Everyone says Toby is cute. But Toby is tired of being cute. He wants to change his image. He starts with a pair of cool shades but they don’t seem to do the trick. He will have to find other ways to look tough. When he nearly crashes his motorcycle right into the Zebra crossing, Toby is struck by love at first sight.
This fable of a young woman and a wild boy is a haunting meditation on the nature of love and loss. Maddy, an old lady now, arrives home one day to find a peculiar boy waiting for her. Over tea, she tells him the story of her life long ago, when she wished for her days to be as romantic and mysterious as a fairy tale. It was then that she fell painfully in love with a free spirit named Feather, who put aside his wild ways to live with her in a little cottage, conceived with her a child never to be born, and disappeared–leaving an inconsolable Maddy to follow after him on a fantastical journey across the sea. In a tale shortlisted for a 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize, Sonya Hartnett explores the mysteries of the heart, the sustaining power of memory and the ultimate consolation that comes to souls who live fully and fearlessly.
Oranges in No Man’s Land tells the riveting story of ten-year-old Ayesha’s terrifying journey across no man’s land to reach a doctor in hostile territory in search of medicine for her dying grandmother.Set in Lebanon during the civil war, this story is told by award-winning author Elizabeth Laird and is based on personal, real-life events. Elizabeth stayed on the green line in Beirut in 1977 in a war-damaged flat with her husband and six-month-old son. Memories of her son sleeping in a suitcase on the floor, taking his first steps on the bullet-riddled balcony, playing with the soldiers on the checkpoint, and her husband racing through no man’s land in the buildup to a battle have all inspired this gripping and moving story.Elizabeth Laird says, “When I wrote Oranges in No Man’s Land, I didn’t know that Lebanon would be plunged back so soon into a nightmare. Caught up in that nightmare are children like Ayesha and Samar, whose lives political leaders so easily throw away.”Elizabeth Laird has been nominated four times for the Carnegie Medal and has won both the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the Children’s Book Award (UK). Her numerous books, including A Little Piece of Ground (Haymarket Books, 2006), have been published around the world.
It’s migration time and as a mother gull dives into the water to catch a herring she’s caught in an oil slick! Thinking of the egg she is about to lay she manages to extract herself and fly to the nearest port. Exhausted, she lands on a balcony where Zorba the cat is sunning himself. Zorba wants to get help, but the gull knows it’s too late and she extracts three promises from him: 1) That he won’t eat the egg, 2) that he’ll take care of the chick until it hatches, and 3) that he’ll teach it to fly. Well the first two are hard enough, but the third one is surely impossible.
This follow-up to the best-selling Mama, Do You Love Me? captures the universal love between a father and child. When a Maasai father in Africa answers his son’s questions, the boy learns that his father’s love for him is unconditional.
Sam has always wanted a dog, but Jenny is a dog like no other. She has come from another world—a parallel world of mythology, where the whims of the gods decide the course of Destiny. Jenny fled in terror after her attempt to save the life of her first beloved boy interrupted the gods’ plans for a battle for control of the world. But now her escape threatens Sam’s world as well. So Jenny has to convince her motley pack of dog friends—tiny Pico, giant Gentleman Jim, slow-moving Boris, excitable Checkers, and nervous Flo—that it’s their destiny to restore the worlds to order before it’s too late. Norse mythology, a huge respect for the hearts and minds of dogs, and many dashes of humor combine to tell the tale of a grand, epic quest to save the world for humans, gods, and dogs.
Ernest Morlaisse leads an unadventurous life. He comes home every day and eats the same snack and sits down to his homework. Enter Victoria de Montardent, the new girl in class. When Victoria sees Ernest it’s love at first sight. And she makes her declaration to everyone: ” I love Ernest. . . . We’re getting married in 13 years, eight months, and three days. This is an invitation to our wedding”. And believe it or not, Victoria’s bulldozer approach works! Quickly Ernest begins to discover that beating inside his chest is his heart. And he begins finding ways to use it.
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.
This book recounts the love story behind the building of the Taj Mahal in India. It discusses how it was constructed and provides information on Indian culture.
Helen is renowned as the most beautiful woman in the world. Her divine beauty will lead her to a lifetime of adventure–from her kidnapping at age 12, through an arranged marriage, to a passionate affair that will ultimately bring about the Trojan War. Cassandra, the sister of Helen’s true love, has the gift, or curse, to predict the future. When she foresees the ruin of her family and city, caused by Helen’s arrival in Troy, she is outraged. Yet Cassandra cannot help being drawn to Helen, and as the war rages around them, the two young women develop a deep friendship. Through their eyes, the classic tale of the Trojan War is retold in an immediate and fascinating way.