Starting with their own body and how it works, children soon become interested in other people, the Earth with all its animals and plants, and beyond to science, technology and the wonders of the universe. The books is comprised of seven sections covering the topics, My Body, People and Places, The Arts, The Earth, Animals and Plants, Science and Technology and The Universe. It is ideal for young readers who are curious about the world they live in.

Authoritative and up-to-date, this fourth edition of the Pocket Oxford Spanish Dictionary covers over 90,000 words and phrases, and 130,000 translations of contemporary Spanish and English. Hundreds of new words from Spanish and English have been added from computing and technology to health and lifestyle, based on findings from the Oxford Languages Tracker. Includes excellent coverage of both European and Latin American Spanish. More than just a dictionary, this handy reference book also includes extensive sections on grammar, culture, and communication giving you the tools you need to communicate effectively and understand aspects of another culture. The grammar supplement provides full information on key points of Spanish grammar, including verb tables for quick reference. The section on culture offers lively and useful information on life in the Spanish-speaking world, covering everything from political institutions to how weddings are celebrated. The communication supplement gives help with all types of correspondence, including example letters, emails, CVs and resumes, and a guide to text messaging. Also new to this edition is a brand-new section on the internet and online services. The Pocket Oxford Spanish Dictionary is the perfect reference for student and adult learners needing an affordable, portable dictionary.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... Clement Moore's popular festive poem about a visit from Santa Claus, illustrated in glowing colour by Tomie dePaola, is a delight to share with children.

Whether your child is learning English or Chinese, Oxford First Chinese Words gives your child a head start in learning another language by taking a picture-book journey through a day, with familiar settings, everyday things, and cute little dinosaurs. There is a bird's eye view of getting ready for school in the morning, the journey to school, inside the classroom, a birthday party, and even a trip to the seaside. As a first picture word book, this is perfect for children and their language teacher, or native speaker, to share together picking out the familiar items, playing the matching game, recognizing numbers, shapes and time words. It is ideal for supporting the language skills children are learning in school, language clubs, and for those learning English as a 2nd language. Over 400 Chinese words and their English translations are given next to their illustrations, on every page. There is also an expertly-levelled supplementary section at the back — a picture/word matching game, counting the ladybirds up to twenty, shapes, opposites, weather, time, and a comprehensive index. The David Melling (The Kiss that Missed, Fidget and Quilly) illustrations make this an adorable first bilingual word book.

This book provides all the information a student of Britain and British culture needs to know. What's it like living in Britain today? Find out about the country and its people in this new edition of Britain. All the information is completely up-to-date and illustrated with new colour photographs. • Understand the attitudes and beliefs that shape Britain's character. • Discover the history and cultural background to British society and institutions such as the NHS and the BBC. • Find out about people's daily lives from charts, graphs, and extracts from popular fiction and newspapers. • Use the questions at the end of each chapter to consider what you have read and to make comparisons with your own culture. • NEW Workbook Pack with activities that make you consider cultural issues you have read about and test your knowledge of the content of the book. • NEW website at www.oup.com/elt/britain, regularly updated with new information and useful links. Suitable for Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate, and Advanced students.

A new edition of the best-selling, story-based course for children starting English at the beginning of the school system. Happy House introduces children to English through the adventures of a lively family with their three children, their cat, Otto, and the mouse characters who live under the floor. The Activity Book contains: • One page of practice activities per Class Book lesson. • Take-home English: activities to involve parents in children's learning. • A MultiROM, with interactive language games, songs and stories.

A new edition of the best-selling, story-based course for children starting English at the beginning of the school system. Happy House introduces children to English through the adventures of a lively family with their three children, their cat, Otto, and two mice. Spike and Ruby, who live under the floor. For the pupil: • Class Book, with new cross-curricular and culture pages and motivating Take-home English projects. • Activity Book, with stickers for children to keep a record of their learning, cut-outs and a MultiROM, with games, songs and stories. For the teacher: • Teacher's Book. • Class AudioCDs, with karaoke songs. • Happy House iTools: digital classroom resources, DVD clips, make-your-own worksheets and much more. • Teacher's Resource Pack containing puppets, 40 storycards, masks, a poster, flashcards, Teacher's Resource Book and Evaluation Book.

First Friends is a two-year beginner's course that develops vocabulary, practices phonics, and teaches family values. The Numbers Book provides additional numeracy practice. It combines traditional numbers activities, such as counting and writing numbers, with engaging puzzles, games, and fun activities. By the end of Level 1, children will be able to: • Write the numbers from 1-10. • Count objects to 10. • Carry out simple picture additions and sums. • Group objects to 10. • Identify number sequences. By the end of Level 2, children will be able to: • Write the numbers from 11-20. • Write the words for numbers from 1-20. • Count objects to 20. • Group objects to 20. • Carry out sums. • Identify more complex number sequences. The Numbers Book is a flexible and easy-to-use component of First Friends. Its lessons may be done at the end of each unit or at any time after Lesson 4 of the Class Book, since Lesson 4 always presents the unit's new numbers (see page 7 for the structure of the Class Book). The Numbers Book is also based on the premiss that all children can succeed, and therefore offers easy-to-do activities that can be completed in class or at home. No new vocabulary is presented through the Numbers Book. All counting and number work is done through known vocabulary, with a special emphasis on the vocabulary presented in the corresponding unit of the Class Book. There are complete notes for each Numbers Book activity at the end of the main notes for each unit in the Teacher's Book.

Read at Home First Skills are fun early learning books, which use your favorite Oxford Reading Tree characters to introduce important first skills to your child. The books are ideal for reading together and sharing. They accompany all your Read at Home storybooks. Wilf's Shapes helps your child to: — learn the names of a variety of 2D and 3D shapes. — recognize properties of these shapes. — consolidate their learning with fun activities and questions.

An Infinity of Things tells the story of one of the largest private collections ever created, and the life of the man behind it. Wellcome planned a great museum filled with treasures from all corners of the globe, charting the history of human health from prehistory to the present day. The breadth of his vision was matched only by the depth of his pockets. During the opening decades of the twentieth century he acquired a collection so large that later generations of staff took to describing its contents by the ton. But Wellcome's museum was never finished, and his collection was still stored in vast warehouses when he died, unseen and incomplete. Today, after decades of work by his successors, artefacts from the collection can be seen in museums and libraries throughout the world. Demonstrating what can happen when a collector's aspirations are left unconstrained by wealth, Frances Larson explores Wellcome's life through his possessions, revealing the many tensions in his character: between his talents as a businessman and his desire for scholarly recognition; his curiosity and his perfectionism; and his philanthropic aspirations and his drive for personal glory.

Families and friends come together at Christmas and, as they do, there are stories to be told. Stories about love, secrets, friendship, bravery, conflict, and compassion. This collection includes stories by Charles Dickens, Laurie Lee, Philippa Pearce, Geraldine McCaughrean, Jacqueline Wilson, Nicholas Fisk, and many, many more. So whether you want to slide with Mr Pickwick on the ice or find out what's on Adrian Mole's Christmas list, there are delights and surprises to be discovered in this wonderfully varied anthology of stories illustrated in both colour and black and white.

Whether your child is learning English or Italian, Oxford First Italian Words gives your child a head start in learning another language by taking a picture-book journey through a day, with familiar settings, everyday things, and cute little dinosaurs. There is a bird's eye view of getting ready for school in the morning, the journey to school, inside the classroom, a birthday party, and even a trip to the seaside. Over 400 Italian words and their English translations are given next to their illustrations, on every page. There is also an expertly-levelled supplementary section at the back — a picture/word matching game, counting the ladybirds up to twenty, shapes, opposites, weather, time, and a comprehensive index. The David Melling (The Kiss that Missed, Fidget and Quilly) illustrations make this an adorable first bilingual word book.

It is sometimes said that the Bible is one of the most unread books in the world, yet has been a major force in the development of Western culture and continues to exert an enormous influence over many people's lives. This Very Short Introduction looks at the importance accorded to the Bible by different communities and cultures and attempts to explain why it has generated such a rich variety of uses and interpretations. It explores how the Bible was written, the development of the canon, the role of Biblical criticism, the appropriation of the Bible in high and popular culture, and its use for political ends.

In this vigorous and fast-moving novel of post-Napoleonic France, Julien Sorel's plans to reach the higher echelons of society through the priesthood are defelected by his realization that the attainment of happiness is of greater consequence than the pursuit of ambition. Subtitled 'A Chronicle of 1830', Stendhal's depiction of a nation of smug hypocrites scandalized contemporary readers, who recognized themselves or their peers and felt uncomfortable with the energy, imagination, and sincerity of a hero so patently inspired by their lately deposed Emperor. Julien's restless energy is fully captured in this specially commissioned translation of one of the world's great novels.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close — the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. Their struggle, seemingly to the death, was to leave many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but was also to lead to his immortality as a literary figure. However illogical as a detective story, 'The final Problem' has proved itself an unforgettable tale. The stories that precede it included two narratives from Holmes himself, on a mutiny at sea and a treasure hunt in a Sussex country house, as well as a meeting with his brilliant brother Mycroft, of whom Holmes says, 'If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from any armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived.'

'In the year of grace 1066, the Lord, the ruler, brought to fulfilment what He had long planned for the English people: He delivered them up to be destroyed by the violent and cunning Norman race.' Henry of Huntingdon's narrative covers one of the most exciting and bloody periods in English history: the Norman Conquest and its aftermath. He tells of the decline of the Old English kingdom, the victory of the Normans at the Battle of Hastings, and the establishment of Norman rule. His accounts pf the kings who reigned during his lifetime — William II, Henry I, and Stephen — contain unique descriptions of people and events. Henry tells how promiscuity, greed, treachery, and cruelty produced a series of disasters, rebellions, and wars. Interwoven with memorable and vivid battle-scenes are anecdotes of court life, the death and murder of nobles, and the first written record of Cnut and the waves and the death of Henry I from a surfeit of lampreys. Diana Greenway's translation of her definitive Latin text has been revised for this edition.

'Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!' A powerful poem of universal guilt and a protest against capital punishment, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is Wilde's best-known poem, yet it is quite unlike the rest of his poetry. At Oxford Wilde discarded the passion and politics of his mother's Irish nationalistic anti-famine poetry and opted to follow an English Romantic tradition, paying tribute to Keats, Swinburne, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Admiration of French masters gradually led to his writing Impressionist, even decadent poems and his collection Poems (1881) brought accusations of obscenity and plagiarism as well as scathing reviews. Unabashed, Wilde revised and reprinted his final 'Author's Edition' in 1892, by which time he was the successful author of fiction, criticism, and Lady Windermere's Fan. This volume follows as closely as possible the chronological order of composition, highlighting autobiographical elements including the young Wilde's conflicting attitudes to Greece and Rome, pagan and Christian, and his fluctuating attraction to Roman Catholicism. The Appendix shows Wilde's original ordering, constructed with great care around a 'musical' arrangement of themes. The poems reveal unexpected aspects of a literary chameleon usually identified with sparkling wit and social comedy.

The Norman Conquest in 1066 was the last time England was successfully invaded, and was one of the most profound turning points in English history, cataclysmically transforming a disparate collection of small nations into a European state. But what actually happened? How was the invasion viewed by those who witnessed it? And how has its legacy been seen by generations since? This fascinating Very Short Introduction reveals how dramatically English life was changed, from its language to its law, and focuses on the differing ways the conquest has been viewed by historians and in folklore ever since.

Completely updated to include all the latest vocabulary, this fourth edition of the Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary contains coverage of over 175,000 words and phrases, and 240,000 translations. It includes a comphrensive correspondence guide with sample letters, emails, and CVs, plus fun and informative cultural notes on life and living in the Spanish-speaking world. This new edition also features new sections on Spanish as used around the world, false friends and Spanglish, as well as an entirely new internet section helping with everyday online activities from booking tickets to banking online. The Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary is easy to use, with a clear layout featuring a two-colour text design and printed thumb tabs for quick reference.

Whether your child is learning English or Arabic, Oxford First Arabic Words gives your child a head start in learning another language by taking a picture-book journey through a day, with familiar settings, everyday things, and cute little dinosaurs. There is a bird's eye view of getting ready for school in the morning, the journey to school, inside the classroom, a birthday party, and even a trip to the seaside. As a first picture word book, this is perfect for children and their language teacher, or native speaker, to share together picking out the familiar items, playing the matching game, recognizing numbers, shapes and time words. It is ideal for supporting the language skills children are learning in school, language clubs, and for those learning English as a 2nd language. Over 400 Arabic words and their English translations are given next to their illustrations, on every page. There is also an expertly-levelled supplementary section at the back — a picture/word matching game, counting the ladybirds up to twenty, shapes, opposites, weather, time, and a comprehensive index. The David Melling (The Kiss that Missed, Fidget and Quilly) illustrations make this an adorable first bilingual word book.