It nurtures their imagination and creativity, lets them explore other worlds, and opens their minds to new truths and knowledge in appealing, inspiring ways. But how can we sort through thousands of children's books to discover the really worthwhile ones?Elizabeth Wilson offers us a newly revised, comprehensive guide to the very best in children's literature. Just as in the original volume, she comments on the tone and content of excellently written, captivating books in over two dozen subject areas. Hundreds of new titles have been added while retaining timeless classics and modern favorites-all of which respect traditional values. So that no matter what the children's ages are or whether they love fact or fiction, you can trust these books to share things that you can believe in and kids will delight in.

    Both a scientist and a freethinking theologian, Servetus is credited with the discovery of pulmonary circulation in the human body as well as the authorship of a polemical masterpiece that cost him his life. The Chrisitianismi Restituto, a heretical work of biblical scholarship, written in 1553, aimed to refute the orthodox Christianity that Servetus' old colleague, John Calvin, supported. After the book spread through the ranks of Protestant hierarchy, Servetus was tried and agonizingly burned at the stake, the last known copy of the Restitutio chained to his leg.Servetus's execution is significant because it marked a turning point in the quest for freedom of expression, due largely to the development of the printing press and the proliferation of books in Renaissance Europe. Three copies of the Restitutio managed to survive the burning, despite every effort on the part of his enemies to destroy them. As a result, the book became almost a surrogate for its author, going into hiding and relying on covert distribution until it could be read freely, centuries later. Out of the Flames tracks the history of this special work, examining Servetus's life and times and the politics of the first information during the sixteenth century. Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone follow the clandestine journey of the three copies through the subsequent centuries and explore its author's legacy and influence over the thinkers that shared his spirit and genius, such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Jefferson, Clarence Dorrow, and William Osler.Out of the Flames is an extraordinary story providing testament to the power of ideas, the enduring legacy of books, and the triumph of individual courage.

    R. R. Tolkien to a popular audience. There are, however, few full and accessible treatments of the religious vision permeating Tolkien�s influential works. Bradley Birzer has remedied that with his fresh study, J. R. R. Tolkien�s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth. In it, Birzer explicates the religious symbolism and significance of Tolkien�s Middle-earth stories. More broadly, Birzer situates Tolkien within the Christian humanist tradition represented by Thomas More and T. S. Eliot, Dante and C. S. Lewis. He argues that through the genre of myth Tolkien is able to provide a sophisticated�and appealing�social and ethical worldview.

    Honey for a Teen’s Heart spells out how good books can help you and your teenager communicate heart-to-heart about ideas, values, and the various issues of a Christian worldview. Sharing the adventure of a book lets both of you know the same people, see the same sights, face the same choices, and feel the same emotions. Life spills out of books--giving you plenty to talk about! But Honey for a Teen’s Heart will do more than strengthen the bonds between you and your son or daughter. You’ll also learn how to help your teen catch the reading habit and become a lover of good books. Gladys Hunt’s insights on how to read a book, what to look for in a book, and how to question what you read will challenge you and your teenager alike. It’s training for life! And it’s fabulous preparation for teens entering college. Including an annotated list of over four hundred books, Honey for a Teen’s Heart gives you expert guidance on the very best books for teens.

    From musings on Ptolemy and "the force of the false" to reflections on the experimental writing of Borges and Joyce, Eco's luminous intelligence and encyclopedic knowledge are on dazzling display throughout. And when he reveals his own ambitions and superstitions, his authorial anxieties and fears, one feels like a secret sharer in the garden of literature to which he so often alludes. Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that have made Eco one of the world's leading writers. On some functions of literature --A reading of the Paradiso --On the style of The communist manifesto --The mists of the Valoi --Wilde : parados and aphorism --A portrait of the artist as bachelor --Between La Mancha and Babel --Borges and my anxiety of influence --On Camporesi : blood, body, life --On symbolism --On style --Les Semaphores sous la Pluie --The flaws in the form --Intertextual irony and levels of reading --The Poetics and us --The American myth in three anti-American generations --The power of falsehood --How I write

    A BOOK OF BOOKS showcases Abelardo Morell's extraordinary photographs of unusual books, like an impossibly large dictionary, illustrated tomes whose characters appear to leap off the page, and water-damaged books that take on sculptural form. Bookish quotations by Hawthorne, Borges, Cocteau, and others accompany the photographs throughout.

    Sharing the superb insight he has gathered from booksellers over the years, Nicholas Basbanes offers a refresher course on the fundamentals that endure, while questioning certain practices of doubtful validity. Topics include how to determine if a book is a first edition, how to spot book club editions, the importance of dust jackets, scouting the flea markets, how to work the book fairs, and the importance of handling the goods, as well as discussing less tangible issues like spotting trends and having a focus. Then he takes a long look at the pros and cons of Internet buying, illuminating how you can use these electronic tools to your advantage and making this the book no modern collector will want to be without.

    G. Wodehouse-brings together the best of his much admired commentary on the great man's words to form the perfect companion to the nearly one hundred novels of "the most consistently funny writer the English language has yet produced" ("The Times"). "Plum Sauce" also contains snippets of Wodehouse's most outrageously hilarious prose, organized in categories from Animals ("Beach's bullfinch continued to chirp reflectively to itself, like a man trying to remember a tune in his bath") to menservants ("Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of a salad"). Usborne introduces in depth all the beloved major characters-Jeeves and Wooster, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred, Lord Emsworth, and the Blandings circle-and sketches the rest of the Wodehouse cast-from Gussie Fink-Nottle to the chorus of Aunts and Drones. Lavishly illustrated with original dust jacket artwork and sketches from the "Strand Magazine, Plum Sauce" is the ultimate source for both aficionados and novices just beginning to "scratch the old lemon."

    Lynn Harris and Terry McMillan has been hailed as an indication that an active African American reading public has come into being. Yet this is not a new trend; there is a vibrant history of African American literacy, literary associations, and book clubs. Forgotten Readers reveals that neglected past, looking at the reading practices of free blacks in the antebellum north and among African Americans following the Civil War. It places the black upper and middle classes within American literary history, illustrating how they used reading and literary conversation as a means to assert their civic identities and intervene in the political and literary cultures of the United States from which they were otherwise excluded. Forgotten Readers expands our definition of literacy and urges us to think of literature as broadly as it was conceived of in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members. She examines particular literary associations, including the Saturday Nighters of Washington, D.C., whose members included Jean Toomer and Georgia Douglas Johnson. She shows how black literary societies developed, their relationship to the black press, and the ways that African American women’s clubs—which flourished during the 1890s—encouraged literary activity. In an epilogue, McHenry connects this rich tradition of African American interest in books, reading, and literary conversation to contemporary literary phenomena such as Oprah Winfrey’s book club.

    She soon decided that what children needed was to see a world of the imagination, beyond their landscape of bombed-out buildings and military vehicles. She went on to found the International Youth Library."

    The text is presented in an easy-to-follow format with main points and terms clearly highlighted. Each chapter concludes with a concise summary, which together with worked examples, problems and answers, emphasize the key principles covered. Text boxes containing interesting case studies and other additional information enrich the content throughout. Over 100 beautiful pen and ink portraits of endangered species help bring the material to life.

    So it's no surprise that for these twenty-one members of the Chrysostom Society (a renowned contemporary Christian writers' group) the works of classic literary masters have played an influential role in shaping their writing. In this revised and updated volume of "Reality and the Vision, " which includes five new chapters, best-selling authors Philip Yancey and James Calvin Schaap ask the question, "Who has helped form you as a writer of faith?" The answers they found are surprising, captivating, and instructive: - Richard Foster explains how reading from the ancient devotional masters helped him to manage a frenetic modern schedule. - Walter Wangerin Jr. shares how the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales helped him make sense of his world. - Virginia Stem Owens confesses that Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher famous for his melancholy, helped her cope with a family crisis.- Eugene Peterson tells how he became a better pastor by scheduling regular appointments with the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. A short reading guide at the end of each chapter serves as an invitation to explore these classic works further. "More Than Words" is a delightful way to deepen an appreciation of fine literature and a thoughtful gift for those who love good books.

    As the man's new affair progresses, the poems to his old lover continue, until finally, he must send the last poem. But will he? Who will win the battle for his heart, the woman of the past or the woman of the present?

    Here, O'Neill brings to life the members of the remarkable Bronte family, their works, and the era in which they lived.IntroductionChronology I Who Were the Brontes?II The Work of the BrontesIII The Landscape of the BrontesIV The Age of the BrontesV The Legacy of the BrontesIndex & BibliographyAcknowledgments

    Remember reading under the elm tree during lazy summer days or reading under the covers with a flashlight when the story shouted to be finished? Remember how you longed to read the next installment? Additional material has been added to this new encyclopedia of beloved girl's series books by John Axe, including Nancy Drew®, Judy Bolton, Cherry Ames, Beverly Gray, Kay Tracey, Penny Parker, Vicki Barr, The Dana Girls, and others all of which supplement the author's previous book, The Secret of Collecting Girls' Series Books. All of the titles in these great adventure and mystery series have been brought together in one comprehensive volume. Each different cover or different printing is identified, dated and valued.

    This book is both a practical travel guide for your family vacation to the UK, and a terrific source of armchair-travel fascination. Each chapter covers classics such as Peter Rabbit and Paddington Bear for the youngest tourists, Alice in Wonderland, Kidnapped and The Secret Garden for the older kids, and C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books for everyone.Read about the real chocolate factory that made such an impression on the young Roald Dahl, or the cozy pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien introduced their friends to Narnia and hobbits. Treat your kids to a visit to the real "100 Aker Wood" that helped A.A. Milne create Winnie the Pooh, or the station where Thomas the Tank Engine lives. And enjoy the many original illustrations that made the books so distinctive on their first publications.From parents who grew up on Wind in the Willows, Mary Poppins and Peter Pan to kids who thrill to Harry Potter, Once Upon a Time in Great Britain is a must-have addition to the libraries of children-and adults-everywhere.

    He discusses his students, his work, and his practice as a teacher, writer, critic, and reader, and positions his theories and opinions as products of "real" life as much as academic exercise. Among the ideas animating the book are Kirby's beliefs that "devotion is more important than dissection" and "practice is more important than theory."Covering an impressive range of writers--from Emerson, Poe, and Melville to James Dickey, Charles Wright, Richard Howard, Susan Montez, and others--Kirby considers the evolution of critical theory from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth and explores the role of criticism in contemporary culture. Drawing from his experience writing poetry and reading to children at a local housing project, he answers two of his four central questions: "What is a reader?" and "What is a writer?" In the largest section of the book, "What Is a Critic?," Kirby demonstrates his passionate engagement with the function of the critic in literary culture and offers both overviews and close examinations of literary theory, book reviewing, and the historical background of criticism from its earliest beginnings. In the final section of the book, he addresses the question "What is a book?" with an examination of the reading preferences of older readers. Kirby's analysis of those responses, along with his own notions of the literary canon, is an insightful excursion into how books are valued.Deeply learned and wonderfully entertaining, What Is a Book? is a lucid look at the whole of literary culture. Kirby makes us think about the books we love and why we love them.

    . .When the Atlantic Monthly first published an excerpted version of B.R. Myers' polemic—in which he attacked literary giants such as Don Delillo, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy, quoting their work extensively to accuse them of mindless pretension—it caused a world-wide sensation."A welcome contrarian takes on the state of contemporary American literary prose," said a Wall Street Journal review. "Useful mischief," said Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. "Brilliantly written," declared The Times of London.But Myers' expanded version of the essay does more than just attack sanctified literary heavyweights.It also:* Examines the literary hierarchy that perpetuates the status quo by looking at the reviews that the novelists in question received. It also considers the literary award system. "Rick Moody received an O. Henry Award in 1997," Myers observes, "whereupon he was made an O. Henry juror himself. And so it goes."* Showcases Myers' biting sense of wit, as in the new section, "Ten Rules for 'Serious' Writers," and his discussion of the sex scenes in the bestselling books of David Guterson ("If Jackie Collins had written that," Myers says after one example, "reviewers would have had a field day.")* Champions clear writing and storytelling in a wide range of writers, from "pop" novelists such as Stephen King to more "serious" literary heavyweights such as Somerset Maugham. Myers also considers the classics such as Balzac and Henry James, and recommends numerous other undeservedly obscure authors.* Includes an all-new section in which Myers not only considers the controversy that followed the Atlantic essay, but responds to several of his most prominent critics.Published on the one-year anniversary of original Atlantic Monthly essay, the new, expanded A READER'S MANIFESTO continues B.R. Myers' fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and brilliantly exposing the literary status quo.

    These works have also attracted a great deal of critical attention, with much current scholarship examining the novel in relation to its historical, political, and cultural contexts. This reference book is an introductory guide to the Victorian novel, its background, and its legacy. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and offers a fresh account of past, current, and new directions in scholarship.The volume is divided into several broad sections, with chapters in each section treating more specialized topics. The first section looks at the emergence of the Victorian novel and its literary precursors, with particular emphasis on the growth of serialization and the development of the novel of syndication. The second explores significant social and cultural facets of nineteenth-century British literature, while the third discusses the principal features of different genres, such as ghost stories, the Gothic, detective fiction, the social problem novel, and contemporary film adaptations. Individual authors are examined in the fourth section, while the fifth overviews various critical approaches and their application to nineteenth-century fiction.

    Hubert Zapf considers the ways in which literature operates as a form of cultural ecology, using language, imagination and critique to challenge and transform cultural narratives of humanity's relationship to nature. In this way, the book demonstrates the important role that literature plays in creating a more sustainable way of life. Applying this approach to works by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Zakes Mda, and Amitav Ghosh, Literature as Cultural Ecology is an essential contribution to the contemporary environmental humanities.

    The question of how the same patriarchal ideology structured representations of male bodies and behaviors was until very recently a marginal discussion. Now that masculinity has emerges as an overt theme in children's literature and film, critical consideration of the subject is timely, if not long overdueWays of Being Male addresses this new concern in an unprecedented collection of essays examining how contemporary debates about masculinity are reflected in fiction and film for young adults. An outstanding team of scholars elucidates the ways in which different versions of male identity are constructed and presented to young audiences. The contributors, drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, employ international discourses in literary criticism, feminism, social sciences, film theory, psychoanalytic criticism, and queer theory in their wide-ranging exploration of male representation. With its illuminating array of perspectives, this pioneering survey brings a long neglected subject into sharp focus.

    The anthology has a running commentary -peering into the strata of four decades, picking through the archaeological remains, accompanied by newly commissioned letters from Edwin Morgan, Helen Douglas, Stephen Willats, Malcolm Dickinson and Craig Richardson. It surveys the literary avant-garde of the 1960s, via Ian Hamilton Findlay, Edwin Morgan, Alexander Trocchi, and Tom McGrath; the adventurous art scene that gravitated to the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh the 1970s; the wilderness of Thatcherism and the post-Referendum dark age; and up to the present, through Beltane, post-punk and dance nation, the voice of young Scotland.

    "Being A Writer "is a brief rhetoric that explores writing processes with an emphasis on their variety; invention, with an emphasis on its playfulness; revision as a technique of invention; collaboration as a means of revision; and personal engagement in academic writing, from literary analysis to argument.

    The author, John Axe, has brought together a rich treasury of book covers and information about 29 different boy's series authors and their books, from the early volumes of Edward Stratemeyer to Tom Swift and Tom Swift, Jr. In between, there are Rick Brant, Tom Slade, Roy Blakeley, Ted Scott, Andy Blake, Jerry Todd, Poppy Ott, Mark Tidd, Bronc Burnett, Chip Hilton, The Hardy Boys, Tom Quest, Ken Holt, Biff Brewster, and others. With this book many youthful memories will flood back -- climbing on the roof of the garage so you did not have to share with your younger brother or reading under the covers with a torch. Several series show each different cover. The Hardy Boys alone have 119 different 'classic series' cover designs. For each series, each different printing is identified, dated and valued. Researched and documented to identify rarities -- or to identify which book from your youth you need to locate and buy -- this book guides collectors through ALL of the different editions and printings.