Starbright

Driven by the desire to help her three-year-old daughter settle down into a peaceful night's sleep, Maureen Garth devised meditations that would help her daughter feel secure and cared for. Starbright is a collection of the stories Garth created as her child grew older. these innovative meditations are simple visualisations parents and teachers can read to their children to help them sleep, develop concentration, waken creativity, and learn to quiet themselves.

Shows photographs of babies conveying their emotions through facial expressions.

File note: the advent of sickness is always accompanied by the arrival of a possible cure. There will be born, of human beauty, a child without fear, known as the Bright Star... Dr Jacob Tietz People all over Claircomb are succumbing to a strange illness, thought to be a deadly new virus. But this is no virus - it is a life form so advanced that its intelligence makes a computer look like counting beads. It knows the prophecy, too, and it is hunting down the Bright Star - to destroy her forever. Can Starbright Connor, the town's tomboy and giggly dare-devil, be the chosen one who will save her beloved family? A thriller from the award-winning author of The Silent One, the Shadrach trilogy and Ticket to the Sky Dance.

The only thing we can be absolutely sure of is our own consciousness. But what is consciousness? Is it a property that is unique to humans or do we share it with other lifeforms? Or is the philosophical doctrine of panpsychism correct—are stars and the entire universe conscious in some sense? Early chapters in this book examine the prehistory, mythology, and history of this topic. Arguments are presented from the viewpoints of shamans, philosophers, poets, quantum physicists, and novelists. A simple “toy” model of panpsychism is then presented, in which a universal field of proto- consciousness interacts with molecular bonds via the vacuum fluctuation pressure of the Casimir Effect. It is shown how this model is in congruence with an anomaly in stellar motions called “Parenago’s Discontinuity.” Cool, redder, less massive stars such as the Sun apparently circle the center of the galaxy faster than their hotter, bluer, more massive sisters. This discontinuity occurs at the point in the stellar distribution where molecules begin to appear in stellar spectra. As described in the first edition of this book, observations of main sequence stars out to ~260 light years and giant stars out to >1,000 light years—using the ESA Hipparcos space observatory—support the reality and non-locality of Parenago’s Discontinuity. Local, more conventional explanations for this phenomenon are not supported by observations of other galaxies and the spiral arms of the Milky Way. Since 2014, the new ESA Gaia space observatory has been obtaining kinematics and position data for ~1 billion stars in our galaxy. The first Gaia data release in 2016 has been used in 2018 by a Russian team to demonstrate Parenago’s Discontinuity for a large stellar sample out to ~500 light years from the Sun. These observations support the hypothesis that anomalistic stellar motion is due to stellar volition, as described by philosopher/author Olaf Stapledon in his classic novel Star Maker, as previously discussed by the author in the peer-reviewed Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS). In light of the new Gaia observations and work by other researchers, it is not impossible that panpsychism is emerging from the realm of philosophy as a new subdivision of observational astronomy. Simple models of universal proto-consciousness may be subject to inductive tests using current and future space observatories. A special feature of this book is the chapter frontispiece art by C Bangs.

There’s no better way for children to grow healthy bodies and curious minds than by getting outside and playing! Let’s Play Outside features bright photos of diverse children in motion to inspire young ones everywhere to get outside and play in their surroundings. Additional resources include suggested activities, play locations, safety tips, and rules.

Little ones will soon settle down for bedtime just like Little Sea Otter as she snuggles with Mama in a cozy bed of sea kelp and calls good night to all her ocean friends—sea lions, sea snails, seagulls, seals, and sea urchins. They all reply. The gently rocking seas and Mama's loving arms soon send Little Sea Otter to dreamland.

New York Times bestselling author Catherine Anderson presents an emotionally compelling story about the hard as nails, fiercely loyal Harrigan family. Faking her own death to escape her murderous husband, Rainie Hall takes refuge in the rural community of Crystal Falls, Oregon, where she starts work as a bookkeeper on a horse ranch run by rugged, dangerously good-looking Parker Harrigan. Parker’s word is his honor, and he can’t tolerate liars. When he realizes that Rainie hasn’t been truthful with him, he’s furious, then concerned. Clearly she’s a woman in trouble and if she’ll trust him, he’ll do right by her. But as their attraction blossoms into a deep and thrilling passion, Rainie fears that her mere presence could jeopardize everything the Harrigan family holds dear....

Narrative strategies for vast fictional worlds across a variety of media, from World of Warcraft to The Wire. The ever-expanding capacities of computing offer new narrative possibilities for virtual worlds. Yet vast narratives—featuring an ongoing and intricately developed storyline, many characters, and multiple settings—did not originate with, and are not limited to, Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Marvel's Spiderman, and the complex stories of such television shows as Dr. Who, The Sopranos, and Lost all present vast fictional worlds. Third Person explores strategies of vast narrative across a variety of media, including video games, television, literature, comic books, tabletop games, and digital art. The contributors—media and television scholars, novelists, comic creators, game designers, and others—investigate such issues as continuity, canonicity, interactivity, fan fiction, technological innovation, and cross-media phenomena. Chapters examine a range of topics, including storytelling in a multiplayer environment; narrative techniques for a 3,000,000-page novel; continuity (or the impossibility of it) in Doctor Who; managing multiple intertwined narratives in superhero comics; the spatial experience of the Final Fantasy role-playing games; World of Warcraft adventure texts created by designers and fans; and the serial storytelling of The Wire. Taken together, the multidisciplinary conversations in Third Person, along with Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin's earlier collections First Person and Second Person, offer essential insights into how fictions are constructed and maintained in very different forms of media at the beginning of the twenty-first century.