Materials from the Americas
“Photo-essay about Flamenco, a southern Spanish art form that incorporates song, dance, and music, tracing its cultural history and focusing on a contemporary young girl and her brother as they learn the traditional style of movement and instrument playing. Includes a glossary/pronunciation guide and author’s sources”–Provided by publisher.
Parents have a lingering impact on their teen children. If you act like Marlene, you end up like Marlene — messed up, lonely and broke. No wonder Samantha rejects her mother’s lifestyle. In The Trouble with Marlene, mother and daughter share one thing — thoughts of suicide. Marlene never stops talking about it, but for Samantha, it’s a private affair. There’s one other private thought for Samantha: putting a pillow over her mother’s face and bringing the madness to an end. How far is she prepared to take her fantasy?
Leading Women celebrates the impact that women in leadership roles have made across cultures and decades.
A fantastic Steampunk adventure in the deeps. Transforming his appearance and stealing secret documents from the French is all in a day’s work for fourteen-year-old Modo, a British secret agent. But his latest mission—to uncover the underwater mystery of something called the Ictneo—seems impossible. There are rumors of a sea monster and a fish as big as a ship. French spies are after it, and Mr. Socrates, Modo’s master, wants to find it first. Modo and his fellow secret agent, Octavia, begin their mission in New York City, then take a steamship across the North Atlantic. During the voyage, Modo uncovers an astounding secret. The Dark Deeps, the second book in Arthur Slade’s Hunchback Assignments series, is set in a fascinating Steampunk Victorian world. Modo’s underwater adventures and his encounters with the young French spy Colette Brunet, the fearless Captain Monturiol, and the dreaded Clockwork Guild guarantee a gripping read filled with danger, suspense, and brilliant inventions.
The people of Bolivia have grown coca for legitimate purposes for hundreds of years, but the demands of America’s War on Drugs now threaten this way of life. Deborah Ellis’s searing follow-up to the highly praised “I Am a Taxi” deals with this frank reality. After he manages to escape from virtual enslavement in an illegal cocaine operation, Diego is taken in by the Ricardo family. These poor coca farmers give Diego a safe haven where he recovers from his ordeal in the jungle. But the army soon moves in and destroys the family’s coca crop — their livelihood. So Diego joins their protest of the destruction of their crops and confront the army head-on by barricading the roads. While tension between the cocaleros and the army builds to a dramatic climax, Diego wonders whether he will ever find a way to return to his family. This compelling novel defies conventional wisdom on an important issue, and shows how people in one part of the world unknowingly create hardship for people in another.
For thirteen years, Ben Tomlin was an only child. But all that changes when his mother brings home Zan — an eight-day-old chimpanzee. Ben’s father, a renowned behavioral scientist, has uprooted the family to pursue his latest research project: a high-profile experiment to determine whether chimpanzees can acquire advanced language skills. Ben’s parents tell him to treat Zan like a little brother. Ben reluctantly agrees. At least now he’s not the only one his father’s going to scrutinize. It isn’t long before Ben is Zan’s favorite, and Ben starts to see Zan as more than just an experiment. His father disagrees. To him, Zan is only a specimen, no more, no less. And this is going to have consequences. Soon Ben is forced to make a critical choice between what he is told to believe and what he knows to be true — between obeying his father or protecting his brother from an unimaginable fate. Half Brother isn’t just a story about a boy and a chimp. It’s about the way families are made, the way humanity is judged, the way easy choices become hard ones, and how you can’t always do right by the people and animals you love. In the hands of master storyteller Kenneth Oppel, it’s a novel you won’t soon forget.
When someone takes a pet goldfish, then other items from Ms. Blackwell’s classroom, each time leaving a clue in the form of a poem, student Edgar Allan competes with a classmate to be first to solve the mystery.
The Game is just the beginning? It’s the year 2154. Lisse and her friends have been deemed unemployable in the eyes of society. Now they must scavenge the disintegrating city for food and shelter, just to make ends meet. But their dismal existence starts to look up when Lisse and her friends are invited to participate in The Game, an experience highly regarded in their society. The Game is a virtual reality experience where they are challenged to survive. But as they spend more time in The Game, the line between reality and fantasy starts to blur. What started as a simple exercise quickly becomes a test of endurance, trust, and their will to live.
We the Children asks: Can a kid change the course of history?
At Spiro Agnew Elementary, the fifth graders rule the school. And class clown Justin Fisher rules them all. Or, at least, he did. Justin has always been the funniest kid in school. But this year, his new teacher isn’t amused. And when Justin gets in trouble with Mr. Tripp over and over, the other kids turn on him, too. No one wants to be friends with the class troublemaker. But Justin Fisher isn’t going down without a fight.