From car pools and coffee klatches to life lessons for all, Johnston combines strips from her fifth and sixth cartoon collections--"Just One More Hug "and "T""he Last Straw"--inside this specially annotated edition.
As creator Lynn Johnston illustrates inside this special treasury of America's most popular family comic strip, "For Better or For Worse," life moves quickly in the Patterson household.
Reflecting Johnston's longstanding tradition of portraying family life with warmth, humor, and honesty, this treasury features Johnston's original commentary, which offers firsthand insight into the development and inspiration behind her strips. Candid personal photos and newspaper clippings from the early days are also included and provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse for fans of "For Better or For Worse."
Join the Patterson family as they find humor in life's everyday challenges and triumphs; and discover why this endearing foursome is North America's favorite funny-page family inside this reflective retrospective.

"For Better or For Worse"'s Patterson family has grown and grown up for decades on the comics page. Facing real-life issues with a continuously humorous, often poignant, sometimes sentimental stance, "For Better or For Worse" delivers storylines that reflect the life moments and family challenges that most people face. In this collection, "Graduation: A Time for Change," life is transforming for each family member and their widening circle of friends. Elly and John face middle age and the decision to ask Elly's dad to move in. As Michael graduates from the safe confines of university, Elizabeth begins her college years with a surprising roommate. The pleasures of being the number one kid sometimes escape the often-lonely April. Throw in the engagement of Michael and Deanna and add another dog to liven up the household and you get a lot of laughs and a bit of chaos--just like real life.

Created by Canadian cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy, the syndicated comic strip Between Friends offers a near-telepathic view of the female psyche and illustrates the essence and angst of modern women today. Between Friends chronicles the highs and lows of three archetypal women in their early forties who have known each other since high school: Susan, who balances her full-time job with her responsibilities at home; Maeve, the divorced, sophisticated professional who's always searching for Mr. Right; and Kim, who works at home while taking care of her six-year-old stepson. Readers will recognize themselves and their friends in this contemporary slice-of-life strip. Susan, Maeve, and Kim talk to each other about things like aging, dating an ex, motherhood, guilt, personal time, and the pros and cons of Botox. Bell-Lundy obviously has struck a chord with countless enthusiastic fans, such as reader Valerie Hastings: "My husband teases me that you must be related or a good friend because you seem to have an inside track on my mind " Reader Kim Turner agrees: "As a working mother with a supportive spouse and two 'daycared'-for children, I continually look forward to seeing glimpses of my own life in your work." Coffee, Tea, and Reality is sure to delight the millions of women whose lives parallel the angst-driven, stress-filled glory of the Between Friends gang.

For thirty years, cartoonist Lynn Johnston made daily additions to what would become a monumental body of work: her newspaper comic strip, For Better or For Worse. Chronicling the daily lives of the middle-class suburbanite Patterson family -- Elly and John and their children, Michael, Elizabeth, and April -- Johnston's strip was ground-breaking in its adherence to narrative and emotional realism, and its refusal to engage in melodrama, superpowers, or anthropomorphic animals. As the syndicated strips appeared in daily newspapers throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the 2000s, these characters aged with their readers, and their trials and tribulations were the same as those of their readers: the daily struggles of work, family, school, and bureaucracy.Wildly funny and formally innovative, For Better or For Worse: The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston was published to coincide with an international touring exhibition of Lynn Johnston's work, organized by the Art Gallery of Sudbury. The book features some of Johnston's most popular narratives, interspersed with an essay that chronicles the development of her drawing, her life, influences both personal and artistic, and the history of her wildly successful comic strip. This book also gathers together a generous selection of Lynn Johnston's daily comic strips and Sunday pages, spanning the lives of the Patterson family.Whether readers are new to Johnston's work or old fans returning once again, they'll find this book to be a rich treasury of For Better or For Worse.

The Complete Peanuts marches into the 1980s as Snoopy's brother Spike is drafted into the Infantry and a second brother, 'Marbles', takes his bow. Also in this volume, Peppermint Patty witnesses the 'butterfly miracle', Sally gets fat, Charlie Brown's team loses its baseball field, Linus is still not Sally's 'Sweet Babboo', more Beagle Scout adventures with Snoopy, and Molly Volley and 'Crybaby' Boobie return for a rematch.

La bedeiste Lynn Johnston a construit jour apres jour ce qui allait devenir une oeuvre considerable : sa bande dessinee Pour le meilleur et pour le pire qui a paru dans les journaux tous les jours durant trente ans. Elle y racontait le quotidien des Patterson, une famille de la classe moyenne de la banlieue : Elly, John et leurs enfants Michael, Elizabeth et April. La bande dessinee de Johnston a innove par son realisme sur les plans du recit et des emotions, et par son refus de verser dans le melodrame ou de faire appel A des superheros et A des animaux anthropomorphiques. Au fil de la publication de ces bandes dessinees dans les journaux au cours des decennies 1980, 1990 et 2000, ses personnages ont vieilli au rythme des lecteurs et vivaient les memes epreuves et aventures qu'eux au travail, en famille, A l'ecole et avec la bureaucratie. La parution de Pour le meilleur et pour le pire : l'art de la bande dessinee selon Lynn Johnston -- amusant et A la mise en page innovatrice -- coA-ncide avec la presentation d'une exposition itinerante internationale des oeuvres de Lynn Johnston organisee par la Galerie d'art de Sudbury. Le livre met en valeur les recits les plus aimes de Johnston intercalee d'un essai sur le developpement de son art, sa vie, ses influences personnelles et artistiques, ainsi que l'histoire de sa tres populaire bande dessinee. L'ouvrage reunit egalement une genereuse selection d'extraits de Pour le meilleur et pour le pire parus dans les quotidiens et les journaux du dimanche. Cet ouvrage plaira autant A ceux qui decouvrent Pour le meilleur et pour le pire de Johnston qu'A ceux qui la suivent depuis longtemps.

Pictures and humor help readers build their Spanish language skills

To its millions of fans, the Pattersons are just like their own families, facing universal issues among daily concerns. Containing a selection of 100 syndicated Spanish-language versions of the strip that is widely read in Latin America, Laugh n Learn Spanish provides an entertaining and effective way to expand and polish conversational skills in Spanish.

Readers learn by understanding and learning natural, everyday verbal interactions at home and about town, following John and Ell Patterson as they attempt to come to terms with middle age; daughter Elizabeth as she spreads her wings and goes off to college; son Michael dating and then marrying his childhood sweetheart, Deanna; daughter April as she rebels against discipline, anther grandpa who finds a second love in the autumn of his life. Each strip is graded by difficulty--Beginning, Moderate, or Challenging--and is accompanied by:

• Glosses that translate difficult vocabulary
  
• Usage notes to build proficiency
  
• A summarizing activity that tests comprehension
  
• Additional exercises for key idioms and word patterns appear at the end of each section