As Marion Peck's magical and bucolic landscapes unfold, an uneasy melancholy fills the air - the birds are chirping but the sounds are not quite right. The viewer pauses and questions the reality Peck has created, as well as reality itself. Themes of hope, despair, mystery, nostalgia, love and death recur throughout Peck's work alongside motifs of dreams, big-eyed animals, natural landscapes, doe-eyed children, royalty and peasantry.
Illustrations and easy-to-read text reassure children that if they were calf, chick, larva, or fawn, they would always be loved by their moose, loon, bee, or deer.
"[This book is] for everyone who loves animals and wants to live a more animal-friendly life, even if they aren't ready to join a movement or give up bacon"--Amazon.com.
This is a story about a boy who was told if he kept digging he would end up in China. Because of his sister's fearlessness and some fantastic friends, he finds himself in Beijing. In this comical retelling, the group meets in Beijing to support the boy's sister, who is running The Great Wall Marathon. The run is a great excuse to extend the trip into an experience of a lifetime: enjoying local cuisine, checking out shopping hot spots, dispelling myths and pre-conceived notions, and putting the T back into tea--all the while laughing at themselves along the way.
Night tells himself Summer is his mother's physical therapist and nothing more. Until she's kidnapped on his watch and he realises how much he truly cares. Night, leader of the Wind Warriors, has little time for romance and no patience for his matchmaking mother's selections, too busy focusing on special missions. His orderly life falls apart when Summer, his mother's physical therapist and his budding romantic interest, is kidnapped at gunpoint. Summer never expects to meet a man like Night, intelligent and downright sexy. She bristles under his dictatorial tone, stands up to him, while beginning to see the man underneath. A man she could spend a lifetime with. The past comes back to haunt Night, dragging Summer into the midst of danger. Can he gather the team and rush to her rescue before it's too late and he loses the woman he's come to love?
"Summer" by Dallas Lore Sharp is the fourth last volume of the natural history - outdoor book series by the author. Excerpt: "I believe that a child's interest in outdoor life is a kind of hunger, as natural as his interest in bread and butter. He cannot live on bread and butter alone, but he ought not to try to live without them. He cannot be educated on nature-study alone, but he ought not to be educated without it. To learn to obey and reason and feel—these are the triple ends of education, and the greatest of these is to learn to feel. The teacher's word for obedience; the arithmetic for reasoning; and for feeling, for the cultivation of the imagination, for the power to respond quickly and deeply, give the child the out-of-doors."
Manga and anime inspire a wide range of creative activities for fans: blogging and contributing to databases, making elaborate cosplay costumes, producing dôjinshi (amateur) manga and scanlations, and engaging in fansubbing and DIY animation. Indeed, fans can no longer be considered passive consumers of popular culture easily duped by corporations and their industrial-capitalist ideologies. They are now more accurately described as users, in whose hands cultural commodities can provide instant gratification but also need to be understood as creative spaces that can be inhabited, modified, and enhanced. User Enhanced, the sixth volume of the Mechademia series, examines the implications of this transformation from consumer to creator. Why do manga characters lend themselves so readily to user enhancement? What are the limitations on fan creativity? Are fans simply adding value to corporate properties with their enhancements? And can the productivity and creativity of user activities be transformed into genuine cultural enrichment and social engagement? Through explorations of the vitality of manga characters, the formal and structural open-endedness of manga, the role of sexuality and desire in manga and anime fandom, the evolution of the Lolita fashion subculture, the contemporary social critique embodied in manga like Helpman! and Ikigami, and gamer behavior within computer games, User Enhanced suggests that commodity enhancement may lead as easily to disengagement and isolation as to interaction, connection, and empowerment. Contributors: Brian Bergstrom; Lisa Blauersouth; Aden Evens, Dartmouth College; Andrea Horbinski; Itô Gô, Tokyo Polytechnic U; Paul Jackson; Yuka Kanno; Shion Kono, Sophia U, Tokyo; Thomas Lamarre, McGill U; Christine L. Marran, U of Minnesota; Miyadai Shinji, Tokyo Metropolitan U; Miyamoto Hirohito, Meiji U; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Miri Nakamura, Wesleyan U; Matthew Penney, Concordia U, Montreal; Emily Raine; Brian Ruh; Kumiko Saito, Bowling Green State U; Rio Saitô, College of Visual Arts, St. Paul; Cathy Sell; James Welker, U of British Columbia; Yoshikuni Igarashi, Vanderbilt U.
After being burned by the one she cared the most, Summer’s ready to unlock her talent and find herself. Summer left everything for Matt’s dream. But when her childhood friend rose to international fame, he unexpectedly told her to go home. Empowered rather than broken, she tries to rebuild her life and, on the way, discovers her own artistic gift. Through a twist of fate, she captivates the great Frank Hills—an award-winning producer. He thinks Summer has what it takes to become a star and sets her up with a mysterious benefactor from his company. So she throws herself into acting... and takes the stage by storm. A natural rising star, she’s thrust into the limelight, falls in love with acting, makes true friends, finds acceptance through her benefactor and inspiration in Joe Starlex—The Sun of Starland, the tittle Matt is desperately seeking. She has no idea her past might just collide with her future: someone from her childhood turns out to be closer than she ever imagined. Their fate has been entwined since long ago and he will enter her life again, leave his mark on her career... ...and maybe, in her heart as well.
It’s never too late for a second chance at first love in this compelling novel from New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton. When Loretta Simmons returns to Hope, Oklahoma, after a disastrous marriage, she’s determined to remain independent for the sake of her daughter. The only thing standing in her way is Deacon Fox—the man she loved and walked away from years ago. Since Loretta owns the bookstore right next to his current renovation project, Deacon can’t escape the woman who broke his heart. Throw in her adorable little girl and one ridiculously oversized dog, and they’re almost a family. Only he can’t be that guy—what they had was once in a lifetime. But love has a funny way of reopening a door you thought was firmly closed....
Abby Banks is your typical sixteen-year-old girl, except that her entire life has been one big lie. Kidnapped as a young girl and fostered by a government agency as collateral, Abby never knew she was important… until her mom’s terrorist organization unleashes a devastating attack on the facility.
