Author: Barry Lubin
Publisher: AuthorMike Ink
ISBN: 0991033027
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Tall Tales of a Short Clown is the story of Barry Lubin, whose alter ego, Grandma, became one of the most successful clowns in American history, and was named "The World's Funniest Grandma" in Germany. Barry has entertained well over a hundred million people in circus rings, stadiums, arenas, on stage, in festivals, in films, and on television as the funny little carpetbagger with a mischievous view of the world. Barry is undoubtedly the only person to have achieved the combination of performing a running headstand onto a whoopee cushion on stage at Carnegie Hall, eating well over 10,000 bagels, and managing to piss off Ringo Starr, Meryl Streep, Gene Kelly, and Bruce Springstein as well as being inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame. Tall Tales of a Short Clown follows Barry's journey from Emerson College dropout to Clown College graduate, from his early failures on the Greatest Show on Earth to his induction into the Ring of Fame, the highest honor in clowning and in circus. He reveals his struggles with drug abuse and alcoholism and his journey into sobriety, his bout with thyroid cancer and his triumphant return to the ring, and his love affair with audiences on six continents over five decades, to earn his place as one of the most beloved clowns in history.

Author: Angellia Moore Swain
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 1490798501
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book, Short & Tall Tales that Kidz Might Love! is a compilation of short and tall poetic tales about animals, people, nuisances in nature, and everyday life. These poems are derived from my own imagination, inspirations, and life experiences. That means some of these poetic stories are pure fiction and made up while some of these stories are nonfiction from life experiences.

Author: Robert S. Bader
Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema
ISBN: 1557839212
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
(Applause Books). Groucho Marx was a comic genius who starred on stage and in film, radio, and television. But he was also a gifted writer the author of a play, two screenplays, seven books, and over 100 articles and essays. This newly expanded collection presents the best of Groucho's short comic pieces, written over a period of more than fifty years between 1919 and 1973 for the New York Times , the New Yorker , the Saturday Evening Post , Variety , the Hollywood Reporter , and other newspapers and magazines. Here is the one and only Groucho on his family, his days in vaudeville, his career, World War II, taxes, and other topics from his love of a good cigar to his chronic insomnia, from "Why Harpo Doesn't Talk" to "The Truth About Captain Spalding." The familiar irreverence, wordplay, and a dash of self-deprecation bring Groucho's wisecracking voice to life in these pages, firmly establishing him as one of the world's great humorists. Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales (a title of Groucho's own choosing) is essential reading for Marx Brothers fans, and a hilarious and nostalgic trip through the twentieth century.

Author: Marla Frazee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1442497459
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Whimsical and touching images tell the story of an unexpected friendship and the revelations it inspires in this moving, wordless picture book from two-time Caldecott Honor medalist Marla Frazee. A baby clown is separated from his family when he accidentally bounces off their circus train and lands in a lonely farmer’s vast, empty field. The farmer reluctantly rescues the little clown, and over the course of one day together, the two of them make some surprising discoveries about themselves—and about life! Sweet, funny, and moving, this wordless picture book from a master of the form and the creator of The Boss Baby speaks volumes and will delight story lovers of all ages.

Author: Daniel Alarcón
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184805
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
A gorgeously rendered graphic novel of Daniel Alarcón’s story City of Clowns. From the author of The King Is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Oscar “Chino” Uribe is a young Peruvian journalist for a local tabloid paper. After the recent death of his philandering father, he must confront the idea of his father’s other family, and how much of his own identity has been shaped by his father’s murky morals. At the same time, he begins to chronicle the life of street clowns, sad characters who populate the violent and corrupt city streets of Lima, and is drawn into their haunting, fantastical world. This remarkably affecting story by Daniel Alarcón was included in his acclaimed first book, War by Candlelight, and now, in collaboration with artist Sheila Alvarado, it takes on a new, thrilling form. This graphic novel, with its short punches of action and images, its stark contrasts between light and dark, truth and fiction, perfectly corresponds to the tone of Chino’s story. With the city of Lima as a character, and the bold visual language from the story, City of Clowns is moving, menacing, and brilliantly vivid.

Author: Christopher R. Fee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1610695682
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1265

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Book Description
A fascinating survey of the entire history of tall tales, folklore, and mythology in the United States from earliest times to the present, including stories and myths from the modern era that have become an essential part of contemporary popular culture. Folklore has been a part of American culture for as long as humans have inhabited North America, and increasingly formed an intrinsic part of American culture as diverse peoples from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania arrived. In modern times, folklore and tall tales experienced a rejuvenation with the emergence of urban legends and the growing popularity of science fiction and conspiracy theories, with mass media such as comic books, television, and films contributing to the retelling of old myths. This multi-volume encyclopedia will teach readers the central myths and legends that have formed American culture since its earliest years of settlement. Its entries provide a fascinating glimpse into the collective American imagination over the past 400 years through the stories that have shaped it. Organized alphabetically, the coverage includes Native American creation myths, "tall tales" like George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree and the adventures of "King of the Wild Frontier" Davy Crockett, through to today's "urban myths." Each entry explains the myth or legend and its importance and provides detailed information about the people and events involved. Each entry also includes a short bibliography that will direct students or interested general readers toward other sources for further investigation. Special attention is paid to African American folklore, Asian American folklore, and the folklore of other traditions that are often overlooked or marginalized in other studies of the topic.

Author: Martin Powell
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 143421897X
Category : Bunyan, Paul (Legendary character)
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description
A graphic novel retelling of the legend of Paul Bunyan and his pet, Babe the Blue Ox.

Author: George Saunders
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408837358
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.

Author: Loretta Ellen Brady
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
A collection of 11 fairy tales about enchanted and magical creatures that do not appear to be duplicated anywhere else. Loretta Ellen Brady was an American author best known for this collection written in 1920.

Author: David R. Slavitt
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807124727
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In these fourteen beautifully crafted stories David R. Slavitt shows his mastery of the form. Elegant, spare, sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac—this collection reflects a writer in admirable control of his craft. The title story (complete with footnotes á la The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction) braids together the tidy conventions of fiction and the brutal reality of New York as a writing teacher ponders s student’s sexually explicit story that may—or may not—be autobiographical. In “The Impostor” a writer’s brother exploits the legerdemain of fiction in a series of ever-bolder impersonations. Several of the stories are presented by emotionally wounded narrators, disillusioned men looking for a hint of grace in a world where expectations are frequently doomed to disappointment. In such a world only one thing is certain we will hurt—and be hurt by—the ones we love. And in the vacuum left when traditions that might have been redemptive have lost their meaning, “punishment gets to be a habit, a way of life, or at least something to hold onto.” The stories pivot on nuance, on the half-realized insight, on “some perfectly innocent and insignificant insight, on “some perfectly innocent and insignificant gesture that turns round and grows into a medium-to-large awkwardness.” We find what the divorced father futilely awaiting his daughter’s visit in “Hurricane Charlie” calls “dabblers in distress”: lonely, decent people trying to discover where love—and life—went. In “Simple Justice” a man striving for some definitive family memory compares the process to archaeology: “The shards that remain are pathetically small and almost grudging.” Thus through the faltering memory of an elderly cousin in “conflations” a man becomes a kind of incarnation of his own father and for a moment finds himself at the “vanishing point” where a lost past meets an unknowable future; in “The long Island Train” a simple anecdote becomes a metaphor for the opacity of the most apparently transparent human intentions. Yet it is often these shard of tradition and memory that seem to hold our only promise of transcendence. The protagonist of “Grandfather,” for example, through his reluctant participation in his grandson’s bris, finds a moment of reconciliation with a past that has broken loose of its moorings. Even the most experimental of these pieces—“Instructions,” a list of admonitions ranging from the quotidian to the cosmic—shows a deep humanity and a maturity of vision that steers adeptly between humor and despair. These stories will linger in the reader’s memory long after the book is closed.