Ramayana Versus Mahabharata: My Playful Comparison


Devdutt Pattanaik - 2018
    Yet these two epics have identical building blocks, identical themes, and identical history.In this ground-breaking book, Devdutt Pattanaik, India’s most popular mythologist, explores the similarities and dissimilarities between the two epics in a ‘playful analysis’ accompanied by his signature illustrations. Whether it is the family structure, forest exile, or war, the comparison between the two epics proves a startling point—the Mahabharata is in fact a reaction to the events in the Ramayana.Ideas in this book are distributed over 56 chapters. In temple ritual, Vishnu is offered 8 different meals daily, different on all seven days of the week—56 dishes in all. May each chapter serve as a mouth-watering offering to the Vishnu within you.

The Grand Inquisitor


Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1879
    The central character in this work is a Grand Inquisitor who arrests Jesus. A Grand Inquisitor, or Inquisitor Generalis in German is the individual who leads an Inquisition, just like Spanish Dominican Tomas de Torquemada who was the official in charge of the Spanish Inquisition.

American Indian Stories


Zitkála-Šá - 1921
    Determined, controversial, and visionary, she creatively worked to bridge the gap between her own culture and mainstream American society and advocated for Native rights on a national level. Susan Rose Dominguez provides a new introduction to this edition.

Severance


Robert Olen Butler - 2006
    In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by the intersection of these two seemingly unrelated concepts, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler wrote sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, capturing the flow of thoughts and feelings that go through a person's mind after their head has been severed. The characters are both real and imaginedMedusa (beheaded by Perseus, 2000 BC), Anne Boleyn (beheaded at the behest of Henry VIII, 1536), a chicken (beheaded for Sunday dinner, Alabama, 1958), and the author (decapitated, on the job, 2008). Told with the intensity of a poet and the wit of a great storyteller, these final thoughts illuminate and crystallize more about the characters' own lives and the worlds they inhabit than many writers manage to convey in full-length biographies or novels. The stories, which have appeared in literary magazines across the country, are a delightful and intriguing creative feat from one of today's most inventive writers.

Mary Engelbreit's Mother Goose: One Hundred Best-Loved Verses


Mary Engelbreit - 2005
    Readers will enjoy Mary Engelbreit’s interpretations of the mouse running up the clock, piggies going to market, and children dancing 'round the mulberry bush.With one hundred rhymes in all, all lavishly illustrated in Mary Engelbreit's signature style, this collection of time-honored verses is truly a book to behold. Makes an excellent gift for baby showers, new parents, and other special occasions!Special features include:• An introduction from children’s book historian Leonard S. Marcus• A note from Mary Engelbreit about the process of creating the book• An index of first lines—easy to track down your favorite rhyme!

The Star Fisher


Laurence Yep - 1991
    As a Chinese American, she has never felt her separateness more than now, in 1927, in this new place in West Virginia. Only Miss Lucy, their landlord and neighbor, seems welcoming....There's nothing coy about Yep's portrait of prejudice, which he sketches from several angles."--Booklist. "A pleasure to read, entertaining its audience even as it educates their hearts."--Horn Book.

Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young


Jack Prelutsky - 1986
    In his introduction to this book Jim Trelease, bestselling author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, writes, “No one better recognizes the essence of the child-poetry connection than poet and anthologist Jack Prelutsky. . . . Here are more than 200 little poems to feed little people with little attention spans to help both grow. Marc Brown’s inviting illustrations add a visual dimension to the poems, which further engage young imaginations.” The poems are by 119 of the best-known poets of the 20th century.This book has been selected as a Common Core State Standards Text Exemplar (Grades K-1, Poetry) in Appendix B.