The idea that some people think differently, though no less humanly, is explored in this inspiring book. Temple Grandin is a gifted and successful animal scientist, and she is autistic. Here she tells us what it was like to grow up perceiving the world in an entirely concrete and visual way - somewhat akin to how animals think, she believes - and how it feels now. Through her finely observed understanding of the workings of her mind she gives us an invaluable insight into autism and its challenges.

A veteran film critic offers a lively, opinionated guide to thinking and talking about movies -- from Casablanca to Clueless Whether we are trying to impress a date after an art house film screening or discussing Oscar nominations among friends, we all need ways to look at and talk about movies. But with so much variety between an Alfred Hitchcock thriller and a Nora Ephron romantic comedy, how can everyday viewers determine what makes a good movie? In Talking Pictures, veteran film critic Ann Hornaday walks us through the production of a typical movie -- from script and casting to final sound edit -- and explains how to evaluate each piece of the process. How do we know if a film has been well-written, above and beyond snappy dialogue? What constitutes a great screen performance? What goes into praiseworthy cinematography, editing, and sound design? And what does a director really do? In a new epilogue, Hornaday addresses important questions of representation in film and the industry and how this can, and should, effect a movie-watching experience. Full of engaging anecdotes and interviews with actors and filmmakers, Talking Pictures will help us see movies in a whole new light-not just as fans, but as film critics in our own right.

"Snapchat was the app that launched the "camera first" revolution. Its' disruptive features out-innovated major social networks and inspired hundreds of millions of users to document their personal stories through the free broadcast network in their pockets. Snapchat allowed us to communicate through images and not just around them. It changed social media from merely documenting and preserving memories to an in-the-moment real time experience. It was authentic, personal and unlike any other social platform in existence"--Back cover.

Images flash across the screen. Photographs appear on walls, on cans, on the sides of buses, in magazines, books, newspapers, computers. We are bombarded with thousands of photographs each day: they are perhaps our major source of information, inspiration, and irritation. But what if you had to choose a single image out of that avalanche - one photograph that you couldn't stop thinking about, that changed your ideas, your aesthetics, your perception of reality? Seventy of the most interesting people of our era - both famous and unknown - were asked to choose that one image for Talking Pictures. The results are startling, profound, funny, and deeply revealing about our psychology and our times. From glossy fashion photography to devastating portraits of the Holocaust, from family snapshots to the shimmering artwork of master photographers such as Irving Penn, Andre Kertesz, and Imogen Cunningham, from Life magazine photo essays to a five-hundred-times magnification of the adhesive on a Post-it, the range of images in Talking Pictures reveals not only the strength of individual obsession and the power of history and imagination, but, more importantly, the peculiar truths about ourselves and our times that can be seen only in photographs.

A new, interactive approach to storytime, The Whole Book Approach was developed in conjunction with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and expert author Megan Dowd Lambert's graduate work in children's literature at Simmons College, offering a practical guide for reshaping storytime and getting kids to think with their eyes. Traditional storytime often offers a passive experience for kids, but the Whole Book approach asks the youngest of readers to ponder all aspects of a picture book and to use their critical thinking skills. Using classic examples, Megan asks kids to think about why the trim size of Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline is so generous, or why the typeset in David Wiesner's Caldecott winner,The Three Pigs, appears to twist around the page, or why books like Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express and Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar are printed landscape instead of portrait. The dynamic discussions that result from this shared reading style range from the profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an essential part of storytime.

In this unprecedented book, a gifted animal scientist who is also autistic, delivers a report on autism, written from her unique perspective. What emerges is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who bridges the gulf between her condition and our own, shedding light on the riddle of our common identity.