With Music Through the Floor, Pushcart Prize winner and former Wallace Stegner Fellow Eric Puchner makes an extraordinary debut: a collection of nine unforgettable stories -- strikingly original, fiercely funny, and quietly heartbreaking -- portraying a group of cultural misfits attempting to navigate mainstream America. Lost, teetering on the edge of normalcy, Puchner's characters seek to define themselves in a frequently absurd and hostile world -- a world that threatens to make outcasts of us all. Caught up in loneliness or solitude, they can't quite hear the music of their own lives. In "Children of God," a young loner becomes the caretaker and companion for two mentally retarded men, seeking solace in their outsider status. "Essay #3: Leda and the Swan" is told in the forlorn, be-nighted, and tragically funny voice of a high school girl who longs more than anything to be loved. In "Mission," an idealistic ESL teacher is faced with the inscrutable wrath of one of his immigrant students. And in the unsettling "Child's Play," Puchner explores the price of nonconformity by following a pack of boys wreaking havoc on Halloween. Writing from an impressive range of perspectives -- men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists -- Puchner deftly exposes the dark, ten-der undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision. Here are people fumbling for identity in a depersonalized world, captured in moments that are hilarious, shocking, and transcendent -- sometimes all at once. Unfailingly true, surprisingly moving, and impossible to forget, these nine stories mark the arrival of a brilliant young writer and one of our most promising literary voices.

(Vocal Selections). Inspired by the Academy Award -winning film of the same name, Finding Neverland has been brought to life on stage with music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy and a book by James Graham. This songbook presents 20 selections from the show arranged for voice and piano with chord symbols: All of London Is Here Tonight * Believe * Circus of Your Mind * If the World Turned Upside Down * Live by the Hook * Neverland * The Pirates of Kensington * Something About This Night * Sylvia's Lullaby * We Own the Night * We're All Made of Stars * When Your Feet Don't Touch the Ground * and more. This folio also includes pages of full-color scenes from the original Broadway production.

Music is a mobile art. When people move to faraway places, whether by choice or by force, they bring their music along. Music creates a meaningful point of contact for individuals and for groups; it can encourage curiosity and foster understanding; and it can preserve a sense of identity and comfort in an unfamiliar or hostile environment. As music crosses cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries, it continually changes. While human mobility and mediation have always shaped music-making, our current era of digital connectedness introduces new creative opportunities and inspiration even as it extends concerns about issues such as copyright infringement and cultural appropriation. With its innovative multimodal approach, Music on the Move invites readers to listen and engage with many different types of music as they read. The text introduces a variety of concepts related to music’s travels—with or without its makers—including colonialism, migration, diaspora, mediation, propaganda, copyright, and hybridity. The case studies represent a variety of musical genres and styles, Western and non-Western, concert music, traditional music, and popular music. Highly accessible, jargon-free, and media-rich, Music on the Move is suitable for students as well as general-interest readers.

This volume seeks to offer a new approach to the study of music through the lens of recent works in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Applied to the study of music, this approach enables us to reconcile the human, social, factual, and technological aspects of the musical world, and opens the prospect of new areas of inquiry in musicology and sound studies. Drawing together contributions from a wide range of scholars, the book’s four sections focus on key areas of music study that are impacted by STS: organology, sound studies, music history, and epistemology.

"A new Raffi board book to delight the youngest of fans! Arachnophobes, beware: there's a spider on the floor! A perfect silly song sure to delight and entertain toddlers everywhere, Raffi's latest board book is a welcome addition to the series. True Kelley's irresistible artwork is the perfect showcase for the busy spider who climbs up an old woman, and along the way, manages to ensnare lots of critters in its web, including a family dog, a snake, an alligator, a skunk, an octopus, an elephant, a moose, and even a dinosaur! Whew! This latest high-energy entry in the Raffi Songs to Read(R) board book collection is just right for very young children. The repetition, rhythm, and rhyme will help build early language skills and the outrageous story will have children clamoring for it again and again. "There's a spider on the floor, on the floor. . . ." "From the Trade Paperback edition.