Little Muddy Waters never listens when his Gullah grandmother tells him to "respect yo elders and do what's right" until Old Man Weava "puts the mouth" on him after he is rude to the old man.

An Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Winner A New York Times Best Illustrated Book An NPR Best Book of the Year A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book A Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner A picture book celebration of the indomitable Muddy Waters, a blues musician whose fierce and electric sound laid the groundwork for what would become rock and roll. Muddy Waters was never good at doing what he was told. When Grandma Della said the blues wouldn’t put food on the table, Muddy didn’t listen. And when record producers told him no one wanted to listen to a country boy playing country blues, Muddy ignored them as well. This tenacious streak carried Muddy from the hardscrabble fields of Mississippi to the smoky juke joints of Chicago and finally to a recording studio where a landmark record was made. Soon the world fell in love with the tough spirit of Muddy Waters. In blues-infused prose and soulful illustrations, Michael Mahin and award-winning artist Evan Turk tell Muddy’s fascinating and inspiring story of struggle, determination, and hope.

Muddy Waters invented electric blues and created the template for the rock and roll band and its wild lifestyle. Gordon excavates Muddy's mysterious past and early career, taking us from Mississippi fields to postwar Chicago street corners.

Facing Life's Struggles As We Grow...Life can be so challenging yet so rewarding. As we grow we've notice things are not as what we thought it would be. Drugs have interrupted families, insecurities have kept people secluded from the world, broken homes, loss of loved ones, new children are born and depression has had some people turn suicidal. Is it love? Or is it lust? The fast pace beating of your heart when you see that person, I've learned that's only at the start. Giving your all thinking its love just to find out they're paying you no attention at all. Spiritually I try to stay focused on what really matters, knowing that he will provide me with what I need. Putting him first and letting everything else just fall into place. Stepping Through Muddy Waters is a walk through the ups and downs in life. It'll help you to have a different outlook on life itself. In writing I have also had a better prospective on things. As you step through the pages of this book you will find yourself or maybe someone that you may know and help change the negative into positive.

This little book transcends geographical, social, and economic boundaries to search the heart and soul of the blues, looking for rules to live by, hope for the downtrodden, cautionary tales for the good times, and truths that "hurt so good". Sometimes, you just gotta be blue. But, as this book goes to show, that's okay--because you're never alone.

Whenever you hear the prevalent wailing blues harmonica in commercials, film soundtracks or at a blues club, you are experiencing the legacy of the master harmonica player, Little Walter. Immensely popular in his lifetime, Little Walter had fourteen Top 10 hits on the R&B charts, and he was also the first Chicago blues musician to play at the Apollo. Ray Charles and B.B. King, great blues artists in their own right, were honored to sit in with his band. However, at the age of 37, he lay in a pauper's grave in Chicago. This book will tell the story of a man whose music, life and struggles continue to resonate to this day.

Growing up under an abusive father, young Molly Meyers desperately wants a way out. When a handsome stranger makes her an offer of marriage, she drops everything and goes with him. Love soon follows but her father finds her and cruelly separates the young lovers. Trapped on a steamboat bound for New Orleans, Molly prays for guidance and deliverance from what seems a cruel fate. Regardless of the adversity, Mollys faith remains strong.

Every field has its "bossman"--the one who sets the style and makes the rules. In bluegrass and early country music the man was Bill Monroe. In the world of urban blues, the man was Muddy Waters. Using their own words and dozens of remarkable photographs by David Gahr, Carl Fleischhauer and John Byrne Cooke, the author compares and contrasts the careers of these two bossmen. Both grew up in remote rural areas. Muddy Waters heard field hollers, church music, jubilees, shouts, string band music, and the raw sound of the delta blues; for Bill Monroe it was square dance music, hymns, old country ballads and the fiddling of his Uncle Pen Vandiver. Both brought their music to the big cities: Bill to Nashville, Muddy to Chicago. Musicians who passed through their bands went on to form bands of their own, giving rise to the worlds of Bluegrass and Chicago Blues. But this is more than a book about music; it is a book about black and white America. In microcosm, it is almost a history of this country; and it sets up striking comparisons that cut deep into our heritage and ways. In the words of Pete Seeger: "Anyone in the world wanting to understand American music could well start right here."

In the face of an uncertain and dangerous world, Americans yearn for a firm moral compass, a clear set of ethical guidelines. But as history shows, by reducing complex situations to simple cases of right or wrong we often go astray. In Morality's Muddy Waters, historian George Cotkin offers a clarion call on behalf of moral complexity. Revisiting several defining moments in the twentieth century—the American bombing of civilians during World War II, the My Lai massacre, racism in the South, capital punishment, the invasion of Iraq—Cotkin chronicles how historical figures have grappled with the problem of evil and moral responsibility—sometimes successfully, oftentimes not. In the process, he offers a wide-ranging tour of modern American history. Taken together, Cotkin maintains, these episodes reveal that the central concepts of morality—evil, empathy, and virtue—are both necessary and troubling. Without empathy, for example, we fail to inhabit the world of others; with it, we sometimes elevate individual suffering over political complexities. For Cotkin, close historical analysis may help reenergize these concepts for ethical thinking and acting. Morality's Muddy Waters argues for a moral turn in the way we study and think about history, maintaining that even when answers to ethical dilemmas prove elusive, the act of grappling with them is invaluable.

Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan, Milly Johnson and Trisha Ashley, this is a story full of wry laughs and shrewd insight into friendship and family from bestselling author Judy Astley. 'Wickedly funny... A thoroughly entertaining romp best enjoyed when you're on a sun lounger with a glass of Pimm's to hand' - DAILY MAIL 'Frothy fun from an author worth noting' - DAILY EXPRESS 'This deliciously funny novel had me laughing out loud' - WOMAN AND HOME 'Highly entertaining with dry humor and hilarious situations' -- ***** Reader review 'Perfect for summer, Judy's books show a real passion for writing' -- ***** Reader review ****************************************************** FRIENDS SHARE EVERYTHING... DON'T THEY? Stella works as an agony aunt for a teenage magazine. She lives on Pansy Island, a self-consciously arty community on the Thames, where her husband Adrian writes erotic novels in a summerhouse by the river, while her two teenage children prepare themselves for adult life in various ways not necessarily recommended in the pages of their mother's advice columns. Stella's friends assume that she has no problems of her own, and shamelessly come to her for the advice she dishes up for a living on the magazine; Stella, however, finds herself with a problem she cannot handle when Abigail, her rich and glamorous friend from university, comes to stay. Abigail has been deserted by her husband, and has decided that Stella's life, and more particularly Stella's husband will fill the gap nicely...