Whalen Book Works

A beautifully illustrated pocket-size hardcover guide to the mushrooms of North America—a must-have for any mushroom enthusiast’s backpack or home library. 

Mushrooms: An Illustrated Field Guide is a compact, beautifully illustrated field guide to 50 North America’s most popular mushrooms. Inside this elegant hardcover, you’ll find profiles on individual species, each showcasing a full-page illustration, plus a definition of fungi, information on where to find mushrooms and how—and when—to collect them, and, last but not least, notes on how to avoid mushroom poisoning. Discover the wonderful world of North American mushrooms, including: 

- Chanterelles (Cantharellus) 
- Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) 
- Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondose) 
- Morels (Morchellaceae) 
- Puffballs (Calvatia)
- Stinkhorn Mushrooms (Phallaceae)

And many, many more! Visually stunning, Mushrooms: An Illustrated Field Guide is an engrossing overview of North America’s remarkable and diverse mushrooms. You’ll find opportunities for discovery on every page.

A beautifully illustrated pocket-size field guide to the birds of North America—a must-have for any birder’s backpack or home library. 

Birds: An Illustrated Field Guide is a compact, beautifully illustrated field guide to 50 North America’s most popular birds. Inside this elegant hardcover, you’ll find profiles on individual species, each showcasing a full-page illustration, plus a description of bird habits and flight patterns, information on where to look for birds and how—and when—to see them, and, last but not least, instructions for building your very own birding “life list.” Discover the wonderful world of North American birds, including: 

- The Mountain Bluebird 
- The Black-Capped Chickadee
- The Carolina Wren
- The Red-Winged Blackbird
- The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

Visually stunning, Birds: An Illustrated Field Guide is an engrossing overview of North America’s remarkable and diverse birds. You’ll find opportunities for discovery on every page. 

Go on a journey through the jungle without ever leaving your bed! With Your Bedroom is a Rainforest!, kids can transform an ordinary room into a habitat for some of Earth’s most amazing creatures with reusable, wall-safe (and BPA-free!), glow-in-the-dark stickers—everything from blue morpho butterflies to Bengal tigers to poison dart frogs! 

“What’s your favorite animal?” The answer to this question, much like one’s favorite color, can say a lot about a kid. Maybe they’re into gorillas because they admire their nobility; maybe the colors of a toucan capture their imagination; maybe they like crocodiles because they take to water. While there are countless possible answers to this question, one thing is almost certain: they probably aren’t going to say, “squirrel.” No, the favorite animal of a child tends to be exotic, dangerous, fast, and maybe even endangered. In the past, a long and expensive trip to the zoo was required for kids to pay a visit to their beast of choice. Well, not anymore! Your Bedroom is a Rainforest! brings the incredible ecosystems of Central America, northern South America, western Africa, Southeast Asia, and beyond, right to the walls of your child’s bedroom! 

Within this keepsake-worthy hardcover book you will find more than 60 reusable stickers of jaguars, capybara, scarlet macaws, monkeys, forest elephants, anacondas, and many more adorable—and sometimes ferocious—animals glow in the dark and bring your environment to life. Along with the stickers, kids can look forward to pages packed with illustrations of their favorite animals accompanied by fascinating, and often hard-to-believe facts, such as:

- Most pandas spend half the day eating.
- Toxic poison dart frogs have neon colors to warn predators.
- Tiger urine smells like buttered popcorn.
- Without sloths, there would be no avocados! 
- Lions may be called the kings of the jungle, but they don’t live anywhere near them.
- Much of the life in the rainforest is found in the trees. 
- Unlike many other cats, jaguars do not avoid water; in fact, they are excellent swimmers. 

The high-quality, glow-in-the-dark stickers might be what gets kids interested, but the amazing facts are sure to be what keeps them around. And the best part? You’re never too old to appreciate amazing jungle animals! 

About the Author: Hannah Sheldon-Dean is a writer, editor, and educator specializing in publications for children and young adults. She has written several licensed activity books and gift books with Penguin Young Readers, and she writes and edits fiction, nonfiction, and educational materials for a variety of outlets. She is currently a writing consultant at the Columbia University School of Social Work and a volunteer mentor with Girls Write Now. Hannah received a Master’s of Social Work from New York University and a BA in Literary Arts and Education Policy from Brown University, and she loves to work on projects that fall at the intersection of those fields. She lives in Brooklyn but grew up in Vermont, so you might see her wandering the city in search of pine trees, mourning doves, caterpillars, or whatever other bits of nature she can find. She also loves singing with Khorikos choir, baking bread, and dreaming about the animal sanctuary she’ll open someday.

 

Unlock the cultural obsession with high-stakes robberies in Heist, a collection of the world’s greatest real-life break-ins. From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s famous art heist to the disappearance of the Marie Antoinette watch, these 100% true stories will have you on the edge of your seat—and double checking the locks on your doors!

Have you ever watched a movie like Ocean’s Eleven and thought: “There’s no way that could ever actually happen, right?” Wrong. In the US alone, there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of heists, from bank break-ins to museum plunders. In this premium compendium, we’ll walk through the most impressive ones, diving into the details behind each case, the detectives that led the investigations, how the events unfolded, and what mysteries remain. The hardcover book will explore the top 50 incidents, including:

1. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist: In March of 1990, two men dressed up as police officers and sweet-talked their way past security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA. After tying up the real guards, these men dismantled and packed up 13 works of art, loaded them onto a truck, and drove off into the night, making the 81- minute breach one of the most expensive in modern history. Today, it remains the single largest property theft in the world. 
2. The Great Train Robbery: Not all heists happen in buildings. In fact, one of the most popular ones was the 1963 train robbery in which nearly 2.6 million pounds was lifted from a Royal Mail train headed to London. Using intel provided by a man on the inside dubbed The Ulsterman, the group rigged the railways traffic light system to bring the train to an extended stop, during which time, they funneled the money from one of the carriages into a waiting truck by way of a human chain.  
3. The French Bank Vault Tunnelers: On the morning of July 19, 1976, workers from a safe manufacturing company were called to the Société Générale bank to fix a faulty vault door that appeared to be jammed. When they drilled into the vault and peered in to diagnose the problem, though, what they found was not a loose screw or broken hinge, but a door that has been welded shut...from the inside. Also scattering the room was a couple of wine glasses, a portable stove, and a giant tunnel system that proved to be the method of transport for thieves, who had dug their way into the bank, spent the weekend there, and left with ten million in cash. 
4. D. B. Cooper’s Escapades: The subject of many conspiracy theories, D. B. Cooper (not his real name) hopped on a Boeing 727 in a trench coat and sunglasses in 1971. When the plane had reached cruising altitude, Cooper hijacked it, extorting 200,000 dollars before strapping on a parachute, jumping out of the plane, and disappearing into thin air. This “aerial heist” remains unsolved to this day and remains one of the FBI’s most frustrating open cases. 
5. The Botched Crown Jewels of England Theft: Back in 1671, a man named Thomas Blood (a cool name, by any standard) decided: “Eh, I’m gonna steal the Crown Jewels.” He reached out to Talbot Edwards, the keeper of the stones, with a proposition: if you give me a private viewing of the gemstones, I’ll have my nephew marry your daughter (a nephew who, naturally, turned out to not exist). At this private viewing, Blood knocked out Talbot, smashed the jewels into pieces and threw the shards into his pockets, hoping to make a run for it. Though he didn’t manage to escape, he did manage to escape jail time: The King at the time was so amused by this failed attempt that he let Blood off scot-free.

And that’s just the start of it. Plastered with gorgeous photography and big, sleek pages, Heist looks as good as it is captivating. Crack the code of the world’s most elusive capers, from the popular tales your great grandad told you about to the ones that have been long forgotten. 

Now the classic novel by Bram Stoker is an illustrated storybook perfect for children! Kid Classics: Dracula is a fun way for kids to experience classic literature at their reading level—and just the right amount of spooky! 

For years, the mysterious Count Dracula has terrorized Transylvania from the shadows of his great gothic castle; but when his latest victim—John Harker—makes a daring escape, the ancient vampire may have finally met his match! Told through the perspective of multiple characters, including vampire-hunter Van Helsing, beautiful schoolteacher Mina Harker, and even the loathsome Count himself, the story of Dracula has never been so much fun for kids to read. With page after page of captivating illustrations, this magical hardcover will be the fought over favorite in your home and schoolroom!  

Bram Stoker was born November 8, 1847, in Dublin, Ireland. Stoker was a sickly child who was frequently bedridden; his mother entertained him by telling frightening stories and fables during his bouts of illness. Stoker studied math at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1867. He worked as a civil servant, freelance journalist, drama critic, editor and, most notably, as manager of the Lyceum Theatre. Although best known for Dracula, Stoker wrote eighteen other books, including Under the Sunset, The Snake’s Pass, The Jewel of Seven Stars, The Lady of the Shroud, and The Lair of the White Worm. He died in 1912 at the age of sixty-four.

Imagine if forgetting your wife’s birthday was not only discouraged, but a crime? That’s one of many real-life blue laws (rules prohibiting a hyperspecific activity) that Don't Hurt a Sasquatch covers. This hilarious compendium dives into the quirkiest decrees from around the country, from Alabama’s ban on driving blindfolded to Delaware’s restriction on selling dog hair. 

Every state in the country has its own set of rules, carefully designed to identify the biggest problems in its culture and correct them. Most of them are normal: don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t go somewhere you don’t belong, etc. All it takes is one weirdo to throw a wrench in that ordinary list, one unruly dude who tried to hold a salmon suspiciously or wash an alligator in a bathtub for lawmakers to step in and impose some order. What are some of these crazy laws, you ask? Take your pick:

• In Connecticut, it’s illegal for a barber to hum a tune while clipping your hair.
• Thinking about buying a boat house? Think again. It’s considered illegal in the state of Georgia to live on a boat for longer than a month. 
• Pigeons get the short end of the stick in both San Francisco, California and Venice, Italy: it’s against the law to feed them in public in both cities.
• Ready to say “I do!” a third time? Hopefully, you don’t live in Kentucky: women are not allowed to marry thrice in the Southern state. 
• Want to surprise your loved one with a pizza? Too bad. Sending a pie to someone without their permission can result in a $500 dollar fine in Louisiana. 
• In Arizona, you can’t feed garbage to a pig without a permit. What constitutes as garbage, though, is up to you. 

The list goes on. More interesting than the laws themselves are the histories behind each, which Blue Laws goes into in detail. Like, why can’t you roll a boulder in Boulder, Colorado? Who decided that you couldn’t catch fish with your hands in Indiana? Why are blue laws called “blue laws” and how did they come to mean “generally weird rules” (instead of their original meaning: “laws dictating what citizens can and cannot do on Sundays”)? In this informative and funny book, you will find out through a series of anecdotes, court cases, and illustrated pictures that break down just how and why these rules (most of which are still currently in effect) came to be. Good for history teachers, trivia nerds, or white elephant gift exchange participants, Don't Hurt a Sasquatch is a widely appealing book that will teach you more about how the world works than you ever wanted to know.

The Illustrated Compendium of Weirdly Specific Words is an illustrated dictionary of the 300+ most specific words in the English language, along with their definitions, roots, and (hilarious) usage quotes!

Have you ever been lying in your bed, surrounded by crumbs and wrappers, feasting on your fifth pop tart and thought, “I wish there was a word for this”? Well, there is! Accubationis - the practice of eating and drinking while lying down. The English language is populated by many words that have a regular place in everyday conversation, and The Illustrated Compendium of Weirdly Specific Words celebrates these words by featuring definitions, origins and usage, and coupling illustrations. Words include:

Badling (noun) - a group of ducks.
Crapulence (noun) - sickness resulting from eating too much.
Guddle (verb) - fishing only with your hands.
Kaiju (noun) - A film genre characterized by giant, terrifying monsters.
Slugabed (noun) - A lazy person who stays in bed late.
Wegotism (noun) - The excessive use of the word ‘we’.

With more than 300 insanely specific words, you’d think that you would know a few of them, right? Well, think again! We’re willing to wager that you don’t know a single one of these words! Unless, of course, you have a special interest in the smell of horse urine (the word for that particular odor is jumentuous). The Illustrated Compendium of Weirdly Specific Words not only captures these words through equally specific illustrations, it also tells you what they mean! And like so many great reference books before it, it is organized in alphabetical order, from aglet to zopissa.

Readers will close this book a little bit smarter than they were when they picked it up! 

Make Vegetables Great Again is the go-to cookbook for making kids (and kids at heart) love their veggies!

Some kids say vegetables like it’s the dirtiest word they’ve ever heard. (Heck, some parents feel the same way!) But it doesn’t have to be like that! It’s time to Make Vegetables Great Again! Inside this polished little hardcover cookbook you’ll find:

- Over 100 recipes, variations, and tips and tricks for making every meal (secretly!) chock full of vegetables!
- Brilliant ideas for sneaking vegetables into kids' diets! 
- Prep-ahead plans and other tricks for making mealtimes (and on-the-go mealtimes) super fun, fast, easy, and delicious!
- Beautiful food photography that will reel in even the pickiest eater!
- Fun facts on how to select luscious produce, plus ways to get the most flavor and nutrition out of your vegetables!

Feeding a little person healthy, fresh, seasonal produce doesn’t have to be difficult. Make Vegetables Great Again will win over even the stubbornest little eater. They’ll be gobbling up that cauliflower in no time! Go on, get cooking—veg-filled breakfasts, fresh lunches, healthy snacks, and happy family dinners await!

This Book Will Teach You Business Etiquette is the essential pocket-sized guide for business skills nobody teaches you about in school! 

There was a time when you could diligently put in your hours and stay in the same job from graduation to retirement. But these days you have to be savvy to get ahead in business! Inside this handy, pocket-size hardcover, you will find:

- Five tricks for remembering names (the first time) and engaging people on a deeper level!
- How to avoid burnout, savor vacation time, and love your work!
- What not to do during a conference call!
- How to be professional
- How to get a promotion and win that raise!

Recent grads and seasoned professionals alike will rely on this trusty little hardcover guide to the nuances of business etiquette that typically take years to learn. With dozens of how-tos, lists, and charts, This Book Will Teach You Business Etiquette breaks down business insider secrets in an entertaining, informative, and encouraging manner. You’ll be winning friends and influencing people in no time! 

The Illustrated Histories of Everyday Inventions uncovers the fascinating, humorous, and often unbelievable origins behind the world’s most overlooked innovations!

Nobody knows the backstories behind our most taken-for-granted inventions, like credit cards, egg cartons, windshield wipers, and breakfast sandwiches! But the strange and wonderful origins of these inventions are far from ordinary: They are rooted in forgotten history. Inside this hardcover book, discover the extraordinary true stories of:

- The TOASTER — actually the best thing before sliced bread
- The PASSPORT — the original Facebook
- The TOOTHBRUSH — so much more than bamboo + hog bristles
- The PIZZA SAVER — no pie left behind since 1985
- SLICED BREAD — at first, no one wanted it
- And MANY, MANY MORE of history’s most influential discoveries!

Organized chronologically from 75,000 B.C. to today and illustrated with more than 200 pieces of original artwork, The Illustrated Histories of Everyday Inventions is as beautiful as it is entertaining and informative. Discover who invented BATHING, why some of the first-ever BEDS were naturally mosquito-repellant, how president Theodore Roosevelt’s encounter with a black bear inspired the TEDDY BEAR, and why SELFIE STICKS might be older than you think!