Shelley has to pick up the socks she’s left all over her room. But when she opens her sock drawer, a tiny troublemaking boy appears. She has to make her bed, but there he is again, underneath the sheets watering a tomato plant. Soon enough this tiny terror is making a mess all over the house and Shelley’s efforts to get rid of him only make him grow bigger. The solution, to everyone’s surprise, is banishment by hugs and kisses! A newly designed Classic Munsch picture book introduces this charming tale of a tiny, yet persistent interloper to a new generation of young readers.

Cast number: 3.

A spine-tingling tale of book bonding. In this wordless story, a little boy finds a book that he loves at the library. It’s a match made in kid lit heaven. But not for the book. Sometimes the little boy’s excitement gets the better of him and the book suffers from possibly too much love: bent pages, tears, hugs, tossing, and shaking. The poor book requires first aid from his friends. Every time the boy comes to the library, the books hide and plan escape routes. But when the book gets away from imminent danger in the boy’s hands, the look of loss in the boy’s eyes is enough to turn a tragic tale into a love story. The boy soon learns that the book is not just an object and is so much more on the inside. He loves the story the book gives him more than the fun he had playing with it. Bob Kolar’s charming and hilarious illustrations show how sometimes our love for a good book can be too much, but with a more gentle touch, books can give us much comfort and joy.

The first book in Tarryn Fisher's fan-favorite Love Me with Lies trilogy, The Opportunist is the twisty, unconventional second-chance love story you didn't see coming! When Olivia Kaspen spots her ex-boyfriend in a Miami record shop, she ignores good sense and approaches him. It’s been three years since their breakup, but when Caleb reveals he’s suffering from amnesia after a recent car accident, first she feels regret—and then opportunity. If he doesn't remember her, then he also doesn’t remember her manipulation, her deceit, or the horrible way she broke his heart. Seeing a chance to reunite with Caleb, she keeps their past, and the details around the implosion of their relationship, a secret. Wrestling to keep her true identity and their sordid history under wraps, Olivia’s greatest obstacle is Caleb’s wicked new girlfriend, Leah, who's equally determined to possess the man who no longer remembers her. But soon Olivia must face the consequences of her lies, and in the process discover that sometimes love falls short of redemption.

Shunned at school because he sprouts flowers every full moon, Rink Bowagon makes a special pair of shoes for a classmate who is able to appreciate his unique abilities.

The Book in the Dresser DrawerBrian Lee MillerThe Midwesterner boy had a blessed upbringing hunting, fishing, working, and playing in rural and urban settings. As a presumed misfit he struggled with color blindness, speech disorders, and life's decisions. Portrayed is a teenager who had an encounter with Muhammad Ali, and as a young man lived homeless in his truck while purchasing his first house at eighteen years-old. The blue collar worker crashed a racecar, confronted three near-death situations, and eluded being paralyzed in a fluke accident. Later in life, he competed on a college football team and received an elementary school teaching degree. The wannabe adventurer encountered a WWII German soldier, dwelled among the descendants of the Apache Chief, Geronimo, and slept through a tornado.After ending a twenty-four year marriage, he suffered through depression and suicidal thoughts. The chronicle closes with happiness rediscovered through Jesus, forgiveness, fireflies, marathons, grandchildren, and daydreams of future adventures.

City Stages combines primary archival research with the scholarly literature emerging from both the humanities and social sciences.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, North American drama has powerfully enacted the problematic notions of cultural memory and identity, as the essays assembled in this critical anthology demonstrate. Echoing Derrida's non-essentialist interpretation of the term «signature», this collection provides an innovative focus on North American theatre and drama as a site of latent cultural memories. In this volume, the concept of cultural memory offers a privileged vantage point from which to redefine issues of diasporic identities, exilic predicaments, and multi-ethnic subject positions at the dawn of a new century. Playwrights examined here include noted Canadian and US artists such as Marie Clements, Eva Ensler, Lorraine Hansberry, Tomson Highway, Cherríe Moraga, Djanet Sears, Guillermo Verdecchia, August Wilson, and Chay Yew, to cite but a few. In the process of remembering, North American dramatists develop new aesthetic modes in which the signatures of the past merge with the present and foreshadow an imagined future.

In Performing Autobiography, Jenn Stephenson presents an innovative new approach to autobiography studies that links the growing field of research to drama. Stephenson’s analysis engages with performance histories to demonstrate the extent to which the dramatic form, which recasts autobiography as ambiguously fictive, ensures that the experience of the plays remains open to revision, alteration, and interpretation. As such, Performing Autobiography understands this form not to be the impossible documentation of the backward-looking narrative of one’s life, but rather an evolving process of self-creation and transformation. Stephenson explores the autobiographical form by analysing seven works by Canadian playwrights written and performed between 1999 and 2009, including Judith Thompson’s Perfect Pie, Daniel MacIvor’s In On It, and Timothy Findley’s Shadows. Her analysis encourages us to see autobiography as a uniquely political act, one that, where enacted on stage, illustrates the variety of ways that self-reflection and interpretation has an expanding role in contemporary culture.

A man with a wild child. A secret child… When Eva Haines first comes to remote (and supposedly deserted) Liberty Island, she has the uncanny feeling that someone’s watching her—and she’s right. A small wild-looking child with a huge black dog has been following her around. Eva, who’s spending a few weeks on the island to deal with an elderly relative’s estate, is puzzled. Who is this little girl? Where did she come from? Eva finds out soon enough. Fanny is the daughter of the reclusive Silas Lord. But once she learns this, Eva only has more questions. Why are Silas and his daughter hiding out on Liberty Island? What secret is Silas keeping about this child he obviously adores? And why is Eva falling in love with such a mysterious man?