Brunhilda the witch loves making trouble. Each morning, she wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, puts on her ugliest dress, eats spider mush for breakfast, and brushes her teeth with candy. Then she looks in the mirror and happily observes, “You are utterly repulsive!” As soon as she leaves the house, she begins to spread her misery. No one is safe from her rainy-day spells or her wart-growing charms! But one night, Brunhilda’s cat makes trouble instead. When Brunhilda wakes up that next morning, she is on the right side of the bed. All she can find to wear is a fluffy pink ball gown. And her spider mush is replaced with oatmeal; her candy replaced by toothpaste! The day has gone completely backwards. What will happen when Brunhilda casts her all-time favorite misery-inducing spells? This is a silly story about how sometimes being nice can be more rewarding than being mean. Brunhilda may decide to keep some of her warts in the end, but she’s a changed witch. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed just doesn’t work for her anymore. A picture book for 3 to 6 year olds, this book teaches kids that being kind and nice to people actually makes you feel better than playing tricks and being mean. A good lesson for young children, teachers and parents will enjoy the message while kids will be enthralled with the bright, colorful illustrations and the silly, warty witch. Sky Pony Press, with our Good Books, Racehorse and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of books for young readers—picture books for small children, chapter books, books for middle grade readers, and novels for young adults. Our list includes bestsellers for children who love to play Minecraft; stories told with LEGO bricks; books that teach lessons about tolerance, patience, and the environment, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

An album which distilled a genre from the musical, cultural, and social ether, Portishead's Dummy was such a complete artistic achievement that its ubiquitous successes threatened to exhaust its own potential. RJ Wheaton offers an impressionistic investigation of Dummy that imitates the cumulative structure of the album itself, piecing together interviews, impressions of time and place, cultural criticism, and a thorough exploration of the music itself. The approach focuses as much on the reception and response that Dummy engendered as it does on the original production of the album. How is that so many people have, collectively, made a quintessential headphone album into a nightclub album? How have they made the product of a niche local scene into an international success? This is the story of how an innovative, experimental album became the iconic sound for the better part of a decade; and an aesthetic template for the experience of music in the digital age.

Last year's runaway bestseller is now revised and updated for the latest version of DOS. It's bigger and dumber than ever! Everybody's favorite computer book author takes an intimidating and boring subject like DOS and shows you that it's okay to laugh as you learn. With over 500,000 in print, the original edition has sold and sold and sold--over nine months atop the bestseller lists in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.

From his birth in 1954, David Patten was unbearably sensitive to the world around him. Unable to concentrate or learn the basics of reading and writing, he was punished and pathologized, labeled lazy, stupid, and a troublemaker. David was finally diagnosed with dyslexia, among other elements in the autism spectrum. But at a time when these disorders were little understood, David was unable to get the help he needed, and he gradually fell into the dark underbelly of American life. David's struggle to survive and find a life worth living included time in a mental institution for attempted suicide at fourteen, and life as a drug dealer in Chicago's criminal underworld. Eventually, David's exceptional abilities in abstract and analytical thinking led him into the technology field, and a lucrative six-figure career as a crisis manager and trouble shooter. His story of gradually transforming disabilities into skills, hopelessness into freedom is a testament to the power of the human spirit.

A picture book designed to help children who are struggling to give up their dummies.

Carin Bramsen's beloved Hey, Duck! characters return in this humorous and heartwarming picture book about friendship. Now that Cat has learned to play games that Duck enjoys, it's Duck's turn to try things that Cat likes. However, climbing trees and swatting at leaves prove to be a bit tricky for flat-footed Duck. What's an unlikely pair of friends to do?

From the sexcapades of Bill Clinton to the unbelievable story of Hugh Grant and the prostitute; from the 15-year-old who weighs only 82 pounds but believes she's obese, to the professor who screams profanities at other drivers in snarled traffic--we wonder out loud, "What are they thinking?!" What drives so many apparently normal, intelligent people to act irrationally, harming themselves and others? According to Sigmund Freud, such behavior may be caused by the "id," our built-in mental invitation to everything from dangerous fun to horrendous acts of irrationality. For popular psychology writer David Weiner, "id" stands for "Inner Dummy," the part of the brain that we must come to understand if we are ever to know why we do foolish, irrational, and compulsive things. Drawing on the groundbreaking theories of evolutionary psychology, Battling the Inner Dummy localizes the source of our irrationality in the limbic id-the most primitive part of our brain that endlessly thirsts for status, sex, territory, nurturance, and survival. "We become captured by these drives," Weiner says. "By understanding our Inner Dummy, we can avoid disasters in our own lives." Along with sound advice from clinical psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert Hefter on how to handle our own Inner Dummies with built-in rewards and punishments, Weiner brilliantly interweaves delightful, imagined conversations with Freud and staffers at a mythical advertising agency, who have been given the assignment of communicating the nature of the id's irrationalities to the general public (e.g., t-shirts that say, "Would someone please fix my Inner Dummy before I fall in love with another idiot?" and a bathroom scale that allows you to weigh eight pounds less each time you use it). This inviting, humorous romp with Inner Dummies who have made the news illustrates how we can apply "ID prevention" in our daily lives and includes all the major strategies science and medicine have developed over the years to counter Inner Dummies that threaten our well-being. See how well you're handling your own inner dummy by taking the quizzes at www.innerdummy.com.