For all you Wallace & Gromit fans

If you've never looked at bunnies quite the same way after watching "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," you just might enjoy checking out at this new book: Wallace & Gromit: Cracking Contraptions Manual.  In the style of a Haynes car manual, you'll find blueprints, cutaway drawings, and notes of some of Wallace's most creative inventions.  Remember the bed launcher?  Or the porridge cannon?  They're all here in cracking good detail.  

Getting away from it all ...

Feeling the need for a break from work/family/life?  A new book is out that just might help you escape all of that reality you have to face each and every day.

For your armchair traveling pleasure, I offer The Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will by Judith Schalansky.  The author, who grew up in East Germany, could not leave the country, so she traveled the world by atlas, and she became fascinated with islands - especially the remote kind.  Writing in a type of cartographic poetry, she delights the reader with her prose, as well as her own, beautifully drawn illustrations.  If you're unable to visit an island in person, you'll still experience "island time" by ambling through this charming book.