Shaping up the Yard is a new first grade geometry unit in the Contexts for Learning Mathematics series. The mathematical focus of the unit is the recognition that shapes have Euclidean properties: specific numbers of sides and angles. A colorful children's read-aloud, Uncle Lloyd's Lawnmower, can be purchased separately as an accompaniment.

"Teddy has been training all summer with his new friends Jack and Gus to make the new travel football team in Walton, but when his long-absent dad comes back to town and into his life he is faced with a much bigger challenge."--

"From the experts in lawn care comes Scotts Lawnscaping, the complete guide to landscaping your lawn. With a carpet of green as your starting point, learn how to create a landscape that offers visual pleasure while increasing the value of your home"--Publisher website (November 2006).

The popular Masloppy Family is back, and this time it is to do spring yard work. Winter is over and Uncle Lloyd is ready for spring with his new, shiny, red lawnmower. He and Nicholas have a grand time making shapes all over the lawn, with many paths and turns. Polygons start appearing everywhere, setting the stage for some fabulous mathematics for young children. Uncle Lloyd's Lawnmower is accompanied by a grade 1 geometry unit, Shaping up the Yard: Paths, Turns, and Polygons, which is part of the Contexts for Learning Mathematics series used by many elementary schools around the world. For more information on the series go to: www.NewPerspectivesOnLearning.com.

A satirical thriller about a British adulterer in Russia from the award-winning author of The Bottle Factory Outing. Middle-class, middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road lawyer Douglas Ashburner has never been much of a womanizer. So when he tells his wife he’s going on a fishing holiday, she takes his word for it. But instead of leaving London for Scotland, he departs from Heathrow to Moscow. Douglas is tagging along with his mistress, a sculptor named Nina St. Clair, on a tour of Russia arranged by the Soviet Artists’ Union. Accompanying them on the trip are two other artists: the impudent Bernard Douglas and the irritable Enid Dwyer. Once in Moscow, Ashburner starts to wish he really had gone fishing. He promptly loses his luggage, the food is terrible, the art is horrific, and their tour guide is downright militant. But when Nina slips out to a last-minute lunch appointment and never returns, things go from bad to disastrous. Motives are unclear. Identities are mistaken. And as the group travels from the capital to Lenigrad to Tblisi, confusion, contradictions, and even hallucinations abound. Ripe with the scathing wit, eccentric characters, and richly morbid atmosphere that have earned award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge both a cult following and mainstream praise, Winter Garden is a psychological thriller that turns an ironic lens on the social mores of modern life.