Download or read book When I Was A Child I Read Books written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the magnificent, award-winning novels GILEAD, HOME and LILA comes this wonderful, heart-warming collection of essays about reading. 'Grace and intelligence ...[her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama Marilynne Robinson is not only a writer of sharp, subtly moving fiction, but also a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this luminous collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her bestselling novels: the place literature has in life, the role of faith in modern living, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our best-loved writers.

Download or read book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid written by Bill Bryson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s. Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid." Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and of his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends. Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.

Download or read book Hurricane Child written by Kacen Callender and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lambda Literary Award Winner: “Lush descriptions bring the Caribbean environment to vivid life . . . An excellent and nuanced coming-of-age tale.” —School Library Journal A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year and Winner of the Stonewall Book Award Being born during a hurricane is considered unlucky where twelve-year-old Caroline Murphy lives, and she has had her share of bad luck lately. She’s hated and bullied by everyone in her small school on St. Thomas of the US Virgin Islands. A spirit only she can see won’t stop following her. And—worst of all—Caroline’s mother left home one day and never came back. But when a new student named Kalinda arrives, Caroline’s luck begins to turn around. Kalinda, a solemn girl from Barbados with a special smile for everyone, becomes Caroline’s first and only friend—and the person for whom Caroline has begun to develop a crush. Now, Caroline must find the strength to confront her feelings for Kalinda, brave the spirit stalking her through the islands, and face the reason her mother abandoned her. Together, Caroline and Kalinda must set out in a hurricane to find Caroline’s missing mother—before Caroline loses her forever. “Absorbing descriptions of the island . . . a folkloric tale about overcoming old narratives and creating new ones.” —Publishers Weekly “Callender draws readers in and makes them identify with Caroline’s angst and sorrow and joy and pain [and] has readers rooting for Caroline the whole way.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Download or read book Children of the Land written by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Best Book of the Year A 2020 International Latino Book Award Finalist An Entertainment Weekly, The Millions, and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of the Year This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man’s attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence. “You were not a ghost even though an entire country was scared of you. No one in this story was a ghost. This was not a story.” When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary. With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family’s encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father’s deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother’s heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor. Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.

Download or read book Acid for the Children written by Flea (Musician) and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The co-founder of the Red Hot Chili Peppers chronicles his life from his birth in Australia and upbringing on the streets of Los Angeles through his rise to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee." --

Download or read book Children s Quotes written by Dr Purushothaman and published by Centre For Human Perfection. This book was released on with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Really, it is the prime duty of each & every grownup person to build up the Life of our Children. We all know that, our Children’s mind is very sensitive. Therefore, whatever Education, Guidance, Help & Support we give to our Children should focus on their Educational, Mental, Psychological & Spiritual development. With these introductory remarks, we are submitting this title “Children’s Quotes” – A collection of Best Quotes & Quotations for our loving Children.

Download or read book A Children s Bible A Novel written by Lydia Millet and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year Named one of the best novels of the year by Time, Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Esquire, BBC, and many others National Bestseller "A blistering little classic." —Ron Charles, Washington Post A Children’s Bible follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their parents, the children decide to run away when a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, embarking on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. Lydia Millet’s prophetic and heartbreaking story of generational divide offers a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.

Download or read book Why You Should Read Children s Books Even Though You are So Old and Wise written by Katherine Rundell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _______________A pocket-sized, unmissable essay on the importance of children's literature by the bestselling and award-winning author, Katherine Rundell._______________'It's a very short book but it packs a real punch... A real delight' - Financial Times'Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power whose novels will be read, cherished and reread long after most so-called "serious" novels are forgotten' - Observer'Rundell's pen is gold-tipped' - Sunday Times_______________Katherine Rundell - Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and prize-winning author of five novels for children - explores how children's books ignite, and can re-ignite, the imagination; how children's fiction, with its unabashed emotion and playfulness, can awaken old hungers and create new perspectives on the world. This delightful and persuasive essay is for adult readers.

Download or read book 100 Best Quotes from Children s Books written by Susan Gabrielle and published by Hyperink Inc. This book was released on 2012-07-30 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ABOUT THE BOOK Storytelling has been around as long as humankind, although the ability to be a storyteller or history-keeper is a special gift not everyone possesses. Generations of our ancestors told oral tales of encounters with nature-with wild animals or with the land itself, real or imagined. Clans gathered around to hear of dreams or of explanations of certain "unexplainable" phenomena, such as thunder and lightning. These stories were often illustrated by scratching them or painting them onto cave walls or on rocks, and especially those tales of great battles against warring tribes. Some of the stories only existed as verbal histories passed from grandfathers to sons to grandsons. MEET THE AUTHOR Susan Gabrielle has had work published in The Christian Science Monitor, TheBatShat, New Verse News, and local publications, and was a finalist in the Tiny Lights Narrative Essay Contest. Her short story "What she should have said" was published in the Social Justice issue of the Little Patuxent Review, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poem "After 10 years of War." She currently teaches writing and literature classes as a university instructor, and is at work on a nonfiction writers' guide. You can reach her at Susan-Gabrielle.com EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK But while storytelling itself is an ancient art form, the genre of children's literature is relatively new, and children's book publishing only came to prominence beginning in Great Britain in the 18th century. As Allen notes, "From the time John Newbery, publisher and bookseller, decided to create books just for children in 18th-century England until the end of the 19th century, when English industry produced children's books of the highest quality, the body of children's literature that became available from England earned a growing respect throughout the literary world." Before that time, children were treated as miniature adults, useful only insofar as their ability to bring income to the home. Most children up to the 1800s worked on the family farm, so there was little free time for play, and since many children did not attend school, they could not read. The family may have owned a Bible, but it most likely would have been read to them by the father, perhaps after dinner. CHAPTER OUTLINE 100 Best Quotes from Children's Books + Introduction + The Beginnings of “Children's Literature” + For adults, for Children or Both? + A Move Toward Realism + ...and much more 100 Best Quotes from Children's Books

Download or read book The Ultimate Book of Inspiring Quotes for Kids written by Michael Stutman and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-07-18 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There's nothing quite like a great quotation to help you think differently or shed light in a difficult or confusing moment. But good words can provide more than just insight-they can actually move you to act. The Ultimate Book of Inspiring Quotes for Kids presents a unique and compelling collection of child-friendly wisdom from many historical greats, including Plato and Albert Einstein, as well as modern leaders, such as Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey. Words can change people-and, ultimately, the world. In order to grow into their best selves, children need inspiration. They need positive influences to counterbalance to the negative words, role models, and behaviors that too often surround them. A great addition to any classroom, home library, or child's bedside, this compilation is organized by themes that range from courage to education to friendship. Each section begins with a brief introduction that relates the topic to kids and explains why it's important to make this value a habit. Thanks to an engaging, uplifting, and easy-to-read style, children and adults alike will enjoy poring over these empowering pages again and again-especially with gems like Helen Keller's "When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another."

Download or read book The Children s Book written by A. S. Byatt and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-11-03 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the renowned author of Possession, The Children’s Book is the absorbing story of the close of what has been called the Edwardian summer: the deceptively languid, blissful period that ended with the cataclysmic destruction of World War I. In this compelling novel, A.S. Byatt summons up a whole era, revealing that beneath its golden surface lay tensions that would explode into war, revolution and unbelievable change — for the generation that came of age before 1914 and, most of all, for their children. The novel centres around Olive Wellwood, a fairy tale writer, and her circle, which includes the brilliant, erratic craftsman Benedict Fludd and his apprentice Phillip Warren, a runaway from the poverty of the Potteries; Prosper Cain, the soldier who directs what will become the Victoria and Albert Museum; Olive’s brother-in-law Basil Wellwood, an officer of the Bank of England; and many others from every layer of society. A.S. Byatt traces their lives in intimate detail and moves between generations, following the children who must choose whether to follow the roles expected of them or stand up to their parents’ “porcelain socialism.” Olive’s daughter Dorothy wishes to become a doctor, while her other daughter, Hedda, wants to fight for votes for women. Her son Tom, sent to an upper-class school, wants nothing more than to spend time in the woods, tracking birds and foxes. Her nephew Charles becomes embroiled with German-influenced revolutionaries. Their portraits connect the political issues at the heart of nascent feminism and socialism with grave personal dilemmas, interlacing until The Children’s Book becomes a perfect depiction of an entire world. Olive is a fairy tale writer in the era of Peter Pan and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In the Willows, not long after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. At a time when children in England suffered deprivation by the millions, the concept of childhood was being refined and elaborated in ways that still influence us today. For each of her children, Olive writes a special, private book, bound in a different colour and placed on a shelf; when these same children are ferried off into the unremitting destruction of the Great War, the reader is left to wonder who the real children in this novel are. The Children’s Book is an astonishing novel. It is an historical feat that brings to life an era that helped shape our own as well as a gripping, personal novel about parents and children, life’s most painful struggles and its richest pleasures. No other writer could have imagined it or created it.

Download or read book Hold On to Your Kids written by Gordon Neufeld and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting issues joins forces with a physician and bestselling author to tackle one of the most disturbing and misunderstood trends of our time -- peers replacing parents in the lives of our children. Dr. Neufeld has dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation, which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behaviour. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity, in tragedies such as in Littleton, Colorado; Tabor, Alberta and Victoria, B.C. It is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids. Once understood, it becomes self-evident -- as do the solutions. Hold On to Your Kids will restore parenting to its natural intuitive basis and the parent-child relationship to its rightful preeminence. The concepts, principles and practical advice contained in Hold On to Your Kids will empower parents to satisfy their children’s inborn need to find direction by turning towards a source of authority, contact and warmth. Something has changed. One can sense it, one can feel it, just not find the words for it. Children are not quite the same as we remember being. They seem less likely to take their cues from adults, less inclined to please those in charge, less afraid of getting into trouble. Parenting, too, seems to have changed. Our parents seemed more confident, more certain of themselves and had more impact on us, for better or for worse. For many, parenting does not feel natural. Adults through the ages have complained about children being less respectful of their elders and more difficult to manage than preceding generations, but could it be that this time it is for real? -- from Hold On to Your Kids

Download or read book I Learn from Children written by Caroline Pratt and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2014-06-16 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoir of an innovative American educator and the remarkable school she built—“a lucid presentation of what progressive education can accomplish” (The New York Times). Over a century ago, American educator Caroline Pratt created an innovative school that fosters creativity and independent thought by asking the provocative question: “Was it unreasonable to try to fit the school to the child, rather than . . . the child to the school?” A strong-willed small-town schoolteacher who ran a one-room schoolhouse by the time she was seventeen, Pratt came to viscerally reject the teaching methods of her day, which often featured a long-winded teacher at the front of the room and rows of miserable children sitting on benches nailed to the floor. In this “persuasive presentation of progressive education,” Pratt recounts how she founded what is now the dynamic City and Country School in New York City, invented the “unit blocks” that have become a staple in classrooms around the globe, and played an important role in reimagining preschool and primary-school education in ways that are essential for the tumultuously creative time we live in today (Kirkus Reviews).

Download or read book Last Child in the Woods written by Richard Louv and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2008-04-22 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book That Launched an International Movement Fans of The Anxious Generation will adore Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's groundbreaking New York Times bestseller. “An absolute must-read for parents.” —The Boston Globe “It rivals Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.” —The Cincinnati Enquirer “I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are,” reports a fourth grader. But it’s not only computers, television, and video games that are keeping kids inside. It’s also their parents’ fears of traffic, strangers, Lyme disease, and West Nile virus; their schools’ emphasis on more and more homework; their structured schedules; and their lack of access to natural areas. Local governments, neighborhood associations, and even organizations devoted to the outdoors are placing legal and regulatory constraints on many wild spaces, sometimes making natural play a crime. As children’s connections to nature diminish and the social, psychological, and spiritual implications become apparent, new research shows that nature can offer powerful therapy for such maladies as depression, obesity, and attention deficit disorder. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that childhood experiences in nature stimulate creativity. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv talks with parents, children, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, child-development researchers, and environmentalists who recognize the threat and offer solutions. Louv shows us an alternative future, one in which parents help their kids experience the natural world more deeply—and find the joy of family connectedness in the process. Included in this edition: A Field Guide with 100 Practical Actions We Can Take Discussion Points for Book Groups, Classrooms, and Communities Additional Notes by the Author New and Updated Research from the U.S. and Abroad

Download or read book Glow Kids written by Nicholas Kardaras and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology-- more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity-- has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain's pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis. Most shocking of all, recent brain imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can neurologically damage a young person's developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can"--

Download or read book Wise Child written by Monica Furlong and published by Echo Point Books & Media. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abandoned by both her parents, nine-year-old Wise Child goes to live with the witch woman Juniper, who begins to train her in the ways of herbs and magic.

Download or read book To My Children s Children written by Sindiwe Magona and published by New Africa Books. This book was released on 1990 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful and widely acclaimed autobiography of Sindiwe Magona's early years in South Africa gives an account of her eventful first 23 years--a candid story of triumph and endurance in the face of hardships relentlessly reinforced by the apartheid system.