Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a "corporate clown," trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars — most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields — to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.

In the summer of 1976, Mary Flynn ran away from home and joined the circus. Follow her down the road as she learns a whole new life as a circus clown, makes friends with circus folks, learns to cope with life on the road, and falls in love along the way. Note: This novel is not a children's book; it contains strong language and adult situations.

This rich collection of readings offers a wide-ranging and authoritative survey of clown practices, history and theory, from the origins of the word clown through to contemporary clowning. Covering clowns in theatre, circus, cinema, TV, street and elsewhere, the author's stimulating narrative challenges assumptions and turns orthodoxy on its head.

Alan Clay's new book on clown, Angels can Fly, promises a mix of fiction, following the adventures of ten clown characters, some personal clown anecdotes, a total of 50 practical clown exercises, and some theory on the nature of modern clown.

At once funny and touching, this book tells the story of Olivia, a clown child, whose dreams are filled with simple things such as bathtubs and homes that don't bump all over the prairie. Then Olivia gets a glimpse of life outside the circus. What would it mean to give up the circus life? Full color.

"Once again Hurwitz exhibits her talent for creating characters who talk, act, and think just like real kids. Realistic dialogue . . . and commonplace situations that sparkle with humor combine to make this a fine choice".--School Library Journal. Illustrated. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

These fierce, funny and feminist short stories shine with everyday heroines at work and at play. Ordinary lives are transformed as women try to be themselves while clowning around for others. Captured in familiar situations as well as in flights of fancy, the women in these stories are engaged in acts of self-preservation: they are exhilarated to discover the joy and surprise of other women's company, they make bold sexual choices, they go on a night-time excursions; as grandmothers, they give their grandchildren unsuitable presents. In one story, a young woman and her mother harness their creativity to express their horror at the world around them. In another, a teenage mother struggles with her feelings for the father of her child. One of the tales follows a woman who experiences the freedom of the workplace while another shows how imprisoning it can be. Compassionate, unexpected, and full of small triumphs in the face of adversity, this collection establishes Hannah Vincent as one of the freshest voices in contemporary fiction.

Into your heart comes the story about Cookie the Clown and her family who journey from Clownika, the homeland of real clowns, into our human world. They begin living among Gudigads (what the clowns call us) and become minorities in our world. By looking at the clown race, the story teaches children that people are sometimes treated differently based solely on how they look.

2017 Freedley Award Finalist, Theatre Library Association 2016 Best Circus Book of the Year, Stuart Thayer Prize, Circus Historical Society The 1960s American hippie-clown boom fostered many creative impulses, including neo-vaudeville and Ringling's Clown College. However, the origin of that impulse, clowning with a circus, has largely gone unexamined. David Carlyon, through an autoethnographic examination of his own experiences in clowning, offers a close reading of the education of a professional circus clown, woven through an eye-opening, sometimes funny, occasionally poignant look at circus life. Layering critical reflections of personal experience with connections to wider scholarship, Carlyon focuses on the work of clowning while interrogating what clowns actually do, rather than using them as stand-ins for conceptual ideas or as sentimental figures.