Uncle John is heeding the call of nature! So pack a rucksack, and let’s head outside! It’s a wild world out there, and the folks at the BRI want to explore it with you. From hornywinks to Dracula orchids, from alluvium to zymogen, Uncle John is embarking on a back-country safari to track down the wackiest, weirdest, silliest, and most amazing stories about the natural world. It’s 448 wild pages of great outdoor facts, strange stories, incredible science, and fun quotes and quizzes. You’ll feel the fresh mountain air energize you as you read about… * An ape that fries burgers and a lizard that plays video games * The explosive history of America’s deepest (and bluest) lake * The search for the mysterious rhinoceros dolphin * How to distinguish a mushroom from a toadstool * Cats vs. birds: the Feline-Avian War * A waterfall that turns toys to stone * The history of dirt And much, much more!
From the market leader in true facts comes a big book of hilariously false information. The crackpot staff of the Bathroom Readers’ Institute is out of control. After 25 years of laboriously researching facts and verifying them and then verifying them again, Uncle John’s mischievous minions decided to blow off a little steam. The result: Fake Facts. It’s stuff that isn’t even remotely true--we just made it sound real. Why? Because it’s really funny. Fake Facts is 228 pages of origins, facts, weird products, strange diseases, kooky fads, slang terms, historical oddities, and other fascinating bits of information that are too good to be true…because they aren’t true. So put aside your BS detector and settle in to read about: * The ill-fated “Vice President For a Day” for kids program * How the overfishing of dolphins led to the canned tuna industry * “Crumble,” “plaidsy,” “benji,” and other British slang * Abandoned rules of early baseball, and obscure rules of grammar * How early vegetarians gave Boston its “Beantown” nickname * The secret superpowers of twins * James Joyce’s unpublished sci-fi trilogy * Unicorns, wizards, and pirates galore And lots more falsified fun!
It's time to "go with the flow" once again with the second smash Bathroom Reader. This new compendium of stories, anecdotes, rumors, proverbs, and other bathroom reading is divided into Short, Medium and Long, enabling each reader to choose the amount of time he wishes to remain on the throne.
Grab some quiet time for yourself and enjoy hundreds of pages of the world’s most twisted trivia! The crackpot staff at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute has scoured the worlds of pop culture, politics, sports, history, and more to bring you Slightly Irregular, the seventeenth all-new edition in the best-selling series. As always, the articles are divided by length for your sitting convenience. So turn thine eyes away from the shampoo bottle, O bathroom reader, and let Uncle John pepper your brain with these absorbing articles . . . * Women in space * The origin of Kung Fu * The CIA’s secret coup * The great windshield epidemic * Spider eggs in the brain, and other urban legends * What went down at Woodstock * Freedom of McSpeech * How to kill a zombie, and much more!
Uncle John is back with another spectacular show—and it’s right here in front of you! Uncle John’s Greatest Know on Earth Bathroom Reader is bursting with the latest oohs and aahs from the worlds of pop culture, history, sports, and politics. Dazzling facts, jaw-dropping blunders, and astounding lists of trivia will make your visits to the throne room more entertaining than ever. Articles range in length from a single page to extended page-turners, so there’s always something to suit your needs. With Uncle John as the ringmaster for the 33rd straight edition, this Bathroom Reader is sure to be a crowd-pleaser!
It’s an actual fact—Uncle John is the most entertaining thing in the bathroom! Uncle John and his team of devoted researchers are back again with an all-new collection of weird news stories, odd historical events, dubious “scientific” theories, jaw-dropping lists, and more. This entertaining 31st anniversary edition contains 512 pages of all-new articles that will appeal to readers everywhere. Pop culture, history, dumb crooks, and other actual and factual tidbits are packed onto every page of this book. Inside, you’ll find . . . Dogs and cats who ran for political office The bizarre method people in Victorian England used to resuscitate drowning victims The man who met his future pet—a stray dog—while running across the Gobi Desert Searching for Planet X—the last unknown planet in our solar system Twantrums—strange Twitter rants that had disastrous effects The true story of Boaty McBoatface And much more!
An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.
Amid the grandeur of the remote Pacific Northwest stands Kingcome, a village so ancient that, according to Kwakiutl myth, it was founded by the two brothers left on earth after the great flood. The Native Americans who still live there call it Quee, a place of such incredible natural richness that hunting and fishing remain primary food sources. But the old culture of totems and potlatch is being replaces by a new culture of prefab housing and alcoholism. Kingcome's younger generation is disenchanted and alienated from its heritage. And now, coming upriver is a young vicar, Mark Brian, on a journey of discovery that can teach him—and us—about life, death, and the transforming power of love.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more,The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school. Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out The Book of General Ignorance for more fun entries and complete answers to the following: How long can a chicken live without its head? About two years. What do chameleons do? They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states. How many legs does a centipede have? Not a hundred. How many toes has a two-toed sloth? It’s either six or eight. Who was the first American president? Peyton Randolph. What were George Washington’s false teeth made from? Mostly hippopotamus. What was James Bond’s favorite drink? Not the vodka martini.
“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.
