Clowning Glory is the ideal resource book for would-be clowns of all ages - from the youngest tot to the most elderly totterer. With over 200 tips and ideas, from acrobats to zoo games, this A-Z of clowning provides a wealth of material for use in churches, youth groups, children's clubs and street theatre.

For many people, the circus, with its clowns, exotic beasts, and other colorful iconography, is lighthearted entertainment. Yet for Greg Renoff and other scholars, the circus and its social context also provide a richly suggestive repository of changing attitudes about race, class, religion, and consumerism. In the South during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, traveling circuses fostered social spaces where people of all classes and colors could grapple with the region's upheavals.

"The Big Tent" relates the circus experience from the perspectives of its diverse audiences, telling what locals might have seen and done while the show was in town. Renoff digs deeper, too. He points out, for instance, that the performances of these itinerant outfits in Jim Crow-era Georgia allowed boisterous, unrestrained interaction between blacks and whites on show lots and on city streets on Circus Day. Renoff also looks at encounters between southerners and the largely northern population of circus owners, promoters, and performers, who were frequently accused of inciting public disorder and purveying lowbrow prurience, in part due to residual anger over the Civil War. By recasting itself as a showcase of athleticism, equestrian skill, and God's wondrous animal creations, the circus appeased community leaders, many of whose businesses prospered during circus visits.

Ranging across a changing social, cultural, and economic landscape, "The Big Tent" tells a new history of what happened when the circus came to town, from the time it traveled by wagon and river barge through its heyday during the railroad era and into its initial decline in the age of the automobile and mass consumerism.

It a special day The circus is in town and Pinky's dad is taking her and her brother, Peter, plus her friend Mary, under the big top. The children are awed by all of the wonderful circus acts. From the lion tamer to the high-wire, the trapeze and all the clowns, Pinky and the gang have a great time. Every part of the performance enthralls the youngsters, from beginning to end. When the show is over, the kids are already anticipating going again when the circus comes back to town next year Pinky Visits the Circus will have you recalling your own trips to see the marvelous shows under the big tent

Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion (and other uncommon tales from the founder of the Big Apple Circus) is a celebration of Paul Binder's life in and around the circus. Drawing on thirty-five years with the show he created, the Big Apple Circus' founder and founding Artistic Director invites us inside the fence every kid peers through for an intimate look at the uncommon life of circus artists, their animal partners, and the roustabouts who spend their days in a world that is both close-knit and international, high-minded and low comedy, death-defying and ludicrous.

Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion (and other uncommon tales from the founder of the Big Apple Circus) balances the weird and the workaday, the curious and the commonplace, the exhilaration and the exhaustion of life in the circus, with simple portrayals of ordinary people going about the business of achieving the extraordinary.