The Loch Ness Monster And Others

Baxter, Nicola (Editor): THE CHILDREN'S CLASSIC POETRY COLLECTION, Smithmark Publishers 1996
ISBN: 0-7651-9745-6 Very Good Condition

From Publishers Weekly the poetry shelf Two new poetry anthologies present poetry as a key to unlocking the imagination. Charles Sullivan collects over 80 poems for Imaginary Animals: Poetry and Art for Young People. A companion to Imaginary Architecture, the entertaining volume encompasses poems on such subjects as the Loch Ness monster and talking to cats; featured poets include William Blake, Galway Kinnell, Sylvia Plath and Ogden Nash. The illustrations are unusually varied, ranging from paintings by Berthe Morisot and Winslow Homer to photographs of a Trojan Horse vase from ancient Greece, Henry Moore's sculpture Sheep Piece, Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone, the gargoyles of Notre Dame and Bigfoot. Half of the 80 illustrations are in color. A more conventional compilation, The Children's Classic Poetry Collection by Nicola Baxter, illus. by Cathie Shuttleworth, puts nursery rhymes side by side with well-known poems by Tennyson and Byron, among others. The selections, divided into such categories as "Dreams and Wonders" and "Bright and Beautiful," represent a wide range of reading levels. The 50 color illustrations veer toward the precious; e.g., freckled girls with big bonnets, striped stockings and puffy skirts. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Hardcover 0.8 x 8.8 x 11.5 inches

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Mostel, Zero; Gotfryd, Alex; Shenker, Israel: ZERO MOSTEL'S BOOK OF VILLAINS, New York, New York: Doubleday, 1976

Soft Cover. Good/None as Issued. Stated 1st Edition. Text/VG: Clean, strong, and Near New. Illustrated cover/Fair: Clean & strong w/rubs, faint creasings all over, and slight push to corner tips. Documentation of 43 vile villains who have offended humanity and law, in history, lore, and literature. A work which the co-authors hope to provide yardsticks against which we can better re-asses our attitudes toward the sinners and miscreants of our own day, and possibly re-evaluate "our standards of punishment and pardon." Villains portrayed by the stage and screen star, Zero Mostel; statement of offense and crime by Israel Shenker; and, black & white photo portraits by Alex Gotfryd. Notable offenders include Adam and Eve, and the Serpent; Bluebeard; Brutus; Cain; Satan; Frankenstein; Jack the Ripper; Mata Hari; the Loch Ness Monster and others, anchored by Zero Mostel. Funny, humorous, comment on archvillainy. Strong copy with a poor and tired cover.

[SW: CARICATURES, HUMOR, COMIC PORTRAITS 0385116918]

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Delaney, Frank. A Walk to the Western Isles.: After Boswell & Johnson. (ISBN: 0246137452) HarperCollins ; London; First Edition, 1993. NEW in dj.

Large 8vo. Maroon hardcover, with gilt lettering; 308pp. Illustrated & maps to endpapers * The Irish writer, Frank Delaney, traces the footsteps of Boswell & Johnson, with humour, a sense of enthusiastic discovery, the "Scottish Jaunt" from Edinburgh, through the kingdom of Fife to Aberdeen, across Loch Ness to Skye, Rassay & Mull; The result is a stimulating and immensely enjoyable account that will inspire many others to go "after Boswell & Johnson"retraces Samuel Johnson and James Boswell's journey through Scotland and its Western Isles in the autumn of 1773. The book tells in some part the history of Scotland in the 18th century and today, of the people of the Highlands and islands then and now, their history, their whisky distilleries, the Loch Ness monster, their literature and songs, their food and hospitality, their lochs and harbours and sea-sounds - all observed via a stream of anecdotes. Johnson's book "A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland" and Boswell's book "Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson" are compared throughout.

[SW: scotland]

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Tharp, Twyla: PUSH COMES TO SHOVE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, New York Bantam Books 1992
ISBN: 0-553-07306-0 As New Condition

An electrifying performer and one of the greatest choreographers of her time, Twyla Tharp is also an intensely private woman whose supremely inventive dances have spoken for her, revealing a spirit full of joy and pain, contradictions and questions - and answers. Now, in her own words, Twyla Tharp offers a rare and provocative glimpse into the mind and heart behind her famously deadpan face. Much more than a dance book, Push Comes to Shove is the story of a woman coming to terms with herself as daughter, wife and lover, mother, artist. A child of Indiana Quaker country, Twyla Tharp was traumatically uprooted to California when her stage-ambitious mother built a drive-in movie theater. Soon Twyla was studying piano, violin, flamenco, drums, French, baton twirling, tap, classical ballet...But it was in adolescence - tangling with a rattlesnake in the California desert and observing overheated couples in the backs of cars - that she began to learn the powers of the body and the erotic mysteries of dance. In New York her raw talent came under the influence of such giants as Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, and George Balanchine. But Tharp fought to find her own vision as an artist. In the process she created a new vocabulary of movement: quirky rebellious, sexy, comic - a daring and defiant marriage of Jelly Roll Morton, Bach, the modern dance, and classical ballet. Her collaborations with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jerome Robbins, director Milos Forman, and David Byrne of Talking Heads built bridges between ballet audiences and fans of popular culture. Now with a stunning accompaniment of photographs by Richard Avedon and others, she reveals the development of the Tharp style - the rendering of order out of chaos, and chaos out of conventional order - that won critical acclaim in such works as Deuce Coupe, The Fugue, Push Comes to Shove, In the Upper Room, and the movies Hair and Amadeus. But her spectacular success did not come without personal anguish. In From The Critics Publishers Weekly The wit and drive of Tharp's dances also feed her life story, which she tells here with a cool ebullience. Born in rural Indiana, she and her family moved to Southern California, where, still a child, she began studying dance with a visionary fanaticism that also grips her narrative. The book is sometimes very funny--George Balanchine makes an appearance as the Loch Ness monster in one of Tharp's dreams--but it is also earnest as Tharp describes her efforts to make her mark on the seminal modern dance scene of New York City in the 1960s. Tharp tells of her difficult marriage to painter Bob Huot and, elliptically, of their son; documents the life of her dance company; candidly confronts the failure of her production of Singin' in the Rain ; and considers most, though not all, of her dances. A few false notes include fulsome thanks paid to patrons and supporters and an overdetermined finale (""Finally I can feel that my attempts to discover truth through objective distance have linked up with my gut''). Photos not seen by PW. Major ad/promo. (Nov.) Library Journal Dance aficionados have the chance to hear directly from Tharp, a dynamo of inventive pop choreography, regarding her artistic development and personal life. Chapters devoted to the creation of her stunning dances, ""Deuce Coupe'' and ""Push Comes to Shove'' are exhilarating. She depicts a life born of a fascinating mix of Quaker roots and an ambitious mother. Along with her sheer talent, Tharp's tough, gutsy determination enabled astonishing breakthroughs in dance but also masked a touchy insecurity that made her difficult to know. She relates startling anecdotes of unfair demands she made on friends and dancers, whose names read like a Who's Who of the art world. But such harsh self-disclosures make it apparent that she has learned from living. The book ends with a chronology of her work from 1965 to 1992. Essential for performing arts and dance collections.-- Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C. BookList Twyla Tharp was desti Hardcover 6-1/2 x 9-1/2"

[SW: Entertainment Biography, Dance]

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