Feeling unappreciated for all the hard work she has done since her mother’s death, Hannah runs away to Mama’s old kitchen garden in a tale involving a princess, a hungry goat, and a windstorm.
Europe
Materials from Europe
Traction Man Meets Turbo Dog (Traction Man)
THAT SQUARE-JAWED CAN-DO action toy, Traction Man, is back in another hilarious adventure. The little boy, Traction Man, and his brave pet, Scrubbing Brush, are inseparable—until the boy’s father throws the “unhygenic” Scrubbing Brush in the trash and replaces it with a “real” toy, the battery-operated TurboDog. It bleeps, speaks, and squeaks—but is not very smart. So Traction Man, wearing his airtight Astro-suit and armed with a bottle of SuperStrong Germo, enters the trash bin and rescues Scrubbing Brush from the Evil Bin Things (pizza crusts, spaghetti, and potato peels with eyes and mouths that hiss “Stay with us”). The Battle of the Bin is not to be missed—nor is the ignominious demise of TurboDog! With this satisfying sequel, Mini Grey has scored another smashing victory for imaginative play.
Henrietta And The Golden Eggs
Henrietta has big dreams for a little chicken: learning to sing, to swim, to fly, and, most important of all, to lay golden eggs. Even when her three thousand, three hundred thirty-three fellow inmates in the old henhouse laugh at her ambitions, Henrietta holds fast, practicing day and night. Whether Henrietta achieves her dreams is debatable, but through her persistence and her resolute belief in herself, she does manage to change the lives of everyone in the henhouse for the better.
Garmann’s Summer
This picturebook delves into the mind of a young boy who is afraid of starting school. Summer is nearly over. The old aunts have come to visit, and autumn is in the air. Everything is ready for Garmann’s first day of school, but he is till nervous. And he can’t believe that he hasn’t lost a single tooth yet, despite his best efforts! Stian Hole has created a memorable and endearing character in Garmann, whose musings about fear and courage, life and death, beginnings and endings, help him understand that everyone is scared of something. Published in ten languages, Garmann’s Summer was the recipient of the 2007 BolognaRagazzi Award, one of the most prestigious international prizes for excellence in children’s book publishing, awarded each year in conjunction with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
Ultimate Game
The story begins when Eric, Charles, and Andreas come upon the video store of their dreams, featuring a vast array of war games they’ve never even heard of (and they’ve heard of, and mastered, all of them). But there, amid the stacks of lurid boxes and scenes of cyber-carnage, is the most remarkable game of all, one pressed on them by the store’s elderly proprietor, a clever sample of computer warfare called “The Ultimate Experience.” Contained in a single diskette, without even a label, the unassuming game surpasses their wildest fantasies: the graphics are better than a movie, the simulated battlefields are historically and geologically perfect, and the action seems to put you right inside the screen. The feeling of “reality” is uncanny.But soon the three friends realize that the Game has a will of its own, and that far from being a dream, it has drawn each of them into his own personal nightmare one that they enter and exit without any control. For Charles, it means suddenly finding himself at the head of a doomed French battalion in the darkest days of World War I, forced to choose which men to send to their deaths. Eric, meanwhile, is a resistance fighter in Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, on the very day in 1937 that German bombers reduced the town and its people to ashes. And Andreas, the oldest and most troubled and most vicious of the three, must face up to his own demons, discovering that, far from being terrified of the carnage around him, he revels in it. Little by little, the Game takes over their lives, leaving Eric, Charles, and their loved ones at its mercy while an increasingly violent Andreas plunges ever deeper into its seductive and deadly power. As the final showdown looms on the stage of virtual history, the three boys are inexorably drawn toward a memorable and horrifying conclusion.
My Two Grannies
An appealing story about a mixed-race family learning to accept different traditions and customs. Alvina has two grannies: Grannie Vero from Trinidad and Grannie Rose from England. When Alvina’s parents go on vacation, both grannies arrive to look after Alvina. But the two grannies have two very different ideas about what to eat, what to play, even what stories to tell. The grannies get angrier and angrier with each other, but Alvina devises a plan so that each granny can have her own way — or so she hopes! This sweet, funny story about tolerance and understanding reminds children that no matter how great the differences may seem, there’s always room for common ground.
A Book Of Coupons
The last thing the class expects when they go back to school is for their new teacher to be old! And then he gives them a goofy present-a book of coupons: one coupon for skipping school for a day; one coupon for not listening in class; one coupon for singing at the top of your lungs whenever you like. The list goes on! What is this wrinkly old teacher trying to do, get everyone in trouble? Susie Morgenstern follows up her award-winning book Secret Letters from 0-10 with a thoughtful, funny, and very original book that once again shows children that life is for the living.
Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative In Darwin, George Eliot And Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Gillian Beer’s classic Darwin’s Plots, one of the most influential works of literary criticism and cultural history of the last quarter century, is here reissued in an updated edition to coincide with the anniversary of Darwin’s birth and of the publication of The Origin of Species. Its focus on how writers, including George Eliot, Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hardy, responded to Darwin’s discoveries and to his innovations in scientific language continues to open up new approaches to Darwin’s thought and to its effects in the culture of his contemporaries. This third edition includes an important new essay that investigates Darwin’s concern with consciousness across all forms of organic life. It demonstrates how this fascination persisted throughout his career and affected his methods and discoveries. With an updated bibliography reflecting recent work in the field, this book will retain its place at the heart of Victorian studies.
Shadow of a Bull
As he prepares for his first bullfight at the age of twelve, Manolo Olivar struggles with doubts about being able to fulfill his late father’s bullfighting legacy.
The Trumpeter Of Krakow
A Polish family in the Middle Ages guards a great secret treasure and a boy’s memory of an earlier trumpeter of Krakow makes it possible for him to save his father.