After a brief hiatus (I was in England! English accents: so cute), Wednesday Cute is back and cute as ever. This week we’re bringing you little kids at Comic Con, a giant yarn-bombed alligator, and a canine sport so cool (and cute) that you’ll put away your Frisbee in shame.

Let’s jump right in: Doggy dock diving is a sport and it’s the cutest thing ever. Basically, dogs leap from docks over the water and straight into your heart. This slideshow alone is reason enough to buy a subscription to the New York Times. (Photo by Megan Bearder)

• Did you ever give your little sister or brother a haircut with a pair of safety scissors? Your parents were mad, right? They wouldn’t have been mad if you’d been as cute as these girls. Here, NPR reporter Jeff Cohen talks to his two very young daughters about what could have possibly been going through their minds as the older snipped the younger’s long locks. The resulting interview is more adorable than you can even imagine.
• Watch this baby turtle eat a raspberry. You won’t be sorry.

The Avengers was a great movie, but it was lacking in the aww department. What’s that you say? Comic Con kiddies dressed as super heroes? WHOA, super adorable! Below, Mini-Hawkeye and the Tiny Flash—the latter a familiar friend from the DC Universe. (via The Mary Sue)

• We love unlikely friendships! So we went ape over this monkey who’s adopted a litter of puppies as her own.
• Have we mentioned that Arlo needs glasses? Enter a photo of your bespectacled dog in our contest for a chance to win a signed copy of the adorable book!

An already awesome alligator-shaped playground (!!) became all the more spectacular when yarn-bomber Olek and a team of “crocheteiros” covered the structure in colorful yarn. Going rainbow-colored and fuzzy would do a lot to improve alligators’ reputations as a species. (via Flavorwire)

• If someone were to bring to ME to the beach, I certainly wouldn’t drag my adorably big paws and floppy ears and tiny fluffy tail through the sand!

—Avery, who’s going to send her dog to dock diving camp

Goodbye February, hello March.  “In like a lion, out like a lamb” is the proverb we associate with this month’s weather, and it got us thinking: lions, lambs, the harsh and the soft meeting in the middle when we never thought they would (think Beauty and the Beast)–sounds like an unlikely friendship.  While we hope you’re familiar with the runaway bestseller Unlikely Friendships by now, you may not have known that the book has been adapted for younger readers.  In each book in the Unlikely Friendships for Kids series, kids can read five stories of improbable, heartwarming friendship between species.  The books come “out like a lamb” in April, and are great for animal lovers age 7 and up.

It’s Monday morning—woof. Instead of worrying about the week ahead, watch this video of a boxer puppy meeting some cows! It’s sure to melt your heart (and your anxieties).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msbSys9Z27I[/youtube]

For more charming stories of unusual animal pairings, pick up a copy of Unlikely Friendships by Jennifer S. Holland.

We’ve brought you lots of stories about all sorts of unlikely animal friendships: Elephant dotes on dog. Deer protects goose. Puppy plays with pony. But today’s story, which comes to us from the U.K.’s Daily Mail, takes things to a whole new level. Not only is Jack the sheep best friends with a sheepdog—he thinks he is one!

Watch below to learn the story of Jack, a lamb who was born on a farm and raised alongside his owners’ springer spaniel named Jesse. Just like his canine brother, Jack loves to chase sticks and go for walks on a leash. He even helps out when it’s time to herd the other sheep!

For more awwww-inspiring stories of interspecies buddies, pick up a copy of Jennifer S. Holland’s New York Times bestselling book Unlikely Friendships.

Brace yourselves, folks: Here comes yet another adorable video of an unlikely friendship in the animal kingdom! This time we’re celebrating the bond between Herbie the pit bull puppy and Jabby the horse.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGHz4XuvGog&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Jabby seems happy to have a playful visitor at the stable, and clearly Herbie is ecstatic at having made such an enormous friend! I didn’t think anything could even come close to “too cute” until I got about 20 seconds in to this video. A horse and a puppy—snuggling! It’s puppy love indeed.

For even more sweet videos and photos of interspecies bonding, check out the official Unlikely Friendships website—and pick up a copy of the New York Times best-selling book by Jennifer S. Holland!

It’s August, and summer is very much still in full swing here in New York City. But despite the chirping birds and blazing sun and ice cream trucks on every corner, I can’t help but think about…January! Call me crazy, but I’m kind of excited for winter this year. That’s not to say that once the snow starts falling and my usually pleasant (if muggy) walk to work becomes a miserable, wet slog I won’t wish I were in a hammock on a tropical island somewhere; no, I’ll definitely be wishing that. Still, there is something quite pleasant about the first month of the year, and I’m not talking about resolutions. I’m talking about calendars.

This (well, next) year’s crop of Workman calendars is pretty epic. There are of course the old standbys, such as the 365 Cats and 365 Dogs Page-a-Day Calendars, two of our most popular titles. And there’s always space on the wall for the gorgeous 1,000 Places to See Before You Die Wall Calendar. But I’d like to take this time to introduce some titles you’ve never seen before. Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present the New Workman Calendars for 2012!

LEGO: The Calendar
If you were ever a kid, you’ve probably played with LEGO bricks at some point in your life—if not every day for 15 years (and beyond). Now you can bring your obsession out into the open with LEGO: The Calendar, a year-long celebration of all things LEGO. Twelve images of spectacular LEGO constructions are accompanied by fun facts about LEGO history and lore. Plus, enter your own construction in the LEGO Calendar Contest and let your creation grace the walls of LEGO enthusiasts the world over!

Peel It. Design It. Birds in Flight and Tropical Paradise
In the category of Most Innovative Calendars I’d like to nominate the Peel It. Design It. series. Decorate your home or office space with beautiful bird- or tropical-themed wall art that also helps you keep track of the days. The decals will stick to your wall or any hard, clean surface, and they won’t leave a mark, so you can move them around during the year as your design sensibilities evolve.

Gallery Calendars: Birds and Flowers
Joining the line of beautiful Page-a-Day Gallery Calendars are two new nature-inspired titles: Birds and Flowers.  Thanks to the brilliant colors and exquisite detail of the exceptional photographs, you’ll feel like you’ve stepped into a natural park with either one of these galleries on your desk.

Nudes Having Fun
You know Nuns Having Fun—now here’s Nudes Having Fun! That’s right: twelve (tasteful) black-and-white images of people having a good time without letting clothes get in the way. There’s a nude sing-along, naked mountain climbers, even a wedding in the buff. Cheeky (ha!) and adorable.

Daily Muse: Writer’s Diary
Everyone knows an aspiring writer (the novel’s almost done, I swear!), and even someone who’s quit his day job to hone his craft needs to keep track of his appointments. Give the budding novelist in your life the portable Writer’s Diary and watch him be encouraged and inspired by quotations from and images of his favorite authors.

Unlikely Friendships
And last but certainly not least, there’s the Unlikely Friendships calendar, based on the New York Times best-selling book by Jennifer S. Holland. Featuring twelve remarkable stories about inter-species camaraderie, this calendar is guaranteed to make you go “aww!” all year long.

Happy New Year!

As a baby, Themba the elephant lost his mother to a terrible accident. When no other female in the herd adopted him, vets at the South African nature reserve where he lived found him an unlikely companion: Albert the sheep. Although initially wary of one another, the two soon bonded. They napped in tandem, played together, and Themba even rested his trunk on Albert’s woolly back as they explored their enclosure.

Below, check out a clip from the National Geographic TV show “Unlikely Animal Friends” that captures their special relationship, from awkward first encounter to best-friends-forever.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnXYiSY99yw[/youtube]

This is just one of 47 spectacular—not to mention adorable—stories of interspecies companionship featured in Jennifer S. Holland’s Unlikely Friendships. Pick up a copy today and let the awww-ing commence!

Greetings! My name is Jennifer, and I’m interning at Workman for the summer. As of today, I’ve been here exactly four weeks – a whole month! For the most part, I have been with the Gift Sales department, which deals with book-selling stores that aren’t necessarily bookstores, but my supervisor has been kind enough to set up days in which I can dip my toes into the work of other departments. Those departments have included Special Markets, Algonquin’s editorial department, and, of course, the Workman editorial department. This week, I’ll be writing about my experiences in the sales departments.

In Gift Sales, I perform a variety of tasks. In anticipation of a week-long gift show in Florida, much of my time was spent putting together sales capsules (overviews of sales information and suggestions for future orders) for the accounts that would be at the show – not the most mentally stimulating of jobs, but my boss, who helped with a lot of the capsules, realized this and punctuated the long process with other assignments. Because of my work with the capsules, however, I did learn more about the range of books that Workman publishes. For example, I found out that You Gotta Be Kidding! is a huge hit. Some stores that generally order thirty copies of a title at a time order more than a hundred copies of this unassuming little 4″ x 6″ book!

This increased familiarity with Workman’s titles helps me with my other main job, which is sending samples of popular titles to different accounts. I rather enjoy selecting the appropriate books to send and composing the accompanying letters, especially since my boss has given me free rein to embellish those letters; she, like the people in Workman’s editorial department who asked me if I would like to write this blog post, is aware of my penchant for writing. Recently, I’ve been sending out lots of copies of Unlikely Friendships, which is selling so phenomenally that it’s in its fifth reprint not even two weeks after its debut (that line’s adapted from a line in the letters I send out).

The buddy system: A pit bull, Siamese cat, and baby chicks from Unlikely Friendships.

I only spent one day in the Special Markets sales department, and I spent it glued to the phone on my (borrowed) desk. Special Markets, if I understand it correctly, deals with stores or other sales outlets that do not traditionally carry books. I was instructed to call the camera stores listed in an online directory to see which are still in business and which are now defunct. The purpose of this task to was to find out which stores are still around to receive a sample copy of How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck. Of course, when I mentioned “free copy,” many people, assuming that there would be a catch, said, “We’re not interested. Goodbye.” I learned ways to adapt my pitch…and got a little taste of what it might it be like to be a telemarketer – definitely not a path I want to pursue further!

That’s it for this installment. Check back next Wednesday for my adventures beyond the sales departments, when I spend some time at Algonquin Books!

—Jennifer

We’ve been loving the stories behind Unlikely Friendships so much that we can’t stop posting cute videos of unusual animal pairs! Last week we brought you the tale of unusual companionship between an elephant and a dog who met at a sanctuary in Tennessee. Today’s heartwarming story features a deer who knows the true meaning of friendship and teamwork. These two aren’t in the book, but who can resist an inspiring tale of foster parenting?

As if we needed more evidence of the wonders of the animal kingdom, the early success of Unlikely Friendships–a book that tells of 47 remarkable, heartwarming animal friendships–proves that unconditional love exists across all boundaries–race, gender, even species. The book debuts at #6 on the New York Times Best Sellers Trade Paperback Nonfiction list and is #22 on the Combined Hardcover & Paperback Nonfiction list.

In celebration, we’re posting the video of a particular pair–Tara and Bella, the elephant and the dog–who came together at an Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee and whose adorable story (via CBS Evening News) fast became an internet sensation. They’re featured in the book, along with famous gorilla Koko and her kitten, All Ball; the hippo Owen and the tortoise Mzee; and Kizzee, the Greyhound, and Murphy, the tabby, who prove that cats and dogs really can get along!

If this video leaves you with the need to coo at some more inter-species pals, check out the article and slideshow that Parade magazine put together about the book to further indulge in the wonder of it all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBtFTF2ii7U[/youtube]