Are you sitting comfortably with your seatbelts fastened? Then we are ready for take-off. Meet Earthworm and Airplane, your hosts, who will take you on a round-the-world journey (and maybe even into the solar system!) With the colourful and inventive paper-engineering that was used to explain the international languages of multiplication and music, the author and illustrator team, Maizels and Petty, have decided that it is time to get to grips with Geography, and their book helps you to discover that it is indeed a wonderful world! Their trademark enthusiasm helps to explain the mysteries of oceans, continents, mountains, rivers, countries and their inhabitants. An entertaining and absorbing read with ingenious pop-ups and moving parts, this book will launch you into the real world.

The classic and beloved song is brought to life with bright and colorful illustrations by Tim Hopgood. First recorded in 1967 by Louis Armstrong, and with sales of over one million copies, "What a Wonderful World" has become a poignant message of hope for people everywhere. Sweet and positive in its message, with bright, beautiful art, this book is sure to be a hit. Perfect for sharing!

As little bear and his mommy travel around the world they see so many beautiful sights. There are stunning sunrises, deep blue oceans, forests full of golden leaves, and new friends and companions around every corner.

'After the success of their ingenious idea of matching pictures from Ladybird's archive with prose that mocks the mores of modern life, they are bowing out with a bang with this compendium' - Sunday Telegraph From the people who gave you classics such as The Ladybird Book of The Hangover and The Ladybird Book of The Mid-Life Crisis, they bring you this collection of what could have been. Imagine a world where there aren't just the thirty-two Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups you've seen in your local bookshop or downstairs toilet but hundreds and hundreds more... In this coffee-table book you don't have to, with never before seen covers, excerpts and paraphernalia from the archives, colourfully presented and helpfully divided into the following chapters: - Fun & Games - Adventure - The World Around Us - At Work - At Home - Coping - Not Coping - Giving Up 'I do not hasten to say that these books are the new Da Vinci Code.' Aisling Bea 'These books are small masterpieces. They make me glad I learned to read.' David Quantick 'HILARIOUS. Beserkly brilliant.' Mel Giedroyc

A new interactive colouring book for fashionistas of all ages, My Even More Wonderful World of Fashion is packed with more beautiful and sophisticated illustrations specially created by illustrator Nina Chakrabarti. The book encourages creativity, with illustrations to colour in and designs to finish off, as well as simple ideas for making and doing (how to make a sari, turn a napkin into a headscarf or dye a T-shirt). Covering clothing, shoes, bags, jewelery and other accessories, the illustrations span both vintage fashions drawing on beautiful and interesting objects through the ages and contemporary invented designs from the illustrator's own imagination. 'Did you know...?' features, giving brief historical notes, encourage children to be inspired by history and by the fashions of other cultures. A wonderful celebration of fashion, the book will appeal to fashion addicts from 8 years upwards.

This fully annotated volume collects three of Baum's fourteen Oz novels in which he developed his utopian vision and which garnered an immense and loyal following. The Wizard of Oz (1900) introduces Dorothy, who arrives from Kansas and meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and a host of other characters. The Emerald City of Oz (1910) finds Dorothy, Aunt Em, and Uncle Henry coming to Oz just as the wicked Nome King is plotting to conquer its people. In Baum's final novel, Glinda of Oz (1920), Dorothy and Princess Ozma try to prevent a battle between the Skeezers and the Flatheads. Tapping into a deeply rooted desire in himself and his loyal readers to live in a peaceful country which values the sharing of talents and gifts, Baum's imaginative creation, like all great utopian literature, holds out the possibility for change. Also included is a selection of the original illustrations by W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A two-play edition featuring Anthony Neilson's companion plays, The Wonderful World of Dissocia (2004) and Realism (2006), both produced by the National Theatre of Scotland. Produced originally for the 2004 Edinburgh International Festival, The Wonderful World of Dissocia wowed critics and audiences alike. This is a hugely original play, both magical and moving, that confirmed Anthony Neilson as one of major voices in contemporary British Theatre. The entire original cast and creative team have been reunited for this keenly anticipated revival. Lisa Jones is on a journey. It's a colourful and exciting off-kilter trip in search of one lost hour that has tipped the balance of her life. The inhabitants of the wonderful world she finds herself in - Dissocia - are a curious blend of the funny, the friendly and the brutal. As Neilson himself put it, 'If you like Alice in Wonderland but there's not enough sex and violence in it, then Dissocia is the show for you'. Realism premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2006. It follows the life of one man during an ordinary day but veers off from the commonplace to become a deliriously surreal trip inside his wayward imagination. It was described by the Guardian as a 'bold and utterly distinctive all-singing, all-dancing show, like nothing else you'll ever see'.

As television transformed American culture in the 1950s, critics feared the influence of this newly pervasive mass medium on the nation's literature. While many studies have addressed the rhetorical response of artists and intellectuals to mid-twentieth-century mass culture, the relationship between the emergence of this culture and the production of novels has gone largely unexamined. In A Novel Marketplace, Evan Brier illuminates the complex ties between postwar mass culture and the making, marketing, and reception of American fiction. Between 1948, when television began its ascendancy, and 1959, when Random House became a publicly owned corporation, the way American novels were produced and distributed changed considerably. Analyzing a range of mid-century novels—including Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and Grace Metalious's Peyton Place—Brier reveals the specific strategies used to carve out cultural and economic space for the American novel just as it seemed most under threat. During this anxious historical moment, the book business underwent an improbable expansion, by capitalizing on an economic boom and a rising population of educated consumers and by forming institutional alliances with educators and cold warriors to promote reading as both a cultural and political good. A Novel Marketplace tells how the book trade and the novelists themselves successfully positioned their works as embattled holdouts against an oppressive mass culture, even as publishers formed partnerships with mass-culture institutions that foreshadowed the multimedia mergers to come in the 1960s. As a foil for and a partner to literary institutions, mass media corporations assisted in fostering the novel's development as both culture and commodity.

This is a selective listing of organizations that promote books and reading! administer literacy projects, and encourage the study of books. Compiled byf Carren O. Kaston, The Community of the Book focuses on national programs of special interest to the Center for the Bookin The Library of Congress, but should be of use to the entire book community. The Emphasis is on organizations in the United States, where recently there has been renewed interest in educational reform, in literacy, and in the future of publishing. The assumption underlining this unusual directory is that a "com-munity of the book" does exist and that it can be mobilized to keep books and reading central in the life of Democratic societies. The listings provide a richly detailed account of 89 major resource centers, providing names of directors, addresses, telephone numbers, and founding dates. In addition, each listing discusses the purposes of the organization, exam-ples of its activities, publications sponsored, and sources of fiscal support. In short, the volume is intended to serve as a national catalyst for stimulating public interest in books in particular and reading in general. Cole provides a pellucid opening essay on the subject: "Is There a Community of the Book?" What is surprising is not his clear affirmative answer, so much as the closely argued historical and analytical study of how this community has been deepened through the conscious activities of The Library of Congress. The work concludes with a brief but valuable guide to other resources, ranging from publishing, broadcasting, bookselling, libraries, and book collecting and culture.

The magazine that helps career moms balance their personal and professional lives.