A kangaroo family and friends celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year in their own special way

A kangaroo family and friends celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year in their own special way

They look for bits of chametz. They're good investigators. They're really just like you and me-- except they're ALLIGATORS. A whimsical alligator family celebrates Passover.

There once was a boy, a rabbit, a magic seed, and a book. The boy, who was bored, went looking for something to do. The rabbit, who was curious, explored until he was lost. The seed was thirsty, but soon it grew and grew and grew. And the book? You are holding it in your hands. Turn the pages! It will make you so happy.

All the dinosaurs are getting ready for Passover, but no one will come to Tyrannosaurus Rex's seder because they think he will eat them. This gives him terrible tsuris, the Yiddish word for "worry." "You think you have tsuris?" Stegosaurus asks. "I can't find parsley for my seder." "And I can't find a brisket big enough to feed all my cousins. That's what you call tsuris!" Allosaurus says. But when T-Rex wails, "I have no guests for my seder!" all the dinosaurs agree that his tsuris is the worst, as the most important part of the seder is sharing it with guests. And they come up with an idea for a tsuris-free celebration.

With the collapse of the back elevation of our tenement we were shipped out to one of those new housing schemes being built on the outskirts of Glasgow and I hated leaving the soo-side behind. I kept going back for this is where I felt I belonged. In this book I have tried to keep alive those memories that people of my generation can all relate to, just ordinary everyday things we all done in the Gorbals and Oatlands and which are forever embedded in our minds, not forgetting walks over to the toon either. I left Glasgow when I was 20 years old (48 years ago) but like most exiles, Glasgow has never left us.

Today, Wallace is a champion; but in the summer of 2005, he was living in a shelter, a refugee from a suspicious pit-bull breeding operation. Then Andrew "Roo" Yori entered the picture. A scientist and shelter volunteer, Roo could immediately see that Wallace was something special. When Roo learned that Wallace was about to be put down, he and his wife frantically fought to keep Wallace alive until they could adopt him, even though they already had two dogs. Once Wallace made it home, Roo knew the dog needed a mission, and serendipity led them to the world of competitive dog Frisbee. Pit bulls are everything that most Frisbee dogs are not, but that was fine with Roo because part of his mission was to change people's minds about pit bulls. Overcoming everything from injuries to prejudice against the breed, the unlikely pair persevered to become world champions.

A poignant collection of short pieces about the author's hometown, St. Petersburg, Russia, and the siege of Leningrad that combines memoir, history, and fiction. Living Pictures refers to the parlor game of tableaux vivants, in which people dress up in costume to bring scenes from history back to life. It’s a game about survival, in a sense, and what it means to be a survivor is the question that Polina Barskova explores in the scintillating literary amalgam of Living Pictures. Barskova, one of the most admired and controversial figures in a new generation of Russian writers, first made her name as a poet; she is also known as a scholar of the catastrophic siege of Leningrad in World War II. In Living Pictures, Barskova writes with caustic humor and wild invention about traumas past and present, historical and autobiographical, exploring how we cope with experiences that defy comprehension. She writes about her relationships with her adoptive father and her birth father; about sex, wanted and unwanted; about the death of a lover; about Turner and Picasso; and, in the final piece, she mines the historical record in a chamber drama about two lovers sheltering in the Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad who slowly, operatically, hopelessly, stage their own deaths. Living Pictures introduces a startlingly daring and original new voice from world literature.