Books published by publisher David R. Godine

Little Polly Flowerdew lives with her two maiden aunts, and she is absolutely sure that something special is going to happen this Christmas. She leaves her bedroom window open on Christmas Eve, just in case the three wise men decide to come visit. When she wakes up on Christmas morning, more than one miracle seems to have taken place.A moving, lyrical, and endearing chapter book, celebrating the magic as well as the mystery of Christmas, this is our first title by Elizabeth Goudge, mistress of the art of storytelling. Charmingly illustrated with ink drawings by Margot Tomes, it is a perfect Christmas read-aloud for young children and parents looking for something slightly sentimental and bracingly wholesome.

Jules is a Zert. He lives on DeZert Isle with his best friend Ned the Nail, and he's in love with a brick.Jules's life is happy and busy; he has plenty of friends, lots of games to play, and sausages to tempt the brick of his dreams. But there are certain things he detests: being hammered by SledgeHead, being swallowed by BigMouths, and being captured by SmotherHen (why does she keep trying to hatch him?)DeZert Isle offers a guided tour of Jules's marvelous world, an up-close and personal visit to the high life and occasional low points of a sun-drenched place where new friends are just around the corner and gifts are offered with an open heart and where there's always enough hippopotamelon juice to go around.Claude Ponti writes and illustrates children's books with an imagination, style, and wit we find especially captivating. His lively drawings invite us into a technicolor landscape full of excitement, and wonder. Each story, rich with puns and jokes, inhabits a delicious world of imaginary creatures, where toys spring to life and the sun just may bump into the moon. Like the best books for youngsters, DeZert Isle sees the world from a child's perspective; the improbable becomes the possible, and all things, even the most bizarre, have perfectly reasonable explanations even being in love with a brick.

The uproarious true adventures of a dog who doesn’t understand that he’s a dog ― and the boy who loved him. Funny, heartwarming, and true, this is a classic story of a very imaginative kid and one very unusual dog.Funny and poignant, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be is a lively portrait of an unorthodox childhood and an unforgettable friendship. Growing up in on the frontier of Saskatoon, Canada, the legendary adventurer and naturalist, Farley Mowat, received a gift from his mom: a dog she bought for four cents. Farley quickly named him “Mutt.”Mutt displayed skills at hunting and retrieving that were either pure genius or just plain crazy ― once going so far as to retrieve a plucked and trussed ruffed grouse from the grocer. Mutt also loved riding passenger in an open car wearing goggles and climbing both trees and ladders ― the perfect companion for a child with a love for animals and misadventures.Originally published for young people, this is a memoir by the author Never Cry Wolf that will delight dog lovers of all ages.

Susan Hills remarkable Woman in Black is as close a cross-section of Jane Austen and Stephen King as our era can provide. Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero Arthur Kipps, a promising young solicitor who has come north from London to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the deserted nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and trap, a childs scream in the fog, and most dreadfully and for Kipps most tragically The Woman in Black.

If you cut your detecting teeth on Crime and Puzzlement, you'll sink them into Crime and Puzzlement 2 with glee . . . Once again, You are the Detective! Alone (or was he?) in his locked room, Torrick the truckdiver succumbed, but to what, and why? Arthur, on his way downstairs for another drink, slipped, or did he? Siegfried Jones was obviously knifed on his way to the operating room, but by whom? Read the story. Ponder the picture. Seize the pencil in fist and solve it yourself! With the applause for Crime and Puzzlement still ringing in his ears, Lawrence Treat has conjured up an even more addictive and fiendishly delightful encore. Who finished Isabella Spiegel? Why did Mr. Grange topple dead from his saddle, and what was the catch in Mr. Fishhead's alibi? It's up to you, the armchair detective, to find out!

Here, at last is a book of "uncommon common sense" for young people by someone who has worked with them for thirty-five years. F. Washington Jarvis is one of the nation s most eminent educators, now in his twenty-eighth year as headmaster of Boston's Roxbury Latin School, the oldest school in continuous operation in North America.Jarvis s approach is anecdotal. "If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it is ten times as true when you are speaking to young teenagers. They are gripped by the story of how real people cope with real situations. They are interested when you share with them the concrete realities of your own life and experience, and they are almost always willing to listen to adults who actually believe in something, who actually stand for something."Jarvis's addresses, reprinted from his school's publications, have enjoyed something of a cult "underground" circulation among young people - and their parents and grandparents. Now his "top hits" have been brought together in a single volume for wider circulation.The author never talks down to his audience. He knows that - appearances to the contrary - students are asking the deepest questions, questions about whether life has meaning and purpose. He also knows that teenagers often find themselves caught by surprise in situations where they have to make tough decisions. And he believes that they are willing, even eager, to know how others have coped in similar situations.This is a book of deep and practical wisdom, one of our surprise "bestsellers" in hardcover, and now available in softcover to serve an even wider audience.Winner of the 2001 Christopher Award

Riptide may be an unusual name for a dog, but it is one that suits this one well. Rip is resolutely drawn to the salty ocean breeze, and the crash of the waves, and he simply cannot be discouraged even in summer when he is forbidden to follow his instincts and race miles along the coast. "No Dogs on Nauset Beach!" the sign reads, and the guards protest, calling for his young owner Zach to come retrieve him daily. Yet Rip will not be deterred, and after one summer storm, it is lucky that he is not. Rip is desperately needed for a rescue, and is forever after known as the nineteenth guard on the beach. Based on a real heroic dog, Frances Weller creates a legend in Riptide, weaving this canine s tale with Robert Blake's stunning oil illustrations. Riptide is captured in all his joyful energy amidst vivid panoramas of Cape Cod scenery, his story immortalized in this classic picture book that children will love and adults will love to read aloud for years to come.

Considering that much of his life was spent in poverty and ill health, it is something of a miracle that in only forty-six years George Orwell managed to publish ten books and two collections of essays. Here, in four fat volumes, is the best selection of his non-fiction available, a trove of letters, essays, reviews, and journalism that is breathtaking in its scope and eclectic passions. Orwell had something to say about just about everyone and everything. His letters to such luminaries as Julian Symons, Anthony Powell, Arthur Koestler, and Cyril Connolly are poignant and personal. His essays, covering everything from "English Cooking" to "Literature and Totalitarianism," are memorable, and his books reviews (Hitler's Mein Kampf, Mumford's Herman Melville, Miller's Black Spring, Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield to name just a few) are among the most lucid and intelligent ever written. From 1943 to l945, he wrote a regular column for the Tribune, a left wing weekly, entitled "As I Please." His observations about life in Britain during the war embraced everything from anti-American sentiment to the history of domestic appliances. A Nonpareil Book from David R. Godine.

"The most engaging and cleverest reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson yet." The Horn Book Follow Inspector Mantis, of brilliant mind, supersensitive antennae, and iron grip, and his faithful sidekick Doctor Hopper, an accomplished violinist and long jumper, as they solve five entomological cases puzzling the populace of Victorian Bugland. Joe Servello's color and pen-and-ink drawings bring exquisite detail to these tales: steam engines, deerstalkers, fog, and mandibles have never been more lovingly crosshatched.

Fields of Peace unites two remarkable talents in masterful volume. The text, written by the late Millen Brand, illuminates the history of the Pennsylvania German sects who were united in their rejection of infant baptism. He provides a sympathetic portrait of these fascinating people (often erroneously called "Pennsylvania Dutch") who emigrated from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, found a home in the sympathetic commonwealth of William Penn, and settled primarily in and around Lancaster County. Primarily Amish and Mennonites, these are quiet and modest people whose lives of determined simplicity and whose passion for land seem totally anomalous in modern America. They continue to live lives of determined simplicity and agrarian focus that have all but disappeared.The photographs by George Tice are some of the most compelling documentary imagery ever framed. In their unobtrusive vision, they capture the substance and the spirit of these self-reliant people. They also reflect over thirty years of gentle but persistent efforts to document their lives and record their customs. For George Tice, this has been a life work, and the breadth and generosity of his vision is manifest on every page.First published in 1970 and here entirely reset with 39 new images added and every photograph reshot for duotone reproduction (as well as a new foreword by Sue Bender and a new afterword by Tice), this is not a "revised edition" but an entirely new book; one that will surely take its place among the classic documentary works of this century.

From the distinguished author-illustrator of the maritime Tim series and winner of the Kate Greenaway medal comes this classic picture book that was recommended to our editor by a children s bookseller in Princeton, NJ. Please find out if Sarah and Simon and No Red Paint is still in print, she implored, and if it is not, please do all you can to publish it. With some difficulty we procured the book, which was indeed out of print, read it, and fell in love. Here is the story of two children, Sarah and Simon, whose father is a painter, and who live with their parents and baby brother in a big room called a Studio. Their father is talented, but unacknowledged, and so the family is poor, though very happy. When the story opens, the father is painting his masterpiece. Sarah and Simon are good little helpers and spend their time doing chores and visiting their favorite place in town: the old second-hand bookshop with its kind owner. Soon the masterpiece is almost finished, except for the bit of red paint needed to complete it, and even the dealer agrees to buy it if it were finished the next day. But there is no more red paint, and no more money left with which to buy it. So Sarah and Simon set out to help their father, and to their surprise, end up reconciling their family with an estranged uncle and restoring the family fortune as well all with the help and kind solicitation of the bookshop owner... Godine is proud to bring this classic with its detailed line drawings and delicate watercolor illustrations back into print, and our thanks to the good bookshop buyer who came to the rescue of this wonderful book.