Homesick Penguin

Penguin likes to visit his friend Duck. But he begins to miss some of the things at home. How can Duck cheer up his homesick friend? Concept: Empathy/Caring for others. Book features: Big Words and Big Questions; original illustrations.

Penguin likes to visit his friend Duck. But he begins to miss some of the things at home. How can Duck cheer up his homesick friend? Concept: Empathy/Caring for others. Book features: Big Words and Big Questions; original illustrations.

FBR: Homesick Penguin

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time "I can’t recall the last time I laughed this hard at a book. Simultaneously, I’m shocked and scandalized. She’s brilliant, this young woman."—David Sedaris Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel. And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE From Emma Hooper, acclaimed author of Etta and Otto and Russell and James, a People magazine “Pick of the Week,” comes a “haunting fable about the transformative power of hope” (Booklist, starred review) in a charming and mystical story of a family on the edge of extinction. Newfoundland, 1992. When all the fish vanish from the waters and the cod industry abruptly collapses, it's not long before the people begin to disappear from the town of Big Running as well. As residents are forced to leave the island in search of work, ten-year-old Finn Connor suddenly finds himself living in a ghost town. There's no school, no friends, and whole rows of houses stand abandoned. And then Finn's parents announce that they too must separate if their family is to survive. But Finn still has his sister, Cora, with whom he counts the dwindling boats on the coast at night, and Mrs. Callaghan, who teaches him the strange and ancient melodies of their native Ireland. That is until his sister disappears, and Finn must find a way of calling home the family and the life he has lost.

Roger Fanning is a junk magician. In Homesick, his second book, he repeatedly drains popular culture of its pop and fizz and transforms it into poems that are substantial, surprising, and evocative. In "Lord of the Jungle, Larva-Nude," Tarzan stands revealed as an adolescent, self-conscious about his lack of body hair. In "Besides Dracula's Castle a Black Pool"-a sly critique of capitalism's excess-Nosferatu becomes "a slender old bachelor with his hair slicked back." For all his humor and ingenuity, Fanning never loses touch with the ache that underlies our daily lives. "[Fanning] can keep life from being a long zombie convention. . . . Anyone not a bonehead should read this book." (Mary Karr)

Earth is sick from human-induced climate change, but this illness can be remedied if human beings remember their ancestral bond with the planetary home that sustains them. As humans experience a reawakening of love and respect for the web of life surrounding them, they will think sustainably and act sustainably.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove comes a powerful coming-of-age novel set in the American West. In Thalia, Texas, Larry McMurtry epitomizes small-town America and through characters reintroduced in Texasville and Duane’s Depressed, captures the ecstasy and heartbreak of adolescence. The Last Picture Show is one of Larry McMurtry's most memorable novels, and the basis for the enormously popular movie of the same name. Set in a small, dusty, Texas town, The Last Picture Show introduced the characters of Jacy, Duane, and Sonny: teenagers stumbling toward adulthood, discovering the beguiling mysteries of sex and the even more baffling mysteries of love. Populated by a wonderful cast of eccentrics and animated by McMurtry's wry and raucous humor, The Last Picture Show is a wild, heartbreaking, and poignant novel that resonates with the magical passion of youth.