Materials from France
Puzzling and mysterious, mazes and labyrinths have fascinated people around the world for centuries. From England to Egypt, Greece to South Africa and beyond, travel on an exciting journey as you discover the secrets of these patterns.
In a little girl’s fantasy, her cat sneaks away, hops a ship, and sails off to Europe! And someday, when he can talk, he’ll tell her all about the amazing things he discovered there like whether or not British cats drink tea and how he strutted down the runway in a Paris fashion show.
A companion to My Cat, the Silliest Cat in the World, chronicling the silliest cat’s younger years. The only thing cuter than a cat is a kitten, and the only thing cuter than a kitten is a kitten who is actually an enormous elephant! After being chosen from a litter of other brightly colored elephants, Gilles’s “kitten” must acclimate himself to his new home. Just like in the first book, the elephant behaves like a kitten should–making a mess, hiding from his food bowl, and waging a war with a particularly tricky stuffed animal.
A statue; a coin; an old book. They look as dusty as everything else in the Faulkner Antiquarian Bookstore, where 14-year-old Sam Faulkner seeks his father, who’s been missing for days. But when Sam slips the coin into the statue, he’s swept back in time — to Scotland in 800 A.D. — where he must find both the statue and another coin in order to return to the present. It’s the first step in an adventure that will take him to ancient Egypt, World War I, even Dracula’s castle and a mystery that will end only when Sam saves his father, or loses him in time.
At 14, Alec knows what he wants to be: a seaman. Instead of working at his family’s inn, he prefers roaming through the busy streets and docks of Dover. When the captain of the Britannia, one of the fishing vessels in the Channel, asks him to be a galley boy, he seizes the opportunity in spite of his father’s objections. On his first day at sea, he weathers a severe storm similar to the one that took the life of his cousin and best friend, Georgie, months earlier. Alec still feels guilty for having not been able to save Georgie. England is at war with Germany, and soon Alec is doing more than swabbing the deck and handling the ropes of the fishing vessel. He wonders why shadowy figures are disappearing into the tunnels under the old stone castle and who the special soldiers being billeted at the inn are. Then comes terrible news: hundreds of thousands of British forces are trapped on the beach at Dunkirk. All ships in the Channel, large and small, are ordered to undertake a massive evacuation. Alec’s transformation from galley boy to courageous seaman is a riveting journey in this dramatic debut novel.
Max thinks school is boring, and his uncle Bill’s idea of livening things up doesn’t sound too exciting either. He gives Max a big bag of seeds for his birthday. At first Max is skeptical, but he follows his uncle’s instructions and scatters the seeds on his way to school. From that moment on, unusual things begin to happen, and the changes are simply magical. Wildflowers begin to grow throughout the city, where they’ve never been before. Suddenly Max becomes the most popular kid in school as his class gets to pick the flowers, draw them, and study them. This was the best gift, after all. Here is a lovely story about how small actions can make a big difference in your own life, and the life of an entire community.
Before Micah came to St. Luc’s, he knew how to beg, how to steal, and how to run from a beating. He did not know how to comb his hair, walk in line when he felt like running, or obey anyone’s whim but his own. He was a stranger in a strange land. Henri has been living within abbey walls all his life, first in the care of nuns, then as a choirboy at St. Luc’s, not far from Paris. He expects to spend the rest of his life there, copying books in the Scriptorium with the other brothers, and singing Mass in the great cathedral. Then Micah arrives, a streetwise ragamuffin with the voice of an angel, saved from certain hanging to sing for God instead of coins. Micah comes like a fresh breeze into dead places, bringing exuberant joy at a time when Henri most needs it. For the plague is coming, the grim reaper that will slash at the very roots of Henri’s security. And neither Henri nor Micah nor anyone else in their world will ever be the same.
Portocristo has clear skies, sandy beaches, bustling streets–and a spoiled rotten, six-year-old king. The little despot is grouchy, whiny, outrageous…everything you’d hate to find in a boy on a throne. But here in Portocristo, anything he says goes, no matter how bizarre or harebrained. Young King Ethelbert swaps his country’s kids for Ethelbert robots, tests his bodyguard’s mettle by putting a price on his own head, shrinks the world down to his size, and brings a dinosaur back from the past. A graphic novel, originally published in France.
Eleven-year-old Isabelle is a lace maker in the town of Versailles. One day as she delivers lace to the palace, she is almost trampled by a crowd of courtiers — only to be rescued by Marie Antoinette. Before Isabelle can believe it, she has a new job — companion to the queen’s daughter. Isabelle is given a fashionable name, fashionable dresses — a new identity. At home she plies her needle under her grandmother’s disapproving eye. At the palace she is playmate to a princess. Thrown into a world of luxury, Isabelle is living a fairy-tale life. But this facade begins to crumble when rumors of starvation in the countryside lead to whispers of revolution. How can Isabelle reconcile the ugly things she hears in the town with the kind family she knows in the palace? And which side is she truly on? Inspired by an actual friendship between the French princess and a commoner who became her companion, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley offers a vivid portrait of life inside the palace of Versailles — and a touching tale of two friends divided by class and the hunger for equality and freedom that fueled the French Revolution.
After the love of Beauty turns him from a Beast into a handsome prince, Auguste fails to reform the bad habits of his past and sees the spell passed on to his three sons.