Misty Pond is the home to a community of marsupials happily living out their days in peace. When this otherwise tranquil community is in trouble and there is a mystery to be solved, Paddy The Flatfooted Platypus is the one for the job. With the help of his nephew Ixby, his investigations lead him to monotremes, flying possums, bandicoots, from burrows to nightclubs, and even all the way to Tasmania in search of the Tasmanian Tiger.

Find out what a platypus has in common with a beaver or a dolphin. Learn what sets a platypus apart from a giraffe or a wild dog. Readers will compare key traits of platypuses—their appearance, behavior, habitat, and life cycle—to traits of other mammals. Charts and sidebars support key ideas and provide details. Through gathering information about similarities and differences, readers will make connections and draw conclusions about what makes this animal a mammal and how mammals are alike and different from each other.

When Paddy the Platypus leaves his home to find new friends, he is shocked to find that the other animals don't want to play with him. A beaver, an otter, and a family of ducks each poke fun at Paddy because he looks so odd. But when a baby bird falls from its nest and Paddy catches it with his soft snout, the other animals realize Paddy's differences are what make him so special. Paddy the Platypus is written in couplets, including a deliberate repetition of key phrases that young children can easily remember. The book is beautifully illustrated by Tristan Brewster-Arnold.

THE LITERARY WORKS OF JOVANKA BACH Produced and directed by John Stark (ph.818 222 6031) I was rummaging through my dear deceased wife Jovanka Bachs belongings, when I uncovered a hidden treasure a never before seen copy of a play entitled Night song For The Boatman, which she had written over twenty years ago, and filed away without telling me about it. And when I read it I was utterly amazed. I immediately went into production with the piece, which I found as fascinating as the best works of Albee, Beckett and Ionesco. It deals with a character she called, Harry Appleman, an aging, alcoholic, washed-up poet, plays dice with fate, and loses. He is called upon to make a mysterious boat trip, by voices from the wilderness, but through various cunning contrivances he tries to avoid his mortality. Then he discovers his humanity when he learns he cant sacrifice his daughter Jessie, for the boat trip, but a tricky graduate student, Gordon Levy will do instead. The Lets Talk Off-Broadway reviewer Yvonne Korshak praised the production I staged at Barrow Group Theatre, calling it a skillfully crafted play, beautifully acted and designed, a totally enjoyable and rewarding evening of theatre.

The platypus is one strange-looking animal! These mammals have duck-like bills, beaver-like tails, otter-like bodies, and even venomous stingers on their webbed feet! Find out how these bizarre animals use their unique features in this title for beginning readers.

Along with the kangaroos, the platypus is totally identified with Australia, and no other living animal has intrigues and fascinated the layperson and the scientist to quite the same degree. This book confines itself to the know facts rather than to the myths and legends with surround this beautiful, secretive and shy creature. In a clear narrative style assisted by superb illustrations, The Platypus takes us through the four seasons in the life of a platypus, describing for us what they eat, where they live, how they reproduce and how they are adapted for survival in an environment that is periodically ravaged by floods and droughts. This third edition of The Platypus has been thoroughly revised and re-designed enabling the reader to be fully up-to-date on the latest research findings about this unique Australian creature.