With roots in American slave tales, Tops & Bottoms celebrates the trickster tradition of using one’s wits to overcome hardship. “As usual, Stevens’ animal characters, bold and colorful, are delightful. . . . It’s all wonderful fun, and the book opens, fittingly, from top to bottom instead of from side to side, making it perfect for story-time sharing.”--BooklistThis title has been selected as a Common Core Text Exemplar (Grades 2-3, Stories)

    Each story focuses on the role of women--both real and fantastic--and their particular strengths, joys and sorrows. Full-color illustrations.

    Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.

    A powerful retelling of the Robin Hood story from Marian's point of view.Who will champion the poor against injustice and cruelty?When fifteen year old Mary flees into the forest to avoid a fearsome marriage arranged by her uncle, she little knows what challenges lie in store for her as the wise and magical Green Lady of the Woods.In this riveting and action-packed saga, Theresa Tomlinson breathes new life into the story of Robin Hood by focusing attention on the women who will pull a bowstring and stand up against the cruel laws of Medieval England.

    A groundbreaking work in the tradition of Joseph Campbell, Bruno Bettelheim and Robert Bly, this book explores the darker side of childhood--loss, betrayal, oppression, and abuse.

    When Clement falls in love with enchanting Pauline, he bids Hippolyte to join his quest to court her, and the two friends set out toward danger and adventure.Pauline is ward of the mysterious Monsieur Zabocat -- a plantation owner reputed to be a quimboiseur, a wizard -- and, defying his wishes, Pauline joins her new fiancé and his friend on their trek home. But the fruited fields and forests they traverse hide dark forces plotting to destroy the couple...and one night -- Tam! Tam! Tamtamtam! -- the distant sound of a drum lures Hippolyte into a deadly trap that forces him to choose between his friend's safety and his own.Robert D. San Souci and Brian Pinkney again combine their talents to bring to life a West Indian folktale that draws upon African, European, and South American traditions and imagery. The result is an extraordinary tale of romance, intrigue, and incomparable courage in which the truest of friends remain faithful to the very end.

    With depth and humor, Johnston tells how lasting tradition was brought to the Ojibway by four half-human brothers, including Nana'b'oozoo, the beloved archetypal being who means well but often blunders. He also relates how people are helped and hindered by other entities, such as the manitous of the forests and meadows, personal manitous and totems, mermen and merwomen, Pauguk (the cursed Flying Skeleton), and the Weendigoes, famed and terrifying giant cannibals.

    They told tales of giants in the hills, dragons in the lakes, marshes swarming with will-o’-the-wisps, and demons and wild folk in the mountains who enjoyed causing landslides, avalanches, and floods. They both feared and respected these entities, knowing the importance of appeasing them for safe travel and a prosperous homestead. Exploring medieval stories, folk traditions, spiritual place names, and pagan rituals of home building and site selection, Claude Lecouteux reveals the multitude of spirits and entities that once inhabited the land before modern civilization repressed them into desert solitude, impenetrable forests, and inaccessible mountains. He explains how, to our ancestors, enclosing a space was a sacred act. Specific rites had to be performed to negotiate with the local spirits and ensure proper placement and protection of a new building. These land spirits often became the household spirit, taking up residence in a new building in exchange for permission to build on their territory. Lecouteux explores Arthurian legends, folk tales, and mythology for evidence of the untamed spirits of the wilderness, such as giants, dragons, and demons, and examines the rites and ceremonies used to gain their good will. Lecouteux reveals how, despite outright Church suppression, belief in these spirits carried through to modern times and was a primary influence on architecture, an influence still visible in today’s buildings. The author also shows how our ancestors’ concern for respecting nature is increasingly relevant in today’s world.

    This wonderful story by a renowned storyteller explains how light was brought to the dark side of the world.

    Notable for their magnificent, jewel-like color illustrations by Bilibin, these traditional tales include "The Frog Princess," "Vassilissa the Beautiful," and "The White Duck." Though Russian Fairy Tales in the Pantheon Folklore Library is a book for adults, it has sold over 30,000 copies.

    RJ Stewart offers contemporary techniques for enhancing awareness and subtle energies through Faery consciousness.

    A native of Madison County, North Carolina, she was introduced to the tale-telling tradition by her great-aunt 'Granny, ' well-known balladeer Dellie Chandler Norton. This collection of Adams's stories provides a rare portrait of a distinctive mountain community and charts the development of an artist's unique voice. The tales range from stories of heroic, sometimes fierce, mountain settlers to the comic adventures of local drifters and tricksters, from magical childhood encounters to adult rites of passage. We meet Bertha and the snake handlers, local preacher Manassey Fender (who 'looked like a pencil with a burr haircut, in a suit'), and Adams's beloved grandfather Breaddaddy, who taught her about life and death with an enchanting graveyard dance. But perhaps the most powerful character depicted here is 'Granny, ' whom Adams calls 'the most exciting person I have ever known and the best teacher I would ever have.' By weaving these remembrances into her stories, Adams both preserves and extends a rich artistic heritage.

    Find a wealth of fascinating facts and a number of fun "spells" to try -- including a rhyme to say to the new moon for revealing the identity of your true love. For those who believe in "breaking a leg", or for anyone interested in folklore and popular culture, this is sure to be an entertaining read as well as an invaluable reference.

    In this lively tale, a woman must pluck three whiskers from a fierce lion's chin in order to win her stepson's trust. Full color.

    The author recounts the struggles and spirituality of the women of her Native American family from the late nineteenth century until the present.

    From Ireland to Turkey, Morocco to Eastern Europe, or remote islands of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, Childress takes the reader on an astonishing quest for mankind's past. Ancient technology, cataclysms, megalithic construction, lost civilisations, and devastating wars of the past are all explored in this amazing book. Childress challenges the sceptics and proves that great civilisations not only existed in the past but that the modern world and its problems are reflections of the ancient world of Atlantis.

    John Stewig's enchanting retelling of this Spanish fairy tale is filled with echoes of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty but with a refreshing twist--a strong, able heroine. Richly detailed pastels with a contemporary edge bring this fairy tale to strikingly beautiful life.

    Stopping to take a quick nap by the big salty lake where he’s supposed to bring home salt for cooking, Coyote’s discovered by some mischievous butterflies. Playing their own trick, they carry Coyote home without his salt. Coyote is completely confused—until the third time when Coyote wakes up at home with his salt and discovers the butterflies have been having a bit of fun.

    Artist and scholar Adrian Morgan has spent twelve years collecting, studying, drawing, painting, observing, and eating his subjects. The result is a glorious feast for the eye as well as the intellect. An astonishing compendium of art history, cultural anthropology, pharmacology, herpetology, mycology, and serious conjecture. TOADS & TOADSTOOLS will delight and amaze any armchair biologist. Brimming over with almost 150 illustrations.

    And not the fisherman, whose fish declares that yams can speak. And what will the king say when he hears of all this foolish talk? (More important, what will his royal chair say?) Full of hubbub and hullabaloo, this traditional story from Ghana offers an irresistible invitation to young listeners to join the fun.

    In the right hands, this is a delightfully subversive manual for a lifetime of fun. This is the do-it-yourself handbook for enjoying our media-saturated world by tinkering with how it works. Pulls together the kookiest and most engaging ideas from the Internet, great suggestions on "culture jamming" (a practice of co-opting the resources, messages, and brain-washing machinery of existing media, pioneered by Adbusters magazine), and generally jam-packed with loads of fun ideas and funny material. Notable contributors include Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius, Richard Kadrey, and that most prolific of all authors, Anonymous. (Editor's note: In some ways, the Happy Mutant philosophy is the cyberspawn of the behavioral shenanigans of the Dadaists, Surrealists, or the lesser-known but more interesting Situationists. )

    His defence was that he was attempting to exorcise a fairy possession first by gentle means and finally by fire.

    This collection includes tales she first heard from her grandmother and mother when she was a child in Ka'u on the Big Island. Many of the folktales are presented both in Pukui's original Hawaiian and in English translation.

    She never knew a moment's sorrow until the day her mother, the queen, died. Soon after, a cunning sorceress tricked the king into marrying her, and then, seething with jealousy, she plotted to kill Rimonah. But as Rimonah grew to be a fearless horsewoman, her goodness and bravery saved her time and again from her evil stepmother's malicious trickery. Beautiful and brave, Rimonah of the Flashing Sword is rewarded in this North African version of Snow White.

    This book contains hundreds of versions of favorite childhood rhymes.

    When Gamma Lee finally reaches the highest peak, she is faced with a ferocious and meddling wind--and the wind doesn't want company. Will they battle it out, or will they learn to live together? Full-color.

    As they look over the contents, both children and adults will recognize the names of stories they love and have loved, such as "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" and "Rapunzul"; chapters from Treasure Island, Anne of Green Gables, The Wind in the Willows; and poems by Edward Lear, Robert Frost, and Dennis Lee. This delightful collection of literary treasures invites its readers to enjoy a lifetime of reading.

    It provides details on the history and healing powers of over 100 herbs and flowers.

    The second was the kingdom of the sea, ruled by the ferocious Shark. And the third was the kingdom of the air, ruled by the powerful Hawk.And then there were the People, who needed the forest and sea and air for survival. But they were small and weak--no match for the beast who dominated the kingdoms. Yet the People had a gift--the gift of storytelling.With powerful prose and bold illustrations, Walter Dean Myers and Ashley Bryan tell how the People used their gift to outwit the rulers of the three kingdoms, making this triumphant story one worth reading again and again.

    “The pictures are exceptionally well reproduced, and Stevens makes clever use of her layout, propelling the actions out of the borders at times, giving them verve and movement.”--Booklist

    Young John Nesbit enters the world of the Strangers in order to rescue his baby sister whom the fairies have replaced with a Changeling.

    Hardscrabble Tennessee farmer Clemmon Hardigree's hard-luck changes when he plants seed potatoes in Cow Hollow before his fat mountain cows cause the pasture to collapse.

    Watch Zundel work his magic and turn his coat into a jacket, his jacket into a vest, his vest into a pocket, as it keeps Zundel company through his long and happy life. With its spirited, folksy illustrations, Bit By Bit is a heart-warming tale about the tradition of storytelling.

    It strenghtened Jackie Torrence's slave ancestors, and now she finds nourishment in another unexpected source--the stories she learned from her grandparents in North Carolina. Here is an inspirational book about the strength we can all find in the wit and wisdom of our heritage.

    

    Brilliant and luminous paintings by David Johnson, an Anishnawbe member of the Curve Lake First Nation, make this very popular book of Ojibwa tales a treasured gift.

    Featuring poetry, prose, and artwork, selected by Sheila Pickles, all in celebration of the natural grace and beauty of wildflowers, The Language of Wildflowers is the tenth slip-cased book in the successful series of scented treasuries from Penhaligon's.

    

    This volume includes a wide variety of folklore; talking-animal stories, tales of a dragon-like creature and other monsters, accounts of little people inhabiting the hills of eastern Oklahoma, variants of European tales, fragments of Cherokee mythology and cosmology, and legends and lore of historical personages and events. The authors present the stories exactly as they were told, adding brief comments to place the stories clearly in the context of Cherokee life and thought. Musical notations are included wherever a song formed part of a story.

    Springing from the same background as the more famous Kalevala, the Finnish 'national epic', the 148 poems in this book bring alive the vanished world of the hunters and fishermen of Karelia and the serfs of Ingria, bound to the land. From ancient myths about the origin of the universe to an eighteenth-century elegy sung to army recruits as they left home, the poems take the readers back to an age when shamanism was still prevalent and show how Christianity replaced the old beliefs. At the same time they are a testimony to the power of the human imagination and to man's need for art.

    Jigs, reels, hornpipes, and breakdowns, transcribed from the playing of traditional fiddlers, with authoritative notes, ideas for embellishments, bowing techniques, and double stops chart.

    As he participates in the festivities of Las Posadas, preparing for the birth of Christ, a young Mexican boy worries about what gift he will have for baby Jesus.

    The approximately 3,500 entries (from 340 ethnic groups) provide descriptions of each group of elves, alternate names, information on well-storied individual elves in the group, their supposed habitat, and magical powers.

    Here is a list of good-luck charms, spells, soothsayings and other irrational but charming and creative folk beliefs. Here we have leprechauns and sprites, ghosts, the evil eye and wise women's curses. There are charms and spells to make the crops grow, to keep cattle healthy, to ensure safe childbirth, and many other longed-for desires. Most superstitions are of pagan origin; many were overlaid with popular Christian belief.

    In her warm, uplifting style, Susan Milord brings each tale to life with a myriad of exciting, relevant hands-on activities.