Most Popular Books by PAMELA ALLEN

The premise of Awakening to the Spirit Within is that all beings are connected by a spiritual energy which forms the essence of who they truly are. Eight paths, which facilitate an awakening to this essence, are explored: Native American Spirituality, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Jesus and the Christ Within, Sufism, and The New Thought Movement. Practice exercises and references are also included. This book highlights some of the unique gifts which various spiritual traditions have to offer our world. In addition, it explores the mystical threads of connection which underlie them. Like the title suggests, it also gives ways of listening to guidance from within. The author includes messages from her own inner guidance in an effort to illustrate how this may occur. Her openness provides more warmth and intimacy than is usually found in such a book. In these uncertain times, there has been an upsurge of interest in books related to spirituality, religion, and mysticism. People are looking for ways to heal, rather than destroy, our planet. That is why this book, and others like it, are so timely and important in moving us closer to our shared goal of creating a more peaceful and harmonious world.

The Authentic Spiritual Leadership model encourages development of leaders who demonstrate a combination of authentic and spiritual leadership behaviors. This book has practical implications for leaders and organizations interested in confronting the current crisis in leadership regarding leadership ethics and leadership accountability. Diverse organizations require leaders who actually demonstrate how this unique approach contributes to a renewed focus on the well-being of people, psychological well-being, ethical well-being, sense of purpose, meaning, calling, and spiritual, moral, authentic, transparent and socially responsible behaviors. Organizations seeking to provide spiritual leadership development training could incorporate spiritual leadership into the design. But combining spiritual, authentic, ethical, and transformational leadership models into the training would also determine if other leadership styles exist within the organizational framework. Additional value should include study of spiritual leadership in one of the fastest-growing and sustainable corporations in the twenty-first century: The Mega Church. This book encourages development of a mega church corporate model as the new organizational form that includes authentic spiritual leadership and other leadership styles. The mega church is the new corporation of the twenty-first century, challenging leaders to join what Scharmer (2009) describes as a cultural-spiritual shift toward the rise of a new consciousness in models of leadership.

''Mr McGee went out to play, down to the beach one windy day,'' the story begins. His happy mood is spoilt when he is bitten by a flea, a flea that he can''t get rid of. The only solution is to take off all his clothes and jump into the sea because of course, fleas don''t like the sea. Mr McGee and the flea are finally separated and the flea moves on to the hair of a dog instead. The pictures tell the story as well as the text.

After claiming the treasure that he and his brother haul out of the ocean, Herbert spends the rest of his life fearfully guarding it from possible thieves.

In a study that explodes the assumption that early modern comic culture was created by men for men, Pamela Allen Brown shows that jest books, plays, and ballads represented women as laugh-getters and sought out the laughter of ordinary women. Disputing the claim that non-elite women had little access to popular culture because of their low literacy and social marginality, Brown demonstrates that women often bested all comers in the arenas of jesting, gaining a few heady moments of agency. Juxtaposing the literature of jest against court records, sermons, and conduct books, Brown employs a witty, entertaining style to propose that non-elite women used jests to test the limits of their subjection. She also shows how women''s mocking laughter could function as a means of social control in closely watched neighborhoods. While official culture beatified the sheep-like wife and disciplined the scold, jesting culture often applauded the satiric shrew, whether her target was priest, cuckold, or rapist. Brown argues that listening for women''s laughter can shed light on both the dramas of the street and those of the stage: plays from The Massacre of the Innocents to The Merry Wives of Windsor to The Woman''s Prize taught audiences the importance of gossips'' alliances as protection against slanderers, lechers, tyrants, and wife-beaters. Other jests, ballads, jigs, and plays show women reveling in tales of female roguery or scoffing at the perverse patience of Griselda. As Brown points out, some women found Griselda types annoying and even foolish: better be a shrew than a sheep.

The Diva''s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage traces the transnational connections between Shakespeare''s all-male stage and the first female stars in the West. The book is the first to use Italian and English plays and other sources to explore this relationship, focusing on the gifted actress who radically altered female roles and expanded the horizons of drama just as the English were building their first paying theaters. By the time Shakespeare began to write plays, women had been acting professionally in Italian troupes for two decades, traveling across the Continent and acting in all genres, including tragicomedy and tragedy. Some women became the first truly international stars, winning royal and noble patrons and literary admirers beyond Italy, with repeat tours in France and Spain. Elizabeth and her court caught wind of the Italians'' success, and soon troupes with actresses came to London to perform. Through contacts direct and indirect, English professionals grew keenly aware of the mimetic revolution wrought by the skilled diva, who expanded the innamorata and made the type more engaging, outspoken, and autonomous. Some English writers pushed back, treating the actress as a whorish threat to the all-male stage, which had long minimized female roles. Others saw a vital new model full of promise. Faced with rising demand for Italian-style plays, Lyly, Marlowe, Kyd, and Shakespeare used Italian models from scripted and improvised drama to turn out stellar female parts in the mode of the actress, altering them in significant ways while continuing to use boys to play them. Writers seized on the comici''s materials and methods to piece together pastoral, comic, and tragicomic plays from mobile theatergrams - plot elements, roles, stories, speeches, and star scenes, such as cross-dressing, the mad scene, and the sung lament. Shakespeare and his peers gave new prominence to female characters, marked their passions as un-English, and devised plots that figured them as self-aware agents, not counters traded between men. Playing up the skills and charisma of the boy player, they produced stunning roles charged with the diva''s prodigious theatricality and alien glamour. Rightly perceived, the diva''s celebrity and her acclaimed skills posed a radical challenge that pushed English playwrights to break with the past in enormously generative and provocative ways.

The reader is invited to guess who causes the boat to sink when five animal friends of varying sizes decide to go for a row.

Cuthbert loves being the centre of attention, but when his mum and dad bring home four baby sisters no-one seems to have time for him anymore. Cuthbert wishes for someone big and bad to play with and, out at sea, in their dreams, three pirates hear his call.

A royal household is disrupted when a lion runs off with the baby.

Children''s picture book about Old Tom and his efforts to milk the temperamental cow, Belinda. Colourfully illustrated by the author, winner of the Children''s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Award 1983 and 1984, and twice winner of the New South Wales Premier''s Award for the best children''s book. Other books include TWho Sank the Boat?'' TMy Cat Maisie'', and TBertie and the Bear''. The book was shortlisted for the 1993 Children''s Book Council Picture Book Award.

The King loves to run and jump and ride his horse and he also loves to eat, and eat and eat . . . until he becomes too fat to have fun any more. When he sacks all his cooks, his friend the stable-boy shares his lunch with him. Every lunch they eat bread and honey until the King can run and jump again. An exuberant, romping read-aloud story for the very young by the author of the classic Who Sank the Boat?

Who sank the boat? Was it the cow or the donkey or the sheep with her knitting? Surely it wasn’t the tiny little mouse? Winner of the 1983 Australian Picture Book of the Year Award, this wonderfully illustrated book is designed for sharing aloud and will make children giggle as they guess which animal spoilt a day’s rowing by sinking the boat.

When a straggling, inattentive duckling falls down a deep hole in the road passersby use their ingenuity and join together to come to the rescue. Suggested level: preschool, junior.

Shake it baby, shake it! is a lively session with bouncing and upbeat dance songs. This Bright Bubs session includes scarf, ball and percussion play to stimulate your baby''s senses. Your baby will enjoy the circle dances, attentive massage, playful finger plays and gentle rocking.