One winter morning, Joe and Jenny look out the window and see fresh snow sparkling on the ground. It's a perfect day for a sleigh ride and ice skating! Joe is excited to teach Jenny how to ice skate, but when the lesson begins, Jenny keeps falling...and Joe keeps laughing! Embarrassed and angry, Jenny skates off and doesn't notice when she skates onto thin ice—and gets trapped on a piece of ice headed for a waterfall! Don't miss this retelling of the classic mini-musical from Walt Disney's Melody Time.
Wintertime at the orchard has Peter learning some important lessons about speaking up in this second novel of a sweet series about the bonds of friendship. Blanketed in snow, the orchard looks like a magical wonderland. But Peter is not so charmed by his new life. He just can’t ignore how he’s always ignored any longer. Sarah, Lizzie, and Olive are always talking over him and bossing him around. And on top of that, it’s really cold outside. One January day, Peter reluctantly agrees to join the girls on a carriage ride through the freshly fallen snow. But things go terribly wrong when a dog incident has the horses running away in fear, with Peter and the carriage trailing dangerously behind them. Then, Peter hits his head on a passing branch and is thrown to the ground. Woozy, Peter wakes up alone in the snow but he makes his way to a cozy cottage. Kai, the cool new kid, opens the door and welcomes Peter inside. Kai shows him a magical mirror that brings the two new friends to another world. A world where people listen to Peter and need his help to defeat dragons, warlocks, and other scary things. Then Peter wakes up in the hospital with a bandage around his head. Everyone is so happy to see him awake. Peter tries to tell them all about the mirror but they dismiss his experience as a wild dream. When Peter goes back to school, it seems like Kai knows what Peter’s talking about. Could the dream have been real? Is there really a magic portal deep in the woods behind the orchard? Even if everyone thinks he’s crazy, Peter is determined to find out.
A cold night's silent majesty hides a BITTER secret… Though she is deeply loved by her parents, the fact that Lydia Brand is adopted has always made her different from her close-knit Amish community. But as Christmas approaches and she begins to search for answers about her biological parents, more questions surface. Soon it seems that the deaths of two women in her small town may not be coincidences, after all. And her pursuit of the truth has left her only with hints of a dark secret—and threats from an unseen adversary. While she does her best to stave off advances from her parents' preferred suitor, Lydia discovers that her heart truly belongs to the man who's been there all along: her friend Josh Yoder. It's only with his help that Lydia can ensure that the stillness of a winter's night means peace…and not danger.
Over a half century, a small Indiana town hosts a circus troupe during the off-seasons in linked stories “as graceful as any acrobat’s high-wire act” (San Francisco Chronicle). A Story Prize Finalist From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima, an elephant can change the course of a man's life—or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show’s manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. In this collection of linked stories spanning decades, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page. “[An] exquisite story collection.” —The Washington Post “Often funny, always graceful, and rich with a mix of historical and imaginative detail.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Sublimely imaginative and affecting.” —The Boston Globe
The final novel of one of America’s most beloved writers—a tale of degeneration, corruption, and spiritual crisis A Penguin Classic In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had “resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American.” Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of Steinbeck’s last novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With Ethan no longer a member of Long Island’s aristocratic class, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards. Set in Steinbeck’s contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty, and today ranks alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction and notes by leading Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Four friends live and work together on a New England apple orchard in this first novel of a brand-new series about the bonds of friendship. Welcome to the Orchard! Every summer the Garrison Family Apple Orchard opens its ice cream stand and lets two kids run the show. Now it’s best friends Lizzie and Sarah’s turn. Then new kids Olive and Peter join their ice cream team. Sarah had big plans and she’s not too happy about sharing the stand or her best friend. But a disaster at the grand opening results in a mysteriously empty cash register, these four kids have to become good friends—and expert detectives—before this Ice Cream Summer turns into the Worst Summer Ever.
For more than a dozen years, a soft spoken, unassuming woman dominated design at The Walt Disney Studios with a joyful creativity and exuberant color palette that stamped the look of many classic Disney animated features, including Cinderella and Peter Pan. Favorite theme park attractions, most notably the "It's A Small World" boat ride, originally created for the 1964 New York World's Fair, were also among her designs. Now the story behind one of Walt's favorite artists is celebrated in this delightful volume of whimsical art and insightful commentary. In her prime, Mary Blair was an amazingly prolific American artist who enlivened and influenced the not-so-small worlds of film, print, theme parks, architectural decor, and advertising. Her art represented and communicated pure pleasure to the viewer. Mary Blair's personal flair was at one with the imagery that flowed effortlessly and continually from her brush for more than half a century. Walt Disney loved her art and championed it at the Studio. The two shared many sensibilities, including a childlike fondness for playfulness in imagery.
Vibrant, splendidly hued, and charming beyond compare, the work of Disney designer and illustrator Mary Blair is more than just acclaimed—it is adored. She has charmed generations with her whimsical creations, from stunning art direction for Cinderella and Peter Pan to the wowing and wonderful “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyland. Magic Color Flair celebrates this Disney icon, tracing the evolution of her mesmerizing style and showcasing her work in gorgeous, full-color imagery. Curated by award winning animation director and designer, John Canemaker, the Magic Color Flair is an authoritative celebration of Blair’s life work. From her precocious paintings she made while studying at the renowned Chouinard Art Institute, to her concept drawings for Disney films, to her treasured Golden Books, delightful advertisements and large-scale installations. With annotations about her artistic process, Magic Color Flair gives readers an inside look to her bold and lively artistic process that yielded such loveable, and memorable work. While at art school, Blair developed a dynamic style that emphasized drama and emotion. Her gift for visual storytelling caught the eye of Walt Disney himself, who loved her bold graphics, sophisticated whimsicality, and eye-catching use of color and who became a lifelong friend and champion of her work. This book accompanies the Walt Disney Family Museum’s 2014 Mary Blair exhibit of the same title.
