“A Christmas Carol Special Edition from Standard Publishing Takes ... - PR Inside” plus 1 more

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A Christmas Carol Special Edition from Standard Publishing Takes ... - PR Inside Posted: 03 Dec 2009 07:26 AM PST 2009-12-03 16:27:49 - Just in time for the holiday season, Standard Publishing has introduced an annotated version of Charles Dickens' beloved tale, A Christmas Carol. The book – A Christmas Carol Special Edition by celebrated Christian author Stephen Skelton – aims to provide new insights and highlight the deeper meaning behind the 1843 classic. A Christmas Carol resonates with all ages. The newest version of the classic story, Disney's A Christmas Carol in 3D, allows a new generation to discover the story of Ebenezer Scrooge's road to redemption. However, if you want to go beyond the special effects this holiday season, explore the messages in A Christmas Carol Special Edition. The new edition includes the complete text of the book, along with insights, definitions, and discussion questions for groups and families. In his annotations, Skelton explores the 19 th Century language and references to Christianity. Born an Anglican, Dickens often drew on Biblical stories to inspire his own writing. A Christmas Carol, written in 1843, was to be the first of several Christmas-themed books by Dickens, and according to some scholars, revived his later career. As a result of A Christmas Carol, such familiar expressions as "Bah! Humbug!" and "Merry Christmas" entered both the English and American vernacular. Through annotations in the book's margins, Skelton explores the universal themes of regret, repentance, and redemption in his study of A Christmas Carol, which offers opportunities for intergenerational and family discussion, in both casual conversation and formal secular and Christian classroom settings. Skelton's previous work includes producing a DVD Bible study series based on A Christmas Carol, as well as DVD Bible studies on classic television shows. A Christmas Carol Special Edition is available at local Christian bookstores, or online at www.standardpub.com/christmascarol : . To learn what reviewers are saying about A Christmas Carol Special Edition, visit www.fsbmedia.com/book_reviews.php?isbn13=9780784723913 : . About Standard Publishing For more than 140 years, Standard Publishing has been raising the standard for true-to-the-Bible resources that educate, encourage, and enrich. The company is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, where it was founded in 1866. For more information, visit www.standardpub.com : . O'Keeffe CommunicationsDan O'Keeffe/Jill Isaacs, 513-221-1526 jill@okeeffecom.com : mailto:jill@okeeffecom.com This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

New and Notable book reviews - AZCentral.com Posted: 28 Nov 2009 09:51 PM PST Get out your gift lists and jot down these four titles. They're good books released for the holiday season, and at reasonable prices. 'The Jazz Loft Project' Sam Stephenson (Knopf, $40) This seductive volume will appeal to lovers of jazz, photography and New York City. In 1957, the great photographer W. Eugene Smith moved into a fourth-floor loft in the city's then-edgy flower district. He'd left behind his family, a rocky relationship with Life magazine and his Pittsburgh project, which had consumed three years of his life. He now shared a shabby, rat-infested building with artist David X. Young, jazz musicians Dick Cary and Hal Overton and a steady flow of jazz players, both the admired (Thelonius Monk, Zoot Sims, Ronnie Free) and the unknown, who came to the loft to jam. Smith taped their late-night sessions, which often stretched to dawn, and took photographs of the players, of the celebrities who came to listen (Norman Mailer, Diane Arbus) and, from his window, of the city life below. The book is dark and wonderfully evocative. You can almost hear the rain against the windows, see the cigarette smoke in the air, imagine the startling music they made. 'The Onion: Our Front Pages 1988-2008' (Scribner, $28) If humor and good taste are a contradiction in terms, it's no secret which camp the Onion prefers. Its staff is fearless. They ran snarky headlines just two weeks after 9/11 ("Rest of Country Temporarily Feels Deep Affection for New York") and months after the Columbine shootings ("Columbine Jocks Safely Resume Bullying"). They got away with it because bad taste and truth often have something in common, and the Onion cashes in on it. There's lots of cringe-worthy fun here, although I'm sad to say my favorite Onion story, about the opening of a Barnes & Noble in the killing fields of Cambodia, did not make the cut. In a foreword, NBC anchor Brian Williams says the Onion is "the sole news outlet capable of acknowledging that it is not above the hue and cry, that it is, in fact along for the ride, and that we have all of us together spiraled out of the darkness and down into something we cannot yet name or comprehend." Surely the Onion will mock him for it soon. 'Heads On and We Shoot: The Making of Where the Wild Things Are' (Harper, $39.99) What would Maurice think? They worried about that. Dave Eggers was nervous when he went with director Spike Jonze to Sendak's house one wintry day in 2003 to talk about their script for his book, "Where the Wild Things Are." But Sendak was welcoming, and when they left, Jonze felt that "we had a wind at our backs. We went into the unknown, and it was Maurice behind us, pushing us with force in that direction." This is the behind-the-scenes story of a movie made by a crew (it included a "creature designer") of adults who had read the book long ago. Some still had strong feelings about it. Here you'll learn about many things, from the injuries Max Records (he played Max) incurred during the shooting - he kept a list - to the logistics of filming the "dirt-clod war" to the contents of KW's belly ("slime," Max said, "that smelled like rotted lemons"). It was challenging and satisfying, and you get the feeling they had a really good time. 'Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds' Edited by Billy Collins (Columbia, $22.95) I picked up this book because its illustrations are by David Allen Sibley, whose bird guide is a standard among American birders (his paintings now grace a guide to trees as well). But it was the poems that kept me in my chair for two hours. This was surprising. I am not an admirer of "theme" anthologies and I am not a bird-watcher. Yet I watch birds. I have no list, no expertise, only an affection for the creatures that dive and hover, bicker and coo, and swoop incessantly among the wires above my yard. On that single, rather weak credential, I'm here to tell you that Collins has assembled a book that is lovely and oddly moving. Whether the poems are funny or sad, they make you think about what we see when we look at birds, and what we imagine them to be. If you enjoy birds in the way I do, two hours will go by fast. Poets include Marianne Moore, Robert Penn Warren, John Updike, Gerald Stern and Gary Snyder. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

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