Henry and his dog, Laird Angus McAngus, were fearless explorers. One morning they set out to find an ocean. They took along Henry's explorer's kit and a special new flag from an old shirt. "It may be a long and dangerous trip," he told his mother as they left. "I hope it won't take all day," she said. "Who knows?" replied Henry. "It could take a year!" And it might have. For like many explorers of oceans, Henry and Angus were cast up on island with no escape. But good explorers are prepared for everything. And these two proved more than equal to the dangers they met, though there were some very tough moments.

For more than fifty years families have enjoyed reading aloud the adventures of a young boy, Henry, and his dog Angus. On the night of the blizzard Henry and Laird Angus McAngus (Angus for short) read an exciting book about exploring. And the next morning Henry assembled his equipment for the trip: lunch and flags for claiming all that he planned to discover. "Don't be late coming home," said Henry's mother. "All right-if a bear doesn't catch us," said Henry. Exploring is hard work. It makes one hungry. It can be a little alarming if one does seem to see a bear. And sometimes, although explorers do not get lost, they are not quite sure which way to go. All of which makes exploring what it is and makes Henry's exploring worth reading about.

"When a little boy sets off with his dog and wooden gun to explore the jungle, his mother doesn't believe he will catch a tiger as he claims he will. But neither he nor his mother know a circus tiger has escaped!"--Google Books.

A storm, a shipwreck, an ongoing ocean, then finally, finally a deserted isle. . . . Safety -- but wait! The fifteen swimmers braving the waves are, after all . . . kitties. They are not into cooperating until, until on this desert isle they must. Here, from the creators of the witty Old Cricket, comes a wily, wise saga of sogginess, a feline fantasy about drying off (elegantly), shaping up (grumpily), getting along (at last), and loving it.

*One of NPR's "Books We Love 2021"* "'I came to see the mountains as an outpouring of our modern lives,' Roy writes, 'of the endless chase for our desires to fill us.' Readers of Behind the Beautiful Forevers will be drawn to this harrowing portrait." —Publishers Weekly "Castaway Mountain deserves every accolade. A stunning achievement." —Kiran Desai, Booker Prize Winner, author of Inheritance of Loss. All of Mumbai’s possessions and memories come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. Towering at the outskirts of the city, the mountains are covered in a faint smog from trash fires. Over time, as wealth brought Bollywood knock offs, fast food and plastics to Mumbaikars, a small, forgotten community of migrants and rag-pickers came to live at the mountains’ edge, making a living by re-using, recycling and re-selling. Among them is Farzana Ali Shaikh, a tall, adventurous girl who soon becomes one of the best pickers in her community. Over time, her family starts to fret about Farzana’s obsessive relationship to the garbage. Like so many in her community, Farzana, made increasingly sick by the trash mountains, is caught up in the thrill of discovery—because among the broken glass, crushed cans, or even the occasional dead baby, there’s a lingering chance that she will find a treasure to lift her family’s fortunes. As Farzana enters adulthood, her way of life becomes more precarious. Mumbai is pitched as a modern city, emblematic of the future of India, forcing officials to reckon with closing the dumping grounds, which would leave the waste pickers more vulnerable than ever. In a narrative instilled with superstition and magical realism, Saumya Roy crafts a modern parable exploring the consequences of urban overconsumption. A moving testament to the impact of fickle desires, Castaway Mountain reveals that when you own nothing, you know where true value lies: in family, community and love. Interior map illustration copyright (c) Jake Coolidge

A wide-ranging and appreciative literary history of the castaway tale from Defoe to the present Ever since Robinson Crusoe washed ashore, the castaway story has survived and prospered, inspiring a multitude of writers of adventure fiction to imitate and adapt its mythic elements. In his brilliant critical study of this popular genre, Christopher Palmer traces the castaway tales' history and changes through periods of settlement, violence, and reconciliation, and across genres and languages. Showing how subsequent authors have parodied or inverted the castaway tale, Palmer concentrates on the period following H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau. These much darker visions are seen in later novels including William Golding's Lord of the Flies, J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island, and Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory. In these and other variations, the castaway becomes a cannibal, the castaway's island is relocated to center of London, female castaways mock the traditional masculinity of the original Crusoe, or Friday ceases to be a biddable servant. By the mid-twentieth century, the castaway tale has plunged into violence and madness, only to see it return in young adult novels—such as Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins and Terry Pratchett's Nation—to the buoyancy and optimism of the original. The result is a fascinating series of revisions of violence and pessimism, but also reconciliation.