Without Big Rover's help at lunch, our Pip did not have much to munch! She stuck her nose in through the gaps, but in the bowls were barely scraps. Pipsqueak is HUNGRY! How can she reach the food bowls before her siblings eat everything? Join Pipsqueak as she learns one of life's most important lessons: that it is okay to ask for help.

Charlotte the spider... Wilbur the pig... Fern and Avery... and Lurvy, the hired hand. They and all the other characters from the timeless children's classic that you remember so well are back, in author and small-press overlord Hal Niedzviecki's first novel, Lurvy: a farmer's almanac. A caveat: given the (ahem) rather significant changes in social morays since the first appearance of these jolly folk, happenings on the Arable farm are somewhat different than you might well remember them.

Funny, heartfelt, and irreverent, The Pig and I follows the hilly course of author Rachel Toor's romantic life as she falls in love with a series of pets and in and out of love with an equally eclectic string of men, many of whom bear a striking resemblance to the animals, both in looks and temperament. From Prudence, a sweet white lab mouse who hates Rachel?s sweet, mousy actor-boyfriend Charlie, to Emma the pig, a fifty-pound force of nature that Rachel coparents with her ex-boyfriend Jonathan, we accompany Rachel as she learns how to bring into her human relationships the same kind of acceptance she so easily extends to her pets. Anyone who knows the comfort of coming home after a disastrous date or day at the office to a wagging tail or a ready purr will find The Pig and I irresistible.

If you relish writing which pushes the envelope with the unconventional, Snowcub is for you. Graham Fulbright has struck gold with his quintet of soft animal toys and their shared dreamstate metamorphoses into sharp-minded, flesh-and-blood creatures. Whereas Moby Dick’s creator thought domesticated dogs and horses Man’s cleverest mind readers, Graham looks to the wild side for nature’s shrewdest judges of human nature. But he also rings the changes, putting words into the mouths and beaks of creatures unable to think straight because of unwittingly parodying humankind. And, as is often the case with Graham, language comes under the microscope. There’s no shying away from the fact that the main thrust of this novel will sit uneasily on some readers’ consciences. An intrepid teenager has thrown down the gauntlet: face up to the inconvenient truth that most of us think animals exist to do with as we see fit. Last but not least, let’s not forget the creature after whom this novel is named. You will be hard put not to warm to the furry protagonist and his quest for self-realisation as he grapples with doubts, fears and aspirations mirroring your own. Under this heroic creature’s leadership and armed with lessons learnt from their encounters with animal life across the globe the novel’s five goodwill ambassadors become a young girl's mental support agents in defence of the planet’s threatened fauna.

All of Chris Hart’s how-to-draw titles are best-sellers. And the best-sellers among all of his best-sellers are the ones about animals. How to Draw Cartoon Animals, just one example, appears regularly on the BookScan Top 50 Art Books list, with more than 190,000 copies sold. Now The Cartoonist’s Big Book of Drawing Animals is ready to roar onto the market! All the most popular animals are here, including dogs, cats, horses, penguins, lions, tigers, bears, and elephants, as well as the favorite sidekick animals—pigs, kangaroos, giraffes, turtles. Simple step-by-step drawings show how to capture every cartoon emotion, from cutesy-sweet to begging to scheming, and how to create every box-office type, from baby animals to villain animals to clueless animals and much more. Faces, bodies, paws, feet, wings, tails—every part of dozens of animals is explained in this bumper book by the world’s leading author of instructional art books. It’s a mega-menagerie for cartoonists!

Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916) began writing his autobiography when he was 49 and was still working on it when he died at age 57. He considered From the Fair his greatest achievement, a book that combined the story of his life and a cultural and spiritual history of his times. Sholom Aleichem called it “my book of books, the Song of Songs of my soul.” In 1908, a Russian newspaper in Kiev asked for an autobiographical sketch, and Sholom Aleichem decided to use a third-person narrative voice for what became a memoir. From the Fair was published in short installments, serialized for newspaper readers. It takes us from the author’s childhood in a Pale of Settlement shtetl to his first love and his early attempts at writing fiction and drama. “I, Sholom Aleichem the writer, will tell the true story of Sholom Aleichem the man,” he writes, “informally and without adornments and embellishments, as if an absolute stranger were talking, yet one who accompanied him everywhere, even to the seven divisions of hell.” The result is essential background for Sholom Aleichem’s works of fiction. Curt Leviant is a prizewinning novelist, author of The Yemenite Girl and Passion in the Desert. His short stories and novellas have been published in many magazines and have been included in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories and other anthologies. He has won the Wallant Prize, an O. Henry Award, and is a Fellow in Literature of the National Endowment for the Arts. A frequent lecturer on Yiddish and Hebrew literature, he has also translated three other Sholom Aleichem collections.

You don't need super powers to be a hero...or to make enemies into friends. In Hero's gang, everyone has a special skill. Well, everybody but Pip. Pip isn't strong, he can't run fast or make himself invisible. He might not have any amazing talents, but when bully Solo invades their spot, Pip shows the gang that you just need guts to be a hero.