"A forgetful narrator tries to tell the tale of a knight's duel with a dragon, and remembers a very important thing along the way"--

This hilarious, Monty Python–style sendup of the classic knight-and-dragon story comes with jaunty rhymes and a fabulous twist ending Mischief! Mishaps! Dragons! Here's the story of an intrepid knight, only our narrator can't quite remember the details. Did that knight carry a sandwich, or a sword? Was he supposed to fight a cat, or a dragon? A hilarious and unpredictable adventure ensues, building through laugh-out-loud rhymes until, at last, the narrator remembers his own role at the center of all the marvelous madness. Fans of Jon Scieszka's The Stinky Cheese Man, David Ezra Stein's Interrupting Chicken, all of Patrick McDonnell's and Mac Barnett's picture books will love this zany read-aloud adventure.

Pilgrims travel thousands of miles to visit Salvation Mountain, a unique religious structure in the Southern California desert. Built by Leonard Knight (1931–2014), variously described as a modern-day prophet and an outsider artist, Salvation Mountain offers a message of divine love for humanity. In Middle of Nowhere Sara M. Patterson argues that Knight was a spiritual descendant of the early Christian desert ascetics who escaped to the desert in order to experience God more fully. Like his early Christian predecessors, Knight received visitors from all over the world who were seeking his wisdom. In Knight’s wisdom they found a critique of capitalism, a challenge to religious divisions, and a celebration of the common person. Recounting the pilgrims’ stories, Middle of Nowhere examines how Knight and the pilgrims constructed a sacred space, one that is now crumbling since the death of its creator.