Materials from the Americas
When Lin Lin and her father immigrate to Canada from China, they bring with them one of their most treasured possessions – a traditional Chinese violin. From the beauty of their new country to the uneasiness of not fitting in, this violin sees them through all their experiences, good and bad.
“Rawwwwk! Reader!” screams an orange bird. “Booook open!” groans a frog. Then the sky lifts away and the enormous face of a child peers down into Sylvie’s storybook world. At last, a reader again! Sylvie has been a twelve-year-old princess for more than eighty years, ever since the book she lives in was first printed. She’s the heroine, and her story is exciting — but it’s always exciting in the same way. That’s the trouble. Sylvie has a restless urge to explore, to accomplish a Great Good Thing beyond the margins of her book. This time, when the new face appears, Sylvie breaks the rule of all storybook characters: Never look at the Reader. Worse, she gets to know the reader, a shy young girl named Claire, and when Claire falls asleep with the book open, Sylvie enters her dreams. After a fire threatens her kingdom, Sylvie rescues the other characters, taking them across the sea in an invisible fish that rolls up like a window shade when it’s out of water. For years they all live, royalty and rogues, in Claire’s subconscious — a surprising and sometimes perilous place. In this new land, Sylvie achieves many Good Things, but the Greatest, like this dazzling book, goes far and deep, beyond even her imaginings.
The death of Bob’s cat prompts his friends and family to give him a surprise birthday party and a very special present.
Drawing on a true story, an award-winning author and illustrator present a picture-book tribute to the beauty and mystery of the ocean, and to the mesmerizing creatures that may frolic there.It came from the sea, from the lonely sea,It came from the glittering sea.In a small Massachusetts fishing village in August of 1817, dozens of citizens claimed to have seen an enormous sea serpent swimming off the coast. Terrified at first, the people of Gloucester eventually became quite accustomed to their new neighbor. Adventure seekers came from miles around to study the serpent and aggressively hunt it down, but the creature eluded capture. The Gloucester sea serpent was then, and remains now, a complete mystery. Reviving the rhythms and tone of a traditional sea chanty, M.T. Anderson recounts this exhilarating sea adventure through the eyes of a little boy who secretly hopes for the serpent’s survival. The author’s captivating verse is paired with Bagram Ibatoulline’s luminous paintings, created in the spirit of nineteenth-century New England maritime artists.
When Anka comes each week on Thursday, young Karrie enjoys her Czech cooking and helps her with the housework.
What a relief when the old story-book is republished and the characters who live inside it suddenly discover they have Readers again — lots of Readers! Princess Sylvie finds herself rushing to get to her place whenever a new Reader — whether in Boston or Bangkok — opens the book. Her mother, the queen, is especially frazzled when the popular story is loaded onto the Web, a weightless, “virtual” world of unforeseen challenges. To cope with the stress, Sylvie convinces the Writer to add a new character, who gives yoga instruction to the storybook’s cast in those moments when they have time off. But stress proves the least of their problems as strange things start happening — words get changed around, scenes disappear — and Sylvie and her friends must launch themselves into the labyrinth of cyberspace to confront a twenty-first-century evil that threatens to destroy their world.
When twelve-year-old Kate, who is half-white, moves to Hawaii with her brother and father, she becomes a victim of racial prejudice but also learns the meaning of her middle name.
When the Fairweather family almost gives up hope of finding a place to live, the youngest child gives them an idea for a great location.
Based on a memoir written in the early twentieth century, tells the story of a young girl and her life in Russia, her travels to America, and her subsequent life in the United States.
Armando and his father are trash-pickers in Tijuana, Mexico, but when Senor David brings his “school”–a blue tarp set down near the garbage dump–to their neighborhood, Armando’s father decides that he must attend classes and learn. Based on a true story.