The tale of a courageous frog who opens a stubborn Queen’s eyes to the beauty of nature is now available in a hardcover classic edition, featuring Charles Santore’s brilliant illustrations for a new generation of readers. The inspiring story of William the Curious tells the tale of William, a brave young frog who lives in the moat of a castle. The Queen of the Land of Far and Wide is a stubborn and impatient ruler who wreaks havoc in her kingdom and demands perfection out of all things. After tossing everything imperfect into the moat, William works up the courage to respectfully approach her, and miraculously opens her eyes to a new world. Charles Santore’s original illustrations are faithfully reproduced with brilliance, detailing the captivating scenes of William’s daring adventures and triumphant influence on the Queen.

A lowly frog teaches a beautiful queen about the dangers of pollution.

The extreme travel community goes to places beyond the ordinary - and William Baekeland, a young man with incredible riches, joins expeditions to isolated islands of Antarctica, the Russian Arctic, Central African Republic, Sudan and Timor-Leste, among others. He becomes the awe and the inspiration of many travellers, young and old, on his quest to 'go everywhere'. But is all as it seems? This incredible true story written by one of the world's most experienced travellers will take you on a journey to some of the most unusual places of our planet while turning into a real-life detective story as the elusive truth finally reveals itself.

This in-depth study of a fourteenth-century murder explores the social fabric of the era through a tale of scandal and conspiracy among a noble family. In 1375, Sir William Cantilupe was found murdered in a field outside of a village in Lincolnshire. As the investigation progressed, fifteen members of his household were indicted for murder, and his armor-bearer and butler were convicted. Through the lens of this murder, Melissa Julian-Jones explores English society during the Hundred Years War, from crime and punishment to social norms and sexual deviance. Cantilupe’s murder was one of the first case to be tried under the Treason Act of 1351, which deemed the murder of a man by his wife or servants to be petty treason. It reveals the deep insecurities of England at this time, where violent rebellions within private households were a serious concern. Though the motives were never recorded, Julian-Jones considers the evidence as well as the relationships between Sir William and the suspects, including his wife, servants, and neighbors.

Dead cats. That's the image many people conjure up when you mention curiosity. An image perpetuated by a dusty old proverb that has long represented the extent of our understanding of the term. This book might not put the proverb to rest, but it will flip it upside down: far from killing anything, curiosity breathes new life into almost everything it touches. In Curious? Dr. Todd Kashdan offers a profound new message missing from so many books on happiness: the greatest opportunities for joy, purpose, and personal growth don't, in fact, happen when we're searching for happiness. They happen when we are mindful, when we explore what's novel, and when we live in the moment and embrace uncertainty. Positive events last longer and we can extract more pleasure and meaning from them when we are open to new experiences and relish the unknown. Dr. Kashdan uses science, story, and practical exercises to show you how to become what he calls a curious explorer—a person who's comfortable with risk and challenge and who functions optimally in an unstable, unpredictable world. Here's a blueprint for building lasting, meaningful relationships, improving health, increasing creativity, and boosting productivity. Aren't you curious to know more?

A strange boy with red hair leads a birthday-girl and her companions on a hunt for the wishing tree which brings them many suprising and magical adventures.

Curious Travellers: Writing the Welsh Tour, 1760-1820 provides the first extensive literary study of British tours of Wales in the Romantic period (c.1760-1820). It examines writers' responses to Welsh landscapes and communities at a time of drastic economic, environmental, and political change. Opening with an overview of Welsh tours up to the early 1700s, Mary-Ann Constantine shows how the intensely intertextual nature of the genre imbued particular sites and locations with meaning. She next draws upon a range of manuscript and published sources to trace a circular tour of the country, unpicking moments of cultural entanglement and revealing how travel-writing shaped understanding of Wales and Welshness within the wider British polity. Wales became a popular destination for visitors following the publication of Thomas Pennant's Tours in Wales in the late 1770s. Hundreds of travel-accounts from the period are extant, yet few (particularly those by women) have been studied in depth. Wales proves, in these narratives, as much a place of disturbance as a picturesque haven--a potent mixture of medieval past and industrial present, exposed down its west coast to the threat of invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. From castles to copper-mines, Constantine explores the full potential of tour writing as an idiosyncratic genre at the interface of literature and history, arguing for its vital importance to broader cultural and environmental studies.