This book explores the golden rule – ‘do unto others…’ – which occurs in some form in most of the world’s religions, and which reached its most perfect formulation in the words of Jesus, ‘Do unto others what you want others to do to you.’ Included are many of the different ways in which the rule is expressed by both religious and secular thinkers. This book also features succinct summaries of arguments for and against the golden rule as a guide to behavior.

The Golden Rule book is unique in its form – being in shape and size similar to a ruler – and is printed in golden ink so that it is both a book on the golden rule and a golden rule itself.

"This book is playful. It is an invitation to a party. Imaginative and beguiling, it is also deceptive: not one if its pages preaches about art; yet none teaches anything else."

So begins "100 Ways To Have Fun With An Alligator & 100 Other Involving Art Projects," unlike any other art activity book on the market. First published in 1969, it is a product of that boundary-breaking era, but its ideas are so fresh they beckon us even today.

The projects in this book use materials as mundane as paper and cloth, as available as shadows and one’s own voice, and as minimally challenging as a camera. Some involve hands-on techniques such as drawing, painting, sculpting and collage, while others are more theatrical:celebrating a poet’s birthday and free associating about a color. Other fascinating ideas include: screening an industrial film and asking students to match music to it, designing a card asking for something without words and – of course – 100 ways to have fun with an alligator, which include buy him some rose-colored glasses and teach him to make lasagna.

Richard Kehl is an artist, teacher, and author. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute where he became so excited about art that “he didn’t sleep until he was thirty.” One of his first projects was a mural for the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair. He was a professor of art at The University of Washington for many years and is now retired. He collects images, and his hobby is exploring foreign metropolises on foot.

Distinguished Canadian artist Norman Laliberté first received international recognition for his extraordinary exhibition of eighty-eight large, cloth-applique banners designed for the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Commissions followed from such prestigious institutions as the National Art Centre of Ottawa and the American Institute of Architects. Paintings, prints and sculptures by Norman Laliberté appear in the permanent collections of more than seventy-five museum and corporate collections. He has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Kansas City Art Institute and remains – as a painter, printmaker and sculptor – more actively engaged than ever.

We’ve left cookies for Santa and made things easy as pie – and now the third in our popular series of vintage recipe books "I Scream for Ice Cream" is ready for the icebox. Including both recipes for ice cream and creative things to do with ready- made ice cream, "I Scream for Ice Cream" is richly illustrated with many charming illustrations from our treasure trove of ice cream imagery. We hope our customers have as much fun using this book as we had putting it together.

"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream." Truer words were never spoken. Author, Benjamin Darling, has once again delved into his storied collection of vintage recipe pamphlets to give readers a fine celebration of frozen confections, quiescent and otherwise. In addition to recipes for making ice cream using traditional, modern and novel methods, author Darling, has filled "I Scream for Ice Cream" with a rich offering of recipes for ice cream sundaes, milk shakes, splits, and many more of the multitude of wonderful things that can be done with ice cream. Finally Mr. Darling has interleaved his work with a rich selection of facts about ice cream and ice cream eating as well as beautiful ice cream illustrations on every page. "I Scream for Ice Scream" is the book for ice cream lovers everywhere, whether they want to make ice cream from scratch, make great ice cream dishes, or simply revel in the beauty of ice cream facts, figures and illustrations.

This, unlike most books of quotations, is not culled from other anthologies, but is the product of thousands of books read and remembered over a lifetime. Some of the unusual categories are: Ambiguity, Confusion, Detachment, In-Between, The Innocent Eye, Invisibility, Locks and Keys, Mirrors, Naming, The Third Alternative, and Zero.

Kehl, a professor of art at the University of Washington, is concerned with cultivating, in himself and others, fresh insight and unhackneyed response. The quotations here collected are those he has found most useful in cultivating independent thinking. He shares the educational goal defined by Sidney Jourard: "The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence."

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because of love.
– Leo Tolstoy

This gathering focuses on the wonderful and baffling alchemy by which two beings can reach
across the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between them, and achieve unity. All of these quotations
were gathered over decades of reading rather than culled from collections of famous sayings. As
before, many of Kehl’s favorite authors are represented, including Neruda, Rilke, Colette, Rumi,
Yeats, Apollinaire and Merwin. This is a book unlike any other on the subject of love.

"What do they call it … the primordial soup? The glop? That heartbreaking second when it all got together, the sugars and the acids and the ultraviolets, and the next thing you knew there were tangerines and string quartets."
– Edward Albee

The mystery of creation is the underlying theme of this gathering of quotations. They were collected in a lifetime of reading. Richard Kehl says that when he happened on words which quickened his breath or caused the hair to stand up on the back of his neck he knew that these were words which he wanted to remember. He has assembled this book in the hope that it will offer to others a similar excitement.

“The Happiest Who’s Who Ever Written”

-Original advertising slogan for book in 1954.

"Who’s Who in Oz", originally published in the 1950’s, is an illustrated index of nearly every
character that ever appeared in the first 39 Oz books.

"Who’s Who in Oz" is wonderful in its scope and reach; author, Jack Snow, did a remarkable job
gathering these characters together and his descriptions or as he calls them “ informal
introductions to over six hundred and thirty Oz characters- people, animals, and creatures- with
hints on the parts they play in the thirty-nine Oz books” show a foremost Oz scholar, and
excellent writer himself, at work. Each character description also has a reference telling you the
first page on which this character appeared, and in which Oz book.

There are many black and white illustrations, by John R. Neill, Frank Kramer and “Dirk”, that
give us a delightful glimpse into the truly amazing, imaginative world of Oz.

Originally published in 1972, "2011: Living in the Future" wondered how we would live in the 2000′s. This optimistic book is both whimsical and nostalgic, inspiring and disappointing. Where are those jet-packs?

In Geoffrey Hoyle’s book "2011: Living in the Future" in the far-off year 2011, we’ll all do our work, attend school and read library books on ingenious video screens that can connect to each other from anywhere around the globe. Hoyle calls these miraculous devices “Vision Phones," (much more lyrical than i-Phone.)

Of course, in author Geoffrey Hoyle’s 1972 vision of the 2000′s, those screens are telephone-based, the size of a large dishwasher—and we use them while wearing practical and ingeniously designed jumpsuits made of “a material so light you can hardly feel it”. We eat using an amazing device into which we simply type our culinary desires on a screen, and voila, a fresh cooked meal to our exact specifications! Better yet no more rush hour, no more gas fueled vehicles, and no houses larger than any family’s needs (if only we’d heeded the warnings!)

Some of Mr. Hoyle’s nearly forty year old predictions are remarkably accurate, some are delightfully wrong, all of them are thought provoking in a very entertaining, pull it out at a party, kind of way. Accompanied by it’s original ultra seventies illustrations "2011: Living in the Future" is a near facsimile of the original with very slight modifications. Mr. Hoyle’s book makes a wonderful gift to both children and adults, or to anyone who has ever speculated on what the future holds, lamented the lack of modern day jet packs, or just likes to laugh at how different the future turns out to be from anything we could have, or can predict!

Entertaining anthology of weird and wonderful scenes from old children’s books.

This volume has seen many years in the making.  The author has kept track, as he collected and cataloged the huge Blue Lantern library old children’s picture books, of particularly unusual images and situations.  Here are some of the best, and rarest of these discoveries.  The world of children’s books is one where imagination is given free rein, and the results are both stimulating and delightful.  Artists and authors include Frank Baum, Edward Lear, Gelett Burgess, Peter Newell, John R. Neill and Charles Doyle.

Welleran Poltarnees, who together with his wife Alexandra Day founded the legendary Green Tiger Press, authored the popular series of Good Dog Carl children’s books, and head the various publishing enterprises of The Laughing Elephant, has been collecting weird and wonderful moments from children’s literature for over three decades.  It is his collection of over 15000 children’s books that fuels the Laughing Elephant’s creative spirit, and it is from this world class collection that he has drawn the selections that appear in Weird and Wonderful. 

"I Love You: an Illustrated Anthology of Some of the Most Romantic Love Poems Ever Written" features some of the most beautiful love poems. This sumptuous gift volume comes in its own box and includes poems by Shakespeare, Byron, Donne and many other of our most revered authors and poets.

All of the poems selected feature accompanying illustrations by some of the finest illustrators and painters of their era, including the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti and that of his contemporary, the book illustrator Eleanot Fortescue Brickdale.. The editors, drawing upon years of collecting in the field of illustrated poetry have created an integrated work in which the reader can enjoy the muse of art and poetry in equal measure.

"I Love You" is intended as a gift between lovers, both old and new, to be given as a testament of love and to be read aloud to the beloved. As such it contains an elaborately decorated page containing a place intended solely for a romantic inscription from giver to receiver; those seeking inspiration for an inscription of sufficient ardor need only look on for a few pages for to find a suitable message.

Recipe booklets and pamphlets were very popular in the first half of the 2oth century and were given away as a premium to help cooks learn to use products (largely foodstuffs and appliances) to best advantage. Given that the recipes carried the brand, justified the purchase, and, if successful, encouraged repeat use of the product, great effort was made to make the best and tastiest recipes possible.

Thus recipe pamphlets contain some wonderful recipes. Pies seem somehow to be a quintessentially American dish, hence the expression “as American as apple pie” and the musical question, “Can she make a cherry pie, Charming Billy?” Pies recall a bygone age when they cooled on the kitchen windowsill and were always in danger of being stolen by hungry boys. Easy As Pie includes all manner of pie recipes, fruit, nut chocolate and cream fillings, as well as a few pastry and piecrust recipes and tips. Wherever possible we have striven to be faithful to the original recipe, in some cases when it seemed that the recipe was either wrong to begin with or that tastes had changed to such an extent that most would be disappointed with the result, we have made minor corrections.

Santa, as you might imagine, is an easygoing guy, jolly, and eager to like and to be liked. He takes no pleasure in making up the list of naughty boys and girls. But there is one thing Santa Claus does not care for and that is when people put out store bought cookies for him on Christmas Eve. This is not to say that Santa does not enjoy the occasional Oreo, Thin Mint or Nutter Butter, but rather that when he has taken the time to come right to ones house to deliver one’s gifts in person he would like to know that we have made an effort on his behalf as well.

"Cookies For Santa"does not purport to contain Santa’s very favorite cookie recipes, but we will say that have we know a lot about Santa, having read numerous biographies, and having seen most of the biopics about him. Thus we feel that we understand his tastes pretty well and we have selected recipes based on our understanding of him and what we think he would like.

Unique in its approach and scope Wings and the Child, originally published in 1913, teaches adults how to work with children to play and imagine with the mind of a child. Wings and the Child is a work of non-fiction by the pioneering children’s author E. Nesbit. It is a passionate argument for the need to encourage simple, creative play in children. Nesbit gives concrete suggestions and fresh ways to engage children’s imaginations so they can exercise this wonderful skill fully and for the rest of their lives.

Illustrated with photographs of amazing constructed magic cities, this book can’t fail to awaken the sleeping dreamer in us all.

E. Nesbit 1858 to 1924, was an English author and poet, who wrote or collaborated on more than 60 works of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television and are still popular today, such as The Railway Children, The Treasure Seekers and Five Children and It.

Nesbit was also a political activist and co-founder of the Fabian Society, a precursor to the modern Labor Party in England. According to her biographer Julia Briggs, Nesbit was the first modern writer for children and inventor of the children’s adventure story. Many modern children’s authors have credited Nesbit with great influence on their work such as P.L. Travers, Edward Eager & Diana Wynne Jones.

An inspiring collection of quotations that assert and amplify the idea that though our bodies age, our hearts and minds can remain young. This is one of those rare anthologies that is the result of wide reading and long collecting, rather than the usual recombination of other people’s gleanings.

Richard Kehl woke up one day, as most of us eventually do, and thought – "I look old, but my heart is not old." That morning he started reading in search of observations which paralleled and examined his insight. We decided to put his collection in this book, because we think it will encourage many readers by letting them know that they are not alone, not wrong in their intuitions. We hope also to promote a youthful outlook, one which even perhaps younger readers will find fascinating.