On The High Wire

Irene grew up traveling around Germany with her family’s circus, surrounded by her loved ones and thrilling the crowds with her performance on the high wire...until one day, the audience boos. The Lorch family is Jewish, and the increasing power of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis has put them all in grave danger. When the circus is forced to shut down and Irene’s father is taken away, Irene and her mother must go into hiding with another circus. Every day is a frightening new kind of balancing act, caught between the desire to perform and the need to hide—even in plain sight.

One day, a mysterious stranger arrives at a boardinghouse of the widow Gateau- a sad-faced stranger, who keeps to himself. When the widow's daughter, Mirette, discovers him crossing the courtyard on air, she begs him to teach her how he does it. But Mirette doesn't know that the stranger was once the Great Bellini- master wire-walker. Or that Bellini has been stopped by a terrible fear. And it is she who must teach him courage once again. Emily Arnold McCully's sweeping watercolor paintings carry the reader over the rooftops of nineteenth-century Paris and into an elegant, beautiful world of acrobats, jugglers, mimes, actors, and one gallant, resourceful little girl.

“On the High Wire is fascinating to read. You will learn about the man, his work, his passion, his tenacity and lucidity” (Marcel Marceau) In this poetic handbook, written when he was just twenty-three, the world-famous high-wire artist Philippe Petit offers a window into the world of his craft. Petit masterfully explains how preparation and self-control contributed to such feats as walking between the towers of Notre Dame and the World Trade Center. Addressing such topics as the rigging of the wire, the walker’s first steps, his salute and exercises, and the work of other renowned high-wire artists, Petit offers us a book about the ecstasy of conquering our fears and reaching for the stars.

High-wire walker Zack has to solve a mysterious theft at the youth circus.

Prankster twins Edgar and Ellen think they have found kindred spirits when they join the circus to escape from their mysterious caretaker and the one-eyed creature Pet, but they soon discover that it is hard to tell friend from foe.

High Wire brings together Booker finalist writer Lloyd Jones and artist Euan Macleod. It is the first of a series of picture books written and made for grownups and designed to showcase leading New Zealand writers and artists working together in a collaborative and dynamic way. In High Wire the narrators playfully set out across the Tasman, literally on a high wire. Macleods striking drawings explore notions of home, and depict homeward thoughts and dreams. High Wire also enters a metaphysical place where art is made, a place where any ambitious art-making enterprise requires its participants to hold their nerve and not look down. Its a beautifully considered small book which richly rewards the reader and stretches the notion of what the book can do.

There has possibly never been a more daring business figure in Canada’s history than Ted Rogers. Hailed by some as a visionary with an incomparable insight, and equally loathed by others as a ruthless opportunist, Ted Rogers relentlessly conquered his rivals in three industries – radio, cable television and cellular telephony. High Wire Act is an unprecedented, in-depth analysis into how Ted Rogers, driven by the psychological need to restore his family's name, leveraged his stake in a small Toronto FM radio station and propelled it into a media and telecommunications behemoth worth over $23 billion. The many topics covered in the book include details on Rogers’... Unmatched ability to foresee the convergence of cable and telephony before anyone else did Insatiable appetite for debt and risk taking, and how he bet his company three times to carry out his vision Shrewd political and regulatory maneuvers that always kept him one step ahead of his competitors and political adversaries such as Bell and the Aspers Opportunistic acquisition of the Toronto Blue Jays High Wire Act is a fascinating and one-of-a-kind look into one of Canada’s most audacious and visionary business figures of the past fifty years. Every Canadian business reader will be enthralled by this enduring success story of Canada’s only true telecommunications mogul.

Ten-year-old Babo has grown up on an abandoned circus camp in a war-torn country, believing her circus-star parents will come back any day now. So she's none too happy when an American couple adopts her, calls her Betti, and takes her away from her fellow parentless friends, to a very confusing America. Betti misses her old home, and she's worried her real parents will never be able to find her. She's determined to run away, but as she gets to know her new parents, little sister, and even a new friend, Betti starts to feel like maybe she could be happy in her new American home.