New Releases by Jim Dale

The Too-Bad-It''s-Your-Birthday Book is like the best outrageous birthday cards rolled into one. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs, the book''s edgy humor needles everyone who''s suffered the slings and arrows of one too many birthdays: Your friends got together to light your birthday candles. Oops, not enough friends. Who''s older . . . you or the Earth? Now that you''re older, admit it. You watch the Weather Channel. It''s now estimated the universe is a trillion years old. That''s two years older than you. Exaggerated sentiments in The Too-Bad-It''s-Your-Birthday Book will make the birthday girl roll with laughter-and start plotting her revenge!

Sometimes you just have to raise your hand and take a chance. With its profound simplicity and vibrant illustrations, The Two of Us: My Teacher and I collects important truisms shared between teachers and their pupils, and captures the essence of this often special bond. The best day for a test is always tomorrow, but sometimes it has to be today. Everyone, even teachers, looks forward to recess. You may not care what you pack in your lunch in the morning, but you will at noon. People who seem to have all the answers usually have a lot of them wrong. Really good teachers can teach and teach and never run out of things to teach. Some really smart people were a little messy with their homework, like Madame Curie and Albert Einstein. My teacher and I could be friends. In fact, we are. For students looking to celebrate the end of the school year and honor a particularly special teacher, The Two of Us: My Teacher and I is the ideal way to say, "Thank you for a great year."

At a time when the forces of evil seem to be gaining the upper hand, Harry comes of age in the wizarding world, and must take on and defeat Voldemort--or be killed himself.

The complete Sid James is the indispensible guide to a career that began in South Africa and came to a premature end on the stage of the Sunderland Empire. This is a fitting tribute to a star whose legend lives on.

Inspired by Molière's Les Fourberies de Scapin.

Oy! So you''ve got a Jewish mother . . . and you''re not even Jewish. Overbearing? Nagging? Shrugs her shoulders deeply and often? Turns all statements into questions? The master of the sigh? Read more about those characteristics we''ve come to know and love.

Any parent who has helped to raise stepchildren knows that it may very well be the single greatest challenge of getting remarried. It''s hard to know exactly how to handle the uncomfortable, unpredictable, and sometimes seemingly unmanageable situations that accompany the inauspicious title of stepparent. Finally, an easygoing handbook for in-the-dark stepparents is here in StepWiseo?=the no-nonsense, no-psychobabble, down-to-earth, practical, and funny guide to dealing with stepchildren in a friendly, sensible, sometimes funny way. Coauthors James Dale and his stepdaughter, Alex Schapiro, offer their insights in a unique, bite-sized format. One of the most important lessons of their experience is that you''ll need your sense of humor, so they tackle this serious subject with levity. They realize raising stepchildren isn''t world peace. It just sometimes seems as hard to achieve.----------------

Written "authoritatively on the ecology of the area and philosophically about winter''s probing of the human spirit."--Cover.