In The Golden Grasshopper, ten-year-old Lisa's and her cousin Paul's lives were changed forever when they met Gagar, from the planet Ylepithon. In Galena's Gift, Gagar returns with his precocious young daughter, asking Lisa, now a twelve-year-old grade sixer, to babysit her and teach her about life on Earth.

Artist-explorer John Mix Stanley (1814–1872), one of the most celebrated chroniclers of the American West in his time, was in a sense a victim of his own success. So highly regarded was his work that more than two hundred of his paintings were held at the Smithsonian Institution—where in 1865 a fire destroyed all but seven of them. This volume, featuring a comprehensive collection of Stanley’s extant art, reproduced in full color, offers an opportunity—and ample reason—to rediscover the remarkable accomplishments of this outsize figure of nineteenth-century American culture. Originally from New York State, Stanley journeyed west in 1842 to paint Indian life. During the U.S.-Mexican War, he joined a frontier military expedition and traveled from Santa Fe to California, producing sketches and paintings of the campaign along the way—work that helped secure his fame in the following decades. He was also appointed chief artist for Isaac Stevens’s survey of the 48th parallel for a proposed transcontinental railroad. The essays in this volume, by noted scholars of American art, document and reflect on Stanley’s life and work from every angle. The authors consider the artist’s experience on government expeditions; his solo tours among the Oregon settlers and western and Plains Indians; and his career in Washington and search for government patronage, as well as his individual works. With contributions by Emily C. Burns, Scott Manning Stevens, Lisa Strong, Melissa Speidel, Jacquelyn Sparks, and Emily C. Wilson, the essays in this volume convey the full scope of John Mix Stanley’s artistic accomplishment and document the unfolding of that uniquely American vision throughout the artist’s colorful life. Together they restore Stanley to his rightful place in the panorama of nineteenth-century American life and art.

Eleven years ago, colonists from Earth made Galena their home. It is a planet of wondrous and deadly mysteries. Survival means adaptation - yet there can be no adaptation to an ancient corruption festering deep beneath the soil. Something is waiting down there, altering the plants and wildlife, twisting them to fit its dark plan. At the same time, progress has finally come to Galena. The dream of cities and superhighways suddenly becomes reality…and the only price is the total subjugation of the colonists who would build them. Gavin Alder is torn between two battlefronts. The future of the colony is balanced on a knife’s edge, and he must choose to stay and fight or entrust himself to a power beyond all human knowledge… …because the creature corrupting the soul of Galena might be the only thing that can save it.

It’s not easy having your own father for a teacher, but that’s only one of twelve-year-old Nikki’s problems. Her beloved dog has died, leaving a gaping hole in her life, which is thrown into further turmoil by the arrival of her long-lost eccentric grandmother from Australia. Life is pretty tense around Nikki’s house, but Nikki relaxes by taking long rides on her horse and visiting a nearby secluded pond inhabited by a rare species of turtle. Things do begin to get brighter when she receives an unwanted, runt puppy as a birthday present. She names the ugly little Border Collie Lucky and he flourishes under her care. As she and her grandmother begin working together, first of all at preparing a garden and then at training Lucky for the local agility trials, they eventually become friends and the grandmother begins telling Nikki about her crusades for the environment in Australia. When Nikki finds out that developers are planning to fill in her special pond to build a housing estate, wiping out the turtles’ habitat, she decides to take a dangerous stand on the animals’ behalf. But can she really take on a big developer and win? Hubcaps and Puppies is not only a story about a girl, her dog and her horse, but also about the protection of the environment and the lessons that the older generation may have to teach the younger if they are willing to listen. Nelson writes in a fast-moving and energetic style, but her characters and situations are always realistic and believable.

Galena, IL, nestled in the bluffs of the Mississippi River in northwest Illinois, is one of the most historic communities in the region. The townspeople take pride in the rich history of their town, dedicating their time to restoration projects and the booming industry of heritage tourism. In this book you will meet the town's pioneer residents, stroll the historic business district, and discover the unique architecture of Galena. Many of the images (c. 1826-1940s) in the book come from the Galena/Jo Daviess Historical Museum (which is sponsoring the project), the Alfred Mueller collection, the Illinois Historic Sites Office, and private collections.

With 85 percent of its buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, Galena truly is a place drenched in history. From the ancient burial mounds crowding the high banks of the Mississippi to the home of President Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois town's rich past is everywhere on display. Follow Diann Marsh in her dogged pursuit of that fascinating heritage and catch glimpses of unforgettable incidents like the courageous defense put up by a handful of Galena settlers during the Black Hawk War or the monster flood that turned a day in 1892 into a bridge-snapping spectacle. Fortunes are won and lost within the space of a page, but the legacy left by Galena's determined citizens and cared for by passionate guardians like Marsh is one that is sure to endure.

"Go anyplace. . . . To travel, to move around — that's the thing. No matter where." Be prepared to laugh and guffaw and hold your sides and, perhaps, depending on your age, reminisce a bit. Take this 1965 car trip around North America.

At one time the home of Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant, and the place where Abraham Lincoln campaigned, Galena was once a booming town with the largest hotel in the West. It was here that Grant put together his presidential plans. When this bustling riverboat mining town and railroad center fell into disrepair, it languished for decades, and Galena became the town that time forgot. Fortunately, no one tore down the early-1800s architecture. Today Galena is a flourishing tourist mecca where visitors can literally go back in time. These postcards tell the story of this quaint village, with its magical old atmosphere.

A writer and educator reflects on the idealistic, tumultuous, and eye-opening time she spent as a back-to-the-land hippie homesteader in Kootenays in the 1970s. What compelled a nice Jewish girl from the suburbs of New York to spend a decade of her life as a hippie homesteader in the BC wilderness? Galena Bay Odyssey traces Ellen Schwartz’s journey from a born-and-raised urbanite who was terrified of the woods to a self-determined logger, cabin-builder, gardener, chicken farmer, apiarist, and woodstove cook living on a communal farm in the Kootenays. Part memoir, part exploration of what motivated the exodus of young hippies—including American expatriates, like Ellen and her husband, Bill—to go “back to the land” in remote parts of North America during the 1960s and ’70s, this fascinating book explores the era’s naivety, idealism, and sense of adventure. Like most “back to the land” books, Galena Bay Odyssey describes the physical work involved in clearing land, constructing buildings, and living off of what they produced, but it also traces the complicated journey of discovery this experience brought to Ellen and Bill. Now, nearly half a century later, Ellen reflects on what her homesteader experience taught her about living more fully, honestly, and ecologically.

One of the youngest survivors of the Warsaw ghetto, author Sahbra Anna Markus lived a life only those who have survived Hitler's hell can imagine. In Only a Bad Dream? she narrates the drama of her early years through her most vivid memories. Sahbra courageously recounts those childhood experiences in her compelling voice, now freed from the repeated warnings: "Don't tell anyone you're a Jew." "Don't forget you're a Jew." "It was only a dream." "Hang on tight, or you'll get lost and die." She tells of traipsing through forests at night, fleeing certain death, of her parents hiding her in a church, desperate to save her life. A frantic search for surviving family found the Markuses traveling throughout Europe on foot, by rowboat, military train, farm wagon, trucks, and finally the ship Caserta that delivered them to the land of hope, freedom, and new beginnings-the only Jewish homeland, Israel. Only a Bad Dream shares how, in the midst of hunger and deprivation, Sahbra still found joy in simple things like cats, the moon, wolves, and fireflies. A story of the triumph of the human spirit, this memoir provides strong insight into the courage, strength, and dignity possessed by those who endured the Holocaust.