Download or read book Letters from Rifka written by Karen Hesse and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Newbery media winner Karen Hesse comes an unforgettable story of an immigrant family's journey to America. "America," the girl repeated. "What will you do there?" I was silent for a little time. "I will do everything there," I answered. Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind. Strong-hearted and determined, Rifka must endure a great deal: humiliating examinations by doctors and soldiers, deadly typhus, separation from all she has ever known and loved, murderous storms at sea, detainment on Ellis Island--and is if this is not enough, the loss of her glorious golden hair. Based on a true story from the author's family, Letters from Rifka presents a real-life heroine with an uncommon courage and unsinkable spirit.
Download or read book Letters from Rifka written by Karen Hesse and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1992-07-15 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Rifka Takes a Bow written by Betty Rosenberg Perlov and published by Millbrook Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kar-Ben Read-Aloud eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting to bring eBooks to life! Rifka's parents are actors in the Yiddish Theater in New York, but one day Rifka finds herself center stage in a special role! A slice of immigrant life on New York's Second Avenue, this is a unique book about a vanished time and a place – the Yiddish theater in the early 20th century―made real through the telling of the true life story of the 96-year-old author as a little girl.
Download or read book The Saga of Rifka and Herschel written by Dorothy Friedman and published by Bitingduck Press LLC. This book was released on 2001 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Saga of Rifka and Herschel begins in South Africa where Herschel Haverman joins the Frankel family after his parents are murdered in Lithuania. Eventually, Herschel goes to Munich for his rabbinical studies. He rejoins the Frankels in Boston, where RifkaOCOs father, Abraham, marries Rifka to Herschel in a surprise substitution for her sister, Manya. Herschel, betrayed, bitter, and madly in love with Manya, does not restrain his fury and contempt for Rifka and Abraham. Herschel leaves for New York City with his unwanted bride and his first job as a rabbi. Rifka is resourceful as she attempts to win HerschelOCOs love. New YorkOCOs complexity and bustle between 1900 and the First World War captivate RifkaOCOs emotional and artistic attention. She discovers the politics of unionism and feminism as these inevitably bear on her effort to create a life of integrity as a rebbetzin with the man she loves. Rifka, a talented painter and the favorite daughter of a rich man, sees in New York lives she didnOCOt know were possible. New York was like nowhere else in the world. An unquenchable restlessness, a frontal movement of people and horses, a dynamic flow of humanity, and Rifka was gripped with a burning glow inside her as if the future opened its arms. For the first time she felt she belonged. Every face begged her, paint me. Clouds of Yiddish filtered through the air. Peddlers singing their wares. Young boys pushing along wagons of clothing. Clean-shaven men and immigrant women still wearing their babushkas, an aroma of Jewish magnetism. Dorothy Friedman evokes Jewish characters struggling with love, religious issues, and radical politics. At the core of Rifka is the biblical story of JacobOCOs being deceived into marrying the wrong bride. For an author bio and photo, reviews and a reading sample, visit bosonbooks.com."
Download or read book Tell the Wolves I m Home written by Carol Rifka Brunt and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A heartfelt story of love, grief, and renewal about two unlikely friends who discover that sometimes you don’t know you’ve lost someone until you’ve found them “A dazzling debut novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Tremendously moving.”—The Wall Street Journal “Touching and ultimately hopeful.”—People 1987. The only person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus is her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can be herself only in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life. At the funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail containing a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and that this unexpected friend just might be the one she needs the most. WINNER OF THE ALEX AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • O: The Oprah Magazine • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • School Library Journal
Download or read book The Storyteller s Beads written by Jane Kurtz and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1998-04-15 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Running for their lives to escape the political upheaval in Ethiopia, two young girls from different faiths form an unlikely friendship.
Download or read book Home Free written by Rifka Kreiter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a bus trip to a Catskill Mountain ashram, Rifka Kreiter recollects her past as she travels to meet Swamiji, another new guru on the scene in the bustling spiritual marketplace of 1976. Memories abound of an eventful childhood with an unstable mother on New York’s Upper West Side and in LA, of dancing the Twist at Manhattan’s Peppermint Lounge, and of sitting in against the war—as well as getting tear-gassed in Mississippi, surviving broken love affairs, and more. A checkerboard ride through the fifties, sixties, and early seventies, Home Free is powered by Kreiter’s passionate drive for pleasure, self-knowledge, and—above all—freedom from limitations, whether psychological, political, or spiritual. Ultimately, it is a joyful trip, as she strives to bust free, be it with drugs, therapy, political activism, or meditation. At last, she arrives at a destination as unexpected as it is transformational.
Download or read book A Time of Angels written by Karen Hesse and published by . This book was released on 1997-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sick with influenza during the 1918 epidemic and separated from her two sisters, a young Jewish girl living in Boston relies on the help of an old German man, and her visions of angels, to get better and to reunite herself with her family.
Download or read book Rifqa written by Mohammed El-Kurd and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rifqa is Mohammed El-Kurd’s debut collection of poetry, written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanafani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature. The book narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah--an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations. The book, named after the author’s late grandmother who was forced to flee from Haifa upon the genocidal establishment of Israel, makes the observation that home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of 1948 Nakba, but are in fact a continuation of it: a legalized, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.
Download or read book The Psychopath Test written by Jon Ronson and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if society wasn't fundamentally rational, but was motivated by insanity? This thought sets Jon Ronson on an utterly compelling adventure into the world of madness. Along the way, Jon meets psychopaths, those whose lives have been touched by madness and those whose job it is to diagnose it, including the influential psychologist who developed the Psychopath Test, from whom Jon learns the art of psychopath-spotting. A skill which seemingly reveals that madness could indeed be at the heart of everything . . . Combining Jon Ronson's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is both entertaining and honest, unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges. 'The belly laughs come thick and fast – my God, he is funny . . . provocative and interesting' – Observer
Download or read book The Drowning Season written by Alice Hoffman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Rules of Magic: A novel of a Long Island family matriarch and her namesake granddaughter who discover the power the past holds over their present. Esther the Black is eighteen years old and ready to leave the Compound, the collection of cottages on the North Shore of Long Island where she has lived all her life. But as July turns to August and her family braces for the height of Drowning Season, she realizes that she may not be able to escape her family’s legacy. Her father will find a way through the locked sea-wall gate and try to drown himself in the harbor, her mother will be too hung over to leave her cottage for days at a time, and her grandmother will refuse to say a single kind word. Esther the White left home when she was just a girl, fleeing her abusive parents across a frozen Russian river with a pocketful of stolen jewels. Life has taught her to be cold and unyielding, but in the heat of another fraught summer at the Compound, she feels her resolve melting away. Cohen, the landscaper and chauffeur responsible for keeping her son out of the water, looks at her with a desire she finds harder and harder to resist. Her granddaughter’s name may be an insult to tradition, but does that mean the poor girl should never feel her grandmother’s love or know her story? Graceful, haunting, and wise, The Drowning Season “casts the spell of all great fairy tales. It takes daily life and transforms it into myth as we watch” (Chicago Sun-Times).
Download or read book Defiance written by Nechama Tec and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust years is one of helpless victims under a death sentence, unable to fight consignment to the ghettos, to the camps, and to the gas chambers. In fact, many Jews struggled alone or with others against the terrors of the Third Reich, risking their lives against overwhelming odds for the slimmest chance of survival, or a mere glimpse of freedom. In Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Describing the entire partisan movement in the region, Tec shows that while most forest fighters in Belorussia were rifle-carrying young men, the members of this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather, always on the lookout for German patrols--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Driven by courage born out of despair, they dug wells, set up workshops to repair guns, made clothes, and resoled shoes, supplied services to other guerilla units, and even established a makeshift hospital and school in the forest. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski, and his journey from his life as the son of the only Jewish peasant family in an isolated rural village to his emergence as a leader possessing the charisma and courage to command under all but impossible circumstances. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis against their former Jewish neighbors. Refusing to turn away the weak or the old for the sake of the survival of the larger group, Bielski would warn new arrivals to the forest, "Life is difficult, we are in danger all the time, but if we perish, if we die, we die like human beings." A scholar, a writer, and herself a Holocaust survivor, author Nechama Techas devoted the last two decades to studying the fate of European Jewry, recording rare but vital examples of human compassion, resistance, altruism and heroism in the face of overwhelming horror and despair. Drawing on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself two weeks before his death in 1987--she reconstructs here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight.
Download or read book Humor in Young Adult Literature written by Walter Hogan and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrates the accomplishments of YA authors acclaimed for producing high-quality comedies, who have not yet been treated in a book-length bio-critical study. Simultaneously, it reminds readers that no matter how funny an author of fiction may be, if he shows off his wit in ways that fail to play a natural role in advancing his narrative, he is not writing good fiction. To demonstrate this, humorous passages are presented to illustrate the contribution a sense of humor can make to a work of fiction. The book is arranged topically to facilitate a comparison of distinctive treatments by various authors of adolescent life events, such as sibling rivalry, bullies, and first dates.
Download or read book The Blackbird Girls written by Anne Blankman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER A SYDNEY TAYLOR MIDDLE GRADE HONOR BOOK Like Ruta Sepetys for middle grade, Anne Blankman pens a poignant and timeless story of friendship that twines together moments in underexplored history. On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red sky. A reactor at the nuclear power plant where their fathers work--Chernobyl--has exploded. Before they know it, the two girls, who've always been enemies, find themselves on a train bound for Leningrad to stay with Valentina's estranged grandmother, Rita Grigorievna. In their new lives in Leningrad, they begin to learn what it means to trust another person. Oksana must face the lies her parents told her all her life. Valentina must keep her grandmother's secret, one that could put all their lives in danger. And both of them discover something they've wished for: a best friend. But how far would you go to save your best friend's life? Would you risk your own? Told in alternating perspectives among three girls--Valentina and Oksana in 1986 and Rifka in 1941--this story shows that hatred, intolerance, and oppression are no match for the power of true friendship.
Download or read book Theatre for Young Audiences written by Coleman A. Jennings and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-03 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of plays, many of which are based on favorite children's tales, including such titles as : "Charlotte's Web, ""Really Rosie, ""Wiley and the Hairy Man, ""Wise men of Chelm, ""and "The Crane Wife."
Download or read book My Son the Lawyer is Drowning written by Doug MacLeod and published by Dramatic Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Boys Girls and the Myths of Literacies and Learning written by Roberta F. Hammett and published by Canadian Scholars’ Press. This book was released on 2008-03-28 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely and authoritative book provides a critique and deconstructs the myths that serve to uphold the current "moral panic" around boys' supposed failures in literacy and diminished chances of success. Readers are asked to look beyond simple gender binarism to see different, more complex and often more egregious categorizations of students in their classrooms, other than the simplistic male/female categories, and begin to question and address some of those issues: poverty, racism, violence, environment, and more complex issues of gender, patriarchy, and hegemony. The authors suggest different ways of teaching literacies to both boys and girls and propose that while solutions are not simple, they are critically important in promoting positive educational experiences for all students, regardless of gender, class, culture, race, or sexual orientation.
