when addressing this subject. The problem comes, in my case, where I will have a room full of about 25 students, and out of that 25, at least six or seven will have parents or grandparents who make their living as puppy mill owners. I plan to use this work at those schools, but I also plan to do a bit of verbal editing when this portion of the book is read to the students. While they need to know about such things, I am not about to be critical of their parents in front of their fellow students. Goodness knows I have had many heated conversations with the parents of these kids on this subject, indeed having been instrumental in shutting a few down, but don't feel the children should be subjected to the same line as I would give their mom and dad.
That being said, I cannot recommend this work highly enough. It is an absolute wealth of information and a delight to the ear and eye. The author has done a wonderful job here. I do wish there were more organizations out there like Best Friends...we certainly need them.
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