Materials from Europe
Biography of Václav Havel who served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until its dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and as the first President of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.
The wordsmith Lewis Carroll is famed for the freewheeling world of Wonderland in his beloved classics Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In this gloriously illustrated picture book, Carroll’s childlike love of life is showcased alongside his brilliance at creating and adapting playful words and phrases. From brillig and uglification to frumious and chortle, the award-winning author Kathleen Krull uses many of Carroll’s own words to tell the story of a man who wanted to make children laugh and whose legacy continues to entertain and delight.
When Jules Verne was born in 1828, his family had his future planned out for him. They expected him to become a lawyer, but he dreamed of writing. He started out writing more traditional poetry and plays, but then he began to create a new, unconventional kind of fiction. It combined adventure, the modern world of science and invention, and his personal view of the future. With fantastical characters, spaceships to the moon, and deep-sea submarines, his books told of things that would not actually occur for decades.
A young boy expresses his love for his friend Jerome.
A Creature who cannot tolerate sunlight lives in a gray cave, longing for something small to care for, until a sun spark appears and teaches her about the world outside.
Two children plan a camping adventure and set up a tent in their own backyard, but when the pickles run out and mosquitos arrive, they are ready to find Dad.
A very busy little girl learns an important lesson from her very lazy cat, Boomer.
A small boy longed to roll and play in the grass like his father had when he was a child. But the boy lived in a concrete city without any grass or trees. Instead, they had roads, walls and lots of other ugly things. Then one day the boy and his friend discovered a sapling hiding behind a low wall. The boy had never seen a tree before. He was so amazed, he dreamed about the tree.” I imagined it tall. Huge, even. And majestic,” he says. So when they heard that a condominium was being built right on the spot where their tree was growing, the friends knew they had to dig it up and replant it in a safe place. They had to make sure the last tree survived. This poignant picture book with a futuristic feel offers a powerful environmental message about the critical importance of conserving the natural world
It’s been four years since Maya, Simon, and Penny Nelson left the lost island of Tamarind. For Maya, the island is a nearly forgotten part of her childhood; for Penny, it’s a secret place she can’t remember, but longs to see; and for Simon, it’s an adventure waiting to happen. An evil group called the Red Coral Project is lurking around the Nelson’s home in Bermuda, and the children discover that the project has moved into Tamarind, and are desiccating it to ruin. Only the Nelson’s can save the island. In Tamarind, there is the mystery of the magical mineral ophalla that Red Coral is greedily mining, their old pirate ship, the Pamela Jane, and the secret of their friend Helix’s parentage. This time, it is up to Simon to put the clues together, and save his sisters from the island and the nefarious Red Coral Project—and defeat Red Coral before the magnificent island is put to ruin. Nadia Aguiar’s sequel to The Lost Island of Tamarind, crafts a vivid story reminiscent of such classics as Peter Pan, full of adventure, magic, and haunting beauty.
Penny Nelson must face three dangerous tasks in order to stabilize the magical island of Tamarind and keep some of the magic for her own use.