Download or read book The Visitor Experience at the Mark Twain House written by Stephanie C. Fox and published by QueenBeeBooks. This book was released on 2020-04-18 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains a tour that I gave as a historic interpreter at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. It takes the readers from the front lawn to the porch to the hall, then goes room by room throughout the author’s family home, telling the story of the wonderful life they all lived in a house that felt alive to them for seventeen years. I did this for several years, and it enabled me to learn all about the author and his family, and to read many of his works. It also led me to meet many fascinating and fun members of the public as I showed them around and told them hilarious, uproarious tales of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, in the manner of a stand-up comic. They loved it, as did I. Many of these visitors made a wonderful remark to me at the conclusion of tour after tour after tour: “That was the best tour I have ever had anywhere. I wish I could buy a copy of it. You should write your tour down, as is.” So, I did.

Download or read book Mark Twain s Homes and Literary Tourism written by Hilary Iris Lowe and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2012-07-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century after Samuel Clemens’s death, Mark Twain thrives—his recently released autobiography topped bestseller lists. One way fans still celebrate the first true American writer and his work is by visiting any number of Mark Twain destinations. They believe they can learn something unique by visiting the places where he lived. Mark Twain’s Homes and Literary Tourism untangles the complicated ways that Clemens’s houses, now museums, have come to tell the stories that they do about Twain and, in the process, reminds us that the sites themselves are the products of multiple agendas and, in some cases, unpleasant histories. Hilary Iris Lowe leads us through four Twain homes, beginning at the beginning—Florida, Missouri, where Clemens was born. Today the site is simply a concrete pedestal missing its bust, a plaque, and an otherwise-empty field. Though the original cabin where he was born likely no longer exists, Lowe treats us to an overview of the history of the area and the state park challenged with somehow marking this site. Next, we travel with Lowe to Hannibal, Missouri, Clemens’s childhood home, which he saw become a tourist destination in his own lifetime. Today mannequins remind visitors of the man that the boy who lived there became and the literature that grew out of his experiences in the house and little town on the Mississippi. Hartford, Connecticut, boasts one of Clemens’s only surviving adulthood homes, the house where he spent his most productive years. Lowe describes the house’s construction, its sale when the high cost of living led the family to seek residence abroad, and its transformation into the museum. Lastly, we travel to Elmira, New York, where Clemens spent many summers with his family at Quarry Farm. His study is the only room at this destination open to the public, and yet, tourists follow in the footsteps of literary pilgrim Rudyard Kipling to see this small space. Literary historic sites pin their authority on the promise of exclusive insight into authors and texts through firsthand experience. As tempting as it is to accept the authenticity of Clemens’s homes, Mark Twain’s Homes and Literary Tourism argues that house museums are not reliable critical texts but are instead carefully constructed spaces designed to satisfy visitors. This volume shows us how these houses’ portrayals of Clemens change frequently to accommodate and shape our own expectations of the author and his work.

Download or read book Why We Took the Car written by Wolfgang Herrndorf and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautifully written, darkly funny coming-of-age story from an award-winning, bestselling German author making his American debut. Mike Klingenberg doesn't get why people think he's boring. Sure, he doesn't have many friends. (Okay, zero friends.) And everyone laughs at him when he reads his essays out loud in class. And he's never invited to parties - including the gorgeous Tatiana's party of the year.Andre Tschichatschow, aka Tschick (not even the teachers can pronounce his name), is new in school, and a whole different kind of unpopular. He always looks like he's just been in a fight, his clothes are tragic, and he never talks to anyone.But one day Tschick shows up at Mike's house out of the blue. Turns out he wasn't invited to Tatiana's party either, and he's ready to do something about it. Forget the popular kids: Together, Mike and Tschick are heading out on a road trip. No parents, no map, no destination. Will they get hopelessly lost in the middle of nowhere? Probably. Will meet some crazy people and get into serious trouble? Definitely. But will they ever be called boring again? Not a chance.

Download or read book What the Small Gray Visitor Said written by Stephanie C. Fox and published by QueenBeeBooks. This book was released on 2020-08-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It isn’t often that a visitor from outer space gets stranded on Earth, but it happens every so often. When it does, it’s an accident. No one intends to get stranded anywhere, after all. This visitor is female, a botanist, and a telepath. The alien carries a Small Gray environmental suit with her. She is looking for plants that can be grown on her own planet’s severely depleted ecosystem. The alien has just uprooted one when she finds herself stuck on Earth during a planet-wide pandemic. It is a spring day when Arielle, an author and editor-for-hire, spends her morning as she usually does: writing, editing, blogging, drinking coffee, and sitting with her cat while looking out the back windows into her yard. She gets up to stretch and takes a walk around her beautiful garden to enjoy some sunshine, smell a few iris blossoms, and survey her berries and herbs. Suddenly, she sees something under her honeysuckle bush. At first, she thinks it is discarded, plastic litter that has blown around the area, and she picks it up in disgust, only to see that it is gray, as light as a feather, and definitely not plastic. It has a face, or rather, a face-covering. Arielle glances up to find herself face-to-face with a stranded visitor – the owner of the suit she is holding. She takes her in…after her husband, a scientist, tests them both for the virus. The tests come back negative, of course. The aliens, anticipating microbes that are not endemic to their own world, have immunized themselves against Earth’s pathogens before venturing out of their ship. Find out what happens next, and what the Small Gray Visitor said while she was here.

Download or read book Mark Twain s Autobiography written by Mark Twain and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected from Mark Twain's typescript.

Download or read book The Gilded Age written by Mark Twain and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Skeptic s Guide to Writers Houses written by Anne Trubek and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-07-11 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many ways to show our devotion to an author besides reading his or her works. Graves make for popular pilgrimage sites, but far more popular are writers' house museums. What is it we hope to accomplish by trekking to the home of a dead author? We may go in search of the point of inspiration, eager to stand on the very spot where our favorite literary characters first came to life—and find ourselves instead in the house where the author himself was conceived, or where she drew her last breath. Perhaps it is a place through which our writer passed only briefly, or maybe it really was a longtime home—now thoroughly remade as a decorator's show-house. In A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses Anne Trubek takes a vexed, often funny, and always thoughtful tour of a goodly number of house museums across the nation. In Key West she visits the shamelessly ersatz shrine to a hard-living Ernest Hemingway, while meditating on his lost Cuban farm and the sterile Idaho house in which he committed suicide. In Hannibal, Missouri, she walks the fuzzy line between fact and fiction, as she visits the home of the young Samuel Clemens—and the purported haunts of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Injun' Joe. She hits literary pay-dirt in Concord, Massachusetts, the nineteenth-century mecca that gave home to Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau—and yet could not accommodate a surprisingly complex Louisa May Alcott. She takes us along the trail of residences that Edgar Allan Poe left behind in the wake of his many failures and to the burned-out shell of a California house with which Jack London staked his claim on posterity. In Dayton, Ohio, a charismatic guide brings Paul Laurence Dunbar to compelling life for those few visitors willing to listen; in Cleveland, Trubek finds a moving remembrance of Charles Chesnutt in a house that no longer stands. Why is it that we visit writers' houses? Although admittedly skeptical about the stories these buildings tell us about their former inhabitants, Anne Trubek carries us along as she falls at least a little bit in love with each stop on her itinerary and finds in each some truth about literature, history, and contemporary America.

Download or read book Intrigue On a Longship Cruise written by Stephanie C. Fox and published by QueenBeeBooks. This book was released on 2022-10-24 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arielle and her aunt, Eloise, are going on a Longship cruise up the Rhône River in France. They are happily anticipating a week of fun meeting new people, eating gourmet food, seeing historic sites in famous cities, buying souvenirs, and photographing it all. It promises to be a lovely trip together after being cooped up at home during the recent pandemic. Vaccinated and packed, they are ready to tour the South of France, free from any worry about dangerous microbes. At least, that's what they think. Someone else aboard their ship has other ideas, including murder, and something worse than murder. What could be worse than murder? Read the story to find out, and enjoy Arielle's photographs.

Download or read book Grant and Twain written by Mark Perry and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-05-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1884 Ulysses S. Grant heeded the advice of Mark Twain and finally agreed to write his memoirs. Little did Grant or Twain realize that this seemingly straightforward decision would profoundly alter not only both their lives but the course of American literature. Over the next fifteen months, as the two men became close friends and intimate collaborators, Grant raced against the spread of cancer to compose a triumphant account of his life and times—while Twain struggled to complete and publish his greatest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.In this deeply moving and meticulously researched book, veteran writer Mark Perry reconstructs the heady months when Grant and Twain inspired and cajoled each other to create two quintessentially American masterpieces. In a bold and colorful narrative, Perry recounts the early careers of these two giants, traces their quest for fame and elusive fortunes, and then follows the series of events that brought them together as friends. The reason Grant let Twain talk him into writing his memoirs was simple: He was bankrupt and needed the money. Twain promised Grant princely returns in exchange for the right to edit and publish the book—and though the writer’s own finances were tottering, he kept his word to the general and his family. Mortally ill and battling debts, magazine editors, and a constant crush of reporters, Grant fought bravely to get the story of his life and his Civil War victories down on paper. Twain, meanwhile, staked all his hopes, both financial and literary, on the tale of a ragged boy and a runaway slave that he had been unable to finish for decades. As Perry delves into the story of the men’s deepening friendship and mutual influence, he arrives at the startling discovery of the true model for the character of Huckleberry Finn. With a cast of fascinating characters, including General William T. Sherman, William Dean Howells, William Henry Vanderbilt, and Abraham Lincoln, Perry’s narrative takes in the whole sweep of a glittering, unscrupulous age. A story of friendship and history, inspiration and desperation, genius and ruin, Grant and Twain captures a pivotal moment in the lives of two towering Americans and the age they epitomized.

Download or read book Antoinette A Year in the Life of a Doll with Her Friends written by Stephanie C. Fox and published by Stephanie C. Fox. This book was released on 2024-06-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antoinette is a concert violinist and opera singer. She travels and advocates for causes that aim to make the world a better place. She has a friend, Lilith, who does that as a lawyer, politician...and witch. A few months into the year, they receive a surprise visit from an alien botanist, Ileandra. Follow them throughout an entire year on their adventures! The dolls are each unique personalities built using mouline floss embroidery threads for their faces, ears, and manicures, after which wigs were attached and styled with ribbons. All of their outfits and dress designs were created and recreated, in miniature, from observing what the author loves from human fashions. There is a story that follows calendar events, with photographs by the author accompanying each part of it. To get the images, she photographed the dolls in each of their outfits, then used Photoshop to place them in other photographs from her own collection of images from places that she has traveled to, so that it is as if the doll is there. There are a few images of the author holding each doll at the end in matching outfits, just for fun.

Download or read book Scheherazade Cat The Story of a War Hero written by Stephanie C. Fox and published by QueenBeeBooks. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We humans are capable of great good. In the time that our species has been on Earth, we have done remarkable things to improve the human condition. But a dark and horrible side of our nature often comes to the surface in the form of military conflict. With sad regularity, our leaders become filled with greed, intolerance, and lust for power, resulting in bloodshed and cruelty that has become more and more horrible as our methods of killing become more efficient. Indeed, war is the most hideous of human experiences and is tragically a regular feature of our history. However, in the midst of wartime horror, sometimes people and events come together and give some hope that, in the end, the positive aspects of human nature will triumph over our evil side. Scheherazade Cat: The Story of a War Hero is an example of how love, loyalty, and kindness can shine through the darkness of war, and restore faith in the human spirit. This is the true story of Lieutenant David Haines, a United States Army chemical weapons officer, and Scheherazade, a calico kitten from Failaka Island, Kuwait. He met her while performing a mission there during the Persian Gulf War. Scheherazade was playing with a small bomb during this meeting, but fortunately it did not detonate. Seeing this alerted Lt. Haines to the presence of other mines, allowing his squad to retreat safely. Recognizing that this encounter may have saved his life and those of his men, the soldier adopted Scheherazade and brought her to America. This is a simple tale about a chance encounter, but it is also a heartwarming lesson that showing kindness and loyalty to a small creature in the midst of extreme danger brings out the best in us. For this reason, the message of this book is a positive one that demonstrates the value of compassion and goodness.

Download or read book Mark Twain s Letters from Hawaii written by Mark Twain and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1975-07-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever." --Mark Twain So Samuel Langhorne Clemens made his excuse for late copy to the Sacramento Union, the newspaper that was underwriting his 1866 trip. If the young reporter's excuse makes perfect sense to you, join the thousands of Island lovers who have delighted in Twain's efforts when he finally did put pen to paper.

Download or read book Teaching History with Museums written by Alan S. Marcus and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teaching History with Museums, Second Edition provides an introduction and overview of the rich pedagogical power of museums and historic sites. With a collection of practical strategies and case studies, the authors provide educators with the tools needed to create successful learning experiences for students. The cases are designed to be adapted to any classroom, encouraging students to consider museums as historical accounts to be examined, questioned, and discussed. Key updates to this revised edition and chapter features include: New Chapter 9 captures the importance of art museums when teaching about the past. Updated Chapter 10 addresses issues of technology, focused on visitors’ experiences in both physical and virtual museums. New coverage of smaller, lesser known museums to allow readers to adapt cases to any of their own local sites. Specific pre-visit, during visit, and post-visit activities for students at each museum. Case reflections analyzing pitfalls and possibilities that can be applied more broadly to similar museums. A listing of resources unique to the museum and history content for each chapter. With this valuable textbook, educators will learn how to promote instruction in support of rigorous inquiry into the past and the goals of democratic values of tolerance and citizenship in the present.

Download or read book The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine written by Mark Twain and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller! A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year A never-before-published, previously unfinished Mark Twain children’s story is brought to life by Philip and Erin Stead, creators of the Caldecott Medal-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee. In a hotel in Paris one evening in 1879, Mark Twain sat with his young daughters, who begged their father for a story. Twain began telling them the tale of Johnny, a poor boy in possession of some magical seeds. Later, Twain would jot down some rough notes about the story, but the tale was left unfinished . . . until now. Plucked from the Mark Twain archive at the University of California at Berkeley, Twain’s notes now form the foundation of a fairy tale picked up over a century later. With only Twain’s fragmentary script and a story that stops partway as his guide, author Philip Stead has written a tale that imagines what might have been if Twain had fully realized this work. Johnny, forlorn and alone except for his pet chicken, meets a kind woman who gives him seeds that change his fortune, allowing him to speak with animals and sending him on a quest to rescue a stolen prince. In the face of a bullying tyrant king, Johnny and his animal friends come to understand that generosity, empathy, and quiet courage are gifts more precious in this world than power and gold. Illuminated by Erin Stead’s graceful, humorous, and achingly poignant artwork, this is a story that reaches through time and brings us a new book from America’s most legendary writer, envisioned by two of today’s most important names in children’s literature. A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year "Will capture the imaginations of readers of all ages"—USA Today, ★ ★ ★ ★ (out of four stars) ★ "Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself would be proud."—Booklist, starred review ★ "A cast of eccentric characters, celestially fine writing, and a crusade against pomp that doesn't sacrifice humor."—Publishers Weekly, starred review ★ "Completing a story penned by arguably America's greatest author is no easy feat, but the Caldecott-winning author-illustrator (and husband-wife) team proves more than equal to the task. . . . A pensive and whimsical work that Twain would applaud."—Kirkus, starred review ★ "The combination of Twain’s (often sarcastic) humor and “lessons of life,” a touch of allegory, and Stead’s own storytelling skills result in an awesome piece of fantasy."—School Library Journal, starred review ★ "Beautifully understated and nuanced illustrations by Erin Stead add the finishing flourishes to this remarkable work."—Shelf Awareness, starred review “drawn with a graceful crosshatched intelligence that seems close to the best of Wyeth.”—Adam Gopnik, The New York Times "Twain and the two Steads have created what could become a read-aloud classic, perfect for families to enjoy together."—The Horn Book "Artful and meta and elegant”—The Wall Street Journal "Should inspire readers young and old to seek further adventures with Twain."—The Washington Post

Download or read book Who Is Mark Twain written by Mark Twain and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “More than 100 years after [Twain] wrote these stories, they remain not only remarkably funny but remarkably modern. . . . Ninety-nine years after his death, Twain still manages to get the last laugh.” — Vanity Fair Who Is Mark Twain? is a collection of twenty six wickedly funny, thought-provoking essays by Samuel Langhorne Clemens—aka Mark Twain—none of which have ever been published before. "You had better shove this in the stove," Mark Twain said at the top of an 1865 letter to his brother, "for I don't want any absurd ‘literary remains' and ‘unpublished letters of Mark Twain' published after I am planted." He was joking, of course. But when Mark Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any nineteenth-century American author. Who Is Mark Twain? presents twenty-six wickedly funny, disarmingly relevant pieces by the American master—a man who was well ahead of his time.

Download or read book Mark Twain in Virginia City Nevada written by Mark Twain and published by Nevada Publications. This book was released on 1986-05 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consists of chapters excerpted from Mark Twain's famous classic book 'Roughing it' with contemporary illustrations.

Download or read book History Today written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: