Add a little character to your decor! These four knit blanket-and-animal sets were designed with both beauty and fun in mind. Designer Chris De Longpre used her knitting wizardry to create four whimsical characters that are the perfect complements to their matching blankets. Each animal or blanket would also make a thoughtful gift, all by itself. 4 knit toys with matching blankets, all knitted using medium weight yarn (except the mouse set, which uses bulky weight yarn): Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails blanket and Woof the Puppy; The Mouse Takes the Cheese blanket and Squeak the Mouse; This Little Piggy blanket and Oink the Piggy; and Duck, Duck, Goose blanket and Quack the Duck. A Collection of Characters (Leisure Arts #4519)

Shortlisted for the National Book Award: "Joan Silber writes with wisdom, humor, grace, and wry intelligence. Her characters bear welcome news of how we will survive."—Andrea Barrett Intense in subject yet restrained in tone, these stories are about longings—often held for years—and the ways in which sex and religion can become parallel forms of dedication and comfort. Though the stories stand alone, a minor element in one becomes major in the next. In "My Shape", a woman is taunted by her dance coach, who later suffers his own heartache. A Venetian poet of the 1500s, another storyteller, is introduced to a modern traveler reading Rilke. His story precedes a mesmerizing narrative of missionaries in China. In the final story, Giles, born to a priesthood family, leans toward Buddhism after a grievous loss, and in time falls in love with the dancer of the first story. So deft and subtle is Joan Silber with these various perspectives that we come full circle surprised and enchanted by her myriad worlds. National Book Award finalist. Reading group guide included.

An inspiring collection of drawings and articles exploring the sketchbooks and artistic practices of 50 talented character artists.

Revealing the secret history of punctuation, this tour of two thousand years of the written word, from ancient Greece to the Internet, explores the parallel histories of language and typography throughout the world and across time.

Lee Konstantinou examines irony in American literary and political life, showing how it migrated from the countercultural margins of the 1950s to the 1980s mainstream. Along the way, irony was absorbed into postmodern theory and ultimately become a target of recent writers who have moved beyond its limitations with a practice of “postirony.”

Draw like a pro! Create fantastic, imaginative art for your comics with the comprehensive Beginner's Guide to Comic Art.

Set in the future when "firemen" burn books forbidden by the totalitarian "brave new world" regime.