In Land of Letters the magic key takes the children to a land with letters everywhere. Biff, Chip and Kipper Stories: Decode and Develop are an exciting new set of stories from Roderick Hunt and Alex Brychta. Full of humour and drama with a delightful mixture of familiar settings and brand new magic key adventures to inspire young readers. Featuring all your favourite characters, children will enjoy exploring the detailed humorous illustrations and be captivated by the storylines. These phonics-based stories are perfect for embedding and building on children's phonics knowledge. They contain high-interest vocabulary to support language development beyond Phase 5 of Letters and Sounds. Each book contains inside cover notes to help adults read and explore the content with the child, supporting their decoding and language comprehension development. Teaching notes on Oxford Owl support independent reading, guided reading, writing, and speaking, listening and drama activities.

After receiving his cancer diagnosis, Wangerin wrote letters about confronting his mortality, about living with the messiness of undone tasks and bodily weakness. These meditations present his testimony to faith, love, and the shocking reality of hope.

The acclaimed author presents “three passionate lectures about the state of politics in Israel” in this “humorous, mournful, enraged, and uplifting” volume (Kirkus). A National Jewish Book Award Finalist Israeli author Amos Oz has won numerous awards for his novels capturing the cultural and political complexities of his country, including the Frankfurt Peace Prize, the Primo Levi Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award. But these essays on the universal nature of fanaticism and its possible cures, on the Jewish roots of humanism and the need for a secular pride in Israel, and on the geopolitical standing of Israel in the wider Middle East and internationally, “may contain his most urgent message yet.” (Ruth Eglash, Washington Post). These essays were written, Oz states, “first and foremost” for his grandchildren: they are a patient, learned telling of history, religion, and politics, to be thumbed through and studied, clung to even, as we march toward an uncertain future. “Concise, evocative . . . Dear Zealots is not just a brilliant book of thoughts and ideas—it is a depiction of one man’s struggle, who for decades has insisted on keeping a sharp, strident and lucid perspective in the face of chaos and at times of madness.” —David Grossman, winner of the Man Booker International Prize

Take an exciting journey into learning as Kate and Jake enter Alphabet Land, where they are introduced to the names and sounds of all the letters. This unique book uses a variety of educational approaches, including cartoon images that show the shape of the mouth when saying the names of the letters and making their sounds. Children also meet diphthongs and upper and lowercase letters. Visually appealing and delightfully imaginative, Adventure in Alphabet Land will make a valuable addition to every home and school library.

Eshinni (1182–1268?), a Buddhist nun and the wife of Shinran (1173–1262), the celebrated founder of the True Pure Land, or Shin, school of Buddhism, was largely unknown until the discovery of a collection of her letters in 1921. In this study, James C. Dobbins, a leading scholar of Pure Land Buddhism, has made creative use of these letters to shed new light on life and religion in medieval Japan. He provides a complete translation of the letters and an explication of them that reveals the character and flavor of early Shin Buddhism. Readers will come away with a new perspective on Pure Land scholarship and a vivid image of Eshinni and the world in which she lived. After situating the ideas and practices of Pure Land Buddhism in the context of the actual living conditions of thirteenth-century Japan, Dobbins examines the portrayal of women in Pure Land Buddhism, the great range of lifestyles found among medieval women and nuns, and how they constructed a meaningful religious life amid negative stereotypes. He goes on to analyze aspects of medieval religion that have been omitted in our modern-day account of Pure Land and tries to reconstruct the religious assumptions of Eshinni and Shinran in their own day. A prevailing theme that runs throughout the book is the need to look beyond idealized images of Buddhism found in doctrine to discover the religion as it was lived and practiced. Scholars and students of Buddhism, Japanese history, women’s studies, and religious studies will find much in this engaging work that is thought-provoking and insightful.