Materials from Europe
What if revenge were a monster of your own creation? If all you needed to summon this monster was enough hatred and enough imagination? Which of you would really be the monster? One boy is about to find out. Brian Jacques spins six all-new tales of horror and suspense.
When a little girl in a red cap puts her picnic basket over her arm and sets off through the woods to grandmother’s house, one of the best-loved fairy tales of all time unfolds.
Ellen and her friend Ollie love the apple tree in Ellen’s yard. They play in the tree all year round. In the summer, it’s a perfect secret place and Ellen and Ollie can be apple tree spies. And in the fall, the apples taste delicious. But one winter night, a storm blows the tree down. Oh, how Ellen misses her wonderful apple tree! Ellen’s mama tells her that they can’t get a new tree until spring. It’s a long wait for Ellen and Ollie . . . Winsome watercolor illustrations accompany this sweet story about the natural cycle of a beloved apple tree.
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, who has been a landscape architect for more than sixty years, considers her profession “the art of the possible.” The description also applies to the very way this remarkable 86-year-old has lived her life. Playing in her grandmother’s garden as a child, Cornelia absorbed the beauty and importance of the natural world and by the age of eleven had decided that she would become a landscape architect.Leaving her native Germany in the wake of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, the teenaged Cornelia was transplanted in America, where she could pursue her dream in safety, although not without having to struggle to carve out a place for herself in the male-dominated world of her chosen profession.
This 96-page biography tells her remarkable life’s story, complete with photographs and plans for the imaginative playgrounds and the innovative museum and embassy grounds she has created around the world, and for green rooftops, her latest passion. Young readers will not only learn about the profession, but also will find inspiration in Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s love for the natural world and the respect and concern she shows for our increasingly fragile environment.
Born in a flower, Thumbelina braves the enormous, dangerous world until, through her kindness and courage, she is delivered to a kingdom of people just her size.
When Harriet Bean’s father mentions that he has five sisters—whom Harriet has never met—she is immediately intrigued. Harriet is determined to uncover the whereabouts of her five lost aunts, but with nothing more than an unfinished family portrait and a few outdated clues, will she be able to locate them? Join Harriet in her search to reunite her father with his five lost sisters—Veronica, Harmonica, Majolica, Japonica, and Thessalonika.
From China to Egypt, and Spain to Hawaii, people have gathered for generations to listen to spooky stories that make the back of their necks prickle.
Artemesia is the daughter of a pirate queen, and she’s sick of practicing deportment at the Angels Academy for Young Maidens. Escaping from the school, she hunts up her mother’s crew and breezily commands them out to sea in a leaky boat. Unfortunately, Art’s memories of her early life may not be accurate-her seasick crew are actors, and Art’s infamous mother was the darling of the stage in a pirate drama. But fiery, pistol-proof Art soon shapes her men into the cleverest pirate crew afloat. And when they meet the dread ship Enemy and her beautiful, treacherous captain, Goldie Girl, Art is certain that her memories are real. The Seven Seas aren’t large enough for two pirate queens: Art will have the battle of her life to win her mother’s title–and the race for the most fabulous treasure in pirate lore.
When his father is arrested as a debtor in 1849 London, fourteen-year-old John Huffman must take on unexpected responsibilities, from asking a distant relative for help to determining why people are spying on him and his family.
“BE STRONG MY ABELA.” Orphaned by AIDS in Africa, Abela has a long journey ahead.When Abela’s mother dies of Aids in their African village, she is left to face the lions of the world. Lions like her Uncle Thomas who has plans to sell her in Europe. Lions like his bitter white wife, whom he abandons with Abela. Abela is forced to stay indoors in a sunless London apartment, cooking and cleaning, and hopelessly dreaming of her African homeland. Meanwhile, in a London suburb, Rosa is distraught when her mother tells her she wants to adopt a child. Rosa doesn’t want a sister or brother. Things were so good, why did they have to change? Berlie Doherty tells parallel stories, each separate and compelling in their own right, but stories that eventually tangle together bringing a message of hope and what it means to be a family.