Ocean State Libraries

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged{u2014}petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral{u2014}while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than...

"Dorothy is transported by a prairie cyclone to the world of Oz, where she meets friends Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion, sees the wondrous Emerald City and its ruling wizard, and defeats the wicked Witch of the West in her efforts to return to Kansas." --

"A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs...

H.G. Wells' original masterpiece now includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on the author, a list of further reading, and detailed notes. Famous for the mistaken panic that ensued from Orson Welles' 1938 radio dramatization, "The War of the Worlds" remains one of the most influential of all science fiction works.

Examines methods of defending and attacking castles and what day to day life was like inside a castle in medieval times.

Learn why horses flatten back their ears, how a blacksmith shoes a horse, how horses have been used in wartime, and how a horse's teeth show its age. Discover why a zebra has stripes, which wild asses are now extinct, what a Roman horseshoe looked like, the difference between an English and a Western saddle, what makes horses race, and much, much more. Includes a CD-ROM of clip art.

Describes and gives step-by-step instructions for drawing several different types of dragons.

"Ramon loved to draw. Anytime. Anything. Anywhere. Drawing is what Ramon does. It's what makes him happy. But in one split second, all that changes. A single reckless remark by Ramon's older brother, Leon, turns Ramon's carefree sketches into joyless struggles. Luckily for Ramon, though, his little sister, Marisol, sees the world differently. She opens his eyes to something a lot more valuable than getting things just "right." Combining the spareness...

Provides instructions for twenty projects, creating such things as a planet mobile, constellation tack board, space helmet, moon buggy, pop-up alien puppet, and rocket pin.