Kip and Kayla take swimming lessons and what Kayla learns surprises even herself! In the context of the story children are encouraged in safe swimming practices.

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously' How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion' The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.

Lord I'm Coming Home focuses on a small, white, rural fishing community on the southern reaches of the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. By means of a new kind of anthropological fieldwork, John Forrest seeks to document the entire aesthetic experience of a group of people, showing the aesthetic to be an "everyday experience and not some rarefied and pure behavior reserved for an artistic elite." The opening chapter of the book is a vivid fictional narrative of a typical day in "Tidewater," presented from the perspective of one fisherman. In the following two chapters the author sets forth the philosophical and anthropological foundations of his book, paying particular attention to problems of defining "aesthetic," to methodological concerns, and to the natural landscape of his field site. Reviewing his own experience as both participant and observer, he then describes in scrupulous detail the aesthetic forms in four areas of Tidewater life: home, work, church, and leisure. People use these forms, Forrest shows, to establish personal and group identities, facilitate certain kinds of interactions while inhibiting others, and cue appropriate behavior. His concluding chapter deals with the different life cycles of men and women, insider-outsider relations, secular and sacred domains, the image and metaphor of "home," and the essential role that aesthetics plays in these spheres. The first ethnography to evoke the full aesthetic life of a community, Lord I'm Coming Home will be important reading not only for anthropologists but also for scholars and students in the fields of American studies, art, folklore, and sociology.

Even a shallow pool can be dangerous if you don't take care! Important lessons of water safety are made easy and accessible in Safety Around Water.

Elemental Academy Chronicles

Are you afraid to put your face in the water? So is Diante. He would like to play in the pool with other children. He's not afraid to hang upside down, though, and he's surprised to learn his grandma is. Can Diante help Grandma and become brave in the water?

Water Safety with Swimmy is a fun book about Swimmy and his 5 friends who learn 10 very important Water Safety Rules that should be used any time they are around water. A great book for children ages 2 to 8 to start to learn to be safer around any body of water which also gives a comprehensive summary of the rules at the end. Please read this book with your children and discuss the rules each time you visit a pool, lake, ocean, or have any swimming experience. For older children, the book can be memorized by singing the rhyme to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Endorsements for Water Safety with Swimmy: “Every child needs to know these rules. Since we have a swimming pool, I will be sharing this book with my 3 year old grandson when he visits next time.” – Jack Canfield, Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Parent’s Soul “This book should be on the bookshelf of every parent of a small child and read to them frequently. Water safety rules are a necessary part of parenting. Carolanne makes teaching them easy and fun.” – B. E. Van Loon, Author and Parenting Expert