Synopsis: THE RED TENT meets GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING in the profoundly moving tale of a young woman who survives the flood as a stowaway on Noah's Ark.

"And every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth..."

When ReJana and her family reach the desert plain where the great ship is being constructed, the world has already begun to change. The waters are rising everywhere, and both people and animals are beginning to panic. This is the dramatic story of the weeks and months that follow, as the rain transforms the earth and the people come to understand the magnitude of the disaster. This is the story of one girl who stows away on the ark for love of Ham, Noah's son. This is her story of survival.

Synopsis: Readers and audiences have long greeted As You Like It with delight. Its characters are brilliant conversationalists, including the princesses Rosalind and Celia and their Fool, Touchstone. Soon after Rosalind and Orlando meet and fall in love, the princesses and Touchstone go into exile in the Forest of Arden, where they find new conversational partners. Duke Frederick, younger brother to Duke Senior, has overthrown his brother and forced him to live homeless in the forest with his courtiers, including the cynical Jaques. Orlando, whose older brother Oliver plotted his death, has fled there, too.

Recent scholars have also grounded the play in the issues of its time. These include primogeniture, passing property from a father to his oldest son. As You Like It depicts intense conflict between brothers, exposing the human suffering that primogeniture entails. Another perspective concerns cross-dressing. Most of Orlando’s courtship of Rosalind takes place while Rosalind is disguised as a man, “Ganymede.” At her urging, Orlando pretends that Ganymede is his beloved Rosalind. But as the epilogue reveals, the sixteenth-century actor playing Rosalind was male, following the practice of the time. In other words, a boy played a girl playing a boy pretending to be a girl.

The authoritative edition of As You Like It from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

-Scene-by-scene plot summaries

-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases

-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language

-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books

-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Susan Snyder

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

Synopsis: Shakespeare’s “merry wives” are Mistress Ford and Mistress Page of the town of Windsor. The two play practical jokes on Mistress Ford’s jealous husband and a visiting knight, Sir John Falstaff.

Merry wives, jealous husbands, and predatory knights were common in a kind of play called “citizen comedy” or “city comedy.” In such plays, courtiers, gentlemen, or knights use social superiority to seduce citizens’ wives.

The Windsor wives, though, do not follow that pattern. Instead, Falstaff’s offer of himself as lover inspires their torment of him. Falstaff responds with the same linguistic facility that Shakespeare gives him in the history plays in which he appears, making him the “hero” of the play for many audiences.

The authoritative edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Natasha Korda

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

Synopsis: From the best-selling, award-winning author of FEED comes a fantastic, fun, and funny middle-grade adventure starring two of the most disarmingly deadpan boys you'll ever meet

When Brian and Gregory receive an invitation to stay at a distant relative's strange manse . . . well, they should know better than to go, since this is a middle-grade adventure novel. But they go anyway. Why not? Once there, they stumble upon The Game of Sunken Places, a board game that mirrors a greater game for which they have suddenly became players. Soon the boys are dealing with attitudinal trolls, warring kingdoms, and some very starchy britches. Luckily, they have wit, deadpan observation, and a keen sense of adventure on their side.

Synopsis: The third book in the Children of the Red King series, CHARLIE BONE AND THE INVISIBLE BOY offers more magical fantasy that is fast paced and easy to read.

This semester at Bloor's Academy brings a few changes. There is a new art teacher, Mr. Boldova, and a new student named Belle, who lives with the Yewbeam aunts and seems to have strange power over them. Emma and Charlie soon discover Mr. Boldova's secret identity: He is the older brother of Ollie Sparks, the boy who lives in the attic of Bloor's Academy. Ollie had always been prying into matters that didn't concern him, so Ezekiel Bloor had made him invisible. When Charlie and his friends find him, Ollie is alone and hungry, so they promise to help him become visible again.

Synopsis: The year is 1968. Like thousands of other American boys, Carl Melcher is drafted and sent to Vietnam. His new company is infected with the same racial tensions plaguing the nation. Despite that, Carl makes friends on both sides of the color line. The war, like a tiger lurking in the bushes, picks off its victims one by one. Naively over-optimistic, Carl believes that karma and good intentions will save him and his friends. Then fate intervenes to teach Carl something of the meaning of life, and death.

Synopsis: In bestselling author Theodore Taylor's novel, a 16 year-old boy must take care of his family's wildlife preserve, while handling the kidnapping of one of the most dangerous tigers known to man.

When a half-eaten body is found inside a locked jaguar cage, eighteen-year-old Ben Jepson knows it's no prank - someone is trying to make trouble for the Los Coyotes Big Cat Preserve and its manager, Ben's father. An outspoken conservationist, Dr. Jepson has made some powerful enemies.

Ben's parents are on a tiger conservation mission deep in the jungle. Now Ben is the only one who can keep Los Coyotes running. But when his beloved tiger Dmitri, nicknamed "Lord of the Kill," is kidnapped, Ben must decide whether to wait for the authorities or to strike out on his own.