Astonishments

In the late nineteenth century, in a dot of a town called Westley, lives the smallest girl in the world. Josephine stands only twenty-two inches high and her parents charge gawkers a penny a piece to see her – until they realize that the headmistress of MacLaren Academy for Girls will pay even more. At the Academy Josephine is treated like a slave and is tormented by the fine young ladies who attend, until she takes five gold dollars and runs away. She finds a new life with R. J. Walters’ Museum of Earthly Astonishments. Among the other human curiosities in the Coney Island freak show, Josephine finds the family she has never known…and dangers greater than any she’d ever dreamed. This riveting novel of adventure and injustice, new in paperback, has received many honors, including selection as a finalist for the Canadian Library book of the Year for Children Award, and as a shortlisted title for the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award and the Red Cedar Book Award.

Essays on contemporary American life reprinted from various magazines.

"Kamieńska came of age during the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Poland and lived under the oppression of Communism. these experiences, and the sudden death of her husband, led her to engage with the Bible and the great religious thinkers of the twentieth century. Her poems record the struggles of a rational mind with religious faith, addressing loneliness and uncertainty in a direct, unsentimental manner. While exploring the meaning of loss and grief, and the yearning for love, Kamieńska's poetry still expresses a quiet humor and a pervasive sense of gratitude for human existence and for a myriad of creatures: hedgehogs, birds, and 'young leaves willing to open up to the sun'."--Dust jacket.

The Astonishment Tapes is the edited transcript of revealing autobiographical audiotapes recorded by the groundbreaking poet Robin Blaser, a founding member of the Berkeley contingent of the San Francisco Renaissance in New American Poetry.

One, two! one, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. Un deux, un deux, par le milieu, Le glaive vorpal fait pat-à-pan! La bête défaite, avec sa tête, Il rentre gallomphant. Eins, Zwei! Eins, Zwei! Und durch und durch Seins vorpals Schwert zerschniferschnück. Da blieb es todt! Er, Kopf in Hand, Geläumfig zog zurück! The late Victor Proetz was by vocation a visual artist who created many distinguished architectural and decorative designs. His favorite avocation, however, was to explore the possibilities (and impossibilities) of words, especially words in translation, and to share his discoveries. As Alastair Reid says in his foreword, "He turned words over in his head, he listened to them, he unraveled them, he looked them up, he played with them, he passed them on like presents, all with an unjadeable astonishment." What, Proetz wondered, do some of the familiar and not-so-familiar works of English and American literature sound like in French? In German? "How," he asked, "do you say 'Yankee Doodle' in French—if you can?" And "How do they say 'Hounyhnhnm' and 'Cheshire Cat' and things like that in German?" And, in either language, "How, in God's name, can you possibly say 'There she blows!'?" This book, unfortunately left incomplete on his death in 1966, contains many of his answers. They are given not only in the assembled texts and translations but also in his wry, curious, sometimes hilarious commentaries. None of it is scholarly in any formal, academic sense—"and yet," Reid reminds us, "his is precisely the kind of enthusiastic curiosity that gives scholarship its pointers."

Astonishment is a collection of twenty brief essays about "life in the slow lane." Author Jan Slepian comments on the astonishment of being old, the comfort and heartbreak of companionship in a retirement community, and the ridiculous moments in everyday life. Utterly delightful, entertaining and amusing. Illustrated by Laura Schreiber, who shares the author's wonderful tongue in cheek style.

“A poet celebrates the wonders of nature in a collection of essays that could almost serve as a coming-of-age memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance. “What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy. Praise for World of Wonders Barnes & Noble 2020 Book of the Year An NPR Best Book of 2020 An Esquire Best Book of 2020 A Publishers Weekly “Big Indie Book of Fall 2020” A BuzzFeed Best Book of Fall 2020 “Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year.” —NPR “A timely story about love, identity and belonging.” —New York Times Book Review “A truly wonderous essay collection.” —Roxane Gay, The Audacity

"Published in conjunction with the exhibition 'A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s,' Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, January 16-July 17, 2016; Grey Art Gallery, New York University, September 8-December 10, 2016; [and] Museum der Moderne Salzburg, March 4-June 18, 2017"--Title page verso.