Mythologist and adventurer Phil Cousineau theorizes that riddles are proverbs turned into questions. He believes telling riddles is a lost folk art. This eclectic collection of brain twisters from Leonardo da Vinci to Lewis Carroll is designed to bring the practice back to the living room. Cousineau invites readers into the peripatetic, poetic, and sweet language of riddles
DIVThe bestselling author of The Art of Pilgrimage and Once and Future Myths presents a selection of mind-bending brain teasers. Riddles by any name—enigmas, conundrum, word puzzles, teasers—have been posed since ancient times to test people’s wit and stretch their imaginations. Mythologist and adventurer Phil Cousineau resurrects this lost art form in A World Treasury of Riddles. Drawing from world literature, history, myth, and folklore, Cousineau has created a one-of-a-kind book that presents riddles from ancient Greece to the Ozarks, from Leonardo da Vinci to Lewis Carroll, and more. Previously published as Riddle Me This: A World Treasury of Word Puzzles, Folk Wisdom, and Literary Conundrums
Winner of the United Kingdom Literacy Association's Author Award 2011 for its contribution to extending children's literacy. Praise for the book: 'This book is about making readers. A compact summary of its contents would not do it justice. It is the accountof a life's work and it deserves thanks and readers. *****'. - Margaret Meek, Books for Keeps on-line, Number 185, November 2010. 'This book is a cornucopia of varied pleasures, offering something for all tastes, presented with an awareness of the complexities of the field and communicated with commitment, enthusiasm and deep knowledge'. - Eve Bearne, English 4-11, the primary school journal of The English Association, Number 42, Summer 2011. Choosing and Using Fiction and Non-Fiction 3-11 is a guide to the many kinds of text we want children to encounter, use and enjoy during their nursery and primary school years. So children’s non-fiction literature – including autobiography, biography, information and reference texts – is given equal status with fiction – nursery rhymes, picturebooks, novels, traditional tales, playscripts and poetry. The author addresses important issues and allows the voices of teachers, reviewers and children to be heard. The book supports teachers as they help children on their journey to becoming insightful and critical readers of non-fiction and sensitive and reflective readers of fiction. It also contains suggestions for practice which are in the spirit of the more flexible and creative approach to learning towards which primary schools are moving. It includes: help on using criteria to select quality texts of all kinds; annotated booklists for each kind of text for different age groups; suggestions for keeping a balance between print and screen-based texts; case studies showing teachers and children using texts in interesting and imaginative ways to support learning in English lessons and across the curriculum; advice on developing children’s visual and multimodal literacy; guidance on using the school library and embedding study skills in children’s wider purposes and learning; critiques of key theoretical perspectives and research projects. Although the main readership will be primary and student teachers, it is hoped that the book will be of interest and use to anyone concerned with the role of texts in children’s learning.
The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.
Cloud Kingdom Games has collected their 150 favorite riddles from the last sixteen years of books, games and the "Riddle of the Week." Each word riddle challenges the reader to guess what's being discussed. Riddles use wordplay, metaphors and just plain sneaky tricks and double meaning to keep you guessing.
