They Don't Wash Their Socks


Book Description

Have you ever wondered what the story is behind the strange sports superstitions you hear about? Gay's collection of superstitions in sports runs the gamut from fishing to football, from amateur players to professionals, from individuals to teams, and from ancient times to the present.




I Don't Want to Wash My Hands!


Book Description

The Little Princess loves getting her hands dirty. The trouble is . . . she hates washing them. Until she learns all about the nasties and the dirties and all the other horrible things that lurk and make you ill . . .




Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself


Book Description

The 1950s were simple times to grow up. For Lewis Grizzard and his buddies, gallivanting meant hanging out at the local store, eating Zagnut candy bars and drinking "Big Orange bellywashers." About the worst thing a kid ever did was smoke rabbit tobacco rolled in paper torn from a brown grocery sack, or maybe slick back his hair into a ducktail and try gyrating his hips like Elvis. But then assassinations, war, civil rights, free love, and drugs rocked the old order. And as they did, Grizzard frequently felt lost and confused. In place of Elvis, the Pied Piper of his generation, Grizzard now found wormy-looking, long-haired English kids who performed either half-naked or dressed like Zasu Pitts. Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself is the witty, satiric, nostalgic account of Grizzard's efforts to survive in a changing world. Sex, music, clothes, entertainment, and life itself receive the Grizzard treatment. In this, his sixth book, Grizzard was never funnier or more in tune with his readers. He might not have felt so good himself, but his social commentary and humor can still make the rest of us feel just fine.




Captain of Games


Book Description

Each year, the captain’s games test the mettle of the would-be leaders of an all-girls school in the verdant Eastern Highlands. This year a heavy cerulean mist enshrouds the rugged, lofty peaks where the games are held. Only cruel fate could have brought Isobel here. As thick fog swirls down the mountain side, contestants begin to disappear. Will Isobel embrace her newfound gift in time to save the cold, frightened girls or are all the unworldly apparitions emerging from the shadows only figments of her unconsented intoxication?




From the Page to the Stage


Book Description

Readers theatre is a powerful tool for building language skills and involving young readers with literature. Educator and seasoned readers-theatre coach Shirlee Sloyer provides teachers and librarians with nuts-and-bolts guidelines for integrating readers theatre into the classroom and library. Detailed instructions for every step guide readers through the process of setting up and conducting a successful program that is based on NCTE and IRA standards. Grades 4-8 Includes: • An Overview of Readers Theatre • Selecting the Literature • Exploring Key Literary Elements • Compiling and Adapting Material • Classroom Procedures • Preparing for Performance • The Performance and Afterward • A Model Program and Script • 11 Classroom-Ready Sample Scripts




To Be a Runner


Book Description

Now with a new introduction and additional stories accumulated in the eight years since its original publication, To Be a Runner is a fresh and exciting update on a running classic. With an exuberant mix of passion, insight, instruction, and humor, bestselling author and lifelong runner Martin Dugard takes a journey through the world of running to illustrate how the sport helps us fulfill that universal desire to be the best possible version of ourselves each and every time we lace up our shoes. To Be a Runner represents a new way to write about running by bridging the chasm between the two categories of running books: how-to and personal narrative. Spinning colorful stories of his running and racing adventures on six continents, Dugard considers what it means to truly integrate running into one's life. As entertaining as it is provocative, To Be a Runner is about far more than running: It is about life, and how we should live it.




A Tokyo Odyssey


Book Description

‘An easily digestible, vividly illustrated look at Tokyo. I discovered stuff I’d never known despite living here for over thirty years.’ Rupert Miller. ‘Some amazing photographs that really open your eyes to the city’s history and what it is today.’ Lu Passidino. ‘A must read, browse or dip into for anyone visiting Tokyo for the first time or the tenth time.’ Dr. Ginny Butterfield. In this scintillating new book, the author peels away the fog that so easily obscures the world’s biggest, most baffling city. It is a piercing analysis of the place, the people, its history, and yet the picture painted is both beautiful and eloquent. The book covers much ground and yet is bang up-to-date including the fiasco of the Olympic Games. At the same time it avoids all the cliches that so many books about Tokyo fall back on. It is close to 300 pages long but also heavily illustrated with many images, most of which have never been published before. This is a history that also uses the voices of the people who lived and visited here, adding an authenticity that is beguiling. Tokyo is a baffling city but know its history and this facade can be unravelled. This is a thorough but also a personal history that meanders through a place that can confuse all comers. Read it an enjoy the journey.




Gambling and Gender


Book Description

There are two distinct strands in the literature on gambling: one that focuses on how to play and win the various games of chance and one that focuses on gambling compulsion and addiction. Gambling and Gender forges a new direction, studying gambling as more communication than compulsion, more recreation than deviance, more sociology than psychology. Within that framework it seeks to explore several aspects of gender: How do the gambling behaviors of men and women differ? How have women adapted to and/or changed the historically male dominance of the gambling arena? What gambling activities have women claimed as their own and used to develop uniquely female relationships? How have recent trends in technology and mass media changed the ways in which men and women claim - or reject - their gender identities? The authors use a variety of research strategies, including content analysis, survey research, interviews, and participative observation, to shed new light on this fascinating subject and to suggest ways to explore it further.




Reading Programs for Young Adults


Book Description

School and public libraries often provide programs and activities for children in preschool through the sixth grade, but there is little available to young adults. For them, libraries become a place for work—the place to research an assignment or find a book for a report—but the thought of the library as a place for enjoyment is lost. So how do librarians recapture the interest of teenagers? This just might be the answer. Here you will find theme-based units (such as Cartoon Cavalcade, Log On at the Library, Go in Style, Cruising the Mall, Space Shots, Teens on TV, and 44 others) that are designed for young adults. Each includes a display idea, suggestions for local sponsorship of prizes, a program game to encourage participation, 10 theme-related activities, curriculum tie-in activities, sample questions for use in trivia games or scavenger hunts, ideas for activity sheets, a bibliography of related works, and a list of theme-related films. The units are highly flexible, allowing any public or school library to adapt them to their particular needs.




Rebirth: Qi Yang's Wonderful Life


Book Description

Qi Yuan rebornHow can a low-key and simple Qizheng manage his new life?Let me take you all to see it