Search results for ""bunker hill publishing inc""

This is the true story of Fu Manchu, an adult male orangutan, who relishes outsmarting his friend, zookeeper Jerry Stones. He does just that when he escapes his enclosure at will and spends sunny days with the elephants in another part of the zoo. At first Jerry believes his staff's carelessness allowed the crafty ape to get out. But when that assumption proves wrong, he launches an all-out surveillance mission to discover how Fu manages his getaways. Jerry soon discovers that Fu can open the locked door, but can't figure out how he does it. The zookeeper removes every twig and stick that could be used as a lock pick, but Fu continues to escape. Eventually, Fu reveals to Jerry how he did it, and is rewarded with honorary membership in the American Association of Locksmiths.

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Imagine that you are Willow the Wallaby, who has come from Australia to live in the Stone Zoo New England, and all day long you overhear young visitors talking about all the great sights to see in the Boston area. After making a list, wouldn't you want to hop over your fence and set off on a walkabout (that's what Australians call a walking tour)? Packing her notebook, pen and anything else she might need conveniently in her pouch, one foggy night, Willow hops over the fence and begins her mission to see as many of the interesting and fun places in the city as she can over the next several days. Setting up a little tent in the Boston Garden, she begins her adventure the next day on the famous Swan Boats, right away meeting a nice little boy who tells where to go next. Taking lots of notes, Willow goes from one fun-filled location to another even ending up hopping her way through the Boston Marathon, all the time collecting souvenirs to bring back to her many friends at the zoo. There is so much to see in beautiful Boston, it is difficult to decide where to go first; so let Willow be your guide in this delightful book.

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As a musician and fine arts photographer Diane Asseo Griliches has observed the many distinctive and dynamic ways in which music teachers interact with their students. These 60 black and white photographs capture unique moments in the lively teaching sessions, and the viewer sees great musician/teachers (YoYo Ma, Jimmy Heath, Roman Totenberg, Bobbie McFerrin, and Ravi Shankar, to name but a few) photographed in the act! We are led into a world few have been privileged to share, where one sees the passion, devotion, joy and agony of hard work, the concentration and approval in the faces and body language of students and teachers, and through it all, the pleasures of shared music making. This book involves classical, jazz and ethnic areas of music. Each image is accompanied by a short biography of the teacher as well as a quotation from the teacher or student. All will respond to the very human emotions and the fine photography. This is a book for music lovers and lovers of photography. When one hears the names Yo-Yo Ma, Paula Robison, Bobbie McFerrin, and Ravi Shankar, great musicians immediately spring to mind. What most people do not know is that these dedicated people are also passionate teachers. From intimate one-on-one lessons to larger classroom sessions, these tireless musician/teachers are passing along the secrets of their art to the next generation. In Teaching Musicians, musician and fine arts photographer Diane Asseo Griliches leads us into a world few have been privileged to enter. The students are sensitive, vulnerable, reaching for confidence and achievement, and the teachers are encouraging with humor, critical commentary, generous guidance, or excited demonstration. The dynamic exchanges between student and teacher are observed through body language, facial expressions, and commentary. These convey much in attitude and approach, and through these intense photographic images one can experience the importance of the making of a musician. The photographer has entered into the other life of these fine musicians -- the life as a teacher -- and captured these moments for posterity. We also learn something of the life of these teachers, and relish what they or their students have to say.

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The war correspondent trails clouds of glory. The names of the pioneers of the trade are stardust: Ernest Hemingway, Alexander Dumas, Henry Villard, Winston Churchill, Stephen Crane, John Reed, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Richard Harding Davis, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Jack London, George Orwell, Philip Gibbs, Luigi Barzini. The names from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Kosovo are likewise as redolent of adventure and derring-do, with photojournalists and radio and televisioncommentators crowding the pantheon. They are the eyes of history. War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict from The Crimea to Iraq tells their stories, from the very first reports from the Crimean War in 1853 to the Second Gulf War in 2003. War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict From the Crimea to Iraq tells their stories, from the very first reports from the Crimean War in 1853 to the Second Gulf War. Through the notebooks, photographs, headlines, wires, telegrams, and satellite uplinks and direct interviews, Harold Evans describes the personal and professional challenges of these uniquely dedicated men and women as they attempted and succeeded, sometimes at the cost of their own lives, in retelling the most immediate stories of war. Harold Evans is an internationally acclaimed editor, author, and publisher. He was the editor of the Sunday Times and The Times of London. He was subsequently president and publisher of Random House and the editorial director for the publishers of US News & World Report, The Daily News, and The Atlantic. He is the author of The American Century. He guest curated the Newseum exhibition that inspired this book. Harold Evans is the author of two critically acclaimed best-selling histories of America: The American Century and They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators. This book was the basis for a four-part documentary of the same title on PBS, which he wrote. It is also being adapted into a college curriculum. His latest book is My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, a memoir covering his early life, his years in Britain's newspaper business and his move to America. He is editor at large of The Week magazine, and moderates The Week's panel discussions with political and economic leaders. Evans graduated M.A. from Durham University and held a Harkness Fellowship at the Universities of Chicago and Stanford. In London, he was the editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, and editor of The Times from 1981 to 1982. His account of these years was published in his best-selling book Good Times, Bad Times. He was regular presenter on the TV series What the Papers Say. Evans moved to America in 1984. He was the founding editor of Conde Nast Traveler magazine and President and Publisher of Random House Trade Group (1990-1997) From 1997-1999 he was Editorial Director and Vice Chairman of U.S. News & World Report, the New York Daily News, The Atlantic Monthly and Fast Company, a position from which he resigned in January 2000 to write full time. (Evans remains a Contributing Editor at U.S. News & World Report.) Among many recognitions, Evans was awarded the European Gold Medal by the Institute of Journalists. This followed his successful Sunday Times investigation and campaign on behalf of children injured by the pharmaceutical thalidomide. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the UK Press Award Committee, its highest accolade. In 2000, Evans was honored as one of 50 World Press Heroes on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the International Press Institute in defense of press freedom; for the IPI's 60th anniversary, he will deliver the keynote address at their 2010 conference in Vienna. In 2001, British journalists voted him the greatest all time British newspaper editor, and in 2004 he was honored with a knighthood in the Queen's 2004 New Year's Honors list.

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In A Child's Christmas in New England, Robert Sullivan and Glenn Wolff return together to their favorite subject. This is a memoir about a time when, and place where, (in the New England of the '50s and '60s), the snow was always deep and a light was always on in the window.

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Princess Olivia - How it came to be. A few years ago, my wife, Carol, was a vendor at a Vermont Farmers' Market. A farmer, Mimi, sold goat cheese in the stand next to her. Her daughter, Olivia was a shy, blonde, girl who raced around the market playing games with a friend. Every Saturday I helped Carol set-up her paintings and then enjoyed the market. When it was time to pack up, I helped Carol and Olivia helped Mimi. We all became friends. One day Olivia

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Wallace and Darwin, the Museum Mice from the Halls of the American Museum of Natural History, are off on another adventure! It's amazing what you can find in a museum and how far you can travel in a small time machine made from a yoghurt cup! Have you ever wondered where we humans all came from and how there came to be so many of us? The answers, as our two mice will show you, lie everywhere including in our own DNA. So there is the Big Picture of The Great Human Journey from the middle of Africa to Australia, America and Asia and then there's the Tiny (really tiny) Picture too of molecules and cells that we can trace inside ourselves and our Genome like long strings of letters that tell us where we came from and who our ancestors were, and where they were when and how they got there!

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Favor Johnson lives on a small farm in the hills of Vermont. He keeps to himself, surrounded by dozens of animals, chickens, geese, and his one constant friend, a hound named Hercules. Then one Christmas Eve Hercules' life is saved by Favor's new neighbor, a doctor, and Favor's whole life -- as well as the life of everyone in his village -- is changed forever. This delightful story of Favor Johnson, Hercules, Doctor Jennings, and the mysterious house-to-house delivery of homemade fruit cakes on Christmas Eve is a heart-warming tale of neighborliness and generosity in a Vermont village at Christmas. It is also a tale of rescue, of good and bad cooking, of friendship, and of giving presents at Christmas. A modern, and classic, American Christmas folktale, Favor Johnson has been a favorite radio story for years and is published now for the first time, brought to life by the wonderful watercolor illustrations of Bert Dodson. This book is their second collaboration, the first being John and Tom, published in 2001.Willem Lange is a short-story writer, commentator and host on Vermont Public Radio and New Hampshire Public Television. He also has a weekly column in The Valley News, the major newspaper in the NH/VT Upper Valley area. In addition to the Yuletide readings of his Christmas story, Favor Johnson, a staple on Public Radio for fifteen years, his annual readings of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol -- on stage, on Vermont Public Radio, and on Armed Forces Radio overseas -- have been popular since 1975. He lives with his wife in East Montpelier, Vermont.Bert Dodson is the author and illustrator of the best-selling learn-to-draw classic Keys to Drawing as well as the illustrator of over 80 children's books including a previous one with Willem Lange. He has also co-written The Way Life Works with noted biologist Mahlon Hoagland. He lives in Bradford, Vermont.

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Organic Gardening (not just) in the Northeast is organized around the calendar year, starting in March and continuing through the year with timely advice. Henry Homeyer's book is packed with useful information you won't easily find elsewhere: how to sharpen your pruners, use a screwdriver to test for compaction in the lawn, and build a welcoming cedar arbor as an entrance to the garden. Learn how to grow ladyslipper orchids or Himalayan blue poppies, prune apple trees, grow giant pumpkins, and even how to start a date palm from a grocery store date or build a small stone igloo to delight grandchildren. Eccentric, eclectic, and entertaining, whether you are a beginner or a veteran, this book has something and more for you.

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Walter Paine's Cousin John: the Story of a Boy and a Small Smart Pig takes young readers to a time when dogs roamed unleashed and ice was delivered in blocks by beefy men with iron tongs. Bert Dodson's charming illustrations bring the bygone era to life and highlight key points in the story. Due to be published in September 2006, an advance review copy is enclosed for your consideration. A simple, elegant tale set in Brookline, Massachusetts a generation or two ago, Cousin John is about awakening and discovery, animals and humans, as experienced by a lonely, curious boy and his pet pig who become the talk of the town. A true story, Cousin John exemplifies that magic moment in childhood Graham Greene noted, when the door opens and lets the future in.

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Each year over three million people visit the Freedom Trail, a two-and-one-half mile red brick line that tells a story over two centuries old. In 1958, local journalist William Schofield had the idea that Boston's revolutionary sights could be made more accessible to residents and visitors, and conceived of the Freedom Trail. Tourists were going berserk, he wrote, bumbling around and frothing at the mouth because they couldn't find what they were looking for. Along with Bob Winn of the Old North Church, Schofield convinced the city of Boston to connect the dots between the historic sites and buildings that were the birthplace of the American Revolution. A natural and easily accomplished idea, a foundation was created that put the idea in place and gave it a name. In this simple way, the Freedom Trail, known and beloved around the world, was born. In addition to its great historical importance, the beauty of the sites, sounds, and neighborhoods along the way made walking the Freedom Trail an instantly popular activity. Some forty-six years later, at the age of eighty-seven the artist Leonard Weber has created a lasting tribute to those who established and maintained one of the treasures of Boston's and the Nation's heritage. He has painted a fold-out panorama of the whole horizon of Boston's revolutionary history, a portrait of each of the sixteen landmarks together with a selection of their most important artifacts--from the State House and the Sacred Cod to the House and Tomb of Paul Revere, and on to Old Ironsides and the Bunker Hill Monument. Len Weber's The Freedom Trail is a visual treasure house of our nation's history, a glorious rekindling of Boston's patriotic past in its present-day glory.

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The North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) is the most endangered large whale in the oceans today. Fewer than 350 are left in their breeding and feeding grounds, which extend from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico. Survivors of hundreds of years of commercial exploitation, the right whales we see in the ocean today are barometers for the plight of whales in the 21st century. For over 900 years, beginning about a.d. 1000, whalers from Europe and the Americas hunted North Atlantic right whales almost out of existence. By 1935, when they were at last given international protection as an endangered species, some scientists suspected that there were fewer than 100 right whales left in the North Atlantic Ocean. Most thought the right whale was doomed to extinction. Disappearing Giants: The North Atlantic Right Whale describes and illustrates an ongoing story of science and rediscovery, of survival and protection, and of research, without which we cannot hope to protect the right whale's habitat along 1,400 miles of the east coast of North America, from Nova Scotia to Florida. Disappearing Giants: The North Atlantic Right Whale also describes in great detail the history and current status of the species, from the reason for its name, to the way each individual can be recognized, the species' feeding and breeding habits, migration, and life in the wilderness of the Atlantic Ocean. Scott Kraus is the director of research and Kenneth Mallory is the editor-in-chief of the publishing program at the New England Aquarium. Between them they have published books and numerous scientific papers as well as children's books, one of which they wrote together, Search for the Right Whale, published in 1992.

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In earlier civilizations ruins were remainders and reminders of the glory of long passed times. People pondered what could still be seen of the palaces, great public buildings and places of worship. The everyday working world was left without any record to commemorate its importance. Ruins now occupy a special place in our contemporary landscape. Nearly everywhere there are vestiges of commercial buildings and machines that many people still remember as vital to their communities. Industrial progress has doomed them in the space of a few decades. They are the relics of America's industrial glory at mid Twentieth century: great structures erected to support the technologies that shaped the country we now live in. In this book of poems and paintings both poet and artist seek to memorialize the recent industrial past of America as both worker and machine fall into oblivion and the declining past yields to the ruthless changes of the present. Audette paints abandoned factories, ships, bridges, and large machines and much smaller artifacts such as discarded railroad couplings, carburetors and machine tools. In contrast, Nothnagle memorializes the intimate lives of the men and women who made and used these engines and devices in the workshops, now abandoned as they themselves have been; their triumphs and victories forgotten. The poems are lyrical and harsh, short and to the point, knowing and critical, like accents on the canvases. The titles say it all, Calling In, Change to Spare, Grudges, Two Ton Bucket, Yard Sale, Buddy, Chance, Funeral, and speak of frailty and strength, chance and misfortune unlike the machines she also writes about This machine was built to last, making parts to be assembled, parts that fit together like they were meant to, parts that always make sense, no matter what crazy people do to people around the world.

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The hero of Cataneo's intensely moving novel is thirteen-year-old Nicky Martini who lives in an apartment complex, known as Eggplant Alley, in the Bronx in 1970 and struggles to cope with a changing family, a changing neighborhood, and a changing world. Long-haired hippies, racial tension, and the divisive Viet Nam war leave Nicky longing for the good old days. Nicky's complaints and remembrances revolve around the five things that ruined his childhood: the nosebleed he received from President Kennedy; the Great Northeast Blackout (which he thought he caused); the end of neighborhood stickball games; the departure to Viet Nam of his beloved big brother, Roy; and Roy's hippie girlfriend, Margalo. With Roy overseas for a year, Nicky is left behind with two distracted, worried parents. And for him, enough is enough. He decides to do something about the endless downward spiral of events. He decides to lead a crusade to revive neighborhood stickball, which he is sure will spark a return to all that was innocent and beautiful about the good old days. In the course of his year-long quest, Nicky confronts an ancient fortune-teller from the second floor; Willie Mays; his father's deep, dark secret from World War II; neighborhood bullies; and a huge romantic crush on Margalo. Most important is his encounter with Lester Allnuts, a new kid in the building who gives Nicky a fresh outlook on Eggplant Alley, and eventually on life in general. Lester is a country boy with a deep secret, and that secret makes him as eager as Nicky to revive stickball and rejuvenate Eggplant Alley. Working together toward the same goal - for entirely different reasons --- the boys develop a strong friendship. Before the year without Roy is over, Nicky learns Lester's secret --- and realizes the destructiveness of prejudice and fear, and the value of empathy and forgiveness. And he ultimately learns there is something far richer than the good old days: real hope for a better future. D.M.Cataneo is a native New Yorker and a magna cum laude graduate of Boston University's School of Public Communication who worked for 22 years for the Boston Globe and Boston Herald as a reporter, columnist, and editor. He is the author of six non-fiction books. He is currently teaching at the University of New Hampshire and lives in Durham, NH, with his family.

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Do you remember how it felt when, as a child, you first discovered some little creature or flower you'd never seen before and when, moved beyond speech, all you could manage was a breathless wow? That little whisper, that crystalline moment of pure wonder, is what Under the Wild Ginger is about.You can reclaim the magical in your hectic life. You'll learn how to open both your senses and your spirit to your surroundings, how to notice and celebrate the countless small miracles that await, often right under your nose. The book introduces the concept of seeing generously. It suggests that, while sensing may seem a kind of acquisition, it's really as much about giving as taking--letting go agendas and schedules; surrendering cell phones and computers; committing your time; applying your imagination; and, above all, simply paying attention. Giving something of yourself to the process of perception restores the curiosity and joie de vivre each of us possessed naturally as a child but which got buried in layer upon layer of adult structure, stress, and cynicism. Under the Wild Ginger is a book to enjoy in quiet moments by yourself, to give to kindred spirits, and, perhaps most importantly, to share with your children and grandchildren as a guidebook to journeys of wonder you'll undertake together. Under the Wild Ginger is a collection of evocative reflections which gently, compellingly urge the reader to reclaim the wonder and wisdom of childhood. Part nature walk, part self-reflection, part spirit quest, it inspires uninhibited curiosity and enthusiasm for small things, those small, wonderful things so often hidden to first glances like the exquisite flower beneath the leaves of the wild ginger. Through his patient probing Jeffrey Willius shows us how, for each layer of our perceptual, emotional and spiritual inattentiveness we're willing to shed. Nature, in return, sheds one layer of her mystery.ENDORSEMENTSA lovely meditation on what makes life worth living. --Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and The Nature PrincipleThis is one of those rare books that can make you rethink how you see the world. --Richard Leider, author of The Power of Purpose; Senior Fellow, University of Minnesota's Center for Spirituality and HealingA welcome invitation to see the world through new eyes. --Marti Erickson, cofounder, Children & Nature NetworkA book I want to sit with in the woods or in my garden and savor; warmhearted, wise, uplifting, healing--simply enchanting! --Robin Easton, author of Naked in Eden: My Adventures and Awakening in the Australian RainforestThese reflections inspire us to keep our childlike wonder alive in all we do--to pause, listen and look deeply, to never stop asking questions. --Ann Bancroft, polar explorer, teacher and authorA delightful, thoughtful read that will have you earmarking page after page for future reference. --Greg Lais, Executive Director, Wilderness InquiryThis book nourishes the soul. --Meg Pier, travel writer and photographer

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A boy is sure he has the world's best father, an outdoorsman who shows him the hiding places of ground-nesting birds and teaches him to paddle a canoe and handle a rifle safely. Never point your gun at anything you don't intend to shoot, his father tells him, and don't kill anything you don't intend to eat. When he's eight years old, he is finally allowed to go to hunting camp with his father. They climb through dark woods to the icy-cold camp, where Dad starts a fire in the stove. A few minutes later, a tiny, shivering white-footed mouse emerges from his nest to share the warmth of the stovepipe. The boy feeds him a bit of cheese and sees that the mouse trusts him. Later, when his father begins to bait a mouse trap, the boy wittily reminds his Dad of the lesson he had taught him.The White-Footed Mouse is Willem Lange's and Bert Dodson's latest collaboration, a delightfully illustrated parable for lovers of nature and the great outdoors and for kids who want to keep their Dads in line.Willem Lange is a short-story writer, columnist, commentator, and host on Vermont Public Radio and New Hampshire Public Television.This is his third children's book with Bert Dodson. He lives with his wife in East Montpelier, Vermont.Bert Dodson is the author and illustrator of the best-selling learn-to-draw classic Keys to Drawing as well as the illustrator of over 80 children's books including a previous one with Willem Lang. He has also co-written The Way Life Works with noted biologist Mahlon Hoagland. He lives in Bradford, Vermont.Advance PraiseWhen I was a 15-year-old kid, Will arrived in our tiny Adirondack Mountain town. It was the beginning of an enduring and profound friendship. Over fifty years we've paddled, climbed, hunted, and fished together, and listened to each other. This story is Will at his best: a man, a boy, and a mouse in a camp together, a tender story of respect and caring for one another in the most important ways.--Baird Edmonds, retired designer, contractor and outdoorsman What a wonderful and beautifully illustrated story! A father teaches his son about nature and ethics, and the son then gives his father a lesson. Willem Lange is a master storyteller and The White-Footed Mouse is one of his best. Beautifully written and beautifully illustrated, the story has lessons for us all. Though written for youth, it's one that every parent and grandparent will treasure. It's destined to become a classic that future generations will enjoy and learn from.--Gary Moore, syndicated columnist, broadcaster and former Vermont Commissioner of Fish and Wildlife

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A fantasy-adventure story about a boy born with a mustache and an ability to talk with animals. Wobar's adventures begin when he runs away from home after getting in trouble at his new school. Hiding out in a cave, he meets a cougar, Roxie, who becomes his best friend and constant companion. Wobar encounters the ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier who was given -- and had stolen from him -- a calumet or Native American peace pipe. The pipe has the power to end all wars and until it is found and returned to the American president, the ghost must remain in limbo. Wobar and Roxie travel to New Orleans - by freight train, boat and cargo plane -- where a gypsy fortune teller helps them with their quest. Alternately scary and funny, each exciting chapter ends with a cliff-hanger.Henry Homeyer is a writer, storyteller, and grandfather who taught third and fourth grade long ago. Wobar and the Quest for the Magic Calumet is a tale Henry told one summer while running a playground program in Saxtons River, Vermont, when he was still in college. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa and has been a peace activist since the Vietnam War. He dreams of a real calumet that can end all wars. Currently residing in Cornish Flat, NH, Henry also writes books and syndicated columns on gardening.Joshua Yunger is the illustrator of several books, including his forthcoming children's book Hippo and Monkey. He is a faculty member at Alliance for the Visual Art (AVA) Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and a stay-at-home dad. In his spare time, he writes and records songs for his band The Ologists. He Lives in South Straffor, VT with his wife Erin and their children George and Casey.Advance PraiseIt is one of the best adventure books I have ever read. And I love adventures.--Willa McGough, reader, age nineAs a child, I ran away on an adventure with Wobar, his mustache, and his cougar friend. Their story, a unique telling of doing good despite the odds, has always stayed with me. Every parent and every child should read it.--Sarah Mitchell, bookseller (retired)Reading the story of Wobar was one of the high points of the year for my third-grade class. They were spellbound.--Linda Fuerst, third-grade teacher

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Outer Beauty Inner Joy is a spiritual book. It seeks to give the reader space in which to contemplate and strengthen values that reason alone cannot reach. The Renaissance was an age of spiritual rediscovery of the art and wisdom of the ancients. Today in an age as fully dysfunctional and violent as the Renaissance itself we need to go on the same quest in our own time. We honor and revere the art of the Italian Renaissance, but not all of us are familiar with the philosophy that inspired it. The Renaissance was an explosion of beauty and art in Western history. It was also a time when writers and scholars like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, and artists such as Leonardo, Boticelli, Tintoretto and Michaelangelo, were seeking a common thread among the world's ancient spiritual traditions. It was the beginning of a freer and more ecumenical way of looking at spirituality and at life. For Renaissance thinkers, the role of the artist and the making of art held an important place in society. Artists could contact unseen forces, bringing the beauty of higher realms into their earthly creations. Through contemplating this beauty, viewers too could touch its divine essence. Renaissance philosophers placed a new emphasis on the value of life: personal experiences with nature, art, and love could be ways of communing with the Divine here and now. Outer Beauty Inner Joy seeks through this selection of passages and images from some of the great writers and artists of the Italian Renaissance, to express the classic Renaissance ideal of beauty, and reveal an ecumenical wisdom; one that reaches across boundaries of different belief systems. Mixing contemporary values with the teachings of the ancients, Italian philosophers forged an inclusive, holistic philosophy. They spoke of a new way to experience life and a new understanding of the individual's place in the cosmos. What in the Renaissance was seen as the Anima Mundi, the divine essence which embraces and energizes all of life, permeates the pages of Outer Beauty, Inner Joy. The ideal of eloquence, persuasive, powerful discourse that moves the listener, was prized during the Renaissance, and is evident in the words of these writers. Soulful words matched with evocative images create a book that reveals the attitude and quality of mind of the Italian Renaissance, a time when concepts fundamental to modern Western culture were born. This philosophy, and this book itself, which reveres the wisdom and art, as well as equality, and tolerance for all beings, could not be more timely. Julianne Davidow has an enduring fascination with the Italian Renaissance. She began spending time in Italy in 1990 and has lived in Rome and Venice. She conducted research for Outer Beauty, Inner Joy at the Marciana Library in Venice, at the New York City Public Library, at conferences sponsored by the Renaissance Society of America and the New York Open Center, and through independent study. Having studied comparative religion and literature at Sarah Lawrence College, she continues to take a deep interest in these subjects. She writes on art, history, travel, and spirituality, and loves to photograph ancient art and artifact. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in the U.S. and in Europe. This immensely attractive and important book shows in visual images, words, and description a point of view that has been utterly lost to the modern mind: the idea that divinity and humanism go together. This means that to be a fully human person, developing all your latent abilities and points of character, you have to be in contact with that which is beyond you, the profound and visionary mysteriousness of your situation. Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul; A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Every day Life

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Brain: A 21st Century Look at a 400 Million Year Old Organ (Bunker Hill Publishing; available: October 2010) is the companion volume to the highly acclaimed Bones, Brains and DNA, and is based on a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History that opens November 3rd, 2010. Is the brain something that works the way it is supposed to like a computer or something that works not quite as well as it is supposed to like a Rube Goldberg contraption? Brains have different purposes depending on whether you are a mouse (it's useful to smell well) or a human (you need to walk on two feet) or a whale (you need to know where you are in the ocean) and for all these purposes and others you need a brain. What kind of a brain does a fruit fly have? Do plants need brains or can they get by without one? Does a pea have a brain? What animal had the first brain? Does brain-size matter and what makes the human brains different from those of other species? Then there are the chemical questions and the electrical questions and how messages are sent around your body from the brain and signals are sent back from the nerve cells to the brain along multi-lane highways full of neurotransmitters which cope with the impulses you have sensed from the outside world. Wallace and Darwin show you how 21st century science works with CATS (No not cats!) and MRIs and all that Brain Imaging that can explore the brain in action. How we sleep, how we perceive things, how we dream, how we (and other animals) remember things, even how we think! Brain takes a 21st Century Look at the major concepts that will help the reader understand the complex structure and function of the brain, whether plants have brains and what the brains of small animals like flies and worms look like and if size matters. Brain looks at the structure of neural cells and what a synapse looks like and does as well as examine the chemical nature of how nerves work and how some molecules like dopamine work to influence the way our nervous systems work. It also looks at how the brain works and what parts of the brain might control what functions and how FMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) looks at the brain. This lavishly illustrated book examines how our brain works when we sleep, see things, perceive and remember things.

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This relationship, like all relationships, is about acceptance and trust. In each moment I am challenged by my own prejudice and fears. Disabled or not, to witness a child grow up and allow them to develop as themselves, to nurture potential but not overwhelm is a daunting task facing all parents. With a child who has a disability it is hard to ignore this task. Even the most mundane experiences are heightened and intensified. The pace of life is slowed down and so these feelings that accompany this journey unavoidably rise to the surface daily. My struggle has been to stay close enough to a core sense of myself and not to be seduced by an external image of 'how to live' and 'what's important' but to a vision created by just us in the present reality of our lives. When you have a learning difficulty you already live outside a well-defined box. Often being 'different' can be liberating. This is my point of view. I do not intend to speak for other mothers. It is the history I have created and I am aware that there are many different ways to tell this narrative. Each child is different and each child with Downs syndrome is different. This document is about being 'Up Close,' up close to both of us. Up Close: A Mother's View is an extraordinary book. With some fifty photographs taken over the first twelve years of her daughter Ophir's life, and a meditative, thoughtful text, Fiona Yaron-Field conveys her moods and feelings, reactions and impulses as a mother. Her lucid words frame the record of an affectionate and unflinching focus on her relationship with her growing daughter, reflected back through the lens of the camera. Fiona has worked as a professional photographer and Art Psychotherapist for over fifteen years. Her work has primarily focused on the family and running a successful portrait business. She has worked in various community-based projects teaching photography and facilitating groups of children and adults with both mental and physical disabilities. Fiona has exhibited her photographic work, and most recently her show Shifting Perspectives was shown at the OXO Tower, London, after touring in the UK. Her latest project is due to be exhibited in June 2008. She is the mother of two girls. Ophir, her eldest, has Downs syndrome.

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Old Bob was old Abe's horse and he was loyal and the manes of both horse and master blew haphazardly this way and that as their way across the prairies long before Old Abe became the most important President America ever had. Old Bob took his master over barely passable trails, across almost unfordable rivers, through endless reaches of tall grass and heavy rain which obscured any view, as Abraham Lincoln rode the circuit of his law practice often for months at a time. Their temperaments matched strong, calm, dependable and intelligent. Old bob was there when they voted Old Abe into the presidency of the United States of America. Old Abe was there in the parade to celebrate the Union victory covered in that special red white and blue blanket covered in tiny Union flags. Tragically he was there too as the nation mourned their assassinated President walking in a place of honor behind the hearse as Abraham Lincoln was borne through the streets of Springfield to the beat of muffled drums to be buried in the Oak Ridge Cemetery. Old Bob and Old Abe is a story of companionship and honor, of a man who loved animals and men, and treated both with respect and dignity in a time in American History when Freedom was won.

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This book is sure to capture the imaginations of young readers. A charmingly illustrated poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins takes us on a journey that features magical transformations and makes a nautical adventure out of the act of reading. The interplay between the pictures and the poetry dramatizes how reading can transport us from our own familiar world into the fantastic world of a book. The boy in the boat stands for every reader and every child. Billy Collins is the author of a dozen books of poetry and was called America's most popular poet by the New York Times. He served as U. S. Poet Laureate 2001-2003, and the New York Public Library named him a Literary Lion. This is his first book designed for children.Karen loves the ocean so much that as a little girl decided she would be a mermaid. That didn't work out. Instead she followed her other love, art. Karen and her family live in historic Clinton, New Jersey. They vacation every year at the Jersey Shore where Karen spends most days on the beach painting... Hoping to one day at least see a mermaid! Voyage is Karen's debut as a picture book illustrator.

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What kind of adventure begins in the living room on a rainy Monday afternoon? It depends. Say you just found out that Granny, who raised you, is going to lose her house because there's nothing valuable left to sell except an unfinished tapestry. And say that your pet blackbird Mead starts talking and swells up to the size of large motorcycle, and that you suddenly find yourself on his back falling into what you could have sworn was just an old rug covered with pictures of knights galloping through forests. If that's your situation, then this adventure could be weirder, scarier, and more amazing than anything you ever imagined. Time and the Tapestry tells the story of a 13 year old, would-be artist Jen and her not-quite-as-nerdy-as-he used-to-be- 10 year old brother Ed. They find themselves adrift in 19th century England, unable to make their way back home until they've gathered the missing pieces to make that tapestry whole. It's great that they can ride on Mead's back. But not so great that his feathers are falling off, too fast to count. Great that they keep meeting up with the rugmaker himself, Jen's hero, British radical William Morris. But not so great that he always seems to be yelling at somebody or tossing something at them. Great that as they travel from London to Oxford to Iceland, they begin to figure out a way to save the Tapestry (and Granny's house along with it). But downright terrifying that Mead's going to be grounded soon, leaving them trapped with Morris and his wacky daughter May in a Victorian London that may be filled with cranky artists and loveable animals, but....it's a long long way from home. The scenes set in Canterbury, Oxford, the English countryside, Trafalgar Square, Iceland, and Boston will enchant those drawn to the tapestry of history. Along with its magnificently detailed illustrations, this expertly woven tale threads together the best of classical fantasy with a tale of modern-day adventure that will captivate readers of all ages. First-time children's book author John Plotz--who's spent years studying, teaching, and dreaming about William Morris--brings the story of Arts and Crafts to life with a yarn about a world where the power of imagination may just be strong enough to bring dragons, flying birds and enchanted books to life.

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Hippo and Monkey is the story of two best friends.Little things start to bother them about each other. How can they find a way to accept each other for who they are? This delightful tale of irritation, tolerance, and love tells us how to be forgiving when it comes to those closest to us. Banana skins in the water! Angry splashing! These are some of the bumps along the path through the jungle of life for Hippo and Monkey. Can they navigate the path wisely? What can we, in turn, learn from them? Find out in this funny, heartwarming, thought-provoking, and beautifully illustrated book.JOSHUA YUNGER is the illustrator of several books including Wobar and the Quest for the Magic Calumet by Henry Homeyer also coming out this October. He is a faculty member at the AVA Gallery and Art Center (Alliance for the Visual Art) in Lebanon NH. In his spare time he writes and records songs for his band The Ologists. He lives in South Stafford, VT with his wife Erin and their young children George and Casey. Advance PraiseWith the bold, dynamic lines and colors of his hand-colored linoleum cuts and his sparse and idiosyncratic use of words, Joshua Yunger perfectly conveys the childhood emotions of these two unusual friends learning to understand and love each other. Hippo and Monkey is a children's book for all ages.--Bente Torjusen, executive director, AVA Gallery and Art Center Most beautiful.--Cooper-Moore, Jazz musician and educatorThis gorgeous fable about the work and rewards of love will delight both children and the grown-ups who read to them. Hippo and Monkey is fresh and rich, a feast for the senses as well as food for the soul.--Jennifer Bates, bookseller, poet, author, The First Night Out of Eden This book has wonderful messages for all of us, no matter how old we are. As you enter the beautifully illustrated world of Hippo and Monkey, you are in for a real treat. Get ready to open yourself up to what these two animals have to teach us.

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Elizabeth Osborne (born 1936) is a painter who responds with awe and religiosity to the grandeur, the frightening power, and the rich fluid diversity of nature. Early she painted the same landscapes -- particularly in Maine and New Mexico -- that have attracted many generations of American artists such as Frederic Church and Thomas Moran in the nineteenth century as well as Robert Henri, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Alex Katz and others in the twentieth. Osborne's translations of nature through the methods of soaked-in, saturated pigment, ecstatic and hallucinatory chroma, and evocative brush gestures conjure the touch, taste, and scent of the landscape. This subjective, experiential exploration reveals her place in the lineage of American landscape painting as well as her compelling role in the history of postwar abstraction. Osborne made her mark with monumental, hallucinatory landscapes of the early and mid-1970s and with virtuoso, glowing realist watercolors of the late 1970s but her recent work has included boldly-painted ruminations of nature in its micro- and macrocosm. Osborne's oeuvre is full of surprises, stylistically experimental yet cohesive, hauntingly introspective and complex in its artistic and personal associations. The Color of Light brings together paintings from all periods in her career, from a provocative series of 1960s interiors, to those innovative land- and sea-scapes of the 1970s, ambitious large still-lifes of the late 1970s and early 1980s and increasingly abstract work of the past two decades. Richly illustrated, this monograph features eighty-two full-color plates, comparative material illuminating the artist's processes, and a comprehensive chronology with numerous documentary photographs. Long recognized by critics and her peers as one of the most innovative and daring Philadelphia-based artists of the last forty years, Osborne has tirelessly explored the psychologically-charged space between abstraction and realism. Osborne studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in the mid-1950s and has been a faculty member there since 1963. A prolific artist and frequent exhibitor in New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and throughout the United States, Osborne has produced a multivalent and challenging body of work that has shifted tone and content gradually since the 1960s. Although she is well-known, there has never been a full survey of her work. This book, published on the occasion of her first painting retrospective reveals the range, depth, and importance of Osborne's art.

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The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's archives are world-renowned, but few might suspect that among over a million and a half photographs of airplanes, spacecraft, and famous aviators, the Museum has a veritable photographic menagerie of animals of all shapes and sizes. Animals Aloft presents a selection of photographs and anecdotes of this little-known aspect of aviation history. The author, in a witty and well informed text, describes the unique moments in the history of animal flight captured by the camera and artists' engravings. Animals Aloft records and illustrates hundreds of animal aviators and co-pilots including fifteen cats, two chickens, one rooster and four chicks; eight cows, one chimpanzee, numerous dogs, innumerable horses (including an entire cavalry column), birds, four goats and a spider. The bravest flew in legendary craft; the chicks in a Lockheed Constellation; the spider in the Skylab space station; the cows in a DC-3A, Kiddo in airship America; Gilmore the lion in a Lockheed Air Express 3; and Tailwind the woodchuck, who flew away in a Bellanca Sky Rocket and was never seen again. Meet Kiddo, the first cat to attempt a transatlantic crossing by air; Whiskey and Soda, lion mascots of the Lafayette Escadrille; Cher Ami, heroic pigeon of the Battle of Meuse-Argonne in World War I; Titina, the dog who flew over the North Pole twice; and Gilmore, lion mascot (and nervous passenger) of the dashing pilot Roscoe Turner. There are the tragic stories of Tailwind the woodchuck and Laika the space dog--and did Moritz, the Red Baron's Great Dane, really suffer from airsickness? Wilbur Wright, Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Lindbergh, and James H. Jimmy Doolittle make guest appearances, as does Amelia Earhart--with Harpo Marx. And, amazingly enough, it turns out that pigs really can fly. Animals Aloft pays an affectionate and at times humorous tribute to all these wonderful animals in their flying machines. Allan Janus is a museum specialist in the Archives Division of the National Air and Space Museum, where he assists researchers and maintains the archives' lighter than air (balloons and airship) files. He has organized several exhibits of archival material for the Museum, including Fauna in the Files, Airships in the Archives, and Army Green to Air Force Blue. He also wrote Dog is my Co-Pilot for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine. Janus is also a widely exhibited photographer, whose work is represented in several museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Janus grew up in the Washington D.C. area, and currently lives in Washington Grove, Maryland, with two decidedly earth-bound cats, Max and Maxine.

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The Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia in the winter of 1776, received an urgent message. Please fix upon some particular color for a flag. It was from an understandably exasperated George Washington. The Continental Armies had taken the field under a babble of emblems and devices. Even the Grand Union flag that flew over naval vessels confused the issue with its display of the crosses of the British flag in its canton. So, at Washington's request, Congress wrestled with the design, and on June 14, 1777, almost a year after the signing of Declaration of Independence, on the date still celebrated as Flag Day, the United States finally had a flag all its own. Every era has a flag story to tell. Suffragettes, Know-Nothings, babies, Boy Scouts, and the Ku Klux Klan have all claimed it as their own. It flies in moments of victory, on Iwo Jima during World War II, and in moments of profound sorrow, when America grieved for the victims of 9/11. Old Glory: Unfurling History describes the histories and myths surrounding the flag of the United States of America from its revolutionary birth to the present day, and is lavishly illustrated from the collections of the Library of Congress. Karal Ann Marling is professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She has published extensively, and her recent books include: George Washington Slept Here, Graceland: Going Home with Elvis, and Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland.

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The mammoth, with its shaggy coat, enormous tusks, and ponderous presence, is one of the great icons of extinction. It is also one of the few prehistoric creatures that is known not only from a few scattered fossilized bones, but from specimens that have been preserved perfectly, with skin, flesh and hair. Complete mammoths lie frozen in the icy wastes of Siberia, and from time to time one is exposed as the temperature or conditions change. So while there is doubt about when most prehistoric animals first appeared on earth, we know precisely when and where the mammoth lived. Not only are there excellent specimens, we also have pictures of mammoths painted by people who actually saw them alive - our ancestors who, thousands of years ago, decorated the walls of caves with the animal's image. Today, this artistic tradition continues and many modern painters have chosen to create pictures showing the mammoth as it appeared in life. Its lumbering form is often shown crossing great ice fields or snowbound plateaus. The Mammoth is one of the great icons of prehistory. The name conjures up an immediate picture of a huge, shaggy, reddish, elephant-like creature trudging across a vast icy waste, its enormous curved tusks reflecting in their whiteness the snows lying all around. The word mammoth is now so familiar that it has come to mean not just an extinct elephant but anything that is immense, formidably large or outsized. The mammoth has entered popular culture in a way that few animals have. And, curiously, we know more about them than we do about most prehistoric beasts. The majority of these are identified only from fossil bones, yet modern man has found whole frozen mammoths, completely preserved for centuries, in the ice of Siberia. We also have cave paintings, drawn by our ancestors, which show us exactly what mammoths looked like in life. These are among the earliest images produced by the hand of man. Yet the mammoth remains mysteriously elusive. The idea of an elephant living in arctic conditions seems to us a strange one. After all, today's elephants are essentially creatures of the tropics. Why did they die out, perhaps as recently as four or five thousand years ago--just as man was beginning his rise to true civilization? This book tells the story of the mammoth and its interaction with man--both in prehistory and today. Errol Fuller is the author of The Great Auk: The Extinction of the Original Penguin, and The Dodo: Extinction in Paradise.

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Do you think a mouse can fly? One Christmas Carlotte Otten's son gave her a fly he had tied, a mouse with red and green stripes which became the inspiration for this story. Teaming up with illustrator Greg Crawford, she takes us on a journey, part real, part fantasy, into the world of fly fishing and a little mouse. In the spirit of Hemingway's Up in Michigan stories and Maclean's A River Runs Through It, Otten's endearing story is nice addition to the books on fly fishing for children. Readers, both adult and children, will be caught up in the intricacies of fly fishing and the little flying mouse's journey. What more can you ask for, adventure, colorful illustrations, lots of new and interesting information, this book has it all. The captivating text of Charlotte Otten and realistic paintings of Greg Crawford bring this story to life and whether you are the reader or are being read to, this book is a pleasure for all ages. Charlotte Otten, a life-long resident of the Great Lakes, spent summers exploring the shores. She now resides in Grand Rapids, MI. She would often wander into small streams, where she watched the hatches of bugs, fished for brook trout, listened to the sounds of the woods, and even once caught sight of a rare animal, a fisher, gently swimming under a natural bridge at a waterfall. When her son grew older and started tying flies, she enjoyed seeing a deer hair caddis, a bead head serendipity, a humpy, a frog. Her poems on fishing have appeared in many journals. She is the author of a number of books for adults and children, including January Rides the Wind, a three starred book awarded 'Best Book of the Year' by the Bank Street College of Education and by Booklist. Greg Crawford has been an artist since he first learned to hold a crayon. He began working professionally while he was still in high school. He has enjoyed a rich and varied career that has demanded versatility. He has done everything from technical illustration to cartoons and caricatures, but he loves children's books. He has illustrated many over the years, including Tai Chi for Kids, Mr. Meow's ABC Book, and Mr. Meow Goes to the Shelter, which he wrote under the pseudonym, Mr. Meow. He also wrote and illustrated Animals in the Stars, Chinese Astrology for Children, and the upcoming Hill Farm. He also wrote and illustrated Animals in the Stars, Chinese Astrology for Children, and the upcoming Hill Farm. Greg lives in Stockbridge, Vermont.

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This is a book with all the color and rhythm of the seasons of New England. Timeless and yet personal, universal and yet so local you recognize your neighbors, can count the logs in their woodpile, smell the smoke from chimneys on a sunny cold autumn day and savor the taste of last summer's raspberries.Life in the North Country, as folks call this part of New England, is hard. But people here have roots sunk deep into the land and into their small communities. Communities where elected representatives are the folks next door, and campaigns for town offices consist of standing up at town meeting and saying a few words. Villages and farms, main streets and meadows, woods and brooks, churches and barns, are strung together between the Green and White mountains by dirt roads and highways. Brightening predawn skies and lingering sunsets behind the hills, sudden storms, birdsong and animal tracks, sultry summers and frigid winters all inspire reflections on childhood memories, departures and returns, mournings and rejoicings.For a writer like Nessa Flax, the North Country of Vermont and New Hampshire is a storyteller's dream­­--every detail is spun into the yarn of stories celebrating a people and a landscape as she listens to the Voices in the Hills, weaving them into so many small pieces of glittering magic.

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NORWAY, 1894Olav -- son of Erik Bjørnsson -- seventeen,swung his father's scythe and dreamed:The singing scythe Grandfather Bjørn had madeand honed each time he found a bit of shadeand passed on to his oldest sonto pass on to his oldest sonto pass until there were no longer sons --the scythe hissed like the grains of sand on the beachthat hiss when a wave falls back and the bubbles burst.The wind that whispered through the grainand dried the sweat upon his arms and chestbore from the west the scent of saltand the distant rumble of the Norwegian Sea. The Viking Age began more than a thousand years ago when the ancient Norse perfected their swift-sailing, dragon-headed longships. Young men, and later whole families, left Norway's rugged fiords in search of open land, trade, treasure, or fame. Many others took to the unknown sea simply because something vague and irresistible beckoned to them. They settled islands all across the North Atlantic and landed in North America more than four hundred years before Columbus. Their exploits are recounted in the ancient Norse sagas. A Dream of Dragons is a proper and modern Norse saga, written with all the power of Melville and Hemingway and a true story now retold in the ageless rhythms of blank verse, as irresistible as the beautiful and specially commissioned woodcuts of Mary Azarian.

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The New York paintings and pastels of Yvonne Jacquette, one of America's most distinguished contemporary painters, and the New York photographs of her late husband Rudy Burckhardt, whose unconventional art has spawned a large and devoted following, are the subjects of this intriguing look at a slice of the New York art world from the 1930s to the present. Picturing New York: The Art of Yvonne Jacquette and Rudy Burckhardt explores this remarkable pair of artists whose work celebrates New York's streets and skyline, capturing both the intimacy and the expansiveness of the city.Yvonne Jacquette and Rudy Burckhardt were creative and personal partners for nearly forty years, from the time of their meeting in 1961 until Burckhardt's death in 1999. Burckhardt, born in 1914 in Basel, Switzerland, came to New York in 1935, and Jacquette, a Pittsburgh native twenty years his junior, arrived in 1955. Although they traveled broadly for artistic subject matter, they were based in New York City, spending most of their careers in the West 20s, where Jacquette's studio still is. They sometimes collaborated, usually on films, but mostly each pursued independent work in photography and painting. Despite this independence, their approaches to representing the city share visual and philosophical parallels.The dazzling urban nocturne is Jacquette's primary subject. For thirty years, she has made night paintings from aerial vantage points of such cities as Tokyo, San Francisco, Washington, Hong Kong, and Chicago-along with bird's-eye views of Maine and Midwestern farmland-but her images of New York City are without question the strongest and most celebrated. These dramatic and glittering canvases are striking for their bold compositions, surface richness, and the powerful presence of their grand scale. Jacquette has described herself as a portraitist of American cities, and none has been more frequently or more affectionately depicted than New York-its splendid architecture, neon signage, bridges, streets, and waterways-and indirectly, the electricity that makes it all visible at night.Burckhardt, whose photographs and films of New York have inspired a cult following, made images of the city's architecture, streets, and inhabitants in a singular style-apolitical and seemingly uncomposed-that broke with tradi­tion and influenced younger generations of photographers. From iconic views of New York's skyscrapers, to close-up architectural details, to storefronts splashed with advertising signage, to New Yorkers walking their streets and riding their subways, the variety of Burckhardt's subject matter conveys his never-ending fascination with the city's scale and diversity. His images convey his own sense of wonder about New York and invite viewers to share in his pleasure of the city's unexpected moments and unexplored places.Coinciding with exhibitions on both artists at the Museum of the City of New York, Picturing New York: The Art of Yvonne Jacquette and Rudy Burckhardt offers a unique look at the work of this important creative couple side by side and the place they hold in the New York art world.

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Featuring the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Belle is an enthralling adventure through three hundred years of art! Belle, a painted butterfly, has been quietly hovering over a beautiful white poppy in a seventeenth-century Dutch painting that has been her home for three hundred years. Suddenly and unexpectedly there is a sudden whoosh of air and she finds herself flying out of her picture into the void So begins the adventures of Belle, the red admiral butterfly in Jan Davidsz de Heem's Vase of Flowers. Accidentally dislodged, when her painting was being taken by museum staff to be examined by the Conservation Department, Belle and her sidekick Brimstone, a fellow butterfly who was ejected from the painting at the same time, must find their way back home. When their painting rolls into an elevator without them, their journey through the art museum begins. Because they are made of paint, they discover that they can blend into any of the other paintings in the museum, no matter what the subject or period. The characters travel through the museum galleries, morphing into and out of paintings by multiple artists and in many styles, while searching for their home painting. At the same time they must avoid becoming lunch for a painted bird in hot pursuit after being inadvertently released from another painting by an awkward bump from Brimstone! Belle and Brimstone tell their story as it happens with all the scary encounters and comic incidents that have them hiding out in unlikely places in the paintings they encounter. They dash and dart as the predatory bird flies after them, chasing them from room to room. Successful and safe in the end Brimstone is up for more adventures. Belle is not so sure! Maybe it will be safer if they stay put in their painting from now on. Can you find them? While the story is an adventure story written for young readers it will also enchant younger listeners. Featuring the collection of the National Gallery of Art, this tale is a fanciful romp through three hundred years of art history, inviting young people to delve into the world of art through the paintings of de Heem, Vermeer, Chardin, Goya, Rembrandt, Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, Mary Cassatt, Renoir, Monet, Tissot, Picasso, Derain, Marc, Matisse, Georgia O'keeffe, Rothko, Pollock, Lichtenstein and many others. As an added bonus Belle has taken the trouble to create Belle's Amazing, Astonishingly Magical Journal and illustrated it with her comments on each painting and ideas on where to hide when being chased! Let Belle and Brimstone be your guides and docents and mind out for that Bird! Mary Lee Corlett, an art historian and research associate at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., owes her love of art to her father, whose mechanical drawings and plans always seemed magical to her as a child, and to an inspired teacher who introduced her to the wonderful ideas and concepts that underlie all great art. As a child she drew and painted but later when, thinking she would like to teach art, she enrolled in college and attended studio art classes and studied education, she discovered that the art history classes were more exciting than her own studio work. Her first job after collecting her BA was as a teaching assistant in the Education department at the Cleveland Museum of Art, doing art projects in Mini-Masters classes of 4-5 year olds. She then moved to Washington and worked at the National Portrait Gallery before assuming her current position. She still draws and paints but her daughter has forsaken paint brush and easel for flute and music stand. They still visit the galleries together and walk through all the amazing, astonishing and magical rooms full of wonderful paintings and sculptures just to check that Belle and Brimstone are safe and sound! Phyllis Saroff is a professional artist who can't remember when she didn't draw pictures. Inspired in First Grade by an older girl drawing pictures for a story she had written Phyllis started to illustrate her own stories. Her father would bring home large stacks of used accordion-fold computer paper from his lab. It was printed on one side with his equations, and the other side was blank. The blank side was Phyllis' side. He let her leave her drawings all over the house, on the coffee table, the dining room table and the kitchen table. His daughter only had to get them out of the way to set the table for dinner. He thought each drawing was a masterpiece; each one greater than the last. He bought art supplies for every birthday and when she was eleven he bought her a small drafting table which she still uses in her studio. She now sells her paintings in galleries and illustrates books for a living and her 97 year-old father still thinks every one of her drawings is a masterpiece.

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Explore the Mona Lisa's smile, Titian's noises, Duccio's artistic omelet, a Jackson Pollock splash, a king's portrait, an entire battle, saints and sinners, knights and peasants, motorcars and animals; and paintings on every conceivable surface -- walls, wood panels, cloth, glass, metal, bark, and leather. Follow Mickey and his friends through this most magical of worlds as they show us how to look at, understand, and enjoy the works of the greatest artist. This unique introduction to the techniques and history of painting takes the young reader through more than 15,000 years of art, from cave painters to Picasso. The result of a collaboration between one of the most important art museums in the world,?London's National Gallery, and the best Disney graphic artists,?Looking at Paintings?is a family reference book to be treasured by children from 8 to 88 years old. This light hearted yet utterly serious celebration of our universal heritage has more than 400 color illustrations, including 24 pages of comic histories and over 200 illustrations of paintings and details, providing the most approachable introduction to the history of painting ever written. DisneyHand, worldwide outreach for The Walt Disney Company, and Disney Publishing Worldwide are delighted to provide a web based?Teacher's Resource Guide for Looking at Paintings?with classroom activity and project suggestions for students in grades 2-4 and grades 5-6 that correspond with?Looking at Paintings.

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