New Releases by John Ciardi

A little boy who''s about to turn six years old is thinking about cake and toys and the best birthday gift of all, a puppy. Daddy tells him to look for a Wish-Tree, on the bark of which is engraved TAKECAREOFYOURWISH. The boy falls asleep as he ponders his father''s advice, and he dreams of a Wish-Tree, with a trunk as big as a house and so tall that the sky had to bump up to get over the top of it. A remarkable adventure follows, involving the limitless nature of wishing and responsibility. Written by the noted teacher and poet John Ciardi, this fanciful tale is filled with inventive, dreamlike drawings by Louis S. Glanzman, illustrator of the Pippi Longstocking books.

Defines unusual and interesting idiomatic words and phrases.

A witty collection of more than 550 limericks from two world-famous writers, and all of them just ''naughty'' enough to make this ''literary form'' hilarious fun!

Presents a collection of 450 poems that originally appeared in twenty individual volumes published between 1940 and 1993

Essays reveal the author''s thoughts on the painstaking craftmanship involved in the art of writing poetry.

An illustrated edition of the Ciardi poem about the pelican and his splendid beak. On board pages.

A collection of limericks about such characters as the Elephant Boy, the fast fiddler from Middletown, and the silly old skinflint named Quince.

Essays reveal the author''s thoughts on the painstaking craftmanship involved in the art of writing poetry

Poems deal with intimacy, memories, dreams, spring, mortality, jealousy, and shared lives.

Ciardi records his days and nights as a gunner on a B-29 in the South Pacific during four of the last terrible months of World War II.

‘Thirty-five imaginative and humorous poems for an adult and a child to read aloud together. . . . The entertaining verses are varied as to length, rhythm, and subject and are illustrated with harmoniously amusing drawings.’ —BL.

Examines the usage and origins of American language expressions.

Thirty-eight poems, mostly humorous, by the well-known poet. "Most children find Ciardi''s tartness invigorating; most adults find his writing deceptively casual, intrinsically sophisticated." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children''s Books

Poems deal with happiness, fragility, crime, education, parenthood, friendship, mortality, dreams, knowledge, and nature

Poems deal with a wide range of subjects including love, death, marriage, war, and nature

Tells the stories, legends, and facts behind the origins of common American expressions.

This single volume, blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy includes an introduction, maps of Dante''s Italy, Hell, Purgatory, Geocentric Universe, and political panorama of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, diagrams and notes providing the reader with invaluable guidance.Described as the "fifth gospel" because of its evangelical purpose, this spiritual autobiography creates a world in which reason and faith have transformed moral and social chaos into order. It is one of the most important works in the literature of Western Europe and is considered the greatest poemof the European Middle Ages.