Nothing is worse than being the new kid, especially when your only friend is a puppet! If you loved Darci Lynne Farmer on America's Got Talent, you'll love this entertaining story about fitting in, making new friends, and learning to be the star of the show. Goodbye Seattle. Goodbye baseball buddies. Goodbye Gram & her cool puppet shows. Hello, Texas. Baker is sure there isn't anything worse than moving. Except being THE NEW KID. Sure, Gram gave him Waldo, a ventriloquist's dummy, for company -- but a puppet, no matter how funny it is, can't take the place of real friends. Baker is bummed. Until he starts school and discovers that kids in Texas (cowboy hats aside) aren't as different as he thought. And that puppets just might be the key to fitting in. Let the show begin!

Zoey's family has a strange feeling about the two-tailed comet in the sky. But that doesn’t mean Zoey will let them chaperone her class field trip to Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee—especially since Grandma Cope grew up near there. What if Grandma tells everyone about being a Native American? Zoey has no interest in her family’s past. All she wants is for her parents to get back together, and for herself to fit in at school. She doesn’t know what’s hit her when, during the bus ride to Reelfoot, she’s propelled back in time to 1811, when the lake was formed! Now Zoey’s cell phone doesn’t work, there’s no fast food in sight, and massive earthquakes keep rattling the land. Prim, proper Prudence Charity and her way-too-pregnant mother are the first people Zoey sees, but they don’t believe her story—until they meet up with Chickasaw Chief Kalopin and his beautiful Choctaw bride. Kalopin is convinced that the Great Spirit has cursed him for stealing Laughing Eyes from Chief Copiah, and that soon, the river will swallow up his village and everyone in it. Zoey knows they’re headed for disaster, but can she find the courage to save them?

A laugh-out-loud chapter book series filled with knightly adventures! Roland Wright wants to be a knight in armor. The problem: Roland’s dad is a blacksmith, and only boys from noble families can even dream of becoming knights. When mysterious visitors arrive in the village one day, everything changes. Roland finds himself in the contest of a lifetime, with a real chance to become a page, the first step on the road to knighthood. But how can skinny, clumsy Roland beat an opponent who is bigger, stronger, and older—and who doesn’t play by the rules?

When Tim is followed home by a dog on the street, he's determined to find out who the friendly stray belongs to. But with a little investigating, Tim discovers that Grk's owners don't live in his town, or even in his country. Max and Natascha Raffifi, Grk's owners, have been kidnapped with their ambassador parents by the evil Colonel Zinfandel and taken to a prison in Eastern Europe! Tim knows he's about to undertake a mission his parents wouldn't exactly approve of. He sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night with Grk, catches a taxi to the airport, then hops a plane to Stanislavia. Together he and Grk will have to break into a high-security prison, pilot a helicopter, and make a nail-biting run for the border in this high-octane, international adventure.

Puppetry has become a significant force in contemporary theatre and thousands of puppets from various cultures and time periods have been collected by scholars, enthusiasts, and curators, who wisely realized that these material images can teach us much about the societies for which they were created. This book consists of essays by the curators of the most significant puppet collections in the United States and by leading scholars in the field. In addition to the descriptive and analytical essays on the collections, the book includes an overview of American puppetry today, a history of puppetry in the United States, and essays on the theater of Julie Taymor, the Jim Henson Company, Howdy Doody's custody case, puppet conservation, and the development of virtual performance space. The fourteen collections discussed include those of the Smithsonian Institution, the Harvard University Theatre Collection, the Brander Matthews Collection at Columbia University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta. Appendices provide a listing of additional puppetry collections and a filmography of puppetry at the New York Public Library Donnell Media Center. The work concludes with a bibliography and index and is illustrated with many beautiful photographs of puppeteers and puppets on display and in performance.

This 188 page dynamo hums along like a 1978 Blue Dodge Eris with a full tank of gas and a radio that only picks up the sound of meditating monks. So, come along for a ride and witness a kidnapping deconstruct, a twisted plot to turn war into a reality style TV program and a typical day at a company with the ill-advised name Object Oriented Payment Solutions, Inc. (or OOPS, Inc. for short). The Unsolvable Circus - a comedy about failure, confusion, lies, gross incompetence and love.

Being a pirate I've had me share of adventure and heard many a tall tale. But what I'm pullin' ye into be more thrillin' than any lit keg o'gun powder I ever had the chance to leap away from. . . . Abandoned on his ship, the Picaroon, by his no-good bad of scoundrels with no provisions except lots and lots of jelly beans, Captain Redbeard sails off to find a new crew . . . only to have horrible, wretched nightmares. Nightmares that bring about serendipitous disasters that doom the Picaroon. Soon Redbeard finds himself shipwrecked on Fundorado Island, where boundless fantastical adventures await.

Henryk Jurkowski's seminal 1988 text, Aspects of Puppet Theatre, was groundbreaking in its analysis of puppetry as a performing art. This new edition of a classic brings the original text back to life, including four additional essays and a new introduction, edited and translated by leading puppetry scholar Penny Francis. Henryk Jurkowski's seminal 1988 text, Aspects of Puppet Theatre, was groundbreaking in its analysis of puppetry as a performing art. This new edition of a classic brings the original text back to life, including four additional essays and a new introduction, edited and translated by leading puppetry scholar Penny Francis.

A continuation of the purported journal of a young adventurer, who becomes a marionette under the control of an evil Puppet Master while trying to reach home in time for tea.