Books with author Alex Beard

The Heights lies between Martinsville and Collinsville, Virginia. Technically a Martinsville neighborhood, the Heights seems to belong to neither town, at least as far as young Jim Stevens is concerned. For Jim, the Heights is just part of a rough factory town with little going for it.Despite good friends and a loving family, Jim knows he wants out. On the streets of the Heights, a kid’s reputation—and safety—is only as good as his fists. Jim has seen kids in the sixth grade fight their way into the emergency room, and one kid is an animal torturer and straight-up pyromaniac. No, the Heights is not where Jim plans to spend his life.While plotting his escape, Jim lives a secret life filled with flights of imagination and childhood adventure while around him, the major events of the 1950s and 1960s unfold. And when an opportunity to escape the Heights presents itself, Jim is eager to take it, even if it isn’t remotely legal. Based on the author’s own childhood, The Heights tells the tale of a young man so desperate for something more he doesn’t realize what he has, until it is too late.

The monkeys that live at the foot of the Mbuno Hills in Africa love to play games. One day while playing Elephant in the Middle with their large friend, their ball, a nut from an ancient baobab tree, rolls into a cave where the troop of monkeys never go. It is dark inside and possibly filled with horrible beasts! When they venture in, they discover instead that the walls are covered with paintings of animals. Elephant shows the monkeys how they too can create artwork using their hands and feet as “stamps” and mud as their medium. But things are never quite as easy as they seem. Artist Alex Beard brings his love of exploration and painting to life with his signature animals in this charming tale about creativity and overcoming fears.

Highlighting the work of well-known artist, illustrator, and puzzle designer Alex Beard, this colourful 16-month calendar is poised to become a perennial bestseller. Beard's delightful paintings - filled with an intricate, almost mathematical dance of whimsical animals, feathers, and figures - will pique the imaginations of children and adults alike throughout the New Year.

Black Rhino and Tickbird want to know why Crocodile is crying. They search the African landscape for other animals who might know the answer. The few they find suggest Crocodile is sad that so many of them face extinction. But when Black Rhino finally asks Crocodile why he’s crying, he learns an interesting fact: Crocodile isn’t really crying; he’s wetting his eyes in the hot, dry sun like all crocodiles do. And Black Rhino learns something else about crocodiles: they can have you for lunch if you don’t watch out!Including a photo of each animal featured in the story along with a description of its current status on the list of endangered species, this picture book is a great educational tool. A share of the proceeds from sales of the book will go to the Shompole Community Trust, a land and animal reserve in Kenya.Praise for Crocodile's Tears"Beard’s illustrations are breathtakingly beautiful in their simplicity. The rhythm of Beard’s writing keeps the reader engaged, and will lend itself to being read aloud easily...this book is a must-have for any “green” collection."–Library Media Connection

Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution-one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America. McLean "alumni" include Olmsted himself, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and Ray Charles, as well as (more secretly) other notables from among the rich and famous. In its "golden age," McLean provided as genteel an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean-despite its affiliation with Harvard University-is struggling to stay afloat. Gracefully Insane, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, is a fascinating and emotional biography of McLean Hospital from its founding in 1817 through today. It is filled with stories about patients and doctors: the Ralph Waldo Emerson protégé whose brilliance disappeared along with his madness; Anne Sexton's poetry seminar, and many more. The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness, of approaches to treatment, and of the economic pressures that are making McLean-and other institutions like it-relics of a bygone age. This is a compelling and often oddly poignant reading for fans of books like Plath's The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted (both inspired by their author's stays at McLean) and for anyone interested in the history of medicine or psychotherapy, or the social history of New England.

The Heights lies between Martinsville and Collinsville, Virginia. Technically a Martinsville neighborhood, the Heights seems to belong to neither town, at least as far as young Jim Stevens is concerned. For Jim, the Heights is just part of a rough factory town with little going for it. Despite good friends and a loving family, Jim knows he wants out. On the streets of the Heights, a kid’s reputation—and safety—is only as good as his fists. Jim has seen kids in the sixth grade fight their way into the emergency room, and one kid is an animal torturer and straight-up pyromaniac. No, the Heights is not where Jim plans to spend his life. While plotting his escape, Jim lives a secret life filled with flights of imagination and childhood adventure while around him, the major events of the 1950s and 1960s unfold. And when an opportunity to escape the Heights presents itself, Jim is eager to take it, even if it isn’t remotely legal. Based on the author’s own childhood, The Heights tells the tale of a young man so desperate for something more he doesn’t realize what he has, until it is too late.