New Releases by Russell Hoban

Celebrate Christmas with the inspiration for the beloved Jim Henson film. In 1977, when Jim Henson debuted the now-classic film Emmet Otter''s Jug-Band Christmas, few knew it was based on a story written and illustrated by Russell and Lillian Hoban, creators of Bread and Jam for Frances and other treasured children''s books. With an enduring score by the great Paul Williams, the movie remains a holiday tradition in homes across North America. Here is the book that started it all, a beautiful gift edition that will thrill Muppets fans young and old. Inspired by the classic tale "The Gift of the Magi," the story begins in a poor country cottage, as Emmet Otter dreams of buying Ma a piano for Christmas, while Ma dreams of buying Emmet a guitar. When a village talent contest is announced, both imagine their dreams coming true. But what they don''t imagine finding is their real reward — the power of love, family, and hope in hard times. It is a story that reaches into a reader''s heart and reminds us all that fortune favors the brave. A Bank Street College of Education Best Children''s Book of the Year "[A] welcome reissue of the Hobans'' 1971 story . . . Colorful illustrations of the close-knit animal community contain plenty of warmth." —The Horn Book

"Like the fantasies of Tolkien, Thurber, E. B. White, The Mouse and His Child is filled with symbolism and satire, violence and vengeance, tears and laughter." -- The New York Times The images stay with you long after the book is done: the toy mouse and his father, on a journey together joined hand in hand; Manny Rat, the nefarious lord of the junkyard, stalking the toy mice for their clockwork parts; Uncle Frog, spouting wisdom and nonsense from within a glove; and the Bonzo Dog Food dog, repeating himself endlessly on a label, fading away to the last visible dog...Russell Hoban''s novel is many things: a stirring adventure story, a sharp-witted comedy, and the moving tale of a father and son struggling to return to a state of grace.Called one of the great works of children''s literature of the twentieth century -- but with an audience that spans ages and times -- The Mouse and His Child has been lovingly re-illustrated by Caldecott Medalist David Small for a new generation and a new millennium.

Russell Hoban’s moving, unflinching tale of a boy who finds bravery during illness is reimagined in graphic-novel format with art by Alexis Deacon. Asleep in his hospital bed, Jim dreams of a great lion with white teeth and amber eyes. This lion is Jim’s finder. According to Nurse Bami, everyone has a finder, a creature who comes looking for us when we are lost. But when the time comes for Jim’s operation, will his lion be able to find him and bring him safely home? Dramatically reimagined as a graphic novel by award-winning illustrator Alexis Deacon, with the inclusion of powerful dream sequences, Russell Hoban’s tale of a boy’s search for strength and courage will resonate with any child dealing with adversity.

Two lonely Londoners bond over a plan to free the sea turtles at the city zoo in this touching novel from a cult-favorite author who has drawn comparisons to J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut. A wise and touching classic that “crackles with witty detail, mordant intelligence and self-deprecating irony,” from the author of Riddley Walker (Time) Life in a city can be atomizing, isolating. And it certainly is for William G. and Neaera H., the strangers at the center of Russell Hoban’s surprisingly heartwarming novel Turtle Diary. William, a clerk at a used bookstore, lives in a rooming house after a divorce that has left him without home or family. Neaera is a successful writer of children’s books, who, in her own estimation, “looks like the sort of spinster who doesn’t keep cats and is not a vegetarian. Looks…like a man’s woman who hasn’t got a man.” Entirely unknown to each other, they are both drawn to the turtle tank at the London Zoo with “minds full of turtle thoughts,” wondering how the turtles might be freed. And then comes the day when Neaera walks into William’s bookstore, and together they form an unlikely partnership to make what seemed a crazy dream become a reality.

Recently widowed and increasingly lonely, Roswell Clark''s life had arrived at the point when he felt he needed a tattoo. His ideal image was that of a bat featured on an eighteenth-century bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum, but strangely, on a visit to the museum, he encountered a woman called Sarah Varley, who was clearly compelled by the same bat. What did it mean? Sarah dealt in antiques and Roswell soon ran into her stalls in Chelsea and Covent Garden. His calling, which grew out of an obsession with crash-test dummies, was a bit harder to explain. It led from the invention of a popular children''s toy to lucrative commissions from a Parisian sybarite for wooden working models with very adult moving parts. Both Roswell and Sarah had lost their spouses and were still grieving in their different ways. And then Christ started putting a hand in - literally - when a fragment of an ancient crucifix fetched up in one of Sarah''s antique lots. Between some compulsion conveyed by this hand and Sarah''s natural urge to make improvements in people, Roswell''s work took a surprising new turn... Russell Hoban''s delicious new novel combines much about art - traditional and conceptual - with new angles on Christ, crash-test dummies, antiques, pornography and a charming tale of romance.

An inexplicable message flashed onto the screen of his Apple II computer at 3 a.m. heralds the beginning of a startling quest for frustrated author Herman Orff. Taking up the offer of a cure for writer''s block leads him ''to those places in your head that you can''t get to on your own'' - and plunges him into a semi-dreamland inhabited by a bizarre combination of characters from myth and reality: the talking head of Orpheus; a lost love; the young girl of Vermeer''s famous portrait - and a frequency of Medusas.

Angelica''s Grotto is a pornographic website into which seventy-two-year-old art historian Harold Klein wanders one evening. Klein, a walking catalogue of infirmities, known to medical consultants as ''he who declines to hop the twig'', may not be up to much physically but there''s a lot of sex going on in his head. ''You''re a tiger from the neck up, Professor,'' says Melissa, the brains behind the website, when at last Klein faces the object of his desire. Harold first visits Angelica''s Grotto after losing his ''inner voice'', that censoring mechanism that keeps us from blurting out the first thing that pops into our heads and finding ourselves in Casualty as a result of it. Harold consults a therapist about this new lack of mental privacy and also has one-to-one onscreen dialogue in the Grotto. ''If I had an inner voice I wouldn''t be telling you all this,'' he explains to the as-yet-unmet Melissa. But when the flesh-and-blood Melissa and her large and well-hung colleague Leslie enter his life he finds it''s good to keep the angina medicine at the ready. Harold Klein''s odyssey takes him not only through erogenous zones but into various corners of the London art world, down the underground and up the buses.

‘Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.’ Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

Re-issued to coincide with the centenary of Messiaen''s birth, The Messiaen Companion was the first major study to appear after the composer''s death in April 1992. It was the first book to offer both a complete survey of Messiaen''s extraordinary achievements and a comprehensive guide to his music, also examining in detail the enduring inspiration which Messiaen derived from his religious faith and from his lifelong passion for ornithology and the natural world. The contributors, all of whom have made a special study of the composer, include two biographers of Messiaen and a number of the foremost interpreters of his music. Messiaen''s influential teaching is recalled in essays by three of his pupils (Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, and Peter Hill), and the composer is also remembered in a remarkable and moving contribution from his widow and devoted musical companion, the pianist Yvonne Loriod.

With a new addition to the family, Frances is feeling left out. So Frances decides to run away—but not too far! This new edition of Russell and Lillian Hoban’s beloved classic is perfect for beginning readers.

Frances doesn''t think her little sister, Gloria, can be her friend. But when Frances''s friend Albert has a no-girls baseball game, Frances shows him a thing or two about friendship—and a thing or two about what girls can do. Along the way, Frances discovers that sisters can indeed be friends . . . maybe even best friends.

The latest whirlwind adventure from Russell Hoban, ''by far the most imaginative novelist in Britain'' (Independent)

A novel about blood thirsty 1950s movie cowgirls with hallucinogenic toadsucking properties: this is seductive, fine fiction at the cutting edge of mayhem.

Falling head over heels for the spirited Lola, who shares his musical tastes and complements him on every level, Max nevertheless pursues a secret second relationship when the unattainable high-school homecoming queen he loved years earlier reenters his life.

''Russell Hoban is one of our greatest, timeless novelists'' The Times

A Russell Hoban Omnibus presents four of Hoban''s novels: the haunting The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz; the popular Turtle Diary (which was made into a movie starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley); Pilgermann; and his newest work, Mr Rinyo-Clacton''s Offer, a brilliant Faustian comedy published here for the first time in the United States. Book jacket.

Washed up on the beach during a storm, the sea-thing child clings fearfully to the shore until he discovers his true destiny. Full-color illustrations.

After receiving a blow to the head from a bully at school and a mysterious puzzle from a melancholy magician, twelve-year-old Nick enters a strange and frightening reality that changes his life.

La manecilla larga del reloj senala las 12 y la pequena las 7. Es la hora de acostarse de Francisca. Pero antes tiene que beber un vaso de leche y recibir un beso de papa y otro de mama.

Famed for her many adventures, Frances made her debut with this title over thirty years ago. In this first Frances book, the little badger adroitly delays her bedtime with requests for kisses and milk, and concerns over tigers and giants and things going bump in the night. Long a favorite for the gentle humor of its familiar going to bed ritual, Bedtime for Frances is at last available with the warmth of full color enriching Garth Williams’s original nuanced and touching art. ‘Here is the coziest, most beguiling bedtime story in many a day.’—Kirkus Reviews (pointer).

When a baby sister arrives, Frances the beloved badger finds a charming way to prove her own importance. Glynis Johns is the perfect voice for Frances.

Frances decides she likes to eat only bread and jam at every meal, until, to her surprise, her parents grant her wish.

One day Thelma tricks Frances into buying her old plastic tea set. Thelma says there are no backsies on the bargain. Can Frances come up with a plan that will change her friend''s mind? Outstanding Children''s Books of 1970 (NYT)

The Little Brute Family members eat gravel for breakfast, never say "please" or "thank you" and kick, yell, punch, and shove. But one day everything changes when Baby Brute finds a "lost good feeling" wandering around in a field of daisies and brings it home. Full-color illustrations. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The Mole family learns about Christmas and builds a chimney so that Santa Claus will be able to visit them.

Harry meets a rag-and-bone man one hot summer afternoon and follows him through the rain door for a fantastic adventure with rain, thunder, and lightning.

A little boy loses all the fights he has with his best friend until his father gives him some good advice.

After Pilgermann, a German Jew in the year 1096, ravishes the tax collector''s wife, an angry Christian mob retaliates by brutally castrating him. Bleeding and left for dead, Pilgermann experiences a vision of Jesus Christ and resolves to set out on a journey to the Holy Land. Along the way, he will be joined by a motley group of companions: the headless corpse of the tax collector, a lascivious talking pig, a dead bear, and Death himself. In the story of Pilgermann''s quest, by turns funny and nightmarish, Russell Hoban is at his most original and most imaginative.