A gorgeously illustrated picture book edition of the beloved classic children's story about overcoming fears Plop the baby barn owl is like every barn owl there ever was except for one thing
- he is afraid of the dark! Mrs Barn Owl sends him down from the nest-hole to find out more about the dark & on his travels he meets a little boy who shows him fireworks a black cat who takes him exploring a little girl who tells him about Father Christmas & many others It's not long before Plop finds out that DARK IS SUPER!A comforting story filled with gentle humour & Paul Howard's warm & soothing illustrations Jill Tomlinson's The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark has been enjoyed for decades by parents & children who want to snuggle down with a good read Perfect for kids aged 2 Jill Tomlinson never intended to be a writer She trained as an opera singer & then decided to have a family whilst her voice matured But illness intervened & she had to find another outlet for her energies She started on a journalism course & by the third lesson decided she wanted to write for children So she did! Jill Tomlinson's bestselling animal stories have been adored by children the world over for nearly four decades Paul Howard is an extraordinarily talented artist who has illustrated many award-winning books from authors such as Allan Ahlberg Jeanne Willis & Michael Rosen which have delighted children & adults alike across the world
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The Owlery is a circular stone room rather cold & drafty because none of the windows had glass in them The lack of glass in the windows allowed the owls to come & go freely Many owls nestled here on perches that rose right up to the top of the tower This light up building requires batteries ...

An exciting new animal series set in the magical Blossom Wood When Katie Eva & Alex hide inside a hollow tree trunk they find themselves taken to a magical wood where they're no longer girls they're owls! Can the three best friends help the animals of Blossom Wood save the precious Moon Chestnut tree? Join the Owls of Blossom Wood on their first adventure! ...

An exciting new animal series set in the magical Blossom Wood The otters of Willow Lake are getting married! The owls are so excited to be invited to the wedding & volunteer to help with the preparations But there's a problem when the special wedding reeds go missing
- the otters can't get married without them Katie Alex & Eva are determined to find them but they only have a few hours & there's the whole of Blossom Wood to search!
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An exciting new animal series set in the magical Blossom Wood Alex Katie & Eva can't wait for the Blossom Wood fete The three best friends are helping the animals to prepare when disaster strikes Flo the smallest deer has gone missing & no one knows where she is! Can the Owls of Blossom Wood find her? ...

The Caribbean is the source of one of the richest most accessible & yet technically adventurous traditions of contemporary world literature This collection of Caribbean short stories is pan-Caribbean including stories from the four main languages of the region English Spanish French & Dutch Stories by major figures in the English language tradition such as V S Naipaul Sam Sevlon & Jean Rhys are set alongside their Spanish- & French-speaking contemporaries like Alejo Carpentier Jan Bosh & Gabriel Garcia Marquez Their work in all its diversity of style theme & linguistic energy provides a context for the work of an exciting new generation of Caribbean writers like Edwidge Danticat Robert Antoni Astrid Roemer & Jamaica Kincaid A celebration of regional creativity the collection contains sufficient surprises to keep even the most avid student of West Indian writing turning the pages while reminding readers that the Caribbean is a multilingual multicultural space ...

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories edited by A S Byatt herself the author of several collections of short stories is the first anthology to specifically take the English short story as its theme The 37 stories featured here are selected from the nineteenth & twentieth centuries ranging from Dickens Trollope & Hardy to J G Ballard Angela Carter & Ian Mc Ewan though many draw ingeniously from the richness of earlier English literary writing There are all sorts of threads of connection & contrast running through these stories Their subjects vary from the sublime to the ridiculous from the momentous to the trivial from the grim to the farcical There is English empiricism English pragmatism English starkness English humour English satire English dandyism English horror & English whimsy There are examples of social realism from rural poverty to blitzed London; ghost stories & tales of the supernatural; surreal fantasy & science fiction There are stories of sensibility precisely delineated from Hardy's reluctant bride to the shocked heroine of Elizabeth Taylor's The Blush from H E Bates's brilliant fusion of class sex death & landscape to D H Lawrence's exploration of a consciousness slowly detaching itself from its world There are exuberant stories by Saki & Waugh Wodehouse & Firbank with a particularly English range from high irony to pure orchestrated farce The very range & scope of the collection celebrates the eccentric differences & excellences of English short stories Some of A S Byatt's choices clearly take their place in the grand tradition of story-telling while others are more unusual Many break all the rules of unity of tone & narrative appearing to be one kind of story before unexpectedly turning into another They pack together comedy & tragedy farce & delicacy elegance & the grotesque with language as various as the subject matter As A S Byatt explains ' My only criterion was that those stories I selected should be startling & satisfying & if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement aesthetic or narrative' ...

Here is a treasure-house of over seven centuries of English poetry chosen & introduced by Christopher Ricks whom Auden described as 'exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding' The Oxford Book of English Verse created in 1900 by Arthur Quiller-Couch & selected anew in 1972 by Helen Gardner has established itself as the foremost anthology of English poetry ample in span liberal in the kinds of poetry presented This completely fresh selection brings in new poems & poets from all ages & extends the range by another half-century to include many twentieth-century figures not featured before
- among them Philip Larkin & Samuel Beckett Thom Gunn & Elaine Feinstein
- right up to Ted Hughes & Seamus Heaney Here as before are lyric (beginning with medieval song) satire hymn ode sonnet elegy ballad but also kinds of poetry not previously admitted the riches of dramatic verse by Marlowe Shakespeare Jonson Webster; great works of translation that are themselves true English poetry such as Chapman's Homer (bringing in its happy wake Keats's ' On First Looking into Chapman's Homer') Dryden's Juvenal & many others; well-loved nursery rhymes limericks even clerihews English poetry from all parts of the British Isles is firmly represented
- Henryson & Mac Diarmid for example now join Dunbar & Burns from Scotland; James Henry Austin Clarke & J M Synge now join Allingham & Yeats from Ireland; R S Thomas joins Dylan Thomas from Wales
- & Edward Taylor & Anne Bradstreet writing in America before its independence in the 1770s are given a rightful & rewarding place Some of the greatest long poems are here in their entirety
- Wordsworth's ' Tintern Abbey' Coleridge's ' Rime of the Ancient Mariner' & Christina Rossetti's ' Goblin Market'
- alongside some of the shortest haikus squibs & epigrams Generous & wide-ranging mixing familiar with fresh delights this is an anthology to move & delight all who find themselves loving English verse





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The essay is one of the richest of literary forms Its most obvious characteristics are freedom informality & the personal touch
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This major new collection is the perfect resource for small choirs young choirs & all choirs whose numbers fluctuate week by week Each piece is scored flexibly with optional parts or parts for equal voices so that it can be performed by more than one combination of performers; many pieces can also be sung in unison The music is accessible
- ideal for choirs with limited rehearsal time
- & keyboard parts are playable on organ (with or without pedals) or piano The repertoire spans the sixteenth century to the present day &

Includes:: new flexibly scored arrangements of traditional pieces as well as newly commissioned anthems There are also pieces in lighter styles to cater for a broad range of tastes With complete coverage of the church year this is an essential resource for those looking for fresh & accessible options for church services



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