The author/photographer and his eight-year-old son journey to the ice floes of eastern Canada to observe the thousands of harp seal pups born there each year.
Americas
Materials from the Americas
The First Time (True Stories Series)
Contains eight “true stories” of the sexual experiences of young adults. These stories are sometimes shocking, poignant, graphic and at times tragic. The stories cover many types of experiences including young love, sexual abuse, emabarrassment, difficult consequences, happiness, and gay experiences.
The Corps Of The Bare-Boned Plane
When an accident leaves teenage cousins Meline and Jocelyn parentless, they come to live with their unknown and eccentric Uncle Marten on his private island. They soon discover that the island has a history as tragic as their own: it was once an air force training camp, led by a mad commander whose crazed plan to train pilots to fly airplanes without instruments sent eleven pilots to their deaths. Jocelyn, Meline, and Uncle Marten are soon joined on this island of wrecked planes and wrecked men by an elderly Austrian housekeeper, a very mysterious butler, a cat, and a dog. But to Jocelyn and Meline, being in a strange new place around strange new people only underscores the fact that the world they once knew has ended. Told in the alternating voices of four characters dealing with grief in different ways, Polly Horvath’s new novel is a rich and complicated story about loss and the possibility— and impossibility—of beginning again.
Ask Me No Questions
Nadira and her family are undocumented, fleeing to the Canadian border as they run from the country they thought was their home. For years since emigrating from Bangladesh, they have lived on expired visas in New York City, hoping they could someday realize their dream of becoming legal citizens. But after 9/11, everything changes. Suddenly, being Muslim means being dangerous, a suspected terrorist. And when Nadira’s father is arrested and detained at the border, Nadira and her older sister, Aisha, are sent back to Queens and told to carry on, as if everything is the same. Nadira and Aisha live in fear they’ll have to return to a Bangladesh they hardly know. Aisha, always the responsible one, falls apart. It’s up to Nadira to find a way to bring her family back together again. Critically acclaimed author Marina Budhos has written a searing portrait of contemporary America in the days of terrorism, orange alerts, and the Patriot Act, and a moving and important story about something most people take for granted — citizenship and acceptance in their country.
1968
1968, the year America grew up from racial and gender equality fights to the struggle against the draft and the Vietnam war. In 1968 Americans asked questions and fought for their rights. Now, 30 years later, we look back on that seminal year–from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assasination to the Columbia University riots to our changing role among other nations–in this gripping introduction to the events home and abroad. The year we first took steps in space, the year we shaped the present, 1968 presented by a former New York Times writer who lived through it all, shares the story with detail.
Gemini Summer
In the quiet of Hog’s Hollow, each member of the River family pursues a dream. Old Man River sets out to build a fallout shelter in case the war in Vietnam “brings the end of everything;” his wife Flo, who collects Gone with the Wind dolls, attempts to pen her own Southern saga; Beau, their older son, suffers from “space fever” and aspires to be an astronaut. As for Danny, the younger River boy, well, he just dreams of having a dog. Then in the spring of 1965 tragedy befalls the Rivers–a tragedy that makes the Old Man wish he’d never started building the shelter, stops Flo from finishing her bestseller, and leaves Beau grounded rather than airborne. But the tragedy does finally bring a dog into Danny’s life. And not just any old dog. Danny comes to believe that the mixed-breed stray embodies the spirit of someone he dearly loves. He won’t allow anyone to separate him from the dog, not even after it bites the neighborhood bully and the police are sent to take it away. Together Danny and his dog run off, heading toward Cape Caneveral, where the Gemini missions blast off from, and where dreams come true.
The Edge
No one understands Declan. Not his mother or his father or his teachers. No one but maybe his new group of friends. After moving, Declan will do anything to fit in at his new school, even if it is illegal. When he and his new friends get caught, the consequences are tragic. Given a second chance that he is not sure that he wants, Declan is sent to work at a ski lodge in the Canadian Rockies. Though he is not locked up, he feels trapped and lonely, and learns that second chances aren’t easy. While there, Declan learns to snowboard and meets new friends, but the ghosts of his past keep rising up to haunt him. Standing on the edge, Declan realizes that the only way to break free is to face his past, and to look forward to the future.
Being With Henry
“You never know where this life will take you,” Henry Olsen tells Laker Wyatt when he finds the boy could, penniless, and sleeping on the street. Raised by his hapless, childlike mother, Laker has often had to act more like a caretaker than a son. It’s become easy for him to soothe her with a cup of tea or fake a phone call to her boss on a bad day. But when stepfather number two, Rick the Prick, comes on the scene, everything changes. After Laker fights with Rick, his mother, Audrey, does the unimaginable: She kicks her son out. Drifting aimlessly, Laker meets Henry, eighty-three, a widower with family troubles of his own. Being with Henry brings its own challenges, as well as surprises. How these two disparate souls — an angry, homeless teenager and a lonely, crotchety old man — come to know and care for each other makes a sometimes funny, often poignant, and ultimately moving novel about truth and family and the courage it takes to search for these in unexpected places.
Guttersnipe
Early in the twentieth century, ten-year-old Ben and his family live in the poorest part of their city with other Jewish immigrants. There is never enough money to make ends meet, so Ben, determined to do his part, lands a job delivering hat linings to a hat factory after school. He sets out on his boss’s bicycle feeling strong and free, and has a grand time until, on his way up Hill Street, he gets a harsh comeuppance, one that hurts his body and threatens to destroy his dreams as well. Based on the experiences of the author’s father and illustrated in Emily Arnold McCully’s signature style, this book celebrates a boy who nearly loses hope, but then learns that the future shines bright and full of second chances.
How Robin Saved Spring
If Lady Winter has her way, the world will stay covered in blankets of snowy white and icy blue. Sister Spring will slumber forever and the winter will never end. Can Lady Winter really keep spring from coming or is there something the animals might do to help? Led by harbinger Robin, the animals are determined to wake Sister Spring, but what price will they each have to pay? Through beautiful words and pictures, this enchanting tale about the battle of the seasons highlights one special bird who saves much more than just the day.