No Such Creature

No Such Creature
Author: Giles Blunt
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2009-08-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307372758

Tooling across the American southwest in their giant Winnebago, Max and his nephew, Owen, seem harmless enough, the actorly old fellow spouting Shakespeare like a faucet while his young charge trots him through select tourist destinations along the road. But appearances, as you might imagine, can be deceiving. Old Max is actually a master thief, and young Owen's summer vacation is his careful apprenticeship in a life of crime. Pulling heists is scary enough, but ominous signs point to the alarming fact that The Subtractors are on their tail, criminal bogeymen who stop at nothing to steal from other thieves. The road trip soon turns into a chase, by turns comic and horrifying. The most disturbing twist: Owen's slow realization that the person he loves most in the world is the one who can do him the most harm.

No Such Things

No Such Things
Author: Bill Peet
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 36
Release: 1983
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780395395943

Describes in rhyme a variety of fantastical creatures such as the blue-snouted Twumps, the pie-faced Pazeeks, and the fancy Fandangos. "Peet introduces a hilarious array of characters reminiscent of those who inhabit Dr. Seuss's books." -- Booklist

For Small Creatures Such as We

For Small Creatures Such as We
Author: Sasha Sagan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 073521879X

"A charming book, ringing with the joy of existence." --Richard Dawkins The perfect gift for a loved one or for yourself, For Small Creatures Such as We is part memoir, part guidebook, and part social history, a luminous celebration of Earth's marvels that require no faith in order to be believed. Sasha Sagan was raised by secular parents, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the writer and producer Ann Druyan. They taught her that the natural world and vast cosmos are full of profound beauty, and that science reveals truths more wondrous than any myth or fable. When Sagan herself became a mother, she began her own hunt for the natural phenomena behind our most treasured occasions--from births to deaths, holidays to weddings, anniversaries, and more--growing these roots into a new set of rituals for her young daughter that honor the joy and significance of each experience without relying on a religious framework. As Sagan shares these rituals, For Small Creatures Such as We becomes a moving tribute to a father, a newborn daughter, a marriage, and the natural world--a celebration of life itself, and the power of our families and beliefs to bring us together.

No Such Thing as Dragons

No Such Thing as Dragons
Author: Philip Reeve
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0545829860

A thrilling adventure from award-winning master storyteller Philip Reeve! Ansel's new master slays dragons for a living. He says he's hunted the monstrous worms all over Christendom-and he has the scars to prove it! But is Brock just a clever trickster in shining armor? Ansel is sure there is no such things as dragons. So what is the man-eating creature that lives in the crags of Dragon Mountain? As he and Brock climb the perilous ice-face to its lair, Ansel is about to discover the horrifying truth. A heart-pounding new fantasy with a brilliant twist from Philip Reeve, one of the world's greatest writers.

Fellow Creatures

Fellow Creatures
Author: Christine M. Korsgaard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2018-06-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191068373

Christine M. Korsgaard presents a compelling new view of humans' moral relationships to the other animals. She defends the claim that we are obligated to treat all sentient beings as what Kant called "ends-in-themselves". Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, she offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of beings for whom things can be good or bad. She then turns to Kant's argument for the value of humanity to show that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends-in-ourselves, in two senses. Kant argued that as autonomous beings, we claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. Korsgaard argues that as beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of moral reciprocity. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient creature as something of absolute importance. Korsgaard argues that human beings are not more important than the other animals, that our moral nature does not make us superior to the other animals, and that our unique capacities do not make us better off than the other animals. She criticizes the "marginal cases" argument and advances a new view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. She criticizes Kant's own view that our duties to animals are indirect, and offers a non-utilitarian account of the relation between pleasure and the good. She also addresses a number of directly practical questions: whether we have the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us and fight in our wars, and keep them as pets; and how to understand the wrong that we do when we cause a species to go extinct.

Belief

Belief
Author: Price, H H
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2014-02-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317852915

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Unusual Creatures

Unusual Creatures
Author: Michael Hearst
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 111
Release: 2012-09-26
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1452104670

"Introduces the reader to a wealth of extraordinary life forms"-- P. [4] of cover.