Think you're too young? Think you're too old? Author Melanie Falick teaches kids of all ages how to knit with fifteen easy projects, from bouncy beanbags to a rolled-edge sweater. Using straightforward language, step-by-step instructions, and bright candy-colored illustrations, beginners learn the basics, including finer knitting, casting on and binding in the round and shaping. Phototgraphs feature finished projects modeled by a delightful case of young knitters. Best of all, kids get to have fun creating things they can actually use—bookmarks, backpacks, bracelets, and more.

Knitting is more popular today than it has been for decades-it's been called "the hot new hobby" and even "the new yoga." The latest generation of knitters thrives on quick projects that are creative, fulfilling, and relaxing-and can fit into a busy lifestyle. Weekend Knitting collects 50 unique, innovative projects and ideas for the beginning- and intermediate-level knitter, many of which can be made in a weekend or less.

Every project is presented in full-color photographs and with clear instructions. Weekend Knitting also features beautiful photos shot in and around real homes, evoking perfect knitting weekends filled with fresh air, friends, and delicious food.

Longtime knitting expert Melanie Falick has also brought together quotes about knitting, creativity, and balanced living from such diverse sources as Virginia Woolf, Pablo Picasso, and Saint Francis of Assisi. Recipes for treats such as hot cocoa and butter cookies and tips about fun and stress-reducing activities like hand massages, taking a bath, and hosting a knitting film festival complete the weekend knitting experience.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement, she writes, "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched, Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.

Susan Faludi, author of the feminist bestseller Backlash, has done it again with an exhaustive report on the betrayals felt by working men throughout the United States. American men are angry and discontented, she argues in Stiffed, because their sense of what it is to be a man has been destroyed by everything from corporate downsizing and the shrinking military of the post cold war era to the increase in local sports teams leaving town. Whether she's interviewing the teenage male members of Southern California's infamous Spur Posse (who collected "points" for every female they had sex with), Cleveland football fans shaken by the departure of the Browns football team, militia movement activists, or Sylvester Stallone, Faludi seems stuck on the idea that American men today are man-boys, unable to completely grow up because they never received the nurturing they needed, and now constantly disappointed by life. Yet while many of the men Faludi interviews have real problems—bad luck and sad, troubled lives—somehow Stiffed still seems a bit whiny. Faludi's "travels through a postwar male realm" are a fascinating slice of male American life "under siege" at the end of the 20th century, even if she does finally leave us like the men she talked to—still wondering just what went wrong. —Linda Killian

The official guide to organic parenting for the toddler stage and beyond—from the author of Green Babies, Sage Moms.

Green living starts at home—where small changes can vastly improve family life. When little ones start exploring, parents want to give them a healthy, green world—at home, at school, and beyond. Jam-packed with helpful, money-saving advice, this book includes sections on:

• Eco-friendly toys, home repairs, holidays, and birthdays
• Pesticides—on the lawn and in food
• How to get a school to go green
• What to ban from house and garden
• What’s really in a food label
• Breaks for Mother Earth—going green while saving green
• And much more!
With tips that will actually save parents money, this guide shows them how to go green while protecting both their children and the planet their children will inherit.

Ages 8 & up. The first children's book both written and illustrated by cartoonist Feiffer is a funny, poignant and profoundly insightful look at the inner life of an artist, who also happens to be a young boy. Jimmy Jibbett loves drawing cartoons and hopes to be great some day—but first he must cope with a lack of privacy, a father who wishes he liked sports instead of drawing, a popular older boy who pressures him to sell out and his own urge to give up when he's failing. Just when Jimmy's starting to think that he's "doomed to be as much a flop as a cartoonist as he was as a boy," he finds a way to look at failure in a new light. In a starred review, Booklist called it "wickedly funny... reminiscent of Roald Dahl's edgy lampoons." In another starred review, Publishers Weekly declared it "one of the best books of the year."

Ponder, if you will

What happens to your Social Security number when you die? Why are peanuts listed as an ingredient in plain M&Ms? Why is Barbie's hair made out of nylon, but Ken's hair is plastic? What makes up the ever-mysterious "new-car smell"?

Pop-culture guru David Feldman demystifies these topics and so much more in Do Penguins Have Knees? — the unchallenged source of answers to civilization's most perplexing questions.

Part of the Imponderables#174; series, Do Penguins Have Knees? arms readers with the knowledge about everyday life that encyclopedias, dictionaries, and almanacs just don't have. And think about it, where else are you going to get to the bottom of how beer was kept cold in the Old West?

That Ruby! Wherever she goes, table cloths accidentally pull dishes to the floor, flowers get trampled and spaghetti somehow end up in her hair. You can't take Ruby anywhere! One sunny morning, the postman brings Ruby an amazing invitation to have tea with — the Queen! Ruby had better polish her manners and quickly. Will Ruby really be ready in time?

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and Robin Preiss Glasser know a thing or two about the importance of manners and poise and being ladylike. In Tea For Ruby, they have created the irrepressible Ruby, whose antics and foibles with touch readers' hearts as she tries her very best to do things correctly. In the end, she knows she is loved for who she is, and that she will always be a princess, royal or not!

Penzler Pick, January 2002: When I first heard the premise of this unique mystery, I doubted that a first-time author could pull off a complicated caper involving so many assumptions, not the least of which is a complete suspension of disbelief. Jasper Fforde is not only up to the task, he exceeds all expectations.

Imagine this. Great Britain in 1985 is close to being a police state. The Crimean War has dragged on for more than 130 years and Wales is self-governing. The only recognizable thing about this England is her citizens' enduring love of literature. And the Third Most Wanted criminal, Acheron Hades, is stealing characters from England's cherished literary heritage and holding them for ransom.

Bibliophiles will be enchanted, but not surprised, to learn that stealing a character from a book only changes that one book, but Hades has escalated his thievery. He has begun attacking the original manuscripts, thus changing all copies in print and enraging the reading public. That's why Special Operations Network has a Literary Division, and it is why one of its operatives, Thursday Next, is on the case.

Thursday is utterly delightful. She is vulnerable, smart, and, above all, literate. She has been trying to trace Hades ever since he stole Mr. Quaverley from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed him. You will only remember Mr. Quaverley if you read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985. But now Hades has set his sights on one of the plums of literature, Jane Eyre, and he must be stopped.

How Thursday achieves this and manages to preserve one of the great books of the Western canon makes for delightfully hilarious reading. You do not have to be an English major to be pulled into this story. You'll be rooting for Thursday, Jane, Mr. Rochester—and a familiar ending. —Otto Penzler

The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair continues with Jasper Fforde’s magnificent second adventure starring the resourceful, fearless literary sleuth Thursday Next. When Landen, the love of her life, is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative of Jurisfiction—the police force inside books. She is apprenticed to the man-hating Miss Havisham from Dickens’s Great Expectations, who grudgingly shows Thursday the ropes. And she gains just enough skill to get herself in a real mess entering the pages of Poe’s "The Raven." What she really wants is to get Landen back. But this latest mission is not without further complications. Along with jumping into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.

Jasper Fforde has done it again in this genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment. After two rollicking New York Times bestselling adventures through Western literature, resourceful literary detective Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like the one she has taken up residence in—are scrapped for salvage. To make matters worse, a murderer is stalking the personnel of Jurisfiction and it’s up to Thursday to save the day. A brilliant feat of literary showmanship filled with wit, fantasy, and effervescent originality, this Ffordian tour de force is the most exciting Thursday Next adventure yet.

A collection of young feminists' personal experiences. Book raises consciousness of the change in the lives of young women. Interesting to see the progress made since book was written in 1994.

Vibrant, combative and broad-ranging, the new voices in Listen Up are the best proof yet that the next wave of rising feminists is magnificently equal to its task of creating a movement that should be, in terms of its ideas, always renewed. — Naomi Wolf, author of Fire With Fire