'Funny, original and moving' The Sun 'Pick of the Week' December 2022 The perfect festive story for readers aged 8 to 8,888! Meet the HUMBUG Family! Christmas Elves, but not as we know them... The Humbugs aren't the kind of family you see on sparkly wrapping paper, or in snowy storybooks about Santa's grotto. You won't see them on the front of Christmas cards, and they definitely won't be knitted on your grandma's favourite festive jumper. Those happy scenes are only for the likes of the workshop elves and certainly not the Humbugs. Nope! They manage a much less glamorous part of Santa's factory, the RPD Department... That's Reindeer Poo Disposal to you and me. YUCK! But when a mince-pie-related-mishap combined with an unfortunate letter-losing-incident sees them exiled from their home, the Humbugs - together with their clumsy Reindeer, Blister, and wheelie-bin sleigh - go on a great and daring adventure, where they discover the true meaning of Christmas, and the real heroes who make it special! "A perfect Christmas stocking present - a very funny, festive page-turner." - Jacqueline Wilson, author of The Story of Tracy Beaker "Humbug is that rare book: funny, original, thought-provoking, and an instant classic." - Francesca Simon, author of Horrid Henry "An exquisite Christmas story, full of imagination and heart. For the whole family to read year-after-year!" - Amy Huberman, author of The Day I Got Trapped In My Brain "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll need a mince pie - a new Christmas classic!" - Steven Lenton, author and illustrator of Genie and Teeny A hilarious, huge-hearted hug of a book; perfect for all ages. For fans of Matt Haig, The Christmasaurus, and Elf on the Shelf. With a touching and thought-provoking message to key-workers who tirelessly toil behind-the-scenes to make everyone's lives better.

Creating Professional Characters: Develop Spectacular Designs from Basic Concepts is an inspiring and informative exploration of how popular professional character designers take the basic concept of a character in a production brief and develop these ideas into an original, high-quality design. Suitable for student and professional character designers alike, this book focuses on how to approach your character designs in ways that ensure the target audience and production needs are met while still creating fun, imaginative characters. This visually appealing book includes twenty thorough tutorials guiding you through the design and decision making processes used to create awesome characters. Replicating the processes used in professional practice today, this book demonstrates the types of brief a professional designer might receive, the iterative design process used to explore the brief, the influence of production feedback on the final design, and how final designs are presented to clients. This detailed, enlightening book is an excellent guide to creating incredible imaginative characters suitable for your future professional projects.

When Barack Obama came into office, the strategic landscape facing the United States in its overseas counterterrorism operations was undergoing a shift. Even before the rise of drones necessitated the articulation of legal doctrine, the Obama administration had to explain itself. In Speaking the Law, the authors offer a detailed examination of the speeches of the Obama administration on national security legal issues. Viewed together here for the first time, the authors lay out a broad array of legal and policy positions regarding a large number of principles currently contested at both the domestic and international levels. The book describes what the Obama administration has said about the legal framework in which it is operating with respect to such questions as the nature of the war on terrorism, the use of drones and targeted killings, detention, trial by military commission and in federal courts, and interrogation. The authors analyze this framework, examining the stresses on it and asking where the administration got matters right and where they were wrong. They conclude with suggestions for certain reforms to the framework for the administration and Congress to consider.

Study Speaking is for intermediate level and above students who need to speak English in connection with their academic work. It is intended primarily for use on language programmes preparing learners of English for study at university or college. The course is designed to improve students' speaking skills by: * activating and extending their linguistic competence * increasing their confidence in using spoken English * developing their ability to analyse and evaluate spoken performance * sharpening their strategic competence in face-to-face interaction. Study Speaking is part of a the Study Skills series.

Turn "Ho ho ho" into "Ha ha ha" with this zany Christmas picture book featuring Santa, Bigfoot, Little Red Riding Hood, unicorns, dragons, and more! In Once Upon a Christmas, the Three Bears' Christmas party gets off to a rocky start: Bigfoot can't stop photobombing, the dragon burns the fruitcake, and Jack Frost inadvertently triggers the storm of the century-knocking Santa's sleigh off course and straight into a lake! A soaked St. Nick finds eager helpers in the partygoers, a varied cast of mythical creatures and familiar fictional favorites. The unlikely team rescues the sleigh, just in time to continue the festivities and get Santa on his merry way. Humorous twists and action-packed illustrations will make this story an instant family classic for the Christmas season.

Study Speaking is for intermediate level and above students who need to speak English in connection with their academic work. It is intended primarily for use on language programmes preparing learners of English for study at university or college. The course is designed to improve students' speaking skills by: * activating and extending their linguistic competence * increasing their confidence in using spoken English * developing their ability to analyse and evaluate spoken performance * sharpening their strategic competence in face-to-face interaction. Study Speaking is part of a the Study Skills series.

What exactly is the United Nations? For that matter, why is there still a United Nations at all? In Living with the UN, international legal scholar Kenneth Anderson analyzes US-UN relations in each major aspect of the United Nations' work-security, human rights and universal values, and development-and addresses the crucial question of whether, when, and how the United States should engage or not engage with the United Nations in its many different organs and activities. He looks at each UN organ and function and suggests the form of engagement that the United States should take toward it, giving workable, pragmatic meaning to "multilateral engagement" across the full range of the United Nations' work.Cutting through the "alphabet soup" of UN agencies, as well as the utopian idealism that, however noble, often clouds analyses of the United Nations, the book offers principles for a permanent relationship based on ideals and interests between the United States and the United Nations-and provides guidance for long-term US policy that runs far beyond the Obama administration's tenure. Ultimately, Living with the UN offers a vision of a better, but also more modest, United Nations-a vision unlikely to be realized but well worth presenting.

Harm reduction is the single most effective approach to drug and alcohol problems because harm reduction uses pragmatic, evidence-based strategies that work. This book is the first comprehensive compilation of harm reduction strategies aimed specifically at people who drink alcohol. Whether your goal is safer drinking, reduced drinking, or quitting alcohol altogether, this is the book for you. It contains a large and detailed selection of harm reduction tools and strategies which you can choose from to build your own individualized alcohol harm reduction program. There are many practical exercises to help people change their behaviors, including risk-ranking worksheets, drinking charts, goal choice worksheets, and many more. There are also innumerable practical tips from folks who "have been there" and have turned their drinking habits around for the better. This book exemplifies the harm reduction principles of "meeting people where they are at" and encouraging people to change in ways which they choose for themselves. This book can either be used as a self-help manual for people working on their own or by people who are participating in a harm reduction support group. BETTER IS BETTER

Students progressing to advanced calculus are frequently confounded by the dramatic shift from mechanical to theoretical and from concrete to abstract. This text bridges the gap, offering a systematic development of the real number system and careful treatment of mappings, sequences, limits, continuity, and metric spaces.
The first five chapters consist of a systematic development of many of the important properties of the real number system, plus detailed treatment of such concepts as mappings, sequences, limits, and continuity. The sixth and final chapter discusses metric spaces and generalizes many of the earlier concepts and results involving arbitrary metric spaces.
An index of axioms and key theorems appears at the end of the book, and more than 300 problems amplify and supplement the material within the text. Geared toward students who have taken several semesters of basic calculus, this volume is an ideal prerequisite for mathematics majors preparing for a two-semester course in advanced calculus.