Wild Times at the Bed and Biscuit
Wild Times at the Bed and Biscuit
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Overview
The Bed and Biscuit is going wild! Kids will laugh at — and learn from — this new adventure, as Grampa takes in some ailing critters who are anything but tame.
Ever since Grampa Bender opened his doors (and veterinary skills) to a despondent Canada goose, a cranky muskrat, and two tiny but rebellious fox kits, his animal boarding house has been turned upside down. Luckily, Ernest the mini-pig is on hand to marshal the other animals into being good hosts — but since wild things are, well, wild by nature, it has been trickier than he imagined. Plus Ernest is trying to train Sir Walter, the Scottish terrier puppy who is the newest addition to the family. But what if Sir Walter doesn’t want to be told what to do and decides that running wild like a fox sounds like lots of fun?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780763674298 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Candlewick Press |
| Publication date: | 09/23/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Lexile: | 670L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 7 MB |
| Age Range: | 6 - 9 Years |
About the Author
Joan Carris has published more than a dozen books for children. She also teaches graduate-level writing at Duke University. She lives in Beaufort, North Carolina.
Noah Z. Jones is the illustrator of Not Norman, by Kelly Bennett and The Monster in the Backpack by Lisa Moser. He lives in Camden, Maine.
Instead of a fascinating, miserable childhood that helps so many writers, I had a boringly normal youth. I remember running all over the neighborhood and then being spanked on the way home, because I knew better than to go so far away. True, I did know better. I just didn’t care about being a good girl. A few weeks after my brother was born, when I was five, I gently lifted him out of his bassinet, tiptoed downstairs in the early morning, and offered him to the milkman. “Here. Take him. We don’t need him,” I said. The milkman made me put him back, of course, and I must say I was beginning to feel a tad guilty. He was a beautiful, happy baby who became a great brother.
In grade school I became a real reader, spending four or five hours a day with books, figuring out who I was and what was important to me. Parts of me were like fiery Anne in Anne of Green Gables. At other times I was Nancy Drew, brilliantly solving mysteries. I was also patient, passionate Edmund Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo and stubborn Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. I was Jo, the writing sister in Little Women. I moved into the mind of each character I loved; I still do, whether I’m reading or writing.
I write many kinds of books, including novels for young readers. The Nancy Drew lurking inside me turned many of these into mysteries: When the Boys Ran the House, Witch-Cat, A Ghost of a Chance, Stolen Bones, and Beware the Ravens, Aunt Morbelia were funny, but they were also mysteries. I especially enjoyed creating Aunt Morbelia, a retired schoolteacher who first appeared in Aunt Morbelia and the Screaming Skulls. Aunt M was an inspiring, inventive woman, yet she was highly superstitious and told scary ghost stories—to the dismay of Todd, her great-nephew. When Aunt Morbelia saw how he struggled with dyslexia, she made it her mission to teach him how to learn. She persevered bravely, even though she passed out cold when Todd and his friend Jeff insisted that she tour the funeral home, and nearly had a heart attack when Todd’s cat Banshee howled in the night. An unlikely pair, Aunt M and Todd eventually forged a bond, to their mutual benefit.
Humor creeps into all of my writing, whether it belongs there or not. I can’t help it apparently. Although I strive to not take myself seriously, I take my work very seriously. Writing and reading are two of the best things you can do to figure out who you are and what is important in life. If I had the power, I’d require much more writing and reading in the schools, focusing on these skills until every kid was good at both. After that, a person can learn anything!
Three Things You Might Not Know About Me:
1. I consider chocolate a vegetable. It comes from a bean, after all, and it raises my spirits whenever I eat some, which is as often as I dare. Do string beans raise my spirits? Nope. That’s why I eat chocolate.
2. In high school and college and afterwards, I smoked cigarettes. Are we all really dumb at times? I guess so, because my smoking was world-class stupid. I don’t smoke anymore, but it was REALLY HARD to quit. Those danged cigarettes were running my life, I decided, and that’s when I quit. Nicotine is a powerful, scary drug. My dad was right about smoking, and I should have listened to him.
3. I prefer loose, billowy clothing because it is more comfortable. A Hawaiian muumuu is the perfect garment, or a fluffy bathrobe in winter. All this spandex and tight clothing drive me wacko. It’s a good thing I work at home, huh?
Noah Z. Jones is an author/illustrator/animator who draws all sorts of wacky oddities out of his home in Camden, Maine. After taking part in a monster-drawing contest in the fifth grade (placing fourth out of five), he realized that he wanted to create art for a living.
As a kid, Noah Z. Jones’s love for drawing was fueled by dinosaurs, monster movies, and the Wacky Packages line of trading cards. He would spend hours poring over books by Maurice Sendak, Richard Scarry, and Mercer Mayer.
His unique art and designs have added to numerous award-winning projects from clients such as Nickelodeon, PBS, and Disney. His crazy web-developed characters have attracted worldwide recognition and can often be spotted popping up on T-shirts around the globe.
Noah Z. Jones’s ability to change styles both digitally and with traditional pencil drawings demonstrates an unusual stylistic versatility. His books with Candlewick Press, Not Norman, The Monster in the Backpack, Those Shoes, and the Bed and Biscuit series— each with a different author — show his ability to approach every story with a fresh eye.
In addition to his work on children’s books, Noah Z. Jones divides his time between creative collaborations with commercial clients and developing his own odd collection of characters, ideas, and all-around lunacy.