Sara, the cautious, quietly observant twin, narrates this reminiscence of sisters whose dreams were intermittently encouraged or dashed by their ambitious, stout-hearted Norwegian-American mother and their alternatively abusive and loving Danish-American father, who felt enslaved by his land and cattle. The twins' emotionally fragile older sister, mischevious younger brother, and sturdy baby sister each found ways to cope. This is a personal portrayal of parents, siblings, family and neighbours who painted the rural landscape in sombre tones of duty and self-sacrifice, yet touched it with hope and grace.

Barnyard animals will not cooperate with Farmer Picket since Mrs. Picket made clothes for them.

Cow friends, Minnie and Moo, decide to dress up and attend a party at the farmer's house.

The cows have come back to the family home, to be together around the Christmas tree. But while dancing the Cowpoke Polka, Moosha crashes through the floor! She is stuck, right in the only place the tree can go. Will Christmas even come this year?

Get ready to do-si-do in the barnyard with Sandra Boynton’s bestselling, toe-tapping Barnyard Dance!—now available in an oversized lap edition! Join twirling pigs, fiddle-playing cows, and other unforgettable animals in their barnyard dance! With rhythmic rhyming text, this book is guaranteed to get kids and adults spinning, swinging, and prancing with the high-spirited cast of characters! It’s BIG fun from Sandra Boynton in the big, big size of this favorite board book. Stomp your feet! Clap your hands! Everybody ready for a BARNYARD DANCE!

"Within a day of receiving this book, I had consumed it... Absorbing, moving, and compulsively readable."—Lydia Davis In this affectionate, heart-warming chronicle, Rosamund Young distills a lifetime of organic farming wisdom, describing the surprising personalities of her cows and other animals At her famous Kite's Nest Farm in Worcestershire, England, the cows (as well as sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing, and housing. Left to be themselves, the cows exhibit temperaments and interests as diverse as our own. "Fat Hat" prefers men to women; "Chippy Minton" refuses to sleep with muddy legs and always reports to the barn for grooming before bed; "Jake" has a thing for sniffing the carbon monoxide fumes of the Land Rover exhaust pipe; and "Gemima" greets all humans with an angry shake of the head and is fiercely independent. An organic farmer for decades, Young has an unaffected and homely voice. Her prose brims with genuine devotion to the wellbeing of animals. Most of us never apprehend the various inner lives animals possess, least of all those that we might eat. But Young has spent countless hours observing how these creatures love, play games, and form life-long friendships. She imparts hard-won wisdom about the both moral and real-world benefits of organic farming. (If preserving the dignity of animals isn't a good enough reason for you, consider how badly factory farming stunts the growth of animals, producing unhealthy and tasteless food.) This gorgeously-illustrated book, which includes an original introduction by the legendary British playwright Alan Bennett, is the summation of a life's work, and a delightful and moving tribute to the deep richness of animal sentience.

Within intellectual paradigms that privilege mind over matter, dance has long appeared as a marginal, derivative, or primitive art. Drawing support from theorists and artists who embrace matter as dynamic and agential, this book offers a visionary definition of dance that illuminates its constitutive work in the ongoing evolution of human persons. Why We Dance introduces a philosophy of bodily becoming that posits bodily movement as the source and telos of human life. Within this philosophy, dance appears as an activity that humans evolved to do as the enabling condition of their best bodily becoming. Weaving theoretical reflection with accounts of lived experience, this book positions dance as a catalyst in the development of human consciousness, compassion, ritual proclivity, and ecological adaptability. Aligning with trends in new materialism, affect theory, and feminist philosophy, as well as advances in dance and religious studies, this work reveals the vital role dance can play in reversing the trajectory of ecological self-destruction along which human civilization is racing.