These adventurous short stories are great for ages ten to one hundred. People's interactions with alligators are usually tense, frightening, engrossing, and occasionally funny after the adrenaline settles down. These encounters occur for a variety of reasons and have various outcomes. Ever accidentally step on an alligator? A big one? It happens! You'll see what can happen when you feed alligators. What can happen when a huge alligator climbs into the boat with you? You'll learn why an alligator would knock on your door. Just visiting? Would an alligator come ashore just to say hello? How might you introduce your children to alligators and other interesting dangers? Should you go for a walk with an alligator? If you open a delicatessen for alligators, should you expect good manners? Just how mean can a cat be? The author based these stories on personal experiences and interviews with people who either witnessed or participated in these events. To show how these events came about and progressed, the author provides insights, conversations, and literary tones to explain the attitudes and behaviors of involved people and alligators. Similar events occur in most of the Southeastern United States, so read these stories to be aware. But realize that you still won't know enough. So, leave alligators alone.

This fascinating collection of myths, legends and folktales celebrates the diversity of characters and cultures across the Sunshine State. Florida boasts mysterious tales that stretch back more than twelve thousand years. In Florida Lore, storyteller Caren Schnur Neile shares a treasure trove of colorful, curious tales that capture her home state’s history, mystery, and unique personality. Delve into the lives of the proud Wakulla Pocahontas and the Ghost of Bellamy Bridge. Meet local lawbreakers like John Ashley, as well as transplants like Ma Barker and Al Capone. Stalk stumpy gators or Hogzilla as they prowl Florida's swamps and suburbs. Discover the quintessential Cracker cowboy and the Barefoot Mailman, plus the origin of names like Boca Raton and Orlando.

This book is full of anecdotes about the program's colorful and sometimes controversial history. A season-by-season look at one of college football's top teams.

From celebrated herpetologist and science writer Marty Crump, a beautifully illustrated exploration of the interlinked stories of herp folklore, natural history, and conservation. Frogs are worshipped for bringing nourishing rains, but blamed for devastating floods. Turtles are admired for their wisdom and longevity, but ridiculed for their sluggish and cowardly behavior. Snakes are respected for their ability to heal and restore life, but despised as symbols of evil. Lizards are revered as beneficent guardian spirits, but feared as the Devil himself. In this ode to toads and snakes, newts and tuatara, crocodiles and tortoises, herpetologist and science writer Marty Crump explores folklore across the world and throughout time. From creation myths to trickster tales; from associations with fertility and rebirth to fire and rain; and from the use of herps in folk medicines and magic, as food, pets, and gods, to their roles in literature, visual art, music, and dance, Crump reveals both our love and hatred of amphibians and reptiles—and their perceived power. In a world where we keep home terrariums at the same time that we battle invasive cane toads, and where public attitudes often dictate that the cute and cuddly receive conservation priority over the slimy and venomous, she shows how our complex and conflicting perceptions threaten the conservation of these ecologically vital animals. Sumptuously illustrated, Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog, Adder’s Fork and Lizard’s Leg is a beautiful and enthralling brew of natural history and folklore, sobering science and humor, that leaves us with one irrefutable lesson: love herps. Warts, scales, and all.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Winner • Pulitzer Prize for History Winner • Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction Finalist • National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, NPR, Library Journal, and gCaptain Booklist Editors’ Choice (History) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence In this “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (New York Times), “Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea” (front page, New York Times Book Review). Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea’ ” (Wall Street Journal). Illuminating America’s political and economic relationship with the environment from the age of the conquistadors to the present, Davis demonstrates how the Gulf’s fruitful ecosystems and exceptional beauty empowered a growing nation. Filled with vivid, untold stories from the sportfish that launched Gulfside vacationing to Hollywood’s role in the country’s first offshore oil wells, this “vast and welltold story shows how we made the Gulf . . . [into] a ‘national sacrifice zone’ ” (Bill McKibben). The first and only study of its kind, The Gulf offers “a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written” (Edward O. Wilson).

Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris wrote novels, narrative histories, translations of French folklore, children's literature, and collections of stories depicting rural life in Georgia. As fiction writer and folklorist, he wrote many 'Brer Rabbit' stories from the African-American oral tradition. He realized the literary value of the stories he had heard from the slaves of Turnwold Plantation. Harris set out to record the stories and insisted that they be verified by two independent sources before he would publish them. The stories, mostly collected directly from the African-American oral storytelling tradition, were revolutionary in their use of dialect, animal personages, and serialized landscapes. 1. The Uncle Remus Books — Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881) — Nights with Uncle Remus (1883) — Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892) — The Tar-Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus (1904) — Told by Uncle Remus (1905) — Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit (1907) — Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1910) — Uncle Remus Returns (1918) — Seven Tales of Uncle Remus (1948) 2. Mr. Thimblefinger Series — Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country (1894) — Mr. Rabbit at Home (1895) — The Story of Aaron (So Named), the Son of Ben Ali (1896) — Aaron in the Wildwoods (1897) 3. The Novels — The Romance of Rockville (1878) — On the Plantation (1892) — Sister Jane (1896) — Gabriel Tolliver (1902) — A Little Union Scout (1904) — Shadow between His Shoulder Blades (1909) — The Bishop and the Boogerman (1909) 4. The Shorter Fiction — Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White (1884) — Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches (1887) — Daddy Jake, The Runaway: And Short Stories Told After Dark (1889) — Balaam and His Master and Other Sketches and Stories (1891) — Evening Tales (1893) — Stories of Georgia (1896) — Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War (1898) — The Chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann (1899) — Plantation Pageants (1899) — On the Wing of Occasions (1900) — The Making of a Statesman and Other Stories (1902) — Wally Wanderoon and His Story-Telling Machine (1903)