New Releases by Julie Lawson

"Who knows what the gods have in store for us?" Xiao Sheng sang out to his mother every morning. "Today may not be the same as yesterday." In spite of his hardships, Xiao Sheng is a cheerful boy who loves to sing. He works from sunrise to sunset to earn enough money to feed his family. When Xiao finds a magic pearl, everything is changed forever.

When the wind picks up on Mistaken Road remarkable things can happen. It''s going to take a resourceful trio of night-time adventurers to undo what the wind has done in one day. Under an agate moon, Jess, Claire and Rigby set off on their mission to the Castle of Kite. To say that they get carried away is an understatement! In this high-flying adventure, they encounter a giant that sneezes, the spindrift of the Milky Way, and a windfall of lost and blown away objects. Their only problem now is how to get home. In this, her lovliest, most fantastical picture book to date, prolific West Coast children''s author Julie Lawson lets her own potent of imagination get carried away - out on the finest of strings. There is no better match for lawson''s story than pictures by Kathryn Naylor. Her luminous watercolour palette of snap-flapping colours and her own georgeous sense of play make Blown Away a marriage of talents made in heaven or somewhere very near by.

In a tumble-down house carved out of the dunes lives an old man with second sight. He is the sifter of sands, the man who separates the sparkling mica, black lava, golden-reds, and misty grays. And as he sifts he mesmerizes Jessica and Andrew with his tales of the trickster-creator Raven and how a lonely young man lived to be 300 years old.

Scottish Masters is a series of booklets on Scottish artists from the 17th century to the present day. Each volume contains an illustrated essay on the artist and his time.