Kuskin, Karla

The Philharmonic Gets Dressed (Reading Rainbow Book)

"It is almost Friday night. Outside, the dark is getting darker," and here and there around the city ninety-two men and thirteen women are getting dressed to go to work. First they bathe and put on their underwear. Then they don special black-and-white apparel. Then when the one hundred and five people are completely ready, each takes a musical instrument and travels to midtown. There, at 8:30 tonight, they will work together: playing.

In these pages Karla Kuskin and Marc Simont combine their talents to give us a delightful and unusual inside view of one way an orchestra prepares.

Nominee, 1983 American Book Award
Notable Children's Books of 1983 (ALA)
1983 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)
Outstanding Children's Books of 1982 (NYT)
A Reading Rainbow Selection
1983 Teachers' Choices (NCTE)
Children's Books of 1982 (Library of Congress)

Green as a Bean

What would you be if you were green?
Or red?
Or blue?
Or yellow?
Would you still be you?

The Upstairs Cat

This rhyming tale about two perpetually warring cats living under the same roof delivers a message of simple truth about the futility of fighting. The lively text is complemented by animated, action-packed oil paintings.

Moon, Have You Met My Mother?

Write about a radish
Too many people write about the moon.

The night is black
The stars are small and high
The clock unwinds its ever-ticking tune
Hills gleam dimly
Distant nighthawks cry.
A radish rises in the waiting sky.

This long-awaited, comprehensive collection by acclaimed poet Karla Kuskin contains her most celebrated poems as well as new works never before published. Whether she's writing about napping cats, reaches of beaches, or radishes as beautiful as the moon, Moon, Have You Met My Mother? amuses while it inspires.

So, What's It Like to Be a Cat?

So, what's it like to be a cat?

I'm very glad you asked me that.

Are cats afraid of the dark? Where do they prefer to sleep? What time do cats eat their breakfast? And what do they really think of dogs (and people!)? The award-winning team of Karla Kuskin and Betsy Lewin explore the secret inner lives of felines in this beguiling question-and-answer interview between an intrepid child and a very clever cat.

I Am Me

This little girl has her mother's eyes, her father's hair, and her Aunt Jen's funny little toe.

Or does she?

In fact, she is also totally, thoroughly, wonderfully herself.

The Animals and the Ark

Mutiny on the Ark!

When Noah builds the Ark, he never anticipates that the animals might get just a bit restless after forty days and forty nights....But just as the monkeys are squealing, the tiny animals are growing tearful, the tigers are getting bad-tempered, and Noah is fearing a mutiny of Biblical proportions, the sun breaks through!

A delightfully raucous look at the Noah's Ark story, from the animals' point of view, told with relish by children's poet extraordinaire, Karla Kuskin.

O Ye Jigs and Juleps!

Combining a little girl's humorous outlook on life, her Christian perspective, and the customs and social mores of ninteenth-century America, a collection of essays follows a child's experiences at a religious boarding school.

Which Horse Is William?

William's mother knows him so well that she can distinguish him from everyone else in the world--even if he were a horse or a songbird or a mouse or a pig.

James and the Rain

An expanded text and new illustrations bring back a long-out-of-print 1957 counting book in which James sets off in a downpour to learn rainy day games from the animals. By the author of The Philarmonic Gets Dressed.