New Releases by Tony Johnston

Neighbours, 20 years on Ramsay Street, is an entertaining and comprehensive history of this very popular Australian television series, a favourite with British TV audiences for two decades. Through its pages, fans will relive the highs and lows of their favourite families, individual characters and evergreen cast members. The book is highly pictorial and includes year-by-year plot synopses, previously unpublished photographs of cast and crew and other behind the scenes material that will enthral the more than three million UK fans of the show. It includes revealing first person recollections from some of the biggest stars, past and present, and enough facts to keep a dedicated trivia buff happy for months!

Publisher Description

The humorous pair from "Alien and Possum: Friends No Matter What" are still "hanging out" and they''re even better friends than before. Full color.

Eight-year-old Isabel hopes that her plan will spare her favorite tree, keep the butterflies coming, and provide an income for her poor family in Mexico.

Eddie''s best friend Sparky saves the day when Eddie''s prized collection of bugs is eaten by one of the exhibits at the school science fair.

When his mother is stolen from her tomb, Ramose, a 4000-year-old mummy, tries to find her in the Egyptian desert, aboard an ocean liner, and in New York City''s Metropolitan Museum, with the help of a cranky talking camel and some young American tourists.

Two good friends, Possum and Alien, spend time together celebrating their birthdays, discovering their uniqueness, and hanging out together in a tree.

A family sews their memories and love into a quilt for a child who is dying.

Brief, humorous rhymes describe animals both ordinary and unusual, including a rooster, a javelina, and a python.

Science Fiction Film examines one of the most enduring and popular genres of Hollywood cinema, suggesting how the science fiction film reflects attitudes toward science, technology, and reason as they have evolved in American culture over the course of the twentieth century. J. P. Telotte provides a survey of science fiction film criticism, emphasizing humanist, psychological, ideological, feminist, and postmodern critiques. He also sketches a history of the genre, from its earliest literary manifestations to the present, while touching on and comparing it to pulp fiction, early television science fiction, and Japanese anim. Telotte offers in-depth readings of three key films: Robocop, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and THX 1138, each of which typifies a particular form of science fiction fantasy. Challenging the boundaries usually seen between high and low culture, literature and film, Science Fiction Film reasserts the central role of fantasy in popular films, even those concerned with reason, science, and technology.

Pa and his family pack up their belongings and undertake the difficult journey to a new life in the West.

Rhyming text presents the many facets of the behavior and characteristics of cats.

Tony Johnston''s THE BARN OWLS recalls in quiet tones the memory of a barn that has stood alone in a wheat field for one hundred years at least. The owls have nested there and have hunted in the fields and circled in the night skies as time slowly slipped by. Every night, as the moon rises, a barn owl awakens and flies out to hunt. Feathered against the endless starry night, he swoops and sails to the darkened wheat field below and catches a mouse in his nimble talons. With outstretched wings, this barn owl returns to his barn nest and his hungry family, repeating the ageless ritual his ancestors have practiced here, in this barn, for at least one hundred years. Following the life cycle of the barn owl, this gentle poem evokes a sense of warm sunshine and envelopes readers with the memory of the scent of a wheat field.

Filled with hope, love, and warmth, this novel describes a Los Angeles far different from the place of movie stars and very poor people--a place where random acts of generosity improve the lives of the community.

Carlos tries to help his uncle, who is frustrated and angry at his inability to speak English, adjust to their new home in Los Angeles.

A child anticipates the arrival of an old man in red, smelling of pine, spreading crinkling presents late at night.

When a treasured teddy bear becomes so worn that it is mistaken for a monkey, a little girl and her mother decide to restore Bear to "his good old self."

A tough silent dog works in the desert, taking care of his goats.

Possum and Alien become friends and find that they have both similarities and differences.

In this book we learn about the various life cycles that result from the apple tree.

Describes a Mexican family preparing for and celebrating the Day of the Dead.

Presents forty-two poems--some funny, some poignant and philosophical--about dogs and their attributes, including their loyalty to people, their love of food and smells, and their varied appearances and personalities.

Sway to the sounds, reach for the colors, dance to the rhythms, and you will find your own Mexico in these poems in both English and Spanish. "Johnston regales the senses with idyllic scenes of streets lined with a rainbow of adobe houses, with the scent of roses growing in coffee cans and lilies in chile jars, and with the sounds of fields of corn shaking quietly in the warm wind. The overall impression is one of sunbaked cheerfulness, warmth, and color ably reinforced by Sierra''s pastel-tinted artwork." --The Horn Book

A pumpkin shimmering in the moonlight attracts the attention of an owl, a cat, crickets, a witch, and a group of boys and girls, who change it into a scary jack-o-lantern.

Poor Coyote! What’s he doing, hanging upside down in the farmer’s house, next to a pot of boiling water? How’d he wind up underneath the jicara tree, getting bonked by rock-hard fruit? Who tricked him into whacking a wasps’ nest with a stick? And why is he always howling at the moon? Because of Rabbit, that’s why! Longtime collaborators Tony Johnston and Tomie dePaola look to the folklore of Oaxaca, Mexico, for this nutty, naughty tale of trickery and hijinks. Written with sly humor and illustrated in the vibrant golds, blues, and reds of the Southwest, this is a story with a flavor as distinctive as chile peppers.

This version of the familiar story in which a mistreated step-child finds happiness with the "man" of her dreams is set in the old-growth forest and features Bigfoot characters.