Books published by publisher Green Monkey Publications

Published in 1926 to explosive acclaim, _The Sun Also Rises_ stands as perhaps the most impressive first novel ever written by an American writer. A roman à clef about a group of American and English expatriates on an excursion from Paris’s Left Bank to Pamplona for the July fiesta and its climactic bull fight, a journey from the center of a civilization spiritually bankrupted by the First World War to a vital, God-haunted world in which faith and honor have yet to lose their currency, the novel captured for the generation that would come to be called “Lost” the spirit of its age, and marked Ernest Hemingway as the preeminent writer of his time. “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose… The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. .. . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”– ECCLESIASTES

In FANTASTIC SPACEY RACY THING AND LOTS AND LOTS OF OTHER POEMS you'll find an exciting treasure trove of poems for reading, reciting and performing. This collection of seventy six poems is alive with highly entertaining characters, wierd and wonderful places and amazing situations. If you are looking for a good read, a poem to say in a drama competition, one to act out, a hugely enjoyable choral verse, a stimulus for improvisation, or poems for a theme programme and so much more, you'll find a great deal in here. Have fun! Lots of fun!

In this adventure, Thabo, who has a simply amazing imagination, goes on a long and dangerous journey. He is accompanied by the very beautiful Sharwa and a magical calabash with highly unusual abilities. Thabo and Sharwa need to face many enemies and weird happenings in their frantic efforts to save Sharwa's kidnapped mother and brother. Throughout their journey, Thabo and Sharwa bravely help each other, but their greatest challenge involves the mighty and terrible Zanga. And where exactly are Sharwa's beloved mother and brother being held captive? A vital clue appears in Sharwa's dreams, but it takes a while to find out exactly what it means.Do Thabo and Sharwa get there in time to save them? And how does the musical calabash help Thabo's imagination? Find out in this action-packed adventure.

'BIG in the Big Top’ sees Big Bruce the blue balloon, Linda the potato who loves to sing and likes everything pink, and Sylvester the carrot with long purple hair who likes dancing, going on a whole new adventure. Quite literally, they land right in the middle of a wonderfully exciting place that has plenty of action and moments of great danger. In the process they become super heroes and kind-hearted saviours. To tell you what takes place would spoil the story and I would not want to do that. Read just how kind and brave Linda the potato, Big Bruce the blue balloon and Sylvester that carrot are in ‘Big in the Big Top’. Though you do not need to have read them to enjoy ‘Big in the Big Top’, the other ‘Be Brave’ stories are: ‘Floating into Happiness’ (The little story with a big heart.), ‘Singing and Clapping’ and ‘THAT’S FANTASTIC!’ A note on how all the ‘Be Brave’ stories started: Andrew Pender-Smith wrote a short article about turning objects into characters and using them in a story. He chose a balloon, a carrot and a potato. He thinks they might have actually chosen him because they were suddenly right there in his brain and impatient for him to write down their first adventure, which is ‘Floating into Happiness’. The other stories soon followed as Linda the potato, Big Bruce the blue balloon and Sylvester the carrot had one amazing adventure after the other. I hope you will now join them in ‘BIG in the Big Top’ for lots of fun and a few moments in which they need to be really brave.

Big Bruce the blue balloon, Linda the potato who loves everything pink, and Sylvester the carrot with long purple hair, find themselves in the middle of the most incredible adventure. It is one that proves to be quite simply ‘out of this world’. To tell you where they actually go to, and what they see and do, would spoil it for you. What I can tell you is that they need to save hundreds of new friends from huge danger. This is the third lot of adventures they face together. The first were in ‘Floating into Happiness’ and the second lot of adventures was in ‘Singing and Clapping’. You do not need to have read these two earlier stories to understand and enjoy ‘THAT’S FANTASTIC!’, though I hope you do. Right now it’s time to find out why my favourite three characters called the place they unexpectedly visited ‘’Out of this world’’. Have fun. Andrew Pender-Smith

This is the second adventure Linda the potato and Sylvester the carrot go on with Big Bruce the balloon. Their first adventure was in ‘Floating into Happiness’ (The little story with a big heart.) You can find it on Amazon Kindle. Though I am sure you will enjoy learning about the earlier adventures of Linda, Sylvester and Big Bruce, you will be able to enjoy this story without having read ‘Floating into Happiness’. In ‘Singing and Clapping’, Linda the potato and Sylvester the carrot are happily floating through the sky on Big Bruce the balloon when Big Bruce starts to lose height. As they drop lower and lower in the sky, they get a big shock. They are about to land on an island full of large, mean crabs. Will they be able to stop themselves from landing on the island or will the ginormous crabs with huge, rattling pincers catch them?

What happens when Mr. Wells, the creepy owner of a pet shop, turns out to be really weird? Where do the mysterious fish in the lakes and ponds around the town actually come from? What is the connection to a local zoo? Can Simon and Roger race against time and rescue hundreds of people and their pets from great danger? All this gets them involved with fantastic happenings that are absolutely ‘out of this world’. This is an adventure that moves at a crazy pace, and Roger and Simon have to keep looking out for danger as they put a simply outrageous plan into terrifying action. Who wins and how do they manage to do so?Andrew Pender-Smith is a teacher of English and Drama. He has spent many years writing poetry for children, a great deal of which has been published and used in schools and studios in South Africa. In addition to SLURP! he has also written Hunting Zanga, which is a book for older children, and two novels, one under a pseudonym.

It was a titanic struggle, and the waters won. That is the extraordinary thing—the waters won. The water seems so soft, so yielding, so fluid, and the rocks seem so impregnable, so adamantine, so immutable. Yet the waters always win. The land makes no impression on the sea; but the sea grinds the land to powder. I know that the sea is often spoken of as the natural emblem of all that is fickle and changeful; but it is a pure illusion. There are, of course superficial variations of tone and tint and temper; but, as compared with the kaleidoscopic changes that overtake the land, the ocean is eternally and everywhere the same. It, and not the rocks, is the symbol of immutability. ‘Look at the sea!’ exclaims Max Pemberton, in Red Morn. ‘How I love it! I like to think that those great rolling waves will go leaping by a thousand years from now. There is never any change about the sea. You never come back to it and say, “How it’s changed!” or “Who’s been building here?” or “Where’s the old place I loved?” No; it is always the same. I suppose if one stood here for a million years the sea would not be different. You’re quite sure of it, and it never disappoints you.’ The land, on the contrary, is forever changing. Man is always working his transformations, and Nature is toiling to the same end.‘When the Romans came to England,’ says Frank Buckland, the naturalist, ‘Julius Caesar probably looked upon an outline of cliff very different from that which holds our gaze to-day. First there comes a sun-crack along the edge of the cliff; the rainwater gets into the crack; then comes the frost. The rain-water in freezing expands, and by degrees wedges off a great slice of chalk cliff; down this tumbles into the water; and Neptune sets his great waves to work to tidy up the mess.’ No man can know the veriest rudiments of geology without recognizing that it is the land, and not the sea, that is constantly changing. We may visit some historic battlefield to-day, and, finding it a network of bustling streets and crowded alleys, may hopelessly fail to repeople the scene with the battalions that wheeled and charged, wavered and rallied, there in the brave days of old. But when, from the deck of a steamer, I surveyed the blue and tossing waters off Cape Trafalgar, I knew that I was gazing upon the scene just as it presented itself to the eye of Nelson on the day of his immortal victory and glorious death more than a century ago.

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat. The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. "Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money." The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him. "No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them." "But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks." "I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted." "It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him." "I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal." "He hasn't much faith." "No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?" "Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home." "Why not?" the old man said. "Between fishermen." They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting. When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.