At The Pond

Combining personal reminiscence with reflections on the history of the place over the years and through the seasons, for the first time this collection brings together writers' impressions of the Pond.

Geraldo Valério looks at the nature of true friendship and love in a stunning new wordless picture book. On a dull gray day, a boy puts his dog on a leash and they walk to a shimmering pond where snowy white swans swim freely. One of the swans invites the boy and dog for a ride. They climb on its back and sail into a stunningly beautiful landscape, dotted with wildflowers, spoonbills and ibises. Foxes, rabbits and deer appear in this paradise, then butterflies and even bigger, more beautiful flowers. The boy unleashes his dog on shore, and the dog bounds off to play. Now the boy wraps his arms around the swan’s neck — he has a new friend. But when he puts the leash on the swan, the sky turns stormy gray, the water becomes turbulent, and the other swans fly away. Both the boy and swan are miserable, until the boy realizes he must free his friend. When he drops the leash into the pond, warm color fills their world and they return to where the boy’s dog happily awaits him. Geraldo Valério, a master of wordless picture books, explores the nature of true friendship and love in his newest creation. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7 Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)

A stunning new picture book that serves as a spectacular meditation on the wonders of nature. From Werner Zimmermann, the bestselling and award-winning illlustrator of Pippin the Christmas Pig and A Porcupine in a Pine Tree, comes a new book featuring lush artwork and a peaceful tale about life in the wild. This lovely story details a day at the pond, and young readers will love counting the fish, and spotting other familiar natural beings. Throughout the story, the sun moves across the sky, and as it does, an entire ecosystem changes. The gorgeous paintings take centre stage, as children and adults alike, will delight in seeing the flora and fauna interact over the course of a single day. This timely book will encourage readers to notice the living, breathing world around them, and think about all of the beauty a day can bring.

A lyrical narration and breathtaking illustrations transport us to the world of a pond with all its sights, sounds, and pulsing life. The red-winged blackbird spreads his tail and sings his hello morning song; he has sung it since the bright and misty world began. When the soft pink of the dawn sun starts peeking over the pond, a new day has begun for all the animals who live in it and around its watery edges. The friendly duck family, the mysterious water striders, and the busy beaver are a few of the many fascinating and familiar animals included in this glowing poetic tribute to the lively ecosystem of the pond. A companion to In the Sea, In the Wild, On the Farm, and In the Woods, At the Pond brings readers to the pond’s sun-dappled shores, pairing David Elliott’s witty and enchanting animal poems with Amy Schimler-Safford’s luminous and evocative scenes of pond life. Back matter notes about the animals and plants will further captivate young nature lovers.

In this gorgeous companion to the acclaimed Over and Under the Snow and Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt, Kate Messner and Christopher Silas Neal bring to life a secret underwater world. In this book, readers will discover the plants and animals that make up the rich, interconnected ecosystem of a mountain pond. Over the pond, the water is a mirror, reflecting the sky. But under the pond is a hidden world of minnows darting, beavers diving, tadpoles growing. These and many other secrets are waiting to be discovered...over and under the pond.

Follow the adventures of a wriggly tadpole as it grows up and encounters enormous fish, fluffy ducklings and shimmering dragonflies before turning into a fully grown frog.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage • “[A] worship song to writers and readers.”—Oprah Daily For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.