Language play iincludes many punctuation marks in this companion to the New York Times #1 bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves! Commas and apostrophes aren't the only punctuation marks that can cause big trouble if they're put in the wrong place. “Twenty-odd ducks” is an estimate of how many are waddling by, but “twenty odd ducks” would not only be a big group, but they’d look very strange! Imagine this without the middle period and the comma: “The king walked and talked. A half hour after, his head was cut off.” Oh no—a beheaded king that can still walk and talk! Truss and Timmons put hyphens, parentheses, quotation marks, periods, and more in the spotlight, with silly scenes showing how which marks you choose and where you put them can cause hilarious mix-ups.
"This is that rare audiobook that truly makes the print version come alive. The sound effects alone are priceless, with homage to Grammy Award-winner Bobby McFerrin. If you've ever wondered what punctuation marks sound like, Beach provides hilarious voices and sound effects for each one. A masterful, creative, amusing, must-have production that simplifies the rules of punctuation." -School Library Journal
Laugh your way to punctuation perfection with this pocket-sized paperback compendium of the hilariously illustrated #1 New York Times bestselling series. Clever side-by-side illustrations show how punctuation placement makes a huge difference in the meaning of a sentence. Imagine this without the middle period and the comma: “The king walked and talked. A half hour after, his head was cut off.” Oh no—a beheaded king that can still walk and talk! You might want to eat a huge hot dog, but a huge, hot dog would run away pretty quickly if you tried to take a bite out of him. Scenes from all three of Lynne Truss and Bonnie Timmons’s best-selling punctuation picture books (Eats, Shoots & Leaves, The Girl's Like Spaghetti, and Twenty-Odd Ducks) highlight the important jobs of commas, apostrophes, hyphens, quotation marks, and more in this humorous punctuation primer. “Wordplay or ‘grammarplay’ at its finest.” —School Library Journal
A comanion to the New York Times #1 best-seller Eats, Shoots & Leaves, this is punctuation play at its finest! Just as the use of commas was hilariously demystified in Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!, now Lynne Truss and Bonnie Timmons put their talents together to do the same for apostrophes. Everyone needs to know where to put an apostrophe to make a word plural or possessive (Are those sticky things your brother's or your brothers?) and leaving one out of a contraction can give someone the completely wrong impression (Were here to help you). Full of silly scenes that show how apostrophes make a difference, too, this is another picture book that will elicit bales of laughter and better punctuation from all who read it. A New York Times Bestseller Parents’ Choice Silver Honor Winner
“[Eisenberg] reminds us in every line of certain saving virtues: wit, wild intelligence, great heart, the beauty of the inquiring human voice. If our culture can produce a writer this wonderful, there must be something beautiful about us yet.” — George Saunders Instead of forcing her characters’ stories into neat, arbitrary, preordained shapes, [Eisenberg] allows them to grow organically into oddly shaped, asymmetrical narratives—narratives that possess all the surprising twists and dismaying turns of real life.” — New York Times “Deborah Eisenberg, one of America’s finest writers, offers new ways of seeing and feeling, as if something were being perfected at the core.” — San Francisco Chronicle “Reading [Eisenberg] makes you wish, as you study the family in front of you in the grocery line, that you could see their thoughts rendered as one of Eisenberg’s stunning inner monologues.” — Los Angeles Times “...[S]uperlative and entertaining...Eisenberg is funny, grim, biting, and wise, but always with a light touch and always in the service of worlds that extend far beyond the page. A virtuoso at rendering the flickering gestures by which people simultaneously hide and reveal themselves, Eisenberg is an undisputed master of the short story.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[Eisenberg] is always worth the wait...so instantly absorbing that it feels like an abduction...This book offers no palliatives to its characters or to its readers — no plan of action. But it is a compass.” — The New York Times “Eisenberg is a gorgeous writer...I thank my stars that there’s a writer in the increasingly imperiled world as smart and funny and blazingly moral and devastatingly sidelong as she is.” — New York Times Book Review “Every character is memorable, every situation seizes our attention, and not a single word is out of place...It’s my fervent hope...that someday we’ll have the opportunity to look back on the many more stories that Deborah Eisenberg has yet to write.” — Financial Times
Known for his meaty seriocomic novels–expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow–Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life. A generous sampling, collected here for the first time and including works as diverse as scholarly art criticism and some decidedly untypical country- music lyrics, Wild Ducks Flying Backward offers a rare sweeping overview of the eclectic sensibility of an American original. Whether he is rocking with the Doors, depoliticizing Picasso’s Guernica, lamenting the angst-ridden state of contemporary literature, or drooling over tomato sandwiches and a species of womanhood he calls “the genius waitress,” Robbins’s briefer writings often exhibit the same five traits that perhaps best characterize his novels: an imaginative wit, a cheerfully brash disregard for convention, a sweetly nasty eroticism, a mystical but keenly observant eye, and an irrepressible love of language. Embedded in this primarily journalistic compilation are a couple of short stories, a sheaf of largely unpublished poems, and an off-beat assessment of our divided nation. And wherever we open Wild Ducks Flying Backward, we’re apt to encounter examples of the intently serious playfulness that percolates from the mind of a self-described “romantic Zen hedonist” and “stray dog in the banquet halls of culture.”
In this off-beat book perfect for reading aloud, a Caldecott Honor winner shares the story of a duck who rides a bike with hilarious results. One day down on the farm, Duck got a wild idea. “I bet I could ride a bike,” he thought. He waddled over to where the boy parked his bike, climbed on, and began to ride. At first, he rode slowly and he wobbled a lot, but it was fun! Duck rode past Cow and waved to her. “Hello, Cow!” said Duck. “Moo,” said Cow. But what she thought was, “A duck on a bike? That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen!” And so, Duck rides past Sheep, Horse, and all the other barnyard animals. Suddenly, a group of kids ride by on their bikes and run into the farmhouse, leaving the bikes outside. Now ALL the animals can ride bikes, just like Duck! Praise for Duck on a Bike “Shannon serves up a sunny blend of humor and action in this delightful tale of a Duck who spies a red bicycle one day and gets “a wild idea” . . . Add to all this the abundant opportunity for youngsters to chime in with barnyard responses (“M-o-o-o”; “Cluck! Cluck!”), and the result is one swell read-aloud, packed with freewheeling fun.” —Publishers Weekly “Grab your funny bone—Shannon . . . rides again! . . . A “quackerjack” of a terrific escapade.” —Kirkus Reviews
In Bob Tarte's home, pandemonium is the order of the day, and animals literally rule the roost—thirty-nine of them at last count. Whether it's the knot-tying African grey parrot, or the overweight cat who's trained Bob to hold her water bowl just above the floor, or the nightmarish duck who challenges him to a shoving match, this menagerie, along with his endlessly optimistic wife, Linda, provides daily lessons on the chaos inherent in our lives. But not until this modern-day Noah's Ark hits stormy weather—and Bob's world spins out of control—does he realize that this exuberant gaggle of animals provides his spiritual anchor. It is their alien presence, their sense of humor, and their impulsive behavior that both drive Bob crazy and paradoxically return him to sanity. With the same sly humor and dead-on character portraits that made Enslaved by Ducks such a rousing success, Tarte proves that life with animals offers a wholly different perspective on the world.
A creature whispers: If not for the cat, And the scarcity of cheese, I could be content. Who is this creature? What does it like to eat? Can you solve the riddle? Seventeen haiku composed by master poet Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by renowned artist Ted Rand ask you to think about seventeen favorite residents of the animal kingdom in a new way. On these glorious and colorful pages you will meet a mouse, a skunk, a beaver, a hummingbird, ants, bald eagles, jellyfish, and many others. Who is who? The answer is right in front of you. But how can you tell? Think and wonder and look and puzzle it out!
