Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful

Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful PDF Author: Matthew Lippman
Publisher: Four Way Books Levis Prize in
ISBN: 9781945588488
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
This is the "Age of the Bullet," Matthew Lippman writes in Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful, days in which "bullets sprout other bullets in the bullet garden" and a caricature of a onesie-wearing president sucking on a pacifier appears on the cover of a national magazine. Lippman's poems are wildly inventive yet grounded in the 21st-century dailyness of parenting and dinner parties and Dunkin Donuts, all of which serve as launch pads into perennial questions of mercy and trust. "I don't care what you say about this city," Lippman writes in the title poem whose images recall New York City in the days following 9/11: "We sit down together on the sidewalk / and we hold one another." These are brash, beautiful poems, big-hearted in their tilt toward sentimentality and their yearning for something more, something better.

Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful

Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful PDF Author: Matthew Lippman
Publisher: Four Way Books Levis Prize in
ISBN: 9781945588488
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 78

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the "Age of the Bullet," Matthew Lippman writes in Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful, days in which "bullets sprout other bullets in the bullet garden" and a caricature of a onesie-wearing president sucking on a pacifier appears on the cover of a national magazine. Lippman's poems are wildly inventive yet grounded in the 21st-century dailyness of parenting and dinner parties and Dunkin Donuts, all of which serve as launch pads into perennial questions of mercy and trust. "I don't care what you say about this city," Lippman writes in the title poem whose images recall New York City in the days following 9/11: "We sit down together on the sidewalk / and we hold one another." These are brash, beautiful poems, big-hearted in their tilt toward sentimentality and their yearning for something more, something better.

Dead Beautiful

Dead Beautiful PDF Author: Yvonne Woon
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1409537544
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Coming from sunny California, the mist-shrouded Academy was a shock, with its strange customs, ancient curriculum and study of Latin - the language of the dead. Then I discovered that the school has more than one dark secret... I also discovered Dante. Intelligent, elusive and devastatingly gorgeous, most people can't decide whether they love, hate or fear him. All I know is that when we're together, I've never felt more alive - or more afraid. "I really enjoyed this book, it was fast moving, gutsy and engaging. Once I picked it up I found it very hard to put it down. The plot was just fantastic, and original... What I loved most was the use of classic literature to help tell the story... It grabs you, and when it finishes you don't really know what to do with yourself. Superb." - The Book Bag

Everything Sad Is Untrue

Everything Sad Is Untrue PDF Author: Daniel Nayeri
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1646140028
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
A National Indie Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year A New York Times Best Book of the Year An Amazon Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editors' Choice A BookPage Best Book of the Year A NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year A Today.com Best of the Year PRAISE "A modern masterpiece." —The New York Times Book Review "Supple, sparkling and original." —The Wall Street Journal "Mesmerizing." —TODAY.com "This book could change the world." —BookPage "Like nothing else you've read or ever will read." —Linda Sue Park "It hooks you right from the opening line." —NPR SEVEN STARRED REVIEWS ★ "A modern epic." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review ★ "A rare treasure of a book." —Publishers Weekly, starred review ★ "A story that soars." —The Bulletin, starred review ★ "At once beautiful and painful." —School Library Journal, starred review ★ "Raises the literary bar in children's lit." —Booklist, starred review ★ "Poignant and powerful." —Foreword Reviews, starred review ★ "One of the most extraordinary books of the year." —BookPage, starred review A sprawling, evocative, and groundbreaking autobiographical novel told in the unforgettable and hilarious voice of a young Iranian refugee. It is a powerfully layered novel that poses the questions: Who owns the truth? Who speaks it? Who believes it? "A patchwork story is the shame of the refugee," Nayeri writes early in the novel. In an Oklahoman middle school, Khosrou (whom everyone calls Daniel) stands in front of a skeptical audience of classmates, telling the tales of his family's history, stretching back years, decades, and centuries. At the core is Daniel's story of how they became refugees—starting with his mother's vocal embrace of Christianity in a country that made such a thing a capital offense, and continuing through their midnight flight from the secret police, bribing their way onto a plane-to-anywhere. Anywhere becomes the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy, and then finally asylum in the U.S. Implementing a distinct literary style and challenging western narrative structures, Nayeri deftly weaves through stories of the long and beautiful history of his family in Iran, adding a richness of ancient tales and Persian folklore. Like Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights in a hostile classroom, Daniel spins a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE (a true story) is a tale of heartbreak and resilience and urges readers to speak their truth and be heard.

Birthright

Birthright PDF Author: Erika Dreifus
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781950462155
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
The poems in Birthright embody multiple legacies: genetic, historical, religious, and literary. Through the lens of one person's experience of inheritance, the poems suggest ways in which all of us may be influenced by how we perceive and process our lives and times. Here, a poet claims what is hers as a child of her particular parents; as a grandchild of refugees from Nazi Germany; as a Jew, a woman, a Gen Xer, and a New Yorker; as a reader of the Bible and Shakespeare and Flaubert and Lucille Clifton. This poet's birthright is as unique as her DNA. But it resonates far beyond herself. Erika Dreifus's poems in Birthright are about the skull and the heart, the bone, and the muscle. They are poems about holiness and everydayness and, in part, about the convergence of these two movements as a way to embrace and discover mercy, love, and honesty. What they illustrate is the beauty that happens in that space, when both elements are embraced and when forces collide: "I've always remembered the Sabbath day; I just haven't kept it holy." Birthright is a book that explores connectedness and connective tissue. These are poems that embrace faith, family, and the forest of good intention in all of its contradictory forces. It's about the expensive nature of coloring one's hair and the expansive nature, which explodes in the beaming colors of the Diaspora. Every time I come back to Birthright I am born again out of the little pieces in me that have died. This is the magic of Erika Dreifus's poems. They are the flame in the darkness of Deuteronomy; they are the spellbound silence of history that helps to bind you with the people right next to you and to the "ancestral spirits that mingle above." -Matthew Lippman, author of Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful and A Little Gut Magic. Full of humor and history, the personal and the painful, Erika Dreifus's Birthright is a thoughtful reflection on life and loss, on inheritance and the individual, collective, and intergenerational nature of Jewish experience. The book's midrashic reflections challenge readers to reconsider ancient texts and their modern resonances. Some of its more political poems, while offering a perspective that is not always easy to hear, add a critical voice to the dissonant chorus that composes today's commentary on Israel-Palestine. At its most moving moments, Birthright relays intimate and familial experiences with an earnest and generous vulnerability. With its honest, accessible language and straightforward storytelling, Erika Dreifus's first full-length collection is a welcome addition to the modern American poetry canon-narrative, Jewish, feminist, or otherwise.-Sivan Butler-Rotholz, Managing Editor, "Saturday Poetry Series," As It Ought to Be Magazine. These clear, unvarnished poems take us deeply into a life engaged with history, family, tradition, politics, and contemporary culture. -Richard Chess, author of Love Nailed to the Doorpost, Third Temple, and other books.

How Beautiful We Were

How Beautiful We Were PDF Author: Imbolo Mbue
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593132432
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A fearless young woman from a small African village starts a revolution against an American oil company in this sweeping, inspiring novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, People • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, The Christian Science Monitor, Marie Claire, Ms. magazine, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews “Mbue reaches for the moon and, by the novel’s end, has it firmly held in her hand.”—NPR We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price. Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.

While Beauty Slept

While Beauty Slept PDF Author: Elizabeth Blackwell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425273849
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
“Elizabeth Blackwell is a story-telling genius. Her mesmerizing writing weaves a spell that will enchant you. While Beauty Slept breathes new life into the fairytale genre with a historical twist that will take your breath away.” —Meg Cabot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Princess Diaries and Heather Wells mystery series I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. Those of humble birth suffer their heartbreaks and celebrate their triumphs unnoticed by the bards, leaving no trace in the fables of their time… And so begins Elise Dalriss’s story. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel’s tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a tower, it pushes open a door to the past, a door Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered—and she is the only one left who knows what actually happened so many years ago. As the memories start to unfold, Elise is plunged back into the magnificent world behind the palace walls she left behind more than a half century ago, a labyrinth where the secrets of her real father and the mysterious fate of her mother connect to an inconceivable evil. Elise has guarded these secrets for a lifetime. As only Elise understands all too well, the truth is no fairy tale.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender PDF Author: Leslye Walton
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763670340
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
A 2015 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo. First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.

Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse

Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse PDF Author: Marcy Campbell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525552782
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
A classic in the making, this heartwarming story about empathy and imagination is one that families will treasure for years to come. Adrian Simcox tells anyone who will listen that he has a horse--the best and most beautiful horse anywhere. But Chloe does NOT believe him. Adrian Simcox lives in a tiny house. Where would he keep a horse? He has holes in his shoes. How would he pay for a horse? The more Adrian talks about his horse, the angrier Chloe gets. But when she calls him out at school and even complains about him to her mom, Chloe doesn't get the vindication she craves. She gets something far more important. Written with tenderness and poignancy and gorgeously illustrated, this book will show readers that kindness is always rewarding, understanding is sweeter than judgment, and friendship is the best gift one can give.

The New Year of Yellow

The New Year of Yellow PDF Author: Matthew Lippman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Winner of the 2005 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Tony Hoagland.

Dear Yusef

Dear Yusef PDF Author: John Murillo
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819501352
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This carefully and generously curated mosaic of essays, letters, and poems reveals the profound impact that poet Yusef Komunyakaa has had on poets, educators, and readers worldwide. The anthology brings together creative and critical offerings from fellow poets, former students, literary entities, and other admirers. There are emerging and established voices—from previously unpublished writers to Pulitzer Prize winning poets. Together these pieces honor one of the most influential writers of the last half century, one, it turns out, who is as beloved for his teaching as he is celebrated for his creative work. Contributors include Terrance Hayes, Sharon Olds, Carolyn Forché, Toi Derricotte, and Martín Espada, among others. Dear Yusef affirms Komunyakaa's transformative influence, showcasing how his mentoring has ignited creativity, nurtured passion, and fostered a sense of belonging among countless individuals. Through the artistry of these testimonials, we witness the transformative power of poetry and the enduring legacy of a true literary icon.