Henrietta has big dreams for a little chicken: learning to sing, to swim, to fly, and, most important of all, to lay golden eggs. Even when her three thousand, three hundred thirty-three fellow inmates in the old henhouse laugh at her ambitions, Henrietta holds fast, practicing day and night. Whether Henrietta achieves her dreams is debatable, but through her persistence and her resolute belief in herself, she does manage to change the lives of everyone in the henhouse for the better.
The story begins when Eric, Charles, and Andreas come upon the video store of their dreams, featuring a vast array of war games they’ve never even heard of (and they’ve heard of, and mastered, all of them). But there, amid the stacks of lurid boxes and scenes of cyber-carnage, is the most remarkable game of all, one pressed on them by the store’s elderly proprietor, a clever sample of computer warfare called “The Ultimate Experience.” Contained in a single diskette, without even a label, the unassuming game surpasses their wildest fantasies: the graphics are better than a movie, the simulated battlefields are historically and geologically perfect, and the action seems to put you right inside the screen. The feeling of “reality” is uncanny.But soon the three friends realize that the Game has a will of its own, and that far from being a dream, it has drawn each of them into his own personal nightmare one that they enter and exit without any control. For Charles, it means suddenly finding himself at the head of a doomed French battalion in the darkest days of World War I, forced to choose which men to send to their deaths. Eric, meanwhile, is a resistance fighter in Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, on the very day in 1937 that German bombers reduced the town and its people to ashes. And Andreas, the oldest and most troubled and most vicious of the three, must face up to his own demons, discovering that, far from being terrified of the carnage around him, he revels in it. Little by little, the Game takes over their lives, leaving Eric, Charles, and their loved ones at its mercy while an increasingly violent Andreas plunges ever deeper into its seductive and deadly power. As the final showdown looms on the stage of virtual history, the three boys are inexorably drawn toward a memorable and horrifying conclusion.
Bonus Hamilton is a dreamer whose greatest wish is to become ruler of Redonda, a deserted island near his own island in the West Indies. Through a catastrophe, Bonus does flee to Redonda, but his arrival is not nearly as regal as he had dreamed it would be.
The last thing the class expects when they go back to school is for their new teacher to be old! And then he gives them a goofy present-a book of coupons: one coupon for skipping school for a day; one coupon for not listening in class; one coupon for singing at the top of your lungs whenever you like. The list goes on! What is this wrinkly old teacher trying to do, get everyone in trouble? Susie Morgenstern follows up her award-winning book Secret Letters from 0-10 with a thoughtful, funny, and very original book that once again shows children that life is for the living.
Liberated for a year from her parents’ restrictions, ten-year-old Lucinda discovers true freedom in the care of her temporary guardians as she roller skates around the streets of turn-of-the-century New York.
When Claudia decided to run away, she planned very carefully. She would be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson in Claudia appreciation. And she would live in comfort-at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She invited her brother Jamie to go, too, mostly because he was a miser and would have money The two took up residence in the museum right on schedule. But once the fun of settling in was over, Claudia had two unexpected problems: She felt just the same, and she wanted to feel different; and she found a statue at the museum so beautiful she could not go home until she had discovered its maker, a question that baffled even the experts. The former owner of the statue was Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and without her help Claudia might never have found a way to go home.
A description of the boyhood, marriage, and young professional life of Abraham Lincoln includes his presidential years and also reflects on the latest scholarly thoughts about our Civil War president.
Caddie Woodlawn is a real adventurer. She’d rather hunt than sew and plow than bake and tries to beat her brother’s dares every chance she gets. Caddie is friends with Indians, who scare most of the neighbors — neighbors who, like her mother and sisters, don’t understand her at all.
Caddie is brave, and her story is special because it’s based on the life and memories of Carol Ryrie Brink’s grandmother, the real Caddie Woodlawn. Her spirit and sense of fun have made this book a classic that readers have taken to their hearts for more than seventy years.
Describes the experiences of Smoky, the mouse-colored horse, from his birth on the range, his capture by humans, through his work in the rodeo and on the ranch, and his eventual old age.
“Take up the pipe, Claudius,” a voice growled near Jessie’s bound head. “He’s worth nothing without his pipe!” Snatched from the docks of New Orleans, thirteen-year-old Jessie is thrown aboard a slave ship where he must play his fife so that captured slaves will “dance,” to keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable for their owners’ use. Jessie is sickened as he witnesses the horrible practices of the slave trade. But even those horrors can’t compare to the one final event awaiting Jessie’s witness. Can the cruelty to his fellow human beings be stopped? And will it be too late when it finally does stop? In a stunning performance by Peter MacNicol, Paula Fox’s enduring classic comes magnificently alive, with the seating truth about a period of American history we would otherwise most likely wish to forget.