Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts


Book Description

Gathers children's rhymes and parodies which deal with sex, pregnancy, illness, death, bodily functions, and television.




Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts


Book Description

Snagging jobs as assistant cooks at a camp crawling with weird individuals, Lucas and Justin decide to get even with "The Blob," the camp leader, by grinding up roadkill burgers. Original.




Camp Run-a-muck


Book Description




What the Children Said


Book Description

Jeanne Pitre Soileau vividly presents children’s voices in What the Children Said: Child Lore of South Louisiana. Including over six hundred handclaps, chants, jokes, jump-rope rhymes, cheers, taunts, and teases, this book takes the reader through a fifty-year history of child speech as it has influenced children’s lives. What the Children Said affirms that children's play in south Louisiana is acquired along a network of summer camps, schoolyards, church gatherings, and sleepovers with friends. When children travel, they obtain new games and rhymes and bring them home. The volume also reveals, in the words of the children themselves, how young people deal with racism and sexism. The children argue and outshout one another, policing their own conversations, stating their own prejudices, and vying with one another for dominion. The first transcript in the book tracks a conversation among three related boys and shows that racism is part of the family interchange. Among second-grade boys and girls at a Catholic school, another transcript presents numerous examples in which boys use insults to dominate a conversation with girls, and girls use giggles and sly comebacks to counter this aggression. Though collected in the areas of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, Louisiana, this volume shows how south Louisiana child lore is connected to other English-speaking places: England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the rest of the United States.




A Damn Fine Growth


Book Description

This Autobiography was written at the insistence of a daughter who was curious about my life . Far from a dreadful childhood I laughed as I wrote it, - realizing it was ripe with the richness of the ever-cheery Cockney. Born in London opposite the Houses of Parliament I was the last of 16 children. Poverty and war; evacuation; my home destroyed; war work where the first jet engines were flown and refueling in flight invented. Seven brothers, my father, and my husband whod served aboard RMS Venus on those horrendous Russian Convoys in U-boat-infested waters, all had served King and Country. My husband never got over living at fever pitch. We emigrated to Canada and New Zealand, finally to California. Settled now in the Santa Clarita Valley with my second husband, I have been a docent for 26 years at the Los Angeles Zoo touring school children; visiting schools to show slides on the plight of endangered animals; reading to children at a local school; attending college classes and ongoing programs at the local Senior Center. Our children and grandchildren live close by; 24 around the Christmas table keeps us all happily connected. Attending Tai Chi classes with my husband, I took up playing the piano four years ago. I keep busy singing with a Senior group, writing stories, knitting and crocheting. Together we have travelled much of the globe. I hope the reader will find parallels of his own. Life is never as bad as we think!




American Children's Folklore


Book Description

Front cover: A book of rhymes, games, jokes, stories, secret languages, beliefs and camp legends, for parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors and all adults who were once children.




Guilty with an Explanation


Book Description

In a day when rules are being rewritten, guilt has come up with a bad rap. Many parents rush to emancipate their children from such troubling apprehensions—and the results are telling. This coming-of-age memoir traces the challenges of a fatherless boy growing up amidst the folly of his peers and the ever-present predators who cannot be wished away. Faced with the reality of evil, the theological concept of Original Sin looms large. This book is an observation that trouble often springs from circumstances that look pretty benign. It's the prerequisite of every murder trial, that accidents happen from a confluence of events and decisions that seem innocuous but end badly. We who live in the world are wounded by the same evil that sociologists explain away. Yet part of adulthood is the willingness to call things what they are. When Jesus cast out demons, he first asked their names, because naming something is to see it clearly. We must render verdicts. Sound judgment is a forgotten virtue, and failure to judge will leave us accountable to our children for the weeds that have grown in the course of our neglect, as evil that goes unchecked is sure to grow.




The Infested Mind


Book Description

The human reaction to insects is neither purely biological nor simply cultural. And no one reacts to insects with indifference. Insects frighten, disgust and fascinate us. Jeff Lockwood explores this phenomenon through evolutionary science, human history, and contemporary psychology, as well as a debilitating bout with entomophobia in his work as an entomologist. Exploring the nature of anxiety and phobia, Lockwood explores the lively debate about how much of our fear of insects can be attributed to ancestral predisposition for our own survival and how much is learned through individual experiences. Drawing on vivid case studies, Lockwood explains how insects have come to infest our minds in sometimes devastating ways and supersede even the most rational understanding of the benefits these creatures provide. No one can claim to be ambivalent in the face of wasps, cockroaches or maggots but our collective entomophobia is wreaking havoc on the natural world as we soak our food, homes and gardens in powerful insecticides. Lockwood dissects our common reactions, distinguishing between disgust and fear, and invites readers to consider their own emotional and physiological reactions to insects in a new framework that he's derived from cutting-edge biological, psychological, and social science.




A Bad Case of the Giggles


Book Description

The Giggles Are Gonna Get You! Bolt the doors and get out of earshot when kids discover A Bad Case of the Giggles. One of the funniest collections of children's poetry, this book includes creations from some of the most entertaining children's poets, including Kenn Nesbitt, Bruce Lansky, Eric Ode, Bill Dodds, Joyce Armor, Linda Knaus, Eileen Spinelli, Robert Scotellaro, Rebecca Kai Dotlich and more.




Folklore 101


Book Description

When's the last time you got to pick a folklorist's brain? Did you know memes count as folklore? Or that folklorists assign numbers to fairy tales to keep track of them all? The field of folklore studies is over two centuries old, and it's full of amazing insights about human behavior, creativity, and community. Folklore studies is as interdisciplinary as it gets, squished somewhere between anthropology and linguistics and religious studies and comparative literature and more. It’s all about the informal human interactions, the million tiny acts and stories and beliefs and arts that function as social glue even if they seem beneath notice. Do traditional holiday foods have a deeper meaning? Yep. Same with folk music, ballads, proverbs, jokes, urban legends, body art, and a ton more genres covered in this book. Is the whole book as easy to read and irreverent as this description? Yep. This fun, accessible guide to the academic study of folklore packs in a college class's worth of material, from basic concepts and major folklore genres to special topics based on identity, fancy theories, and more. If you've always wanted to take a folklore class, or you're a writer or artist using folklore in your work, or you're just generally interested in the topic, this is the book for you! “This wonderfully insightful book introduces the reader to folklore with warmth and good humor. Students and others interested in folklore will love it!” - Libby Tucker, Distinguished Service Professor of English, Binghamton University and author of Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses “Dr. Jeana Jorgensen knows her stuff and, just as importantly, knows how to communicate it. Folklore 101 is a treasure trove of knowledge, the kind it would take years of college courses to accumulate yourself. If you're curious about academic folklore, this clear, engaging book is where you want to start." – Dr. Sara Cleto, co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic