Friday, April 1, 2011

Friday Finds


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Bluey & Dingo's Outback Adventure Beautifully illustrated over 40 pages in full color and aimed at the 4-7 years' old age group, Bluey and Dingo's Outback Adventure follows the exciting story of a farmer who has to travel deep into the Outback to save a sick camel. When his Jeep breaks down, Bluey and his pet, Dingo, are left stranded in the middle of the Australian desert. Surrounded by snakes and frightening wildlife, they have to figure out how to get home safely...

The Megasaurus What's the King of Beandom to do? The tiny, multi-colored bean-shaped bears of Beandom are under attack by a monster. Even the King's wisest advisors seem unable find a solution. Who will save Beandom? Can an ordinary tiny bear step forward with a plan that works? Welcome to Beandom! It's a great place to visit. Or, it will be — just as soon as we get rid of that pesky monster! The message of the story is: Follow your convictions even when others think differently. In the series entitled The Lima Bear Stories, as the basic characters appear and reappear, each has a distinct personality that shines through in every story. While the children have no idea what twists and turns the story may take, they come to know the characters and have a pretty good idea of how they are likely to act in different situations and settings. In essence, the children become friends with the characters. There is a form of bonding that develops. Each story carries an important overriding message (such as courage, tolerance, honesty), and we believe that this bonding creates a more profound understanding and appreciation of the message.

Origami Zoo: 25 Fun Paper Animal Creations! Origami Zoo contains twenty-five delightful origami animal designs. Kids will love creating such critters as koalas, monkeys, butterflies, vultures, and more. Color photos and helpful illustrations make the instructions easy to follow. Origami Zoo comes with 60 sheets of origami paper. Paul Jackson is a professional paper artist and instructor living in Tel Aviv, Israel. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. He is the author of Origami Toys: Paper Toys that Fly, Tumble, and Spin.

Bless This Mouse Here is how it started. Out of the corner of my eye, while I was hard at work one day, I saw something move. A little scurrying motion. It wasn’t my dog, Alfie, who was curled up and snoozing by my feet. But I was quite certain I had seen something. I went to look, and found a mouse. But this mouse was quite different. He had very large eyes and ears. They made him appear—well, cute. He seemed, actually, to have a personality, and he was completely unafraid of me. Finally, not knowing exactly how to behave with such a creature, I picked him up, talked to him a bit about how he would be happier living outdoors, and then I carried him out to my garden and gently placed him on the ground beside the birdbath. I told him that I hoped he would have a pleasant summer. Alfie took one last close-up look at him and lost interest. Then I went back into the house and to my unfinished manuscript. But I found myself suddenly bored by my fictional humans. I could only think about mice. I started typing. I created a mouse, and then another, and another. I gave them names and personalities and problems and relationships, and before I knew it I had written an entire book about them. I called it Bless This Mouse.

SAT & BAF! Memories of a Tower Rat It is 1986, and the Soviet Union is five years from collapsing bringing an end to a nearly fifty year standoff with the United States. The arms race has ramped up to unbelievable proportions. The USSR is also in the midst of a protracted war of conquest in Afghanistan. Leftist groups such as the Red Army Faction (RAF) of West Germany and Action Direct (AD) of France are threatening to attack NATO installations in the Federal Republic of Germany and throughout Europe as they have in the past. Thousands of protestors are surrounding nuclear storage sites and are becoming more aggressive each year. It appears nothing can end this standoff except nuclear annihilation or capitulation by one of the antagonists.  One company of infantry stands between the entire Soviet arsenal and live Pershing II nuclear missiles which are the threat used by President Ronald Reagan as he orders Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

Jesus: God, Man or Party Label? The Dead Sea Scrolls' Messiah Code Intrigue. Politics. Lies. Power struggle. Sound like a thriller? It's the Bible. In Jesus: God, Man or Party Label?, Chris Albert Wells argues that the interpretation of the Gospels we have been taught as Truth ignores a bitter battle of intra-community conflicts and strategies. To discover the nature of the initial split, Wells encourages us to give a new look at the Essene Dead Sea Scroll Messiahs and then to Northern Syria, where the first Gospels were written in a community called Essene before being called Christian. The reader will discover here the background that ultimately produced the Gospels and what they really meant to those who wrote them. Within this community context, Jesus will be just as alien to established Church traditions as to modern historical portrayals or mythical castings forwarded by scholarly textual criticism. Wells challenges us to question everything we have been told, and to understand the story of Jesus in an entirely new light. Chris Albert Wells is a university teacher, professor of surgery and presently lives on the French Riviera.

Killing Me Softly: My Life in Music Charles Fox has composed more than 100 motion picture and television scores, among them the themes of many iconic series, including Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Love, American Style, and Love Boat. Twice nominated for the Academy Award and a two-time Emmy winner, Fox has also written music for the concert hall and the ballet. Among the hundreds of songs he has written is the Grammy Award-winning 'Killing Me Softly with His Song,' a number one record in just about every country in the world, by two different artists: Roberta Flack in 1973 and the Fugees, 20 years later. In this memoir, Fox recounts his development as a musician, beginning with his formal music education in Paris. From letters he wrote home between 1959 and 1961, Fox recounts his studies under the tutelage of the most renowned music composition teacher of the 20th century, Nadia Boulanger, whose influence Fox carried throughout his entire professional career. Following his return to the states, Fox describes the cornerstone events of his musical and personal life. He reflects on the highlights of his career, working with some of the greatest names in entertainment, film, television, and records, including Jim Croce, Barry Manilow, Lena Horne, and Fred Astaire. Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004 and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Composers & Lyricists, Fox's memoir is a compelling story of a musician and composer whose work continues to entertain and inspire listeners around the world.

Grieving a Soulmate: The Love Story Behind "Till Death Do Us Part" The book every lover should read. Grieving a Soulmate is unlike any book you've ever read, even though the story is universal. It's about the death of a lover. The book takes on this difficult and very personal topic with courage, out-of-the box thinking, and deep love. Ranging from the practical to the emotional--and frequently blending the two--Orfali's style of writing makes a difficult topic easier to manage. He writes in an easy style that is analytical, yet speaks from the heart. The content is thought-provoking, unique and original. It's your gentle and informed guide to the deep grieving that accompanies the death of a soulmate. This book should help you quickly overcome the red-hot pain of grief. It also tells you how to reconstruct your life, find meaning, and deal with the big existential issues from a secular perspective. It's a survival guide for the last stages in a soulmate relationship. Above all, however, Grieving a Soulmate is a love story.

The Survivors In 1692, when witch trials gripped the community of Salem, Massachusetts, twenty-six children were accused as witches, exiled, and left for dead. Fourteen of them survived. The Survivors is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries. Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter, dares to abandon the family's sacred hiding place. But no matter how far Sadie runs, something always pulls her back. On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the human world she's sought to belong to for over a century and send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters, dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the search for her own mortality. After all... HOW DO YOU KILL A SURVIVOR? The Survivors will steal your heart and invade your mind. Fall into the pages of Sadie's life, a world so frighteningly similar to your own, you'll find yourself wanting to go to the Montana mountains to find the Survivors for yourself. And it is only the beginning.

2 comments:

  1. The Survivors looks really good.
    Here's mine:
    http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com/2011/04/friday-finds.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lots of good choices this week! My Friday Find is here: http://t.co/6klzFm7

    ReplyDelete