Talk, Oscar, Please!


Book Description

A boy imagines how much more fun he and his dog could have if only the dog would learn to talk.




I Wanna New Room


Book Description

A hilarious companion to I Wanna Iguana. Ever since their baby sister came along, Alex has been forced to share a room with his little brother, Ethan, and it's a nightmare. Ethan always breaks stuff, snores like a walrus, and sticks crayons up his nose. No hardworking, well-behaved, practically grown-up boy like Alex should have to put up with that! Writing letters to his mom convinced her to let him get his pet iguana, so Alex puts pencil to paper again, this time determined to get his own room. Though all of his powers of persuasion can't get his dad to expand the house, he does come through with a fun alternative to give Alex some space of his own.




Some Days


Book Description

“Some days are chocolate pudding pie days. Kites up in the sky days. Jumping super high days.” This rhyming picture book—from the author of the bestselling I Wanna Iguana series and Miles of Smiles—is a moving, powerful, delightful exploration of a child’s shifting feelings. Come along and follow a year in the life of a young boy and girl as they discover their many different and ever-changing emotions, including joy, fear, anger, jealousy, excitement, pride, disappointment, loneliness, and contentment. As children read about “angels in the snow days” as well as “need my mommy now days,” they’ll begin to understand how to cope with both positive and negative feelings.




I Wanna Iguana


Book Description

Hilarious notes between a son and his mom show how kid logic can be very persuasive. Alex just has to convince his mom to let him have an iguana, so he puts his arguments in writing. He promises that she won't have to feed it or clean its cage or even see it if she doesn't want to. Of course Mom imagines life with a six-foot-long iguana eating them out of house and home. Alex's reassures her: It takes fifteen years for an iguana to get that big. I'll be married by then and probably living in my own house His mom's reply: How are you going to get a girl to marry you when you own a giant reptile? Kis will be in hysterics as the negotiations go back and forth through notes, and the lively, imaginative illustrations showing their polar opposite dreams of life with an iguana take the humor to even higher heights.




Take My Wife, Please


Book Description

Felix is recently divorced from April and currently lives in an efficiency apartment. He is Oscar’s long-time, best friend. Oscar is a womanizer and is married to Diane. His business is finally taking off, so he starts an affair with a young, tantalizing girlfriend, named Cyndi. Cyndi, is a naive young lady, in her first year of college. She lives in an all-girls dorm. Who thinks Oscar, is separated? Oscar’s life is going great, but for one thing? His marriage, to his faithful wife, Diane. He wants to get rid of her, but how? He comes up with a crazy idea, to solve all his problems. He only needs to persuade Felix, to seduce his wife, and film it on video, as grounds for divorce. The question is... Will Felix, do it? Or rather, do her?




How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read


Book Description

In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.




I Wanna Go Home


Book Description

Another hilarious companion to I Wanna Iguana. Alex is not happy about being sent to his grandparents’ retirement community while his parents go on a fabulous vacation. What could be worse than tagging along to Grandma’s boring bridge game or enduring the sight of Grandpa’s dentures? But as the week goes on, Alex’s desperate emails to his parents turn into stories about ice cream before dinner and stickball with Grandpa. Before he knows it, Alex has made a surprising discovery: grandparents are way cooler than he thought! Masterfully balancing hilarity and heart, Karen Kaufman Orloff and Dave Catrow deliver a story sure to entertain kids and grandparents everywhere.




Long Story Short


Book Description

Literature is long. Comics are short. Does Proust get you down? Do you find The Unbearable Lightness of Being simply unbearable? Is The Inferno your own private hell? Do you long to be conversant about classics like Moby Dick, the Bhagavad Gita, Madame Bovary, and, um, Twilight? Bestselling illustrator Lisa Brown (The Airport Book; Baby, Mix Me a Drink) did her homework. Long Story Short offers 100 pithy and skewering three-panel literary summaries, from curriculum classics like Don Quixote, Lord of the Flies, and Jane Eyre to modern favorites like Beloved, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Atonement, conveniently organized by subjects including “Love,” “Sex,” “Death,” and “Female Trouble.” Lisa Brown’s Long Story Short is the perfect way to turn a traipse through what your English teacher called “the canon” into a frolic—or to happily cram for the next occasion that requires you to appear bookish and well-read.




Please Come Off-Book


Book Description

Please Come Off-Book queers the theatrical canon we all grew up with. Kantor critiques the treatment of queer figures and imagines a braver and bolder future that allows queer voices the agency over their own stories. Drawing upon elements of the Aristotelian dramatic structure and the Hero's Journey, Please Come Off-Book is both a love letter to and a scathing critique of American culture and the lenses we choose to see ourselves through.




The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)


Book Description

Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.