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"Wow! Perfect! I really needed that!"

After a staff development program I presented in Florida, a teacher sent me a note: "When I arrived home, I got myself all worked up about everything I needed to accomplish. I resigned myself to the possibility that my summer was slipping away and I wouldn't be able to spend time with friends and family as I had planned. I made a list of all the friend's I would have to call to cancel plans. Then I crawled in bed and grabbed, Keeping First Things First. I read the first page:

"It seems as though there's never enough time to do all the things we have to do. Or is there? When I got to work today, I realized that my shoes weren't shined. I bent over to shine them at home this morning, but heard my little son crying before I got the lid off the polish. So I went to him and picked him up and dried his tears and gave him love. Then I didn't have time to go back and shine my shoes. I had to leave. That's okay. Some day my shoes will be in a scrap heap and no one will care whether they were ever shined. But the love I gave my son this morning will live on in him and those he passes it on to. No, I'm not embarrassed that my shoes aren't shined. They're a sign that I'm learning to keep first things first."

"Wow! Perfect! I really needed that! I reached over and crumpled up that list of 'friends to cancel' and tossed it in the trash. I now have a new list — a schedule of people to visit with. My chores will be penciled in around them. Thanks."

"It was exactly what I needed to help me work through
some very rough personal times."

"As a new mother,I made the same mistake that most Type-A personalities make. I tried to be 'Super Mom.' I physically and emotionally wore myself down and eventually just collapsed... Your insights are absolutely incredible and I can't tell you how much they have helped me."— C.M.

"I'm enjoying my kids and they're enjoying me."

"Since I teach, I have my summers free. Every summer I have a list a mile long to complete. My children were young, so I worked at my list before they woke up, while they napped, and after they went to bed at night. This year, however, the oldest of my three doesn't nap...and my list of previous summers is gone. I was feeling rather unproductive until I read Keeping First Things First. Now I would feel guilty if I completed my list. I'm enjoying my kids and they're enjoying me. Thanks for making my summer." L.G., Dixon, IL

"The perfect gift for a special friend . . ."

"It is the perfect gift for a special friend of mine who has recently had to adjust to her first-born leaving for college." — L.V., Rhode Island

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"Lyrically written, this unique fable — exquisitely illustrated — tells what happens when greed spoils the beauty and peace of the very first, perfect forest. This best selling resource encourages us all to share, to respect others, and much more." — Scholastic of Canada

Michigan and New York reviews place The First Forest alongside Charlotte's Web, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Giving Tree, and other classics. "The book relays the value of both concern for each other and for the environment." — Publishers Weekly

• Reading Coordinators' National Read, America! Classic Selection
• Scholastic Canada Book Club Selection
• Chicago Tribune Best-Seller List four consecutive holiday seasons

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• National Read, America! Selection
• Reading Is Fundamental Book List
• Teachers' Choice Award Winner
• Scholastic Book Club Selection
• The Perfect Book For Title I

• Oh, How I Wished I Could Read! "makes children want to be readers" —Olga Gize Carlile, Review

• "Oh, How I Wished I Could Read! is a book focused on the need to motivate children to read... We want you to be aware of a resource so specific to family literacy." —Secretary of State Literacy Office, Illinois State Library

• This light-hearted story with action-packed illustrations hits bull's eye on a glaring national need — motivating children to read. Oh, How I Wished I Could Read! produces laughs and gasps that make its "reading is vital" message a child-pleasing joy. Highly acclaimed and a national bestseller, it's a perfect book for fun-loving parents and high spirited teachers who laugh with their children and use humor to teach. Oh, How I Wished I Could Read! is used extensively in schools and even in adult literacy programs with its companion book What Is That Thing? Whose Stuff Is This? to foster reading development. — Publishing Profile

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"What Is That Thing? Whose Stuff Is This? is fun to read. The drawings are clever. But what makes the book so special is that it's a manifesto for literacy... An understanding of words and an ability to use words is one of the greatest gifts that a parent can give a child." — J. Snively, Review

"Happy are children with caring adults who help them discover the power of words."

"What Is That Thing? Whose Stuff Is This? provides the same practical motivation for vocabulary development that Oh, How I Wished I Could Read! provides for reading power. Author John Gile uses lyrically written text to capitalize on the phonological awareness dimension of rhythm and rhyme in writing as he takes us on a whimsical tour of amusing and confusing situations we would face in a world without word power. It's a book parents and teachers can enjoy themselves as they use it to help children understand the key role of words in our lives, the connection between reading and vocabulary development (what Gile calls "word power"), and how the words we say to each other can harm and hurt or help and heal." — Publishing Profile

" . . . In Dr. Seuss style . . . a delightfully whimsical account . . . Beginning with a time "when words and names were unknown, when people lived in caves and trees," . . . The book is funny and entertaining, and gets the message across in a free-flowing, rib-tickling way." — S. Johnson, Review

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Coming Attraction

• Call 815.968.6601 for information.
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Coming Attraction

From Never Vote For A Lawyer:

"History teaches us that all bureaucracies tend to devolve or degenerate to the point at which they serve the interests of the people running the bureaucracy instead of the interests of the people the bureaucracy was intended to serve. It happens in all large bureaucracies: in business, in education, in medicine, in religion, in unions, in government. Governments at all levels are subject to that tendency -- aided and abetted by citizen apathy.

"Because government has the power to take away your money, your property, your liberty, and your life, no one can afford to ignore or be indifferent to government. Bad government happens when good people quit caring.

"In the human condition, there is a common tendency to drift away from principles, to compromise principles for personal desires. Our nation’s founders were aware of that natural human tendency and created checks and balances to protect us from abuse. They knew that it is unrealistic to expect any particular candidate or party to govern perfectly and selflessly. Candidates we elect and the members of any party we put in power are subject to the limitations of the human condition described by classical theology and understood by our nation’s founders: limitations manifest in temptations to lust, greed, pride, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth and the destructive consequences from succumbing.

"Never Vote For A Lawyer is not a lawyer-bashing book. It is an aid for constantly focusing on and living up to the core principles and ideals of our Declaration of Independence and of our Constitution. Never Vote for a Lawyer is a reminder that, in a free society, we get the kind of government we deserve, that we — you and I — are ultimately responsible." — John Gile in Never Vote For A Lawyer

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