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Description
Blah Blah Black SheepWe're all sheep. Except him. A children's book about the courage to be different. Look Inside the Book I know your mama taught you how to stand and chew and bleat. But even green pastures won't stay safe in the farms of the West. Not with a hungry coyote on the loose. One outlaw is free from the herd's fears of bad looks and bad actors. Nobody wants to deal with Blah Blah Black Sheep, not even coyotes. That's when the flock learns that the courage to
We're all sheep. Except him.
A children's book about the courage to be different.
Look Inside the Book
I know your mama taught you how to stand and chew and bleat.
But even green pastures won't stay safe in the farms of the West.
Not with a hungry coyote on the loose.
One outlaw is free from the herd's fears of bad looks and bad actors. Nobody wants to deal with Blah Blah Black Sheep, not even coyotes. That's when the flock learns that the courage to defend the farm starts not with a bleat but with a blah.
Not with a hungry coyote on the loose.
One outlaw is free from the herd's fears of bad looks and bad actors. Nobody wants to deal with Blah Blah Black Sheep, not even coyotes. That's when the flock learns that the courage to defend the farm starts not with a bleat but with a blah.
He zigs when the flock zags.
He blahs when the flock bleats.
He howls at the moon when the flock sleeps.
But when danger comes lurking...
WHO WILL YOU BE?
Blah Blah Black Sheep is coming in Animated Glory!
Help make it a reality.
- Get the Black Sheep Bundle
- Buy more for your whole flock
- Subscribe to Canon+
The Black Sheep Bundle
What's In The Bundle?- Hardback book signed by N.D. Wilson
- Premium Art Print (8.5 x 11) signed by Forrest Dickison
- Fund the show to get your Black Sheep's name mentioned in the credits!
(We'll reach out for a name after purchase).
Does your own black sheep stand out boldly from the flock? Whether your children struggle with an excess of boldness in a timid flock, or need that extra push to get out there and stand up to the wolves, Blah Blah will be right there with them.
Blah Blah Black Sheep's boldness and bravery aren't appreciated by his flock, but he still isn't afraid to take a stand for what's right and protect them.
Teach your child to stand out from a frightened crowd, and to stand up for those who don't have their rough and tumble spirit.
With story from N.D. Wilson and stunning illustrations from Forrest Dickison (both of Hello Ninja fame), your little sheep will want to climb right into the pages and bound and fly by Blah Blah's side.
Defend the Farm Bundle
We live in Big Sky Country where you're not the only one under threat of danger out your borders.
Defend the farm with 3 Black Sheep Bundles for you, your folks, and your friends.Blah Blah Black Sheep's boldness and bravery aren't appreciated by his flock, but he still isn't afraid to take a stand for what's right and protect them.
Here's what y'all get:
- 3 Hardbacks (32 pages), signed by N.D. Wilson and Forrest Dickison
- 3 Premium Art Print, signed by Forrest Dickison (8.5 x 11)
- 3 Black Sheep names in the episode credits and the website
(We'll reach out for names after purchase).
Watch the creators talk about the book, the animated show, and the kind of rebels we desperately need.
Canonball Books is the children's imprint of Canon Press. At Canonball, we believe stories are soul food, so you can expect excitement, danger, loyalty, virtue, and family in your Canonball books. Feed your kids the right books!
—
N.D. Wilson is a professional misbehaver and storyteller with a fondness for big personalities—even in small sheep. He is currently brewing seven and a half new adventures and is a Writer in Residence at New Saint Andrews College.
Forrest Dickison illustrates children’s books, paints landscapes, and works in animation. He and his wife Danielle live in Moscow, Idaho and have three young daughters. Forrest illustrated all the books in the Hello, Ninja series, which became a hit original series on Netflix, and he also wielded the paint behind Sir Badalot. Visit him online at www.forrestdickison.com.
AUTHOR: N.D. Wilson
ILLUSTRATOR: Forrest Dickison
PAGE COUNT: 32
SIZE: 11.25x8.75"
ISBN-10: 1-95-790586-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-957905-86-0
BINDING: Hardback
PUB. DATE: October 17, 2023
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4.7 ★★★★★
Based on 1704 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
Excellent book, possibly currently unique in coverage of latest ideas
This book is possibly currently unique in its coverage of the latest ideas in the field of deep learning -- and it is a very convenient and good survey of fundamental concepts (linear algebra, optimization, performance metrics, activation function types), different network types (multi-layer perceptron, convolutional neural networks, and recurrent neural networks), practical considerations (data set, training and validation, implementation), and applications (comments on existing real-world/commercial uses). The final 235 pages of the content portion of the book is dedicated to topics in "Deep Learning Research", and these topics are truly at the current frontier.
Another reviewer said that one could gain the same knowledge of cutting-edge research by reading all of the latest papers (from academia and industry), but the "research" section of this book offers the following: Selection of the most notable research by the very experienced authors of the book, and collection of similar research in to a broader discussion of themes, and the additional insights. The book covers very advanced and new ideas currently being explored, and it is very nice to be able to have a consistent and coherent presentation of all of those ideas.
However, the book is also packed with valuable observations and pointers about more basic aspects of deep learning implementations and practices -- and such commentary is in depth and includes substantial analysis and mathematical derivation (in an intuitive presentation that often includes graphs illustrating the phenomenon).
As someone with an intermediate level of knowledge and experience of neural networks, I am really grateful for this book, because seems like the ideal resource for learning cutting-edge ideas and practices, with context. The book has excellent scope and depth, and I am confident that anyone with a solid background in linear algebra, calculus, statistics, and general machine learning, and basic neural networks (multi-layer perceptrons) will find this book to be very exciting and perhaps unique in its ability to take the reader to the next level and a new frontier. I was personally excited to learn about the idea of representing the dependencies of intermediate quantities by directed graphs, and how this can be used to perform calculations for recurrent neural networks efficiently. And I think the long chapter on recurrent neural networks is very helpful.
Having said all of this, I think only people with significant working knowledge and experience with neural networks and mathematics -- people whose academic or professional focus has been neural networks for at least a year or two -- would benefit from this book. This book answers a lot of the deeper questions that one is likely to have while developing a solid understanding of the fundamentals, and that's one of the book's tremendous values, but this book assumes an understanding of the fundamentals (but does briskly cover the basics).
I think this book is a perfect follow-up book for the excellent book "Neural Network Design (2nd edition)" by Hagan, Demuth, Beale, and de Jesus, and I highly recommend the latter for gaining the solid background needed to have a thrilling experience with the "Deep Learning" book.
In summary, I am very glad this "Deep Learning" book was written, and I think the "Deep Learning" book will be a great benefit to a lot of people, and to the evolution of the field.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2017
★★★★★ 5
The definitive guide to becoming a researcher in the field
Format: Hardcover
This is not a coding book. I see a lot of negative reviews around the expectation that this book would teach the reader how to quickly build machine learning systems and write code. This book is not for that audience.
If you just want to build applications, don't worry about how deep learning works. It's akin to needing to understand how an engine works just to drive a car. If you are looking for a coding resource, try: https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit-Learn-TensorFlow/dp/1492032646/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=machine+learning+tensorflow&qid=1579608765&sr=8-4 . And even with that book, the material still goes far beyond what you need - use it as a light reference.
I bought this book as an aspiring machine learning researcher, and towards that end, it is the best resource available in print (still true as of 2020). For instance:
The first 5 chapters are timeless. These are things that were mostly established 20 or 30 years ago and beyond and are mostly STEM fundamentals at this point. There are whole textbooks dedicated to each of those chapters, but the authors provide a quick refresher and overview of probably 80% of what you'll encounter in deep learning. If you haven't previously learned each of these subtopics, you'll probably want to study them individually since they are the key to innovating (linear algebra, probability & stats, numerical computation, machine learning fundamentals).
Chapters 6 thru 9 are the foundation of deep learning. We're about 12 years into seeing rapid change in the deep learning space, yet all of these principles and techniques still hold (many recent innovations are still relying on Convolutional models in 2020, which is the most layered/complex topics in those chapters). Therefore, I'd wager that these chapters are also fairly stable knowledge that is worth internalizing if you want to be deeply involved in the future of machine learning.
Chapters after 9 are mostly experimental topics, and many of them are already the wrong strategies for optimal results. But there are interesting ideas in here that you'll often encounter in the wild, so it's good exposure to various topics. But probably not worth much of your time.
And lastly, there is good history in here from people who know the space intimately. It's a good way to piece together the developments and learn the lexicon of deep learning so you can have intelligent conversation with experts.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2020
★★★★★ 5
The best DL/ML book I have ever seen!!
Format: Hardcover
Fantastic deep-learning book! The logic is very easy to follow, but the content is very thorough when it comes to explaining the theories behind it, making it perfect for beginners as well as math and CS students. The best DL/ML book I have ever seen!!
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Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Comprehensive Look At An Incredibly Complex Topic
Format: Hardcover
Deep Learning is an advanced book with great explanations and details. There is a heavy math focus with the book's beginning chapters detailing the necessary linear algebra and probability that one will need to understand deep learning. I liked that the author's chose to cover only the parts of these subjects which are relevant to deep learning.
There are many interesting philosophical sections in the book as well. Just about when I was feeling overwhelmed with the complexity of the mathematics the authors take a step back and cover the foundations of deep learning such as borrowing concepts from human learning. There was an interesting dicussion about the early studies done on the vision of cat's and monkey's in the 1970s.
The text covers the entire history of deep learning and the bibliography is hundreds of sources. It is clear this is the most comprehensive text available about deep learning. For anybody interested in this topic this book is a mandatory read.
There are sections about machine learning as well, which makes sense because deep learning is a subset of machine learning. These sections focused on the machine learning concepts which are most relevant to deep learning.
The book was well organized and divided into three parts which cover mathematics related to deep learning, typical deep learning techniques, and then more experiment learning techniques. Often the author's state when a technique works well or when it does not, and which types of data works best for the technique.
Just a warning, the math in this book is highly complex. It requires a lot of work to go through this book, but the effort will be well rewarded.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2017
★★★★★ 4
Too Dry.
Format: Hardcover
This was a required textbook for my class in college. I think it was too dry.
The book titled Deep Learning: From Curiosity To Mastery is much more approachable.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2026