Author: Gregory Maguire
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062980807
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
After brilliantly reimagining the worlds of Oz, Wonderland, Dickensian London, and the Nutcracker, the New York Times bestselling author of Wicked turns his unconventional genius to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Wild Swans," transforming this classic tale into an Italian-American girl's poignant coming-of-age story, set amid the magic of Christmas in 1960s New York. Following her brother's death and her mother's emotional breakdown, Laura now lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in a lonely townhouse she shares with her old-world, strict, often querulous grandparents. But the arrangement may be temporary. The quiet, awkward teenager has been getting into trouble at home and has been expelled from her high school for throwing a record album at a popular girl who bullied her. When Christmas is over and the new year begins, Laura may find herself at boarding school in Montreal. Nearly unmoored from reality through her panic and submerged grief, Laura is startled when a handsome swan boy with only one wing lands on her roof. Hiding him from her ever-bickering grandparents, Laura tries to build the swan boy a wing so he can fly home. But the task is too difficult to accomplish herself. Little does Laura know that her struggle to find help for her new friend parallels that of her grandparents, who are desperate for a distant relative’s financial aid to save the family store. As he explores themes of class, isolation, family, and the dangerous yearning to be saved by a power greater than ourselves, Gregory Maguire conjures a haunting, beautiful tale of magical realism that illuminates one young woman’s heartbreak and hope as she begins the inevitable journey to adulthood.
Author: Joyce Sidman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547906501
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 37
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Book Description
Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold summons forth the charms and dictates of winter. Just as Joyce Sidman captured the drama of the pond in Song of the Water Boatman and the night woods in Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night, here she captures the drama of the cold. Why don't snakes freeze to death? How does the tiny honeybee survive frost? Learn about the secret lives of animals happening under the snow and how it buds to spring!
Author: Owen Sheers
Publisher: Seren Books
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
Ideas of separation and divorce--the geographical divides of borders, the separation of the dead and the living, the movement from childhood to adulthood, and the end of relationships--drive this poetry collection from one of Great Britain's rising young talents. The collection revolves around the poems "Y Gaer" and "The Hillfort," the titles themselves suggesting the linguistic divide in Wales, from poems concerned with childhood, a Welsh landscape, and family to an outward-looking vision that is both geographic and historic.
Author: Hans Christian Andersen
Publisher: Golden Books
ISBN: 0553509489
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 26
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Book Description
From the Golden Book archives comes a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, gloriously illustrated by Gordon Laite in the late 1960s but never published until now! Gordon Laite’s breathtaking artwork for a Little Golden Book edition of the Andersen fairy tale was found recently in the Golden Books archive. Planned for a 1970 release but never published, this Little Golden Book is finally making its debut for today’s fairy tale fans! And it couldn’t be a lovelier retelling of the story of a determined princess whose loyalty saves her brothers from being turned into swans by an evil queen.
Author: Jung Chang
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439106495
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Author: Lucy Christopher
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545317711
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
While her father is in the hospital, 13-year-old Isla befriends Harry, the first boy to understand her love of the outdoors, and as Harry's health fails, Isla tries to help both him and the lone swan they see, struggling to fly, on the lake outside Harry's window.
Author: Robert McCammon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501131427
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 928
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Book Description
In a nightmarish, post-holocaust world, an ancient evil roams a devastated America, gathering the forces of human greed and madness, searching for a child named Swan who possesses the gift of life.
Author: Guy Baldassarre
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421408082
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1183
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Book Description
The best-selling and authoritative reference book on waterfowl has been fully revised and updated by one of the world’s most respected waterfowl biologists. Honorable Mention for the PROSE Award for Excellence, Multivolume/Science of the Association of American Publishers Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America has been hailed as a classic since the first edition was published in 1942. A must-have for professional biologists, birders, waterfowl hunters, decoy collectors, and wildlife managers, this fully revised and updated edition provides definitive information on the continent's forty-six species. Maps of both winter and breeding ranges are presented with stunning images by top waterfowl photographers and the acclaimed original artwork of Robert W. (Bob) Hines. Originally authored by F. H. Kortright and later revised by Frank Bellrose, this latest edition, which has been meticulously updated by renowned waterfowl biologist Guy Baldassarre, continues the legacy of esteemed authors. Each species account contains in-depth sections on: • identification • distribution • migration behavior • habitat • population status • breeding biology • rearing of young • recruitment and survival • food habits and feeding ecology • molts and plumages • conservation and management To facilitate identification, the species accounts also include detailed illustrations of wings. An appendix contains comparative illustrations of ducklings, goslings, and cygnets. This edition of Ducks, Geese, and Swans consists of two volumes, printed in full color, and packaged in a slipcase, along with a CD containing references and additional maps.
Author: Deborah Pope
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807124666
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
The emergence of large numbers of women writers expressing a deliberately female consciousness has marked one of the significant directions of literature in this century. A central idea embraced by these writers has been the particular isolation, or marginality, flet by women. In A Separate Vision Deborah Pope focuses on four representative poets – Louise Bogan, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, and Adrienne Rich – to explore the ways in which women writers’ treatment of isolation extends our perception of women’s experience and our understanding of the alienated human sensibility. In the work of these poets, Pope identifies four distinct phases of isolation, split-self, and validation. These phases represent a progression from negation to affirmation, from a sense of powerlessness and severe restriction to one of literal and psychological freedom. She shows how the dynamics of this progression have operated in each poet’s development, with each starting from the negative stance of victimization and moving, in varying degrees, toward validation. But Pope also finds that in each woman’s work one phase of isolation is predominant. She sees the tension and confessionalism in the poetry of Bogan, the earliest of the four, as most representative of victimization. Kumin’s poems on her alienation from familial and social experiences exemplify personalization. The split-self is manifested most clearly in Levertov, whose work shows a woman torn between her social female self and her inner artistic self. Rich, the most committed feminist of this group, si also the strongest exemplar of validation. Her recent poems are charged with personality and power, and the isolation in her writing is the isolation of those in the forefront of exploration and change. This progress toward a positive sense of women’s isolation is a significant movement in contemporary poetry. With what Pope describes as their “vigorous revisioning of our patterns of human experience,” women poets are today showing us new ways of understanding and realizing human dignity and worth.
Author: Melanie Dickerson
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 0785234020
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Where there is wealth and power, there’s always someone willing to do anything to take it. When Delia's father dies, her stepmother accuses her seven brothers of treasonous crimes. Seeking to free them from Richard II's grasp, Delia's only ally is Sir Geoffrey, the man who arrested them. Can she trust him? England, 1381: Delia’s idyllic life as daughter of an earl is shattered when her father dies and his wife accuses Delia’s seven brothers of treason and murder. The youngest is only ten years old, but this doesn’t stop the guards from hauling them off to the Tower of London. There they await a grim fate, as child-king Richard II is executing anyone who poses a threat to his throne. Delia is their only hope for pardon and freedom. Sir Geoffrey did not expect his first assignment as captain of the guard to be the arrest of boys so young. He dutifully imprisons the brothers, but he can’t ignore the feeling, rooted in personal experience, that injustice and treachery are at work. Determined to rescue her brothers, Delia secures a position as a seamstress for the queen. Her quest is all but impossible as the executions continue. Sir Geoffrey offers to be her ally, but should she trust him in a court where everyone has an agenda? From New York Times bestselling author Melanie Dickerson comes a tender retelling of “The Wild Swans,” where the virtues of loyalty and love face a harrowing showdown with power and fear. The first installment in a brand-new series set in England: The Dericott Tales Book 1: Court of Swans Book 2: Castle of Refuge Book 3: Veil of Winter Full-length clean fairy-tale reimagining Includes discussion questions for book clubs
