Lotte Reiniger (1899–1981) was a German film director and animator best known for The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which was released in 1926 and is the oldest surviving animated movie. (It came out a full eleven years before Disney's Snow White!) As a little kid, Reiniger loved reading fairytales and fell in love with puppetry. At school, she learned about paperschnitte, or papercuts, which helped her create her signature style of silhouettes....

This innovative children's biography of an unsung hero of early animation is a sweeping tribute to a woman whose influence still resonates today.

"Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) was a German film director and animator best known for The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which was released in 1926 and is the oldest surviving animated movie. (It came out a full 11 years before Disney's Snow White!) As a little kid, Reiniger loved reading fairytales and fell in love with puppetry. At school, she learned about paperschnitte, or papercuts, which helped her create her signature style of silhouettes. She grew...

"This Train races us through America's heartland, carrying secrets. There is treasure in the cargo car, along with an invisible puppeteer. There is a coder named Nora, Mugzy, the yippy dog, and Ross, the too-curious poet. On board, it's a countdown to murder... On this train there is a silver madman, a targeted banker, and crises of conscience. This train harbors the "perfect" couple's conspiracies, the chaos of being a teenager, and parenthood alongside...

"The harrowing, little-known story of the ARA, an American effort to save the newly-formed Soviet Union from a disastrous famine"-- 1921. Facing one of the worst famines in history, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin invited the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover's brainchild, to save communist Russia from ruin. For two years a small band of Americans fed more than ten million men, women, and children across a million square...

"Drawing on real historical documents but infused with the intensity of imagination, sly humor, and intellectual fire for which award-winning author Rivka Galchen's writing is known, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is a tale for our time--the story of how a community becomes implicated in collective aggression and hysterical fear"-- 1618, Wurttemberg, a German duchy. Plague is spreading. The Thirty Years' War has begun. Fear and suspicion are...

Peter Pan has crash-landed back on Neverland. But this is not the island he remembers.Desperate to rescue Claire and the fractured Lost Boys, Peter must unravel what truly tore his dreamland apart. But with each step, he is haunted by more of his own broken memories. Not even Pan himself is what he seems.Claire Kenton is chained to a pirate ship, watching the wreckage of Neverland rocked by tempests. When she finally finds her brother, Connor is every...

Once upon a time, humans lived in intimate relationship with nature. Whether disillusioned by the dominant church or unfulfilled by traditional expressions of faith, many of us long for a deeper spirtuality. Victoria Loorz certainly did. Coping with an unraveling vocation, identity, and planet, Loorz turned to the wanderings of spiritual leaders and the sanctuary of the natural world, eventually cofounding the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the...

"I'm the Mae West of 1968." Mercy Fontenot was a Zelig who grew up in the San Francisco Haight Ashbury scene, where she crossed paths with Charles Manson, went to the first Acid Test, and was friends with Jimi Hendrix (she was later in his movie Rainbow Bridge). She predicted the Altamont disaster when reading the Rolling Stones' tarot cards at a party and left San Francisco for the climes of Los Angeles in 1967 when the Haight 'lost its magic.' Miss...

Where do you find safety when your world is falling apart? Apprentice Flick thought the Elite Academy was the answer to all her problems. But the revelation of her past turned everything upside down. Now, she is caught between two worlds set on a collision course. Will she embrace the chaotic memories that flood her every waking moment? Or will she run to the security of her Elite training? Discovering her parents' identities takes her to a secret...