Rating: 
Summary: EXCELLENT! A GENTLE PORTRAYAL OF LIVES
Review: This absolutely delightful book gives a very interesting overview of the development, thought and care that went into creating these high caliber, sympathetic and very believable characters. I have known Lawerences, Gordons and Sharons. I am so delighted to find their "cartoon" counterparts vividly portrayed in this book. Lynn Johnston is not only a very gifted artist, but she is a wonderful realist and is truly skilled at maintaining her readers' interest. There is no cartoonist I have read to date who is in her league. Like the title of the 1992 baseball movie, she really is in a "league of her own." Kudos to this wonderful book and it was the very first book I ever bought on line! (I bought all her other books at the store). THREE CHEERS FOR THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Meeting Old Friends
Review: This book fills in all the gaps about the people we have come to know and love. After reading about each one I feel even closer to this group of individuals. What a shame that they are fictional. And yet, we all know similar personalities in our own neighborhood. What a gentle touch Lynn has, letting us into their lives and giving us insight into the "real" people we deal with every day.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit pretentious, but I liked it
Review: This book is great for fans like myself who aren't quite old enough to have followed all the storylines the strip has covered, and who wonder about the stories behind the secondary characters. I do have my limits, and as much as I love FBOFW, we all know it can be schmaltzy sometimes. That definitely shows through here and there in this book, and on occasion I think Johnston tries a bit too hard to fill in all the blanks regarding her characters - this is fiction, after all. It's not really a very good place to start if you're just catching on to the strip (one of the older anthologies would be much better in that case). But if you're a serious fan, you won't want to be without this book. I'm glad I picked it up.
Rating:
Summary: A great behind-the-scenes book!
Review: This book really fills in the details (with words and new drawings) that Lynn Johnston could not squeeze into a daily comic strip. For example, I learned a lot about Elly's past, how she and John met, more about Lawrence's 'coming out' situation, and what she sees for the future of these characters. Every major character in the show is given this "behind the scenes" treatment, which is great (I never knew the entire history of Elly's best friend Connie, for example). Of course, there are lots of old cartoon strips where appropriate -- but this is much more than a book full of cartoon strips. My only "complaint" is that there is no table of contents for the characters and things are not necessarily in chronological order. When I wanted to look up info on a particular character or situation, I'd have to flip through the pages for a while.
Rating: 
Summary: a big disppointment
Review: This book was a surprise to me. I'd been reading "For Better or For Worse" since the kids were pre-adolescents. I'd read much and forgotten much. This book brought it all back, and then some. I found I cared about the characters and their lives, more than I could have possibly imagined.I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know how simple ink on paper can produce such three-dimensional characters.
Rating:
Summary: More Than Meets the Eye?
Review: This book was a surprise to me. I'd been reading "For Better or For Worse" since the kids were pre-adolescents. I'd read much and forgotten much. This book brought it all back, and then some. I found I cared about the characters and their lives, more than I could have possibly imagined. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know how simple ink on paper can produce such three-dimensional characters.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: When I found this book, I at first thought that it might be an autobiography of sorts of the Johnston family. I wasn't thrilled, but I love For Better or For Worse so much, that anything about the comic strip will interest me. What I found was a treasure, not an autobiography, but a volume on the autobiographical Pattersons, including a discussion about the evolution of the strip, an examination of the major characters and their friends, and a synopsis of events that occurred to the Pattersons prior to the first strip published 21 years ago. Ms. Johnston does an admirable job of showing how she has developed characters that often seem so real that I now think of them as members of my family. I learned things that I have missed through the years, including Connie's South American adventure which resulted in the birth of Lawrence. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of the Pattersons, Lynn Johnston, and For Better or For Worse.
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