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Garden Flora
by Noel Kingsbury
#UM2542
Hardcover, 368 pages; 2016
$40.00
When it comes to the plants in my yard, my
knowledge encompasses only their purchase
dates and watering and pruning schedules.
And yet the flowers and trees that create
the beautiful landscapes we know and love
have deep and varied “biographies,” more
than one hundred of which are explored in
this gorgeous and informative
“natural and
cultural history of the plants in your garden.”
Did you know that roses are more than 35
million years old? Or that bamboo is a grass, not a
tree? During the Heian period in Japan, people hosted
wisteria-growing parties, and hyacinths were once
used for making laundry starch and bookbinders’
glue. These fascinating facts and more fill this lovely
volume, richly illustrated with colorful botanical plates and
photographs.
Garden Flora
may not make you a better gardener, per se,
but it will certainly enhance your appreciation for the natural world.
(KG)
Members’ Price $34.00
BBS
In the Great Green Room
by Amy Gary
#UM2642
Hardcover, 288 pages; 2017
$26.99
You know Margaret Wise Brown as the author of such beloved
children’s books as
Goodnight Moon
and
The Runaway Bunny
, but you
may
not
realize just how much she shaped children’s literature as we
know it today. Born in Brooklyn in 1910, Brown grew up exploring
the fields and forests of bucolic Long Island, spinning stories for
her siblings and studying the animals and insects that roamed
near her home. Boarding school and college fueled her passion for
writing, but success eluded her…until the founder of Manhattan’s
Bureau of Educational Experiments hired her to write a new sort
of children’s textbook. So began an extraordinarily prolific career, during which Brown helped
to revolutionize and democratize children’s literature in America. The matter-of-fact tone of
biographer Amy Gary’s prose sometimes glosses over the more dramatic twists in Brown’s
tumultuous personal life, but there is no denying the extraordinary impact the golden-haired girl
from Long Island had—and continues to have—on generations of young readers.
(KG)
Round the World
with Nellie Bly
Game/Puzzle
#UM3052 $18.95
In 1889, twenty-five-
year-old newspaper
reporter Nellie Bly set
sail on an ambitious
journey, to travel around
the world alone…and
break the record set by
the protagonist of Jules Verne’s novel
Around the World in Eighty Days.
She succeeded, with eight
days to spare, and became a hero to women the world over. We’ve long admired the intrepid
reporter, so we were thrilled to find this reproduction of the 1890 board game
Round the World
with Nellie Bly
. Players ages 3 to 103 will get a kick out of this vintage game, which traces Bly’s
extraordinary 72-day journey around the globe. But there is
one
catch: Before you can play the
game, you must solve a 300-piece puzzle to build the game board! The puzzle measures 18"x24"
when complete and includes four game pieces, one die, and an instruction booklet enriched with
a brief biography of Nellie Bly. Bon voyage!
Members’ Price $22.94
BBS
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