Books with author PICKERING

Jason loves Scruffy his Teddy bear. He tells Scruffy all his secrets. One day Scruffy goes missing. Jason searches high and low with his mother but there was no sign of Scruffy. Jason has trouble sleeping without Scruffy. He reports Scruffy as a missing person to the police. His school friends help him make lost Teddy posters to paste all over town. A miracle happens on Christmas day.

Part travelogue, part psychological self-study, Sam Pickering's Edinburgh Days, or Doing What I Want to Do is an open invitation to be led on a walking tour of Scotland's capital as well as through the labyrinth of the guide's swerving moods and memories. Along the way readers discern as much from Pickering's sensual observations of Scottish lives and landmarks as they do about what befalls the curious mind of an intellectual removed from the relations and responsibilities that otherwise delineate his days. Pickering spent the winter and spring of 2004 on a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, making his return to the city after a forty-year absence. Edinburgh Days maps the transition from his life in Connecticut, defined by family, academic appointments, and the recognition of neighbors and avid acolytes, to a temporary existence on foreign soil that is at once unsettlingly isolating and curiously liberating. Torn between labeling himself a tourist or a sojourner, Pickering opts to define himself as an "urban spelunker" and embarks on daily explorations of the city's museums, bookshops, pubs, antique stores, monuments, neighborhoods, and graveyards. His ambling tours include such recognizable sites as Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Castle Rock, the Museum of Childhood, the National Gallery, the Writers' Museum, the Museum of the People, the Huntly House, the John Knox House, the Royal Botanic Garden, and the Edinburgh Zoo. The holdings of city and university libraries present Pickering with the opportunity to revisit the works of a host of writers, both renowned and obscure, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Samuel Smiles, John Buchan, Tobias Wolfe, Russell Hoban, Patrick White, Hilaire Belloc, and Van Wyck Brooks. Freed from his default settings yet never willing to fully immerse himself in the surrounding culture, Pickering serves as an adventurous participant-observer, cataloging and collecting his Edinburgh experiences in the expansive curio shop of his mind while monitoring how his extended absence from home and family affects him. "I have long been a traveler in little things," he muses, and it is his fascination with minutiae that infuses this collection of essays with the dynamic descriptions, quirky observations, and jesting interludes that bring the historic city to life on the page and simultaneously recall the very best of Pickering's idiosyncratic style.

Suzy was a mermaid. She was kidnapped by a pirate and taken to a far off land. She lived in the ocean near an island where a pirate lived. In her new place she made lots of friends with seahorses other mermaids and a handsome merman. She had some magical powers. which a fairy had given her and she was practicing using them . Sometimes she got the spell wrong and the fish started to swim upside down. They all wanted warning a before she started to practice. An amusing underwater tale with gorgeous pictures the children will love.

Benji and his friends wanted to explore the Secret Forest. Their parents told them that they were to stay away from the strange goings on in the forest, but unfortunately it only intrigued them more. Occasionally they had noticed that there were a lot of strange cats that lived in the forest and since they all liked cats they thought there was no harm in having a look. What could it do? It was something to do on the school holidays something they could tell their classmates about.

WHERE IS MY MOTHER? The little barn owl squawked.This is a story about; overcoming fear, friendship, caring, responsibility, forgiving, compassion, and being proud of who you are! It is an amusing tale about an owl chick called Hiccups who has a hiccup problem. He has unlikely foster parents; a pair of vultures. They are kind but not very helpful in teaching Hiccups how to hunt. They are different because they are scavengers and their food often makes Hiccups sick. Hiccups is reluctant to leave the nest because of his hiccups and wobbly flying. When his foster parents leave him abruptly, he realizes he is without survival skills. Good fortune comes Hiccups' way, when a farmer cares for him after Hiccups crashes into a barn. Butch the dog, Smiley the cat, and the chickens are also part of the story. He is a barn owl and barn owls belong on a farm.

Banny is a little boy cave man in prehistoric time. He just loves little dinosaurs and the mammoth elephants. He convinces his tribe only to hunt the big vicious killer dinosaurs and to make the small baby ones into pets. Banny ends up with so many they all love him and follow him around like a dog would. They also protect him from the large ones as well as being friends.

Daisy the milking cow is a happy, friendly, placid cow who loves to listen to the birds sing. One day, the silence is broken when trucks arrive next door and workers chop down the trees. They bring noisy machinery and build tall towers. There is a terrible loud sound that is never ending. The animals nerves become jangled. The bees and the birds leave. Jasmine the duck loses her feathers and becomes sick from her polluted pond. Daisy is so nervous her milk has bubbles. People arrive with banners to protest about the fracking. Daisy rallies all the animals to join in the protest and help the people. War is declared; their farms are threatened. Many farm animals, pigs, geese, goats, chickens, and naughty hawks join the protesters. The animals become a nuisance, climbing over the machinery and eating the workers lunches. The hawks bomb the workers with eggs. Together, people and animals successfully drive the frackers to a desert. This is a hilarious story of cooperation, determination, and caring for the community and the environment. Animals and people become the best of friends, and Daisy becomes a local hero.