The Rainforest Family and Those Terrible Toads takes place in Australia's Lamington National Park. Two children named Alec and Philippa become lost in the park's rainforest, but are soon comforted by an extremely small Koori warrior named Wargunya. He tells them a story about the time the rainforest was invaded by a tribe of cane toads led by the toad king, Bufo; and how Wargunya tried to trick some animals into scaring the toads away. His first efforts fail, so the small warrior consults a wise koala called Klyma, who advises him with a better plan. This time Wargunya enlists all of the animals in a common goal: Get rid of Those Terrible Toads! The plan succeeds and the cane toads are vanquished. The children are then found by their parents, just before the warrior is about to tell them how he became so tiny. Alec and Philippa excitedly tell all about their adventure, but their parents don't believe them. As the family exits the rainforest, Wargunya sadly watches his new friends leave. In this first book of a series, Wargunya got rid of a load of toads. Watch for the sequel!

Drywater Gulch has a toad problem. Not the hop-down-your-britches, croaking-all-night toad kind of problem. The thievin', hootin' and hollerin', steal-your-gold never-say-thank-you outlaw toad kind of problem. Then hope rides into town. Sheriff Ryan might only be seven years old, and he might not know much about shooting and roping. But he knows a lot about dinosaurs. Yes, dinosaurs. And it turns out that knowing a thing or two about paleontology can come in handy when it comes to hoodwinking and rounding up a few no-good bandits. From Bob Shea and Lane Smith comes this hilarious picture book, Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads. This title has Common Core connections.

Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by “Frogs” and “Toads,” humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. The history of American youth depends primarily on adult reminiscences of their own childhoods, adult testimony to the lives of youth around them, or surmises based on at best a few creative artifacts. The survival then of such a large collection of adolescent comic strips from America’s small-town Midwest is remarkable. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his father’s adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels. Kugler emphasizes how US propaganda intended to inspire patriotic support for the war gave this young artist a license for his imagined violence. In a context of progressive American educational reform, these violent comic stories, often in settings modeled on the artist’s small Nebraska town, suggests a form of adolescent rebellion against moral conventions consistent with comic art’s reputation for “outsider” or countercultural expressions. Kugler also argues that these comics provide evidence for the transition in American taste from war stories to the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kugler’s thorough analysis of his father’s adolescent art explains how a small-town boy from the plains distilled the popular culture of his day for an imagined war he could fight on his audacious, even shocking terms.

WHAT IT IS: This fun and hilarious musical play helps you teach the standards while bringing your classroom to life! Easy-to-do play comes with script, audio CD, and teacher's guide. NO music or drama experience is required -- you don't have to sing or play a note! Go big and perform on stage, keep it simple with a classroom performance, or simply do reader's theater in class. No fancy sets, costumes, or performance spaces are needed, so it's all up to you! Flexible casting for 8-40 students and permission to edit the script and songs make it easy to tailor the play to the needs of your class and community. Your purchase of one copy per teacher includes permission to photocopy the script for students. /// WHAT IT TEACHES: "Rumpus in the Rainforest" gives students a musical tour of the various levels of the jungle and reinforces in fun fashion the importance of the rainforest. Frog desperately wants to get off the jungle floor and see the sky -- but who will help him climb above the canopy? The Jaguar loves the jungle floor, the Sloth family keeps falling asleep, and the Howler Monkeys have gone nuts! 25 minutes; grades 1-5. /// WHAT IT DOES: "Rumpus in the Rainforest" is a great complement to your curriculum resources in environmental science. And, like all Bad Wolf Press plays, this show can be used to improve reading comprehension, vocabulary, performance and speaking skills, class camaraderie and teamwork, and school engagement and parental involvement -- all while enabling students to be part of a truly fun and creative experience they will never forget!

Liberty Epic of Shadows interweaves shades of the past, present, and future into a dynamic tapestry designed on global scale that spans centuries through a trail of human history beginning with the discovery of a New World. What is the connection between the rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire during the dynastic reign of the Spanish Hapsburgs and a small cotton mill town in twentieth century post industrial south? What is the lost meaning of Xeantee Aconee left behind by an obscure North American tribe of Indians and a present day monster named Westbaily? Are both fiendish embodiments of imminent judgment or messenger angels of deliverance? To the locals of 1960 Viet Nam era America, Liberty Swamp is a place laced with unknown dangers, manifesting imagined terror of life's inevitability, a place avoided through slumbered existence. But this epic is not just about fallen dynasties, repetitious wars, or chimeras of shadow. It weaves the mortal fabric of human experience into a lattice of concentric patterns that never really change. It unveils the defined origin of evil in human desire by comparing gifts from Mammon forged of weaker elements to the essence of things made from eternal substance provided by the architect of creation in the fullness of every season. At the twilight of his days, a man named David, reluctantly made a king of Israel, stands humble before the twelve tribes. This after the siege of Jesus, declared Jerusalem, a city dedicated to the God of Covenant, he bows his head and blesses the Lord of heaven and earth: "Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou reigns over all; and in your hand is power and might; and in your hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come from you and of your own have we given thee. For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." 1 chronicles chapter 29 Verses 12-15

Readers will make up their own funny stories and create awesome animals as they flip through the split pages and muddle things up!