Everyone loves Bernard! Especially his four 'kissy' aunts who plaster him with kisses. How much more can a boy take?

This anthology features six plays by celebrated Chicago playwright Mickle Maher, who has been described by the Houston Chronicle as “one of the most original voices in American theater today,” and by the Chicago Reader as “a master at creating complex, paradoxical works that encompass their own contradictions.” Maher’s plays engage classic literature as a jumping off point for seriously unusual comedic dramas, often dealing with the absurdity, difficulties, and rewards of artistic endeavor. His work has been influenced by or compared to Eugène Ionesco, Maria Irene Fornes, Kenneth Koch, and Edward Albee, among others. This edition is designed to be useful for schools and other organizations that wish to mount productions of Maher’s plays, which generally feature small casts and simple scenery and stagings, and thus can be easy to produce. The anthology includes: An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening On the night Faustus concludes his bargain with Mephistopheles, he apologizes to a group of random people for his failure to keep a diary of his fabulous life. The Hunchback Variations Ludwig von Beethoven and Quasimodo present a panel discussion on their failure to create an impossible sound called for in a stage direction in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Song About Himself In a dystopian future, a woman made extraordinary by her ability to speak relatively clearly tries to connect with others on a mysterious social media site created by a rogue artificial intelligence. There Is a Happiness That Morning Is Having engaged the evening before in a highly inappropriate display of public affection on the main lawn of their rural New England campus, two lecturers on the poems of William Blake must now, in class, either apologize for their behavior or effectively justify it to keep their jobs. It Is Magic Deb and Sandy are auditioning Tim for the role of the Wolf in a production of The Three Little Pigs, but there’s a mysterious haze in the basement of the Mortier Civic Playhouse and that, in addition to interruptions from the director of the Scottish play that’s going on upstairs, is making things difficult. Then, Liz shows up and throws the whole room into (further) chaos. It Is Magic reveals the deep, ancient evil at the heart of the community theater audition process. Spirits to Enforce Twelve telefundraisers with secret identities work to raise money for a superheroic production of The Tempest in a bid to save Fathomtown from Professor Cannibal and his band of evil doers.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.

Whether used for thematic story times, program and curriculum planning, readers' advisory, or collection development, this updated edition of the well-known companion makes finding the right picture books for your library a breeze. Generations of savvy librarians and educators have relied on this detailed subject guide to children's picture books for all aspects of children's services, and this new edition does not disappoint. Covering more than 18,000 books published through 2017, it empowers users to identify current and classic titles on topics ranging from apples to zebras. Organized simply, with a subject guide that categorizes subjects by theme and topic and subject headings arranged alphabetically, this reference applies more than 1,200 intuitive (as opposed to formal catalog) subject terms to children's picture books, making it both a comprehensive and user-friendly resource that is accessible to parents and teachers as well as librarians. It can be used to identify titles to fill in gaps in library collections, to find books on particular topics for young readers, to help teachers locate titles to support lessons, or to design thematic programs and story times. Title and illustrator indexes, in addition to a bibliographic guide arranged alphabetically by author name, further extend access to titles.

Offering an original application of the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina to the humanities, this book demonstrates the need for further emphasis on deep reading, reflection, and contemplation in contemporary university classrooms. Each chapter provides readers with an historical overview of the four movements of this monastic method: lectio (reading), meditatio (interpreting), oratio (responding), and contemplatio (experiencing wisdom), and suggests ways to incorporate these practices in humanites courses. Keator demonstrates that the lectio divina method is a viable pedagogical tool to guide students slowly and methodically through literary texts and into a subjective experience of wisdom and meaning.

This collection of essays analyzes the work of 29 authors and illustrators. South African children's and youth literature has a long history. The country is the most prolific publisher of children's books on the continent, producing perhaps the highest quality literature in Africa. Its traditions resonate within the larger world of children's literature but are solidly grounded in African myth and archetypes. The African diaspora in the U.S. and elsewhere have stories rooted in these oral traditions. Much has changed in South African literature for children since the 1994 transformation of the country. A field once dominated by all white and mostly female writers and illustrators has diversified, adding many new voices.