It's Easter morning in Washington, DC, and Tiny is out for a jog, but he STOPS in his tracks and discovers the Easter Bunny STUCK in a log! With the Easter Bunny trapped, it's up to Tiny to save Easter in Washington, DC! But being a bunny isn't as easy as it looks, especially for an elephant. In this fun and playful story, find out how Tiny uses his own special talents to save Easter!
Meet the most inept crime family you're ever likely to run across! Although they aim to perform on the same level of some of the best Mafia families...well...they never QUITE reach their goal and things usually end up with hilarious consequences. From meddling mothers and cupcakes to illegal fireworks and potato salad these stories will be sure to keep you laughing out loud all year long! Included in this collection are these short stories to make your holidays more fun: A Mobster's Recipe for Cupcakes: A Valentine's Day Story A Mobster's Toast to St. Patrick's Day A Mobster's Menu for Mother's Day Brunch A Mobster's Gift on Father's Day A Mobster's Independence Day Picnic A Mobster's Guide to Cranberry Sauce
Humorous, insightful essays on outdoor life from the renowned contributor and editor of Field & Stream—“one of the best magazine writers in America” (The Wall Street Journal). Living the life of an outdoorsman doesn’t necessarily take skill. After more than two decades of writing about his adventures (and misadventures), Bill Heavey has proven that being a true outdoorsman just takes enthusiasm, determination, and a willingness to, occasionally, make a fool of oneself. You’re Not Lost If You Can Still See the Truck gathers together more than sixty of Heavey’s best stories from his work in Field & Stream, The Washington Post, and The Washingtonian. Including retellings of his adventures hunting ants in the urban jungles of Washington, DC; braving freezing winter expeditions in Eastern Alaska; attempting to impress ladies by immediately flipping over his canoe; and planning deer hunts around dad-duties, these tales are chock full of life, insight, and, of course, hilarity. Here is a far-ranging and enlightening volume that traces a life lived outdoors, for better or for worse. “To the list of great Field & Stream essayists . . . add the name Bill Heavey. His writing is funny, poignant, acerbic, and, best of all, always alert to the absurdities of life.” —Patrick C. McManus
Small mammals are soft, adorable pets, but they require special care. Small Mammals examines various small mammal species and their unique needs, as well as the laws, regulations, challenges, and controversies regarding owning these animals. It also looks at the industry and communities that have sprung up to support small mammal ownership and the many ways small mammals bring joy to their owners. Features include a glossary, references, websites, source notes, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Color and Shape Books for All Ages calls attention to more than 450 titles focused on the concepts of color and shape. The purposes of the color and shape books range from simply learning the names of colors or identifying simple shapes, to recognizing intricate geometric shapes, or even understanding how color affects responses, moods, and attitudes.
This two-volume work presents a comprehensive survey of all the ways people celebrate religious life around the globe. Religious Celebrations is an alphabetically organized encyclopedia that covers more than 800 celebratory occasions from all of the world's major religious communities as well as many of the minor faith traditions. The encyclopedia provides a complete reference tool for examining the myriad ways people worldwide celebrate their religious lives across religious boundaries, providing information on numerous celebratory activities never before covered in a reference work. Offering the most comprehensive coverage of religious holidays ever assembled, this two-volume book covers festivals, commemorations, holidays, and annual religious gatherings all over the world, with special attention paid to the celebrations in larger countries. Entries written by distinguished researchers and specialists on different religious communities capture the unique intensity of each event, be it fasting or feasting, frenzied activity or the universal cessation of work, a huge gathering of the faithful en masse or a small family-centered event. The work spotlights celebrations that currently exist without overlooking now-abandoned celebrations that still impact the modern world.
This four-volume work provides a detailed, multicultural survey of established as well as "new" American religions and investigates the fascinating interactions between religion and ethnicity, gender, politics, regionalism, ethics, and popular culture. This revised and expanded edition of Religion and American Cultures: Tradition, Diversity, and Popular Expression presents more than 140 essays that address contemporary spiritual practice and culture with a historical perspective. The entries cover virtually every religion in modern-day America as well as the role of religion in various aspects of U.S. culture. Readers will discover that Americans aren't largely Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish anymore, and that the number of popular religious identities is far greater than many would imagine. And although most Americans believe in a higher power, the fastest growing identity in the United States is the "nones"—those Americans who elect "none" when asked about their religious identity—thereby demonstrating how many individuals see their spirituality as something not easily defined or categorized. The first volume explores America's multicultural communities and their religious practices, covering the range of different religions among Anglo-Americans and Euro-Americans as well as spirituality among Latino, African American, Native American, and Asian American communities. The second volume focuses on cultural aspects of religions, addressing topics such as film, Generation X, public sacred spaces, sexuality, and new religious expressions. The new third volume expands the range of topics covered with in-depth essays on additional topics such as interfaith families, religion in prisons, belief in the paranormal, and religion after September 11, 2001. The fourth volume is devoted to complementary primary source documents.
A revealing examination of small-town life More than thirty million Americans live in small, out-of-the-way places. Many of them could have joined the vast majority of Americans who live in cities and suburbs. They could live closer to more lucrative careers and convenient shopping, a wider range of educational opportunities, and more robust health care. But they have opted to live differently. In Small-Town America, we meet factory workers, shop owners, retirees, teachers, clergy, and mayors—residents who show neighborliness in small ways, but who also worry about everything from school closings and their children's futures to the ups and downs of the local economy. Drawing on more than seven hundred in-depth interviews in hundreds of towns across America and three decades of census data, Robert Wuthnow shows the fragility of community in small towns. He covers a host of topics, including the symbols and rituals of small-town life, the roles of formal and informal leaders, the social role of religious congregations, the perception of moral and economic decline, and the myriad ways residents in small towns make sense of their own lives. Wuthnow also tackles difficult issues such as class and race, abortion, homosexuality, and substance abuse. Small-Town America paints a rich panorama of individuals who reside in small communities, finding that, for many people, living in a small town is an important part of self-identity.
The characters, scandals, and secrets that shaped America's most controversial residence. Emerging from family tragedy and newfound chances, the story of Mar-a-Lago starts when heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and investor E.F. Hutton built their ode to Roaring Twenties excess in south Florida. And as the hood ornament of Palm Beach society, not even a catastrophic hurricane could deter winter revelries there. No one could have predicted what followed: This 126-room wonder has withstood mutual adultery, high-stakes divorces, ruinous development plans, apathetic heirs, and financial collapse. All this...even before Donald Trump was given the keys to the front door. American Castle reveals a power couple's dream oasis colliding with the Kennedys, Lady Bird Johnson, Richard Nixon, the National Park Service, and Donald Trump--the man who fused a private club with a Winter White House and watched the FBI raid his own home.
The award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America’s greatest and most influential families—the Roosevelts—exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries with his signature cinematic flair. Drawing on previously hidden historical documents and interviews with the long-silent "illegitimate" branch of the family, William J. Mann paints an elegant, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts’ rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest that at times devolved into blood sport. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself, of social Darwinism at its most ruthless—in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient. Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her Uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott—his brother and bitter rival—for political expediency. Mann presents a fascinating alternate picture of Eleanor, contending that this "worshipful niece" in fact bore a grudge against TR for the rest of her life, and dares to tell the truth about her intimate relationships without obfuscations, explanations, or labels. Mann also brings into focus Eleanor’s cousins, TR’s children, whose stories propelled the family rivalry but have never before been fully chronicled, as well as her illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, who inherited his family’s ambition and skill without their name and privilege. Growing up in poverty just miles from his wealthy relatives, Elliott Mann embodied the American Dream, rising to middle-class prosperity and enjoying one of the very few happy, long-term marriages in the Roosevelt saga. For the first time, The Wars of the Roosevelts also includes the stories of Elliott’s daughter and grandchildren, and never-before-seen photographs from their archives. Deeply psychological and finely rendered, illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs, The Wars of the Roosevelts illuminates not only the enviable strengths but also the profound shame of this remarkable and influential family.
