New Releases by Mary Chase

This book was written by Mary Mills Lyall in collaboration with her architect husband Earl Harvey Lyall, who also illustrated it. "The Cubies' ABC" is a delightful and humorous satirical alphabet book that makes fun of Cubists while pretending to be a kid's book. Three unidentified individuals are called The Cubies. Each has green hair and is one of three different colors: blue, mustard, and magenta. Instead of using cubes to build them, Earl Lyall used pyramids. They frequently feature jack-o'-lantern-like leering grins, have red triangle eyes and mouths, and have triangular shapes. They frequently scowl and come out as purposefully dim-witted. They swoon over anything Cubist and mock objectivity throughout the entire book.

The main people (according to Chapman) “are seven or eight youths who might be called nice Dead End kids. These lads love practical jokes, hang out in a beer parlor in a Western town, and talk endlessly about females and their conquests over same. But they are sham hoodlums; they are good kids from good families trying to grow up. Their leader is a fascinating young man nicknamed Beau, who has a crazy twinkle in his eye and a supple imagination. When things grow dull with his companions, he cheers them up with tales of the ideal town, where the boys stay downstairs and send their parents up to bed. In his [ideal] town, Sneaky Falls, Idaho…it is the mothers who enlist in the Navy and their sons run around like crazy mailing them packages of cookies. This chap Beau…has invented for the gang the ideal female. She is slinky, sexy and willing, being from Sneaky Falls, where only one word is spoken. The word is 'Yes.' The girl’s name is Bernardine…The only really unhappy member of the crowd is a character named Wormy. Wormy wants to be a big wheel, a conquering male, the way the others say they are—but somehow he can’t make it. His attempts at playing wolf never succeed, and none of the girls in the town will date him. His mother’s watchful affection bores and irks him. In one great, desperate effort to become important in the eyes of his companions, he hangs out in a hotel lobby and makes passes until he succeeds with an older woman who must be at least in her twenties, maybe thirties. Wormy’s adventure is agonizing and funny."

Maureen Swanson is the scourge of the neighborhood. At age nine, she already has a reputation as a hard slapper, a loud laugher, a liar, and a stay-after-schooler. The other kids call her Stinky. So sometimes when Maureen passes the crumbling (and haunted?) Messerman mansion, she imagines that she is Maureen Messerman–rich, privileged, and powerful. Then she finds a way into the forbidden, boarded-up house. In the hall are portraits of seven young women wearing elaborate gowns and haughty expressions. Maureen has something scathing to say to each one, but then she notices that the figures seem to have shifted in their frames. So she reaches out her finger to touch the paint–just to make sure–and touches . . . silk! These seven daughters of privilege are colder and meaner than Maureen ever thought to be. They are wicked, wicked ladies, and Maureen has something they want. . . .

Imagine how shocked you would be if, like ten-year-old Colin Mason, you were the oldest (smartest, best) kid in a family of four, and then you found out that all these years, without knowing it, you’ve had an older sister, an “awful, awful, bad, bad, girl—Loretta Mason Potts.” Who? What? Wait! ... But this is only the first of many surprises that lie in store for Colin, as things get curiouser and curiouser very fast. Loretta (a glum gangly girl and so very very rude!) comes home and before you know it, Colin is secretly following her down a hidden tunnel that leads from a bedroom closet to an astonishing castle, where a charming and beautiful countess keeps court attended by a dapper and ever-obliging general, and in this world everybody loves Loretta (especially when she’s rude), so much so that they’re begging her to stay with them forever. What is the secret behind this mysterious other world and how does it connect to the many secrets in the Mason family? It’ll take a spellbinding, hair-raising adventure, involving not just Colin and Loretta but their mother and the rest of the family, to work that out.

When spoiled, independent Catherine Mansard discovers she cannot maintain ownership of the family estate unless she puts herself on the "Marriage Market" interesting events ensue. Can impetuous Cat maintain the propriety at which she's so often scoffed long enough to find an appropriate mate? Or will her true nature reveal itself and send her suitors running for the hills? Battles of will, a nefarious plot, badly behaved dogs, and a family mystery wreak havoc on the best-laid plans.

An enjoyable novel about a teenage girl from a large ranch, who goes to Massachusetts to attend boarding school.

Dubbed "Little Lizzie Borden" by the tabloids, a young girl took refuge in a series of private sanitariums, moving from one to another when the paparazzi found her. The hiding continued after her release at eighteen, until finally she disappeared entirely with a new name, identity and persona -- or so she thought. Against the rain-washed backdrop of Seattle, surrounded by the images of tarot and the hidden messages of poetry, a woman must confront her past and make a decision: run again or face down the demons that haunt her still? Only a passage along the well-worn road of the Fool's Journey will tell.

Provides practical guidance for implementing Kidspiration and visual learning across the curriculum to improve achievement.

Designed to help educators integrate visual learning into their language arts curriculum.

Explores the expanding needs of curriculum standards by the integration of visual learning and thinking skills into the standards. Explores how visual learning helps students create and learn.

Develops learning skills for young students by integrating visual learning and thinking skills into lesson plans. Explores how visual learning helps students create and learn.

Pregnant with the child of a man betrothed to another woman, London beauty Marianne Gardiner seeks refuge and anonymity in a remote English village, where she encounters the charming Dr. Alden Venables, a physician who harbors his own shocking secret. Original.

Together their stories offer an intimate portrait of an American family caught up in the sweep of a century of change.

Searching questions for Bible study leaders, as well as complete instructions for facilitating a study group of the Gospels.

Linda and Julie, two twelve year olds, delight in calling strangers on the phone and then terrifying them by breathing heavily and chewing ice cubes in their ears. One of their victims is Vivian Lucas, a very nice lady who quickly catches on to what they are up to and, having done the same sort of thing when she was a girl, invites Linda to lunch at the Clermont Hotel. But then they call the La Strange Tattoo Parlor, where the reaction is quite different. Madam La Strange is furious and, abetted by her ugly son Heinrich, vows to catch Linda and tattoo her forehead. Discovering Linda's plan to meet Mrs. Lucas for lunch, Madam and Heinrich arrive at the hotel first and explain to Linda that Mrs. Lucas has asked them to drive her to the Lucas home--whereupon they all repair to the tattoo parlor. Luckily Linda's friends, having uncovered the plot, make their own crank call to Madam La Strange, Linda slips away in the confusion, and all agree, with a pronounced sigh of relief, that the "fun" phone calls are over for good!

THE STORY: Mrs. Edwin Gilroy (Midgie) Purvis is a rich, fashionable and middle-aged member of society. She is also given to cutting unexpected, and sometimes eyebrow-raising capers. Her rather stuffy son, Canfield (who is about to be married), has

THE STORY: As told by Kerr, all happens very logically. A little girl has slipped past the gatekeeper and over the garden wall to play with a lonely and put-upon lad. She is quickly shooed out by his mother as 'trash.' It just so happens that the