Some people are like monarch butterflies—solitary by nature, on a passionate search for somewhere. Critically acclaimed songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews presents her first poetry collection. This poetry collection reads like a transformation, me, the narrator, being the figurative Old Monarch. Documenting this journey, the book is separated into three sections, "Sonoran Milkweed," "Longing In Flight," and "Eucalyptus Tree (My Arrival to Rest)." In the first stage of my journey, I explore my childhood in Arizona, and the naive assumptions of youth. At this stage in my journey, I am impressionable, seeing the world with all its nuances for the first time. Through the landscape of the Sonoran Desert, I explore some dark family dynamics and what a child sees. Several characters turn up in the early poems including my cowboy grandpa, and the single mother who raised me, despite many forthcomings. The early poems also explore my desire to see a brighter world of possibility beyond the dusty desert island, and see humans more clearly within the confounds of discovery. In the second stage, I have left home. I am falling in love for the first time, as I become a young woman. Finally, the last stage is the old monarch's arrival to the garden. There are a lot of metaphysical and philosophical poems in this section. I arrive at the figurative garden, and I finally understand the journey at the edge of my life. There are a lot of poems in the context of a garden here, accepting mortality and the ever-changing world. These are meant to be wise old woman poems.

A ten-year-old girl may be the only person who can save humanity from extinction in this exciting graphic novel adventure. It’s been fifty years since a sun shift wiped out nearly all mammal life across the earth. Towns and cities are abandoned relics, autonomous machines maintain roadways, and the world is slowly being reclaimed by nature. Isolated pockets of survivors keep to themselves in underground sites, hiding from the lethal sunlight by day and coming above ground at night. 10-year-old Elvie and her caretaker, Flora, a biologist, are the only two humans who can survive during daylight because Flora made an incredible discovery – a way to make an antidote to sun sickness using the scales from monarch butterfly wings. Unfortunately, it can only be made in small quantities and has a short shelf life. Free to travel during the day, Elvie and Flora follow monarchs as they migrate across the former Western United States, constantly making new medicine for themselves while trying to find a way to make a vaccine they can share with everyone. Will they discover a way to go from a treatment to a cure and preserve what remains of humanity, or will their efforts be thwarted by disaster and the very people they are trying to save? Little Monarchs is a new kind of graphic novel adventure—one that invites readers to take an intimate look at the natural world and the secrets hidden within. Elvie and Flora’s adventures take place in real locations marked panel-by-panel with coordinates and a compass heading. Curious readers can follow their travel routes and see the same landscapes—whether it be a secluded butterfly grove on the California coast or a hot-springs in the high desert. Through both comic narrative and journal entries, readers learn the basics of star navigation, how to tie useful knots, and other survival skills applicable in the natural world. Creator Jonathan Case acquired the fact-based portion of Little Monarchs through intensive research and several expeditions to study monarchs across the western United States. Scientific support also came from the Xerces Society, the world leaders in monarch preservation. An American Library Association Notable Children's Book An ALA Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table Top Ten Best Graphic Novels for Children Selection Named to the Little Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year An NPR Book We Love A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editors’ Choice Selection

"Bonnie Kelley-Young's narrative voice is well suited to the subject matter and its audience....The sound effects enhance the story and add to the sense of wonder." -AudioFile

"Candice Wuehle's irresistibly weird debut novel Monarch is the kind of book that you want to start reading again immediately after turning the last page—not just to trace the conspiracy at its heart, but to appreciate how its kaleidoscope of beauty pageants, Y2K anxieties, famous dead girls, and deep state machinations synthesizes into an exploration of what makes up a self . . . Poetic, haunting."—Kristen Martin, NPR After waking up with a strange taste in her mouth and mysterious bruises, former child pageant star Jessica Clink unwittingly begins an investigation into a nefarious deep state underworld. Equipped with the eccentric education of her father, Dr. Clink (a professor of Boredom Studies and the founder of an elite study group known as the Devil’s Workshop), Jessica uncovers a disquieting connection between her former life as a beauty queen and an offshoot of Project MKUltra known as MONARCH. As Jessica moves closer to the truth, she begins to suspect the involvement of everyone around her, including her own mother, Grethe (a Norwegian pageant queen turned occult American wellness guru for suburban housewives). With the help of Christine (her black-lipsticked riot grrrl babysitter and confidante), Jessica sets out to take down Project MONARCH. More importantly, she must discover if her first love, fellow teen queen Veronica Marshall, was genuine or yet another deep state plant. Merging iconic true crime stories of the ’90s (Lorena Bobbitt, Nicole Brown Simpson, and JonBenét Ramsey) with theories of human consciousness, folklore, and a perennial cultural fixation with dead girls, MONARCH questions the shadow sides of self-concept: Who are you if you don’t know yourself?

“What a wonderful idea for an adventure! Absolutely inspired, timely, and important.” —Alistair Humphreys, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and author of The Doorstep Mile and Around the World by Bike Outdoor educator and field researcher Sara Dykman made history when she became the first person to bicycle along­side monarch butterflies on their storied annual migration—a round-trip adventure that included three countries and more than 10,000 miles. Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts. Her panniers were recycled buckets. In Bicycling with Butterflies, Dykman recounts her incredible journey and the dramatic ups and downs of the nearly nine-month odyssey. We’re beside her as she nav­igates unmapped roads in foreign countries, checks roadside milkweed for monarch eggs, and shares her passion with eager schoolchil­dren, skeptical bar patrons, and unimpressed border officials. We also meet some of the ardent monarch stewards who supported her efforts, from citizen scientists and research­ers to farmers and high-rise city dwellers. With both humor and humility, Dykman offers a compelling story, confirming the urgency of saving the threatened monarch migration—and the other threatened systems of nature that affect the survival of us all.

Shortlisted for The Telegraph Sports Book Awards Biography of the Year 'A splendid new biography. How good was young Tom Morris? Stephen Proctor makes his case cogently. Young Tom Morris was one of the greatest of them all' - Allan Massie Young Tom Morris, the son of the legendary pioneer of golf, Tom Morris, was golf's first superstar. Born at a pivotal moment in history, just as the new and inexpensive 'gutty' ball was making golf affordable and drawing thousands of new players to the game, his genius and his swashbuckling personality would set a game that had been frozen in amber for four centuries on the pathway to becoming worldwide spectator sport we know today. Exhaustively researched and beautifully illustrated, Monarch of the Green is a stirring and evocative history of Tommy's life (which also includes, for the first time, a compilation of his competitive record in stroke-play tournaments, singles matches, and foursomes) and demonstrates how, in one dazzling decade, this young superstar dominated the sport like few others have ever done.

The fascinating and complex evolutionary relationship of the monarch butterfly and the milkweed plant Monarch butterflies are one of nature's most recognizable creatures, known for their bright colors and epic annual migration from the United States and Canada to Mexico. Yet there is much more to the monarch than its distinctive presence and mythic journeying. In Monarchs and Milkweed, Anurag Agrawal presents a vivid investigation into how the monarch butterfly has evolved closely alongside the milkweed—a toxic plant named for the sticky white substance emitted when its leaves are damaged—and how this inextricable and intimate relationship has been like an arms race over the millennia, a battle of exploitation and defense between two fascinating species. The monarch life cycle begins each spring when it deposits eggs on milkweed leaves. But this dependency of monarchs on milkweeds as food is not reciprocated, and milkweeds do all they can to poison or thwart the young monarchs. Agrawal delves into major scientific discoveries, including his own pioneering research, and traces how plant poisons have not only shaped monarch-milkweed interactions but have also been culturally important for centuries. Agrawal presents current ideas regarding the recent decline in monarch populations, including habitat destruction, increased winter storms, and lack of milkweed—the last one a theory that the author rejects. He evaluates the current sustainability of monarchs and reveals a novel explanation for their plummeting numbers. Lavishly illustrated with more than eighty color photos and images, Monarchs and Milkweed takes readers on an unforgettable exploration of one of nature's most important and sophisticated evolutionary relationships.