Books published by publisher Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books

When you are little and you've learned to read, and you've learned to write a poem all by yourself, you'd like someone big to put his arm around you and say, "Wow! Wonderful! You are terrific!" Hamlet's pig family is more interested in supper than poetry. Sadly, he wanders off into the night woods with his book and his poems. And there Hamlet finds something powerfully surprising. Something good and grand and terrific.

Most tall tales are no taller than the teller. This one is taller than a tree - a great-great-grandaddy of a sycamore, just right for moving into, for settling down in and raising children and children and children. It's a story starting way back in time about one man and something magical happening. Was it his doing? Or nature's? With a storyteller's lilt and a folk-artist's eye, a writer and an illustrator have made something magical of an Appalachian legend.

In the Old Days There Were Songs Something is bothering Russel Susskit. He hates waking up to the sound of his father's coughing, the smell of diesel oil, the noise of snow machines starting up. Only Oogruk, the shaman who owns the last team of dogs in the village, understands Russel's longing for the old ways and the songs that celebrated them. But Oogruk cannot give Russel the answers he seeks; the old man can only prepare him for what he must do alone. Driven by a strange, powerful dream of a long-ago self and by a burning desire to find his own song, Russel takes Oogruk's dogs on an epic journey of self-discovery that will change his life forever.