Three imaginative tales with a Central European flavor: The King of the Hermits, The Signal, The Two Sides of the Forest.

"Alabama, 1944. America is about to face the atomic bomb the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Billy Malone and Callie Fisque of Hammond, Alabama, are about to grow up in a way no one would wish on them. It starts innocently enough with a trick played on a junk dealer, and with the hypnotic legend of an old one-eyed black hermit living in the swamps across-river from Hammond "Bynymo, Bynymo, hit im in the belly with a fawty-foe!" children shout about the nearly mythical hermit, who supposedly carries a black bullwhip as long as five men. Billy and Callie can't resist ..." "This novel has been revised by the author, and this edition carries five new stories, including the hilarious Southern Gothic Brother Billy's Eye. In addition, a foreword by Bert Hitchcock places this first novel in perspective of Bill Cobb's work to date."--BOOK JACKET.

"Alabama, 1944. America is about to face the atomic bomb the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Billy Malone and Callie Fisque of Hammond, Alabama, are about to grow up in a way no one would wish on them. It starts innocently enough with a trick played on a junk dealer, and with the hypnotic legend of an old one-eyed black hermit living in the swamps across-river from Hammond "Bynymo, Bynymo, hit im in the belly with a fawty-foe!" children shout about the nearly mythical hermit, who supposedly carries a black bullwhip as long as five men. Billy and Callie can't resist ..." "This novel has been revised by the author, and this edition carries five new stories, including the hilarious Southern Gothic Brother Billy's Eye. In addition, a foreword by Bert Hitchcock places this first novel in perspective of Bill Cobb's work to date."--BOOK JACKET.

A history of hermits and eremitism from antiquity to the present: Greco-Roman influences, early Christianity, hermits in medieval Europe and East Asia, decline in Western modernity, the rise of solitude, and rehabilitation of hermits.

In his successful Creative Storytelling, Jack Zipes showed how storytelling is a rich and powerful tool for self-expression and for building children's imaginations. In Speaking Out, this master storyteller goes further, speaking out against rote learning and testing and for the positive force within storytelling and creative drama during the K-12 years. For the past four years, Jack Zipes has worked with the Neighborhood Bridges Program of the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, taking his storytelling techniques into inner-city schools. Speaking Out is in part a record of the transformations storytelling can work on the minds and lives of young people. But it is also a vivid and exhilarating demonstration of a different kind of education - one built from deep inside each child. Speaking Out is a book for storytellers, educators, parents, and anyone who cares about helping kids find within themselves the keys to imagination.

Jack Zipes has reinvigorated storytelling as a successful and engaging tool for teachers and professional storytellers. Encouraging storytellers, librarians, and schoolteachers to be active in this magical process, Zipes proposes an interactive storytelling that creates and strengthens a sense of community for students, teachers and parents while extolling storytelling as animation, subversion, and self-discovery.

The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy's artistic prowess displayed over five decades - experimenting with prose styles and drawing on his own experiences with humour, realism and compassion. Inspired by his experiences in the army, 'The Two Hussars' contrasts a dashing father and his mean-spirited son. Illustrating Tolstoy's belief that art must serve a moral purpose, 'What Men Live By' portrays an angel sent to earth to learn three existential rules of life, and 'Two Old Men' shows a peasant abandoning his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to help his neighbours. And in the highly moving 'Master and Man', Tolstoy depicts a mercenary merchant travelling with his unprotesting servant through a blizzard to close a business deal - little realizing he may soon have to settle accounts with his maker.