![]() ![]() ![]() But life in a subdivision and a school filled with "pubescent cheddar" holds little appeal for a girl who began working at four and smoking at nine.Īs the quaint world of 1950s America recedes into history, Cathy dives headfirst into the 1960s. ![]() In the hopes of giving Cathy a fresh start away from their small town, the McClures leave behind Niagara Falls and the family pharmacy to start over in suburban Buffalo. It's 1960 and twelve-year-old Cathy McClure has just been thrown out of Catholic school for - among other transgressions - filling the holy water fount with vodka. The vivid and touching sequel to the bestselling memoir Too Close to the Falls. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Semi-nomadic groups scratch survival from the boggy ground, often disinterring the remains of a destroyed civilisation. In search of the lost power of "clevverness", some now excavate for "Salt 4" (sulphur), the key "gready mint" (ingredient) of gunpowder, which is to be reinvented by the end of the novel. The rulers of former times were the "Puter Leat" (computer elite). With a brilliant observation of incongruity, Hoban has shards of scientific vocabulary survive in the neo-primitive idioms of this post-nuclear time: "program" for plan "gallack seas" for the heavens. This is England long after some nuclear holocaust. ![]() ![]() We piece together what must have happened. It is an extraordinary risk for a novelist to take: to write in so rebarbative a fashion. Even as you get the habit of Riddley's vocabulary and his lack of punctuation, you still have to read more slowly than you are used to doing. "Thayr ar tu menne agenst us this tym we mus du betteren that." Only three words out of these 13 are spelt "normally". Spelling is phoneticised, hampering the process of recognition that usually speeds us through sentences. "I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly benn the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs." The story is narrated by Riddley Walker, and begins with "my naming day when I come 12" (we will soon find that a 12-year-old is not a child in his world). W hat has happened to the English language? Begin Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker and you are in a struggle with words. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In The Doré Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, Doré reproduces with excellent clarity Dante Alighieri's sublime poetic masterpiece in 135 plates of The Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise an extraordinarily vivid and imaginative account of the poet's allegorical journey through the afterlife. ![]() Gustave Doré's illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy are an unforgettable visual journey through nightmare landscapes of eternal damnation to the very core of Hell. ![]() ![]() And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. ![]() In Wildwood, Prue and her friend Curtis uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval-a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. The story is told from multiple points of view, and the book features more than eighty illustrations, including six full-color plates, making this an absolutely gorgeous object. It feels at once firmly steeped in the classics of children's literature and completely fresh. ![]() Wildwood captivates readers with the wonder and thrill of a secret world within the landscape of a modern city. For fans of the Chronicles of Narnia comes the first book in the Wildwood Chronicles, the New York Times bestselling fantasy adventure series by Colin Meloy, lead singer of the Decemberists, and Carson Ellis, acclaimed illustrator of The Mysterious Benedict Society. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This is no prestigious private academy-they've been enrolled at South Side Middle School in the heart of Chicago. But as conflict brews near Wakanda, T'Challa's father makes a startling announcement: he's sending T'Challa and M'Baku to school in America. When he's not learning how to rule a kingdom from his father-the reigning Black Panther-or testing out the latest tech, he's off breaking rules with his best friend, M'Baku. Life is comfortable for twelve-year-old T'Challa in his home of Wakanda, an isolated, technologically advanced African nation. But right now, he's simply T'Challa-the young prince. Handpicked by Amazon kids’ books editor, Seira Wilson, for Prime Book Box – a children’s subscription that inspires a love of reading.īlack Panther. ![]() ![]() ![]() Hoping to help end the war and bring his dad home faster, Hobie decides to donate. ![]() So here’s one of my mantras for the foreseeable future: no matter what’s happening in the moment, if I open my heart up to the whole story, I might find a happy ending or two. With World War II raging and his father fighting overseas in Europe, eleven-year-old Hobie Hanson is determined to do his part to help his family and his country, even if it means giving up his beloved German shepherd, Duke. ![]() I admire this young man’s courage, and see him as a true role model. You can clearly see why this young reader would feel that way! Look at that adorable German shepherd! He has his own teddy bear, too.īut this reader took a chance on opening up his heart to this book, even though he worried it might make him sad. ![]() He said his son hadn’t wanted to read Duke, because Hobie gives Duke away to the Dogs for Defense program. (If that’s not your thing, be sure to come back Friday, December 30 for a guest post written by the amazing Nikki Grimes!).Ī dad in Omaha, Nebraska, sent me this photo (be still my heart!). I’m doing something a tiny bit different for the next few weeks instead of shining the spotlight on friends’ new books, I’m going to shine a spotlight on readers. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Preface explains just what this transformation of philosophy into science fundamentally involves. It is to this revolutionary transformation that Hegel sees the Phenomenology as first and foremost contributing. Philosophy is in the process of transforming itself into a science, becoming actual wisdom instead of mere love of wisdom (71-72). The revolution that he speaks of is not merely political but also philosophical. Spirit has broken away from its former world of existence and imaging it is about to sink all that into the past, and is busy shaping itself anew" (82). ![]() Hegel writes there that it is "not hard to see that our time is a time of birth and transition into a new era. The Preface to the work, completed a few months later in January of 1807, reflects the revolutionary excitement of the time. Everyone knows the story of how Hegel, in October of 1806, against the backdrop of the battle of Jena, composed the final pages of the Phenomenology of Spirit with the roar of Napoleon's cannons in his ears. ![]() ![]() ![]() Reeling from her own trauma, and faced with proof that she may have been hallucinating, Lo continues to investigate, aided by her ex-boyfriend Ben (who's also writing about the cruise), fighting desperately to find any shred of evidence that she may be right. To make matters stranger, there's no record of any passenger traveling in the cabin next to Lo’s, even though Lo herself saw a woman there and even borrowed makeup from her before the first night’s dinner party. ![]() By the time she comes onboard the Aurora, Lo is suffering from severe sleep deprivation and possibly even PTSD, so when she hears a big splash from the cabin next door in the middle of the night, “the kind of splash made by a body hitting water,” she can’t prove to security that anything violent has actually occurred. ![]() Though unharmed, she ends up locked in her own room for several hours before escaping as a result, she is unable to sleep. Ware ( In A Dark, Dark Wood, 2015) offers up a classic “paranoid woman” story with a modern twist in this tense, claustrophobic mystery.ĭays before departing on a luxury cruise for work, travel journalist Lo Blacklock is the victim of a break-in. ![]() ![]() ![]() In Essential Labor, Garbes explores assumptions about care, work, and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is, and can be. In response to the increasing weight placed on mothers and caregivers-and the lack of a social safety net to support them-writer Angela Garbes found herself pondering a vital question: How, under our current circumstances that leave us lonely, exhausted, and financially strained, might we demand more from American family life? The Covid-19 pandemic shed fresh light on a long-overlooked truth: mothering is among the only essential work humans do. ![]() ![]() From the acclaimed author of Like a Mother comes a reflection on the state of caregiving in America, and an exploration of mothering as a means of social change. ![]() ![]() ![]() Readers have glimpsed small parts of this narrative in such volumes as The World of Ice & Fire but now, for the first time, the full tapestry of Targaryen history is revealed. What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why did it become so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What is the origin of Daenerys’s three dragon eggs? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley. ![]() Fire and Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart. ![]() Set 300 years before the events in A Song of Ice and Fire, Fire and Blood is the definitive history of the Targaryens in Westeros as told by Archmaester Gyldayn, and chronicles the conquest that united the Seven Kingdoms under Targaryen rule through the Dance of the Dragons: the Targaryen civil war that nearly ended their dynasty forever.Ĭenturies before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen – the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria – took up residence on Dragonstone. ![]() |