Mikhail Baryshnikov: Dance Genius (Giants of Art and Culture)

A biography of the brilliant ballet dancer who went on to become a choreographer film actor and director of the American Ballet Theatre.

 

Shakespeare for Kids: His Life and Times: His Life and Times 21 Activities

Presents the life and works of Shakespeare and includes 21 fun activities to introduce Elizabethan times including making costumes staging swordplay making and using a quill pen and binding a book by hand. Original.

 

Treasure Chests: The Legacy of Extraordinary Boxes

Treasure Chests traces the fascinating evolution of the boxes that have held the things that people valued most throughout history. For thousands of years chests have gone to war and to sea journeyed with us across entire continents and protected the possessions we hold most dear in our very own homes. From tool chests to toy chests this book celebrates how extraordinary a box can be when it is meant to hold the things we cherish most.

 

Von Bek (Tale of the Eternal Champion No 2)

 

The Rainbow Fish

The award-winning book about a beautiful fish who finds friendship and happiness when he learns to share is now available in a board book edition for the youngest child.

 

Alex Haley (I Have a Dream)

 

Birthday Monsters (Boynton on Board)

A die-cut cover opens to reveal chunky pages full of delightful dinosaurs singing dancing lumbering galloping and gallivanting in a board book that celebrates chaotic silliness.

 

Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops

A cantankerously funny view of books and the people who love them. It does take all kinds and through the misanthropic eyes of a very grumpy bookseller we see them allfrom the Person Who Doesn't Know What They Want (But Thinks It Might Have a Blue Cover) to the Parents Secretly After Free Childcare. From behind the counter Shaun Bythell catalogs the customers who roam his shop in Wigtown Scotland. Theres the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person) the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational) Occultists (from Conspiracy Theorist to Craft Woman).Then there's the Loiterer (including the Erotica Browser and the Self-Published Author) the Bearded Pensioner (including the Lyrca Clad) and the The Not-So-Silent Traveller (the Whistler Sniffer Hummer Farter and Tutter). Two bonus sections include Staff and finally Perfect Customerall add up to one of the funniest book about books youll ever find.Shaun Bythell (author of Confessions of a Bookseller) and his mordantly unique observational eye make this perfect for anyone who loves books and bookshops.Bythell is having fun and its infectious.ScotsmanVirtuosic venting ... misanthropy with bursts of sweetness.?GuardianAll the ingredients for a gentle human comedy are here as soothing as a bag of boiled sweets and just as tempting to dip into.Literary ReviewAny reader finding this book in their stocking on Christmas morning should feel lucky...contains plenty to amusean excellent diversionBookmunch

 

Making Poor Man's Guitars: Cigar Box Guitars the Frying Pan Banjo and Other DIY Instruments

Many books have been written about how to build cigar box guitars and other unique hand-made instruments but few have touched on why. This book presents the authentic stories of American DIY music with step-by-step projects photo studies of antique instruments interviews with music legends and historical accounts. Shane Speal the King of the Cigar Box Guitar brings the making of music and musical instruments back to its roots. From a simple two-string tin can guitar to an electrified washtub bass Shane shows how anyone can build amazing musical instruments from found items. Sidebars present the fascinating backstory of the music capturing struggle poverty and the blues within the artistic side of cigar box guitar building. Featuring an introduction from the New Orleans Museum of Jazz this DIY musical instrument book is as inspirational to read in the living room as it is in the workshop.

 

Night Sky with Exit Wounds

One of the most celebrated poetry books of the year:The New Yorker The Best Books of Poetry of 2016New York Times Critics PickBoston Globe Best Books listingNPR Best Books listingMiami Herald Best LGBTQ BooksSan Francisco Chronicle Top 100 Books of the YearLibrary Journal Best Books of 2016Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times writes: The poems in Mr. Vuongs new collection Night Sky With Exit Woundspossess a tensile precision reminiscent of Emily Dickinsons work combined with a Gerard Manley Hopkins-like appreciation for the sound and rhythms of words. Mr. Vuong can create startling images (a black piano in a field a wedding-cake couple preserved under glass a shepherd stepping out of a Caravaggio painting) and make the silences and elisions in his verse speak as potently as his wordsThere is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuongs sincerity and candor and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things.Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition. His poems are by turns graceful and wonderstruck. His lines are both long and short his pose narrative and lyric his diction formal and insouciant. From the outside Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion.The New YorkerThe language is painfully exquisitely exact the scenes haunting and indelible. Highly recommended.Library Journal starred review'Night Sky with Exit Wounds establishes Vuong as a fierce new talent to be reckoned with...This book is a masterpiece that captures with elegance the raw sorrows and joys of human existence.'Buzzfeed's 'Most Exciting New Books of 2016''This original sprightly wordsmith of tumbling pulsing phrases pushes poetry to a new level...A stunning introduction to a young poet who writes with both assurance and vulnerability. Visceral tender and lyrical fleet and agile these poems unflinchingly face the legacies of violence and cultural displacement but they also assume a position of wonder before the world.2016 Whiting Award citation'Night Sky with Exit Wounds is the kind of book that soon becomes worn with love. You will want to crease every page to come back to it to underline every other line because each word resonates with power.'LitHub'Vuongs powerful voice explores passion violence history identityall with a tremendous humanity.'SlateIn his impressive debut collection Vuong writes beauty intoand culls fromindividual familial and historical traumas. Vuong exists as both observer and observed throughout the book as he explores deeply personal themes such as poverty depression queer sexuality domestic abuse and the various forms of violence inflicted on his family during the Vietnam War. Poems float and strike in equal measure as the poet strives to transform pain into clarity.Publishers WeeklyTorso of AirSuppose you do change your life.& the body is more thana portion of nightsealedwith bruises. Suppose you woke& found your shadow replacedby a black wolf. The boy beautiful & gone. So you take the knife to the wallinstead. You carve & carveuntil a coin of light appears& you get to look in at laston happiness. The eyestaring back from the other sidewaiting.Born in Saigon Vietnam Ocean Vuong attended Brooklyn College. He is the author of two chapbooks as well as a full-length collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds. A Ruth Lilly Fellow and winner of the Whiting Award Ocean Vuong lives in New York City.