Books published by publisher David Goodin

On the first day of ChristmasMy true love gave to meA partridge in a pear tree.So begins one of the best-loved songs of the yuletide season. Its verses celebrate the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, when the three Magi presented the baby Jesus with gold, frankincense, and myrrh - the very first Christmas gifts.Drawing inspiration from centuries-old illuminated manuscripts, Caldecott honor-medalist Ilse Plume here creates an Italian Renaissance setting for the lyrics of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Twice a resident of Florence, her soul "forever touched by the rays of Tuscan sunlight," she has pored over numerous books of hours, bestiaries, and miniatures in search of imagery that might "convey the atmosphere, both tangible and intangible, of a particular time and place": a Florentine garden of the late fifteenth century. Plume's exquisite images, created in gouache and colored pencil, are rich in royal purple and gold, glowing vermilion and verdant green. In each, a beautiful, shy, young noblewoman with magnificent yellow tresses graciously receives a gift from her handsome Romeo: a brown partridge in a fruit-laden tree, two turtledoves in a golden cage ... and, finally, twelve lords a-leaping, in the form of twelve ornamental figures for the lady's Christmas tree.Plume writes in an artist's note that "I hope that the reader, in turning the pages of my book, will feel the sense of tranquility that he or she would have felt wandering through a Renaissance garden." Many readers will feel exactly that as they lose themselves in this quietly brilliant gem of bookmaking, a gift book that celebrates the joys of gift-giving.Includes sheet music and lyrics for the home musician.

Andrea Wisnewski makes the story of Little Red Riding Hood fresh and new in this ingeniously designed retelling. She has set her tale in the rural New England of the early nineteenth century, basing her interiors, architecture, and costumes on models found at Old Sturbridge Village, the living-history museum in western Massachusetts. The images, full of lovingly rendered period detail, are done in a medium Wisnewski has made her own: black-and-white prints made from intricate papercut designs (the results look much like woodcuts) that are then hand painted in gloriously vivid watercolor. This is surely to become the favorite American retelling of this classic tale from Grimm, the one about a stout-hearted little girl and the crafty, hungry wolf.

Of all of Longfellow's beloved poems (and there are many) none is so personal, so sunny, or so touching as this affectionate love letter to his three daughters, "grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, and Edith with the golden hair."Longfellow's happiest hours were spent writing on a cluttered desk by the south window of his beloved Craigie House, an imposing mansion still preserved on Cambridge's famous Brattle Street. It was here that most of the action takes place (except for his literary reference, and brief excursion, to the "Mouse-Tower on the Rhine"), here that his daughters come creeping down the stairs to beard the gentle, genial poet in his lair.Lang's luminous illustrations perfectly capture the happy atmosphere of that house, the author's affections for his daughters, and the painterly quality of his verse. This book for young readers presents one of the sweetest poems in the English language, her newly illustrated, beautifully presented, and now available to a new generation of readers.

The prose of Joan Aiken, her uncanny ability to tell a great story in language that is classically beautiful, her fascinating characters, riveting dialogue, and compelling action, should be better appreciated. Like her father, Conrad Aiken, she is adept at a number of forms but is a master of the short story. In this fetching collection of what she herself considers thirteen of her best tales, she can be scary (everyone knows her fascination with wolves and witches) and poetic (as in "Moonshine in the Mustard Pot" or "The Lilac in the Lake"). But whatever she sets her hand to, it reads like the work of a master. And set against the lovely and luminous pencil drawings of Pamela Johnson, we have a a baker's dozen of magical tales that will stay with readers long after the last page is turned and the lights turned out.

Here the celebrated picture-book artist Ilse Plume has imagined a fresh and very American setting for the lyrics a farmstead in the Pennsylvania Dutch country. A young Amish farmer takes a wife, the beautiful wife takes a child, the child takes a nurse, the nurse takes a dog, and with each successive verse the seasons turn, the farmer grows older, and his farm grows more prosperous, more lively, more richly populated. Ms. Plume's colored-pencil drawings are inspired by the folk art and decorative motifs of the Pennsylvania Dutch. They are as comforting as a star-patterned quilt, and as sweet, warm, and delightful as a homemade apple pie. Includes sheet music, lyrics, and directions for playing the game.

In this delightful fable by the team behind Henrietta and the Golden Eggs, a cantakerous duck and a grumpy owl square off over the right way to eat, the right time to sleep, and the right place to perch. Neither thinks the other is right about anything, and each clearly has a blind spot about the other's way of life. Johansen tells the story almost entirely through dialogue, giving lively energy to the petty bickering and narrow-mindedness that stand in the way of a woodland friendship.Bhend's intricate, telling ink drawings, show convincingly the value in each creature's point of view. Together, words and pictures reveal how respect for others can be the first step toward true friendship and real understanding. And, as any good fable should, it does it all without preaching its moral or losing its sense of humor.

Henrietta has big dreams for a little chicken: learning to sing, to swim, to fly, and, most important of all, to lay golden eggs. Even when her three thousand, three hundred thirty-three fellow inmates in the old henhouse laugh at her ambitions, Henrietta holds fast, practicing day and night. And while she's honing her talents, she's also getting ready to move on to the bigger, brighter world she can see through the tiny hole in the henhouse wall.Our heroine is no fool; she knows her limitations, but doesn't let them destroy her ambitions, any more than she lets the henhouse walls keep her a prisoner. And she's not above causing a little havoc along the way once the other three thousand, three hundred thirty-three chickens find her escape route, chaos reigns in the barnyard, by the pond, and among the wheat fields.Whether Henrietta achieves her dreams is debatable, but through her persistence and her resolute belief in herself, she does manage to change the lives of everyone in the henhouse for the better.This delightful fable is the first book by Hanna Johansen to be published in English. The spirited pen-and-ink illustrations by Käthi Bhend, printed in two colors, capture the henhouse denizens and their frenetic escapades down to the last feather.

The expression of love has occurred throughout the ages in innumerable fashions. Sonnets, soliloquies, songs; 'countless ways' is the true answer to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How do I love thee? Often, the simplest method is best, using the word itself: Love. In Animals Spell Love, gorgeously written and designed by David Cundy, sixteen critters from the farthest reaches of the animal kingdom help readers of all ages learn how to express the word love in sixteen languages from around the globe. From Czech to Amharic to Korean, and even including American Sign Language, children and adults will be delighted by the way Cundy shapes the letters into animals, and his brief primers, complete with pronunciation guide for every incarnation will help readers indulge in the languages of love.

Electra to the Rescue brings young readers the captivating story of Electra Havemeyer Webb and her adventures in "America's attic." Illustrated throughout with archival images and full-color photographs of items from the Shelburne collection, the book is a splendid introduction not only to a dynamic, unconventional woman but also to the rich, colorful world of Americana - the "visual vernacular" of our nation's people. Electra's enthusiasm was in many ways childlike, and she collected things that fire the imagination of children: rag dolls, cast-iron banks, embroidery samplers, miniature circuses even a working paddle-wheeler. Here is a book that perfectly embodies Electra's lifelong mission: to teach, in a unique and fun way, the American tradition of craftsmanship and the often sublime beauty of simple, everyday objects.

The Golden Ass has been a favorite of the private presses and illustrators since the invention of printing. Apuleius's comic masterpiece, originally composed in Latin in the second century a.d. traces the hilarious misadventures of a young man a tad too curious about magic for his own good. Hoping to change himself into an owl, he turns himself into a donkey instead, and in this guise is sold, stolen, or otherwise shunted from one master to the next. Along the way, he sees the underbelly of the sprawling Roman Empire, with its saints and villains, its venal merchants and greedy priests, until he's transformed back to human form via divine intervention. Not only a story of comic redemption, it is also a self-conscious, early example of storytelling that left an indelible mark on subsequent literature from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Boccaccio's Decameron, from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to Pinocchio.M.D.Usher's creative adaptation brings the tale alive for young readers of all ages. Classical scholars will admire its faithfulness and its clever innovations, while new readers young and old will enjoy its freshness and accessibility. Motley's lively, thoroughly contemporary drawings capture the boisterous, see-sawing plot, while wittily quoting any number of graphic predecessors. Here is illustration at its best, at once illuminating and expanding a text while bringing it squarely into a new century.