The world’s great poets interpret the world’s great art in this exquisite book that investigates the connection between art and words, deepening our understanding of both. The poet and the artist share a special kind of vision—an ability to see and penetrate the very essence of their subjects. This volume features poems by writers who turned to paintings for their inspiration, as well as paintings by artists who based their works on poems. Stretching across centuries and styles, this collection includes Rossetti’s haunting sonnet based on Botticelli’s Primavera; Wallace Stevens’s "The Man with the Blue Guitar," a masterful meditation on an iconic painting by Picasso; William Carlos Williams’s joyous interpretations of scenes by Breughel; and Adrienne Rich lending a compassionate voice to the subject of Edwin Romanzo Elmer’s The Mourning Chair. These and other pairings appear as elegant texts facing full page, glowing illustrations of the paintings. An introduction to some of the greatest poets and painters in history, this remarkable book makes a perfect gift, offering compelling insights into the worlds of art and literature, and the relationship between the two.

Three-time Caldecott Honor Artist Molly Bang and National Science Award-winning professor Penny Chisholm present a stunning, accessible explanation of the Earth's water cycle and its global effects. With stunning artwork and compelling scientific explanation, Bang and Chisholm have brought forth a masterpiece that is critically relevant in this environmentally tumultuous time. How does the sun keep ocean currents moving and lift fresh water from the seas? What can we do to conserve one of our planet's most precious resources? In this newest book in the award-winning Sunlight Series, readers learn about the constant movement of water as it flows around the Earth. As the water changes between liquid, vapor, and ice, Sunlight powers all living things, ensuring that life can exist on Earth.Perfect for any reader--young or old!--this is an invaluable addition to all classrooms, libraries, and at-home collections.

Starting out in life as a young wife and mother, you never imagine the ways your hopes and dreams might be completely shattered. For Jessica and her husband Jason, a series of unrelenting heartbreaks struck, beginning with their baby's diagnosis with a life-changing disability. Just a few short years later, thirty-three-year old Jason lay in a hospital bed, battling a Glioblastoma brain tumor. And within the span of six years of marriage, Jessica became a widow left alone to care for their four young children, including one with special needs. But the story doesn't end there. In the midst of storm after storm, Jessica stubbornly clung to God, and she found him to be faithful. Enter Ryan Ronne, a young widower and father of three. Ryan had also lost his spouse to brain cancer-in fact, around the same time Jessica's husband, Jason, had succumbed to the disease. Just as the idea of sunlight burning at midnight sounds impossible, so it seemed unlikely anything beautiful could arise from their devastation. But a new love story emerged, along with a combined family that now numbers eight children. As featured on the Today Show, theirs is an inspiring and encouraging story of faith. Here, Jessica Ronne tells her riveting story of finding hope amid havoc, and of the surprising ways that pain often commingles with joy.

For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel

Clive James has been close to death for several years, and he has written about the experience in a series of deeply moving poems. In Sentenced to Life, he was clear-sighted as he faced the end, honest about his regrets. In Injury Time, he wrote about living well in the time remaining, focusing our attention on the joys of family and art, and celebrating the immediate beauty of the world. When The River in the Sky opens, we find James in ill health but high spirits. Although his body traps him at home, his mind is free to roam, and this long poem is animated by his recollection of what life was and never will be again; as it resolves into a flowing stream of vivid images, his memories are emotionally supercharged ‘by the force of their own fading’. In this form, the poet can transmit the felt experience of his exceptional life to the reader. As ever with James, his enthusiasm is contagious; he shares his wide interests with enormous generosity, making brilliant and original connections, sparking passion in the reader so that you can explore the world’s treasures yourself. Because this is not just a reminiscence, it’s a wise and moving preparation for and acceptance of death. As James realizes that he is only one bright spot in a galaxy of stars, he passes the torch to the poets of the future, to his young granddaughter, and to you, his reader. A book that could not have been written by anyone else, this is Clive James at the height of his considerable powers: funny, wise, deeply felt, and always expressed with an unmatched power for clarity of expression and phrase-making that has been his been his hallmark.

Top notch Boy Scout Max "the Wolf" cannot remember how he came to be in a strange forest, but soon he and three talking animals are on the run from the Blue Cutters, hunters who will alter the foursome's very essence if they can catch them.

For Russians, St. Petersburg has embodied power, heroism, and fortitude. It has encompassed all the things that the Russians are and that they hope to become. Opulence and artistic brilliance blended with images of suffering on a monumental scale make up the historic persona of the late W. Bruce Lincoln's lavish "biography" of this mysterious, complex city. Climate and comfort were not what Tsar Peter the Great had in mind when, in the spring of 1703, he decided to build a new capital in the muddy marshes of the Neva River delta. Located 500 miles below the Arctic Circle, this area, with its foul weather, bad water, and sodden soil, was so unattractive that only a handful of Finnish fisherman had ever settled there. Bathed in sunlight at midnight in the summer, it brooded in darkness at noon in the winter, and its canals froze solid at least five months out of every year. Yet to the Tsar, the place he named Sankt Pieter Burkh had the makings of a "paradise." His vision was soon borne out: though St. Petersburg was closer to London, Paris, and Vienna than to Russia's far-off eastern lands, it quickly became the political, cultural, and economic center of an empire that stretched across more than a dozen time zones and over three continents. In this book, revolutionaries and laborers brush shoulders with tsars, and builders, soldiers, and statesmen share pride of place with poets. For only the entire historical experience of this magnificent and mysterious city can reveal the wealth of human and natural forces that shaped the modern history of it and the nation it represents.