Hannah the hen spends a whole day on the farm looking for a quiet place to lay her eggs, so that she can have chicks of her own. The pigs grunt too loudly, the lambs are too playful, the cows are too clumsy…Will Hannah ever find a nice quiet place where her eggs will be safe?
Faith, the little fairy, can’t get to sleep. It’s a lovely summer’s night and magic is in the air, so she flies off to see who else is still awake. Faith meets a mother fox and her young cubs, who can’t get to sleep, an elf father whose children can’t get to sleep, and the sandman who is filling sacks with magic dust to help children everywhere get to sleep. Finally the little fairy meets a moth-fairy prince who takes her to the source of the night’s magic – a wonderful Midsummer Night’s party – where she dances until she is so tired that she finally falls asleep.This magical, dreamlike tale makes perfect bedtime reading.
Activities with unspun sheep’s wool, also known as magic wool, offer a wide range of creative possibilities for both children and adults. In this book Dagmar Schmidt and Freya Jaffke combine their talents and experience, and show how to create beautiful pictures, as well as table-top scenes featuring figures and animals. They explain the process of carding and dyeing unspun wool to make ‘magic wool’. They focus on making pictures with wool, including scenes from several well-known fairy tales and festivals, before showing how to make simple dolls and animals, building up to an entire nativity scene. Detailed instructions, diagrams and colour photographs are provided throughout.
Unspun sheep’s wool, also known as magic wool, is a warm vibrant material, perfect for making these beautiful soft figures. Christine Schafer includes detailed instructions on making fairies and angels for every occasion: flower fairies for a seasonal nature table, fairies for birthday celebrations, guardian angels to watch over a crib and, of course, a range of Christmas angels. This book includes step-by-step instructions, colour photographs and diagrams which clearly show the reader the basics for making simple figures, progressing to detailed instructions for making more elaborate versions.
Young slave Milon starts his journey at home in Athens. When he sets sail on a ship bound for Italy his adventures really begin. He narrowly escapes with his life in Pompei as the great volcano Vesuvius erupts and destroys the town; he experiences the colourful life of the metropolis of Alexandria in Egypt, and he faces a battle for life and death in the Colosseum in Rome. When he meets a small community of Christians in Rome, he finally gains his freedom and finds a purpose in life. At the centre of the story is Milon’s relationship with a wounded lion who he bravely helps. Will the lion remember him and return the favour when Milon faces death at the hands of the mighty Roman emperors?
In the third installment of the Century Quartet, Italian author P. D. Baccalario continues the mystery that will take four cities and four extraordinary kids to solve.
PARIS, JUNE 20
When new information turns up about the Star of Stone, the object they found in New York, Mistral, Elettra, Harvey, and Sheng meet again in Paris. Harvey brings the stone to show to his dad’s archaeologist friend. And it turns out that the friend knows much more about the kids’ quest than they could have imagined. She gives them a clock that once belonged to Napoléon, and she tells them that if they can figure out how it works, it will lead them to another object of power. The clock sends the kids all over Paris, through old churches and forgotten museum exhibits, in search of an artifact linked to the Egyptian goddess Isis. But a woman with a penchant for venomous snakes and carnivorous plants—and her vast network of spies—is watching their every move.
Fifteen-year-old Dolf uses a prototype time machine and gets stuck in the Middle Ages. Trying to find his way back to the twentieth century, he joins a children’s crusade of almost ten thousand children on their way to the Holy Land. Dolf helps the children defy the terrible mountains, conquer disease and fight evil knights. Slowly, Dolf begins to realize that the real danger does not lurk behind the next mountaintop, but rather within the crusade itself.
Lizzie and Karl’s mother is a zoo keeper; the family has become attached to an orphaned elephant named Marlene, who will be destroyed as a precautionary measure so she and the other animals don’t run wild should the zoo be hit by bombs. The family persuades the zoo director to let Marlene stay in their garden instead. When the city is bombed, the family flees with thousands of others, but how can they walk the same route when they have an elephant in tow, and keep themselves safe? Along the way, they meet Peter, a Canadian navigator who risks his own capture to save the family. As Michael Morpurgo writes in an author’s note, An Elephant in the Garden is inspired by historical truths, and by his admiration for elephants, “the noblest and wisest and most sensitive of all creatures.” Here is a story that brings together an unlikely group of survivors whose faith in kindness and love proves the best weapon of all.
Nine-year-old Nat and his family are forced from their home on April 17, 1975, marched for many days, separated from each other, and forced to work in the rice fields, where Nat concentrates on survival. Includes historical notes and photographs.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 2
This collection includes works by world-renowned poets, among them Lorca, Goethe, Whitman, and Shelley. Each poem appears first in Spanish, and then in its original language, if the poem was translated. For instance, Emily Dickinson’s selection appears in Spanish and English, while Wang Wei’s appears in Spanish and Chinese. The book opens with an excerpt from Christina Rossetti’s Is the Moon Tired? in which the orb is personified as a tired, hardworking woman. Its Spanish translation actually sounds more musical than the original English. The hauntingly beautiful full-page digital paintings have an ethereal quality that transports readers into the lyrical poetry. The Moon appears in each illustration, sometimes as a crescent, sometimes full, and sometimes as a woman’s face. This oversize treasury will be perfect for a world-poetry unit, a lesson on the art of translation, or special poetry programs at schools and libraries.–Rebecca Hickman, Sherman Library at NSU, Fort Lauderdale, FL