A young boy takes a new book into the bathroom to read. But what a strange story! One by one, all sorts of animals—a cow, a polar bear, a lion, and more—race across the pages. But where are they running to? Then, the boy’s reading is interrupted by a loud knock on the bathroom door. The very same creatures are outside, lined up to use the toilet!.
Europe
Materials from Europe
A Thousand Glass Flowers: Marietta Barovier And The Invention Of The Rosetta Bead
As a child in fifteenth-century Murano, Italy, Marietta Barovier is drawn to her father’s workshop and, although glass blowing is men’s work, she later revives the lost art of millefiori.
Heartstopper
Nick and Charlie are best friends, but one spontaneous kiss has changed everything. In the aftermath, Charlie thinks that he’s made a horrible mistake and ruined his friendship with Nick, but Nick is more confused than ever.
Love works in surprising ways, and Nick comes to see the world from a new perspective. He discovers all sorts of things about his friends, his family… and himself.
The Girl Who Speaks Bear
Found abandoned in a bear cave as a baby, Yanka has always wondered about where she is from. She tries to ignore the strange whispers and looks from the villagers, wishing she was as strong on the inside as she is on the outside. But, when she has to flee her house, looking for answers about who she really is, a journey far beyond one that she ever imagined begins: from icy rivers to smouldering mountains meeting an ever-growing herd of extraordinary friends along the way.
We Had To Be Brave: Escaping The Nazis On The Kindertransport
“Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth’s experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. Just going to school became dangerous. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and unleashed a wave of violence and forced arrests. Days later, desperate volunteers sprang into action to organize the Kindertransport, a rescue effort to bring Jewish children to England. Young people like Ruth David had to say good-bye to their families, unsure if they’d ever be reunited. Miles from home, the Kindertransport refugees entered unrecognizable lives, where food, clothes — and, for many of them, language and religion — were startlingly new. Meanwhile, the onset of war and the Holocaust visited unimaginable horrors on loved ones left behind. Somehow, these rescued children had to learn to look forward, to hope. Through the moving and often heart-wrenching personal accounts of Kindertransport survivors, critically acclaimed and award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson paints the timely and devastating story of how the rise of Hitler and the Nazis tore apart the lives of so many families and what they were forced to give up in order to save these children”–
Pippi Goes On Board
Outrageous Pippi Longstocking has no parents around and no rules to follow, so she lives according to her own daredevilish ways. She’s been treating her friends Tommy and Annika to wild adventures, too–like buying and eating seventy-two pounds of candy, or sailing off to an island in the middle of a lake to see what it’s like to be shipwrecked. But then Pippi’s long lost father returns, and she might have to leave Villa Villekulla!
The Racers-how an outcast driver, an American heiress, and a legendary car challenged Hitler’s best
“In the years before World War II, Adolf Hitler wanted to prove the greatness of the Third Reich in everything from track and field to motorsports. The Nazis poured money into the development of new race cars, and Mercedes-Benz came out with a stable of supercharged automobiles called Silver Arrows. Their drivers dominated the sensational world of European Grand Prix racing and saluted Hitler on their many returns home with victory. As the Third Reich stripped Jews of their rights and began their march toward war, one driver, Rene Dreyfus, a 32-year-old Frenchman of Jewish heritage who had enjoyed some early successes on the racing circuit, was barred from driving on any German or Italian race teams, which fielded the best in class, due to the rise of Hitler and Benito Mussolini. So it was that in 1937, Lucy Schell, an American heiress and top Monte Carlo Rally driver, needed a racer for a new team she was creating to take on Germany’s Silver Arrows. Sensing untapped potential in Dreyfus, she funded the development of a nimble tiger of a new car built by a little-known French manufacturer called Delahaye. As the nations of Europe marched ever closer to war, Schell and Dreyfus faced down Hitler’s top drivers, and the world held its breath in anticipation, waiting to see who would triumph”–
War Stories
Twelve-year-old Trevor Firestone loves playing war-based video games and he idolizes his great-grandfather Jacob who came home from World War II a celebrated hero; now ninety-three Jacob wants to retrace his journey in memory and reality and return to the small French village that his unit liberated, and Trevor is going with him–but not everyone in the town want Jacob to come, and Trevor is going to learn an important lesson: real war is not a video game, and valor and heroism can be very murky concepts.
What We’ll Build
A father and his young daughter gather their tools and begin building a future where love can be set aside until it is needed, enemies become friends, and exploration is key.
The Loop
It’s Luka Kane’s sixteenth birthday and he’s been inside The Loop for over two years. Every inmate is serving a death sentence with the option to push back their execution date by six months if they opt into “Delays”, scientific and medical experiments for the benefit of the elite in the outside world.