Mostrando resultados por Editor "August House" en Todas las categorías

If you've ever been in the car while a loved one was learning to drive, then think of this as cheap therapy! Learning to drive has occasioned emotions ranging from reasonable caution to unbridled terror. Learning under the watchful eye of one's spouse is an added challenge. Undertaking the task with anxious children in the backseat can only heighten the sensory richness of the moment.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

Donald Davis was born into a southern Appalachian mountain world rich in stories. He grew up listening to his father and his Uncle Frank tell stories of their boyhood, all the while taking in the details of his own childhood experience.

Broken Bones is a double set of double stories. The first set is made up of a story Davis's grandmother told about the time his mother broke her arm - twice! The second story in the first set is about how his little brother's collarbone was broken - twice! The second set of stories concerns Davis' neighbors, the Leatherwoods, and explains what happens when two big brothers team up against two little brothers. It also tells us that fathers are always smarter than their sons!

In Too Much Hair!, Donald Davis focuses on the trouble with little brothers, especially his own. In the title story, he gives his little brother the haircut he badly needs. The next story explains how he came to be permanently fired as his brother's babysitter. The third tale recounts one of the many science projects for which his brother served as Davis's personal chemistry set. These stories will call forth memories from anyone who has had to live with siblings.

A children's librarian, Margaret Read MacDonald, and a traditional musician, Richard Scholtz, combine voice, dulcimer, and autoharp to enliven stories for families and children in libraries and at storytelling festivals nationwide.

Storyteller Donald Davis had a very sensible mother. She had a pretty good idea of what boys would do, so she was always on the lookout. As Davis later learned, always being on the lookout is what mamas do. His vigilant but gentle mother gave her son multiple gifts in life and, as we learn in the end, gifts that do not end with her passing.

If you're looking for the scariest stories you can get your ears on, your search is over. Accomplished storyteller Roberta Simpson Brown unfolds her thrilling stories for listeners of all ages.

Expanding upon the four-line nursery rhyme, storyteller David Novak spins an epic tale as young Itsy prepares to attempt what no spider has done before: scale the water spout. A nervous Mother Bitsy prepares her little Itsy as nourishing lunch; a fly salad sandwich, a bag of grasshopper chips, and a bottle of fresh-squeezed moth juice (100% natural). The result is an epic on a child's scale, in which determination, concentration, and grit are championed.

Many years ago, the proudest animal in the jungle was not the peacock. The proudest animal was the tiger. In this folktale from Vietnam, we see how Tiger's pride leads him to covet wisdom and, with the help of a wise farmer, earn his stripes. Illustrated by Baird Hoffmire.

If you're looking for the scariest stories you can get your hands on, your search is over. Accomplished storyteller Roberta Simpson Brown unfolds her thrilling stories for listeners of all ages.

Braces hurt. Braces look funny. Braces are downright embarrassing. And just about the time you think they're going to feel normal, it's time to tighten them up again. Worst of all, most of us get braces just at that time of life when the last thing we want to do is to look conspicuous, to call attention to ourselves in any way. This new coming-of-age story employs storyteller Donald Davis' trademark descriptions and humor to address the question: is this worth all the pain and embarrassment?

Old Man Hawkins was a larger-than-life character among deer hunters, or, more precisely, among tellers and hearers of tall tales. His self-proclaimed method of hunting deer by holding a mirror in one hand and his rifle in the other, pointing backward over a shoulder, was, he said, "to be fair to the deer". It was a story, Davis tells us, that would occupy his father on the drive to Grandma's house.

When the Southern Bells brought the telephone to rural North Carolina, it looked like a "big black daffodil". What the telephone company had not counted on in conceiving its eight-party line service was a pair of "past-middle-age, unmarried sisters", the chatty Misses Lucy and Lena Leatherwood. Once the Leatherwood sisters were connected by the Southern Bells, nobody else on that line had a chance!

Traditional values abound in these hilarious stories from Appalachia: friendship, family, orderliness, humor, and delight in an especially inventive practical joke. In "Rainy Weather", a hound dog with more heart than sense wins everyone's admiration. "Uncle Frank Learns to Speak Polish" finds Davis' famous Uncle Frank making the most of a little foreign language. And, in "Uncle Frank Clean Up the Post Office", cleanliness is next to godliness, and it's also next to hilarity.

If you have never ridden a mule along a 48-inch wide trail whose ledge drops off, in places, 700 feet to the Colorado River, straight down, you may have difficulty picturing the temporary insanity that leads otherwise responsible adults to sign away the remainder of their natural life expectancy just for the chance to see the Grand Canyon's natural beauty close-up.

The title story of this collection might have been dubbed "Mother Knows Best". Kathryn Tucker Windham has always had a healthy respect for wisdom, but her true love has always been humor. The stories in this collection reflect her appreciation for traditional values and traditional ways, but they also beguile the listener with that most enchanting of Southern traits, a keen sense of humor.

We all have our personal phobias and white-knuckle moments. The title story of Irrational Fear tells of Davis's mother's fear of snakes and the way she eventually got even with him for making fun of her. (She always came out on top.) The second story, "The Red Coat", tells why his father and his father's brother-in-law finally stopped playing Christmas tricks on their sisters and wives. Here's another hilarious send-up from one of America's favorite storytellers.

"Down in Thomasville, Alabama, a long time ago...." Kathryn Tucker Windham's mellifluous Southern voice guides us by words alone through a town where a parrot sings along with the doxology at church and the telephone operator can tell you anything you need to know.

In this cumulative retelling of an ancient and widely circulated legend, storyteller Heather Forest shows that when each person makes a small contribution, the collective impact can be huge. Illustrated by Susan Gaber.