A collection of concrete poetry, illustrations, and photographs that shows how young children’s constructions, created as they play, are reflected in notable works of architecture from around the world. Includes biographies of the architects, quotations, and sources.
Eleven-year-old Zac follows his grandmother into the magical world of dreams called Nocturne, where Dream Pirates led by Shadow are spreading dark magic that creates nightmares, and it is up to Zac and new friends to foil the evil plan.
Ten-year-old Pierre dreams of being a chef at his parents’ restaurant, La Bonne Vache, in the south of France and is told he is too young, but when an important guest comes Pierre sees a chance to prove himself. Includes notes about dining in France and a glossary.
Because her Haitian family is too poor to be able to buy paints for her, eight-year-old Ti Marie finds her own way to create pictures that make the heart sing. Ti Marie dreams of being an artist. Whenever she gets some time away from watching her little sisters and helping Mama in their market stall, she finds a cement wall or a scrap of waste paper and lets her imagination soar. Using whatever she can find to make a mark–bits of red brick, charcoal, white rocks–Ti Marie makes beautiful art. If only she had real paint, brushes, and clean white canvas, what wonderful pictures she could paint then! But Mama says there is no money for such things. Still, Ti Marie finds a surprising way to make her dreams come true.
In 1977, when Zhongmei Lei was eleven years old, she learned that the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy was having open auditions. She’d already taken dance lessons, but everyone said a poor country girl would never get into the academy, especially without any connections in the Communist Party of the 1970s. But Zhongmei, whose name means Faithful Plum, persisted, even going on a hunger strike, until her parents agreed to allow her to go. She traveled for three days and two nights to get to Beijing and eventually beat out 60,000 other girls for one of 12 coveted spots. But getting in was easy compared to staying in, as Zhongmei soon learned. Without those all-important connections she was just a little girl on her own, far away from family. But her determination, talent, and sheer force of will were not something the teachers or other students expected, and soon it was apparent that Zhongmei was not to be underestimated. Zhongmei became a famous dancer, and founded her own dance company, which made its New York debut when she was in just her late 20s. In A Girl Named Faithful Plum, her husband and renowned journalist, Richard Bernstein, has written a fascinating account of one girl’s struggle to go from the remote farmlands of China to the world’s stages, and the lengths she went to in order to follow her dream.
In this story about a universal childhood fear, a frightened girl keeps a light under the covers to scare away the night, whom she calls Señora Regañona (Old Grouch). But one night, she falls asleep in the dark and dreams of flying into the “starry adventure-filled sky” to find Señora Regañona and transform her into a friendly playmate.
Katherine is almost eighteen. Severely burned when she was three, she dreams that one day she will look like everyone else. Be like everyone else. Achieve her dreams. But Katherine won’t be seen as a victim. Her life is filled with fun and humor and friendship, as she faces her first “real” date, arguments with her mum, and decisions about her future.
An extraordinary story of a journey where pain and trauma become triumph and a passion for living, “Butterflies” is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the fighter in all of us.
Twelve-year-old orphan Christopher “Kit” Buckles becomes a stage boy in a London theater in 1598, tries his hand at acting, and later helps build the Globe Theater for playwright William Shakespeare and the Chamberlain’s Men acting troupe.
Walter, the son of Lady Emma and Lord Nathan Rothschild, was a very unusual boy. He was born in 1868 to a family of bankers and was nearly the richest boy in the world. But that’s not what made him unusual. Walter was so shy he barely spoke. He had no friends, but he loved every creature that crawled, slithered or flew. At the age of seven he saw his first circus and was inspired to declare breathlessly to his parents: “I’m going to collect animals from all over the world and build a museum and I’m going to call it My Museum!” The family knew explorers who traveled the world to bring back animals for the London Zoo, and soon Walter had his first exotic creatures: several kangaroos. From there his collection grew and grew, until it threatened to take over the Rothschild estate. Lord Rothschild eventually lost patience with Walter’s hobby and insisted that Walter become a banker, like everyone else in the family. Reluctantly, Walter obeyed, but his dream couldn’t be dimmed–he used his earnings to purchase species from undiscovered lands. Eventually Walter created the largest zoological collection gathered by one man and was respected throughout the world for his contribution to science. He wrote 1200 books and scientific papers and named 5000 new species. Animals that now bear the name Rothschild include butterflies, fish, a millipede, a fly, a lizard, a porcupine, a wallaby, a bird of paradise, and even a giraffe. The painfully shy boy who never made a good banker forever changed our understanding of the world’s diversity of creatures.
The Dream Mouse drives his cart with its load of sleep through the darkening village, bringing wondrous dreams to all the children.