The Search For Snout

SOMEWHERE SNOUT IS WAITING. Rod Allbright and his alien friends face the biggest mystery of their lives: Where in the wide, wide galaxy is their missing friend Snout, the Master of the Mental Arts? Their death-defying search for their friend leads them across the stars to the Mentat, the mysterious home of the Mental Masters. But the clues they uncover there only deepen the mystery -- and the danger. For Rod and his friends have stumbled into something far bigger and more dangerous than any of them had ever dreamed. At stake are their honor, their lives, their sanity, and (just possibly) the fate of the universe.

In this classic novel, now reissued with an exciting new look, Rod Allbright is off to Mentat to find his lost father and the mysteriously vanished crew member, Snout, the Master of the Mental Arts. Illustrations.

Following the successful repackaging of Bruce Coville’s My Teacher Is an Alien series, great new covers for another popular backlist series from the bestselling author. IT’S THE WEIRDEST ALIEN INVASION EVER! “I cannot tell a lie,” says Rod Allbright. And it’s the truth. Ask him a question and he’s bound to give you an honest answer. Which is why, when his teacher asks what happened to last night’s math assignment, Rod has to give the only answer he can: “Aliens ate my homework, Miss Maloney!” Of course, no one believes Rod this time, so they don’t bother to ask him why the aliens are here. It’s just as well, since he is sworn to silence about their secret mission and the fact that he has been drafted to help them!

Rod and his alien friends face danger and mystery as they travel the galaxy looking for their missing friend Snout, the Master of Mental Arts.

BRING BACK ROD'S BODY! Rod Allbright has found his father -- but lost his own body! It's been stolen by BKR, the most fiendish villain in the galaxy, which leaves Rod sharing the body of a one-eyed, blue alien named Seymour. Alas, when it comes time to go after BKR, Rod is forced to stay behind so that the little villain won't be able to get at the world-destroying secret locked in Rod's brain. Stranded on an alien planet with only Madame Pong, Seymour, Snout, and his annoying cousin Elspeth for company, Rod fumes at being left behind. Little does he know he's about to be drawn into a web of alien plots that will test his courage to the utmost -- and ultimately bring him face-to-face with BKR.

KIDNAPPED TO DIMENSION X! When Rod Allbright's cousin Elspeth arrived for a visit the day after school let out for the summer, Rod thought his vacation was ruined. But after they are kidnapped to Dimension X by a monster named Smorkus Flinders, Rod realizes that Elspeth is the least of his problems. After all, what's a bratty cousin compared to cranky monsters, furious aliens, and the discovery that you are stuck in the middle of an interstellar power play? And that doesn't begin to take into account the horrifying personal decision that Rod will be forced to make before his adventures are over.

Unlike other barnyard animals, which pull plows, give eggs or milk, or grow wool, a pig produces only one thing: meat. Incredibly efficient at converting almost any organic matter into nourishing, delectable protein, swine are nothing short of a gastronomic godsend—yet their flesh is banned in many cultures, and the animals themselves are maligned as filthy, lazy brutes. As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What’s more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril. Tracing the interplay of pig biology and human culture from Neolithic villages 10,000 years ago to modern industrial farms, Essig blends culinary and natural history to demonstrate the vast importance of the pig and the tragedy of its modern treatment at the hands of humans. Pork, Essig explains, has long been a staple of the human diet, prized in societies from Ancient Rome to dynastic China to the contemporary American South. Yet pigs’ ability to track down and eat a wide range of substances (some of them distinctly unpalatable to humans) and convert them into edible meat has also led people throughout history to demonize the entire species as craven and unclean. Today’s unconscionable system of factory farming, Essig explains, is only the latest instance of humans taking pigs for granted, and the most recent evidence of how both pigs and people suffer when our symbiotic relationship falls out of balance. An expansive, illuminating history of one of our most vital yet unsung food animals, Lesser Beasts turns a spotlight on the humble creature that, perhaps more than any other, has been a mainstay of civilization since its very beginnings—whether we like it or not.