A Whale In Paris

“Perfect for readers who love a touch of the fantastic and the impossible.” —Booklist A hopeful and heroic girl befriends a small, lost whale during World War II and together they embark on a journey to liberate France and find their families in this charming debut novel. Ever since the Germans became the unwelcome “guests” of Paris in the early days of World War II, Papa and Chantal have gone out in the evenings to fish in the Seine. Tonight Chantal is hoping for a salmon, but instead she spies something much more special: a whale! Though small (for a whale) and lost, he seems friendly. Chantal soon opens her heart to the loveable creature and names him Franklin, after the American president who must surely be sending troops to rescue her country. Yet Franklin is in danger: The Parisians are starving and would love to eat him, and the Nazis want to capture him as a gift to Hitler. In a desperate bid to liberate themselves and their city, Chantal and Franklin embark on a dangerous voyage. But can one small girl manage to return a whale to the ocean and reunite him with his parents? And will she ever see her own family again?

Have you ever felt out of place? Like you are not important or special? Have you ever wondered why God made you the way you are? Well, so does Jed, the great, great whale. This story takes us on an underwater adventure with a whale named Jed, who is a very big whale! Jed grows bigger and bigger by the day and becomes twice the size of all the other whales in the sea. In fact, he becomes the biggest creature in the entire ocean! Jed is no monster, however; this big whale has an even bigger heart. Even after being picked on and mistreated, Jed never gives up and believes God made him special for a reason. Jed discovers God has an amazing mission for him and that he was made extra big for this special reason. As you embark on this journey with Jed, he wants you to remember that God never, ever makes a mistake. Just like Jed the whale, God loves you and has made you to do big things for Him.

Woodrow McIlmore is leading the perfect life in Paris, Arkansas: married to his high school sweetheart, he has two wonderful children and a warm circle of family and friends. When Wood's daughter announces that she wants to marry a college classmate, Wood is stunned. But that's just the tip of the iceberg -- her intended is the son of the woman who left Wood twenty years earlier, the free-spirited Duff. And so begins a tumultuous year in Paris, as Duff returns and familiar sparks fly with her old flame. Their rekindled passion affects not only Wood and Duff but also their good friends, as they must now all decide what in their lives is worth keeping and what needs to be thrown away.

Fiction. Avi Heyer's rollicking adventure begins when he returns to Elsbeth, North Carolina, to settle his mother's affairs. A student chef with the wrong girlfriend and a mud-loving dog, Avi soon finds himself dragged into a criminal conspiracy. His world is churned up, down and sideways by the diabolical Camel and her hired henchwomen; an unknown phone caller who somehow tracks his every move; an enticing hippie who may be trying to steal something from Avi; a plainspoken building contractor with a suspicious hearing aid; and a news reporter desperate for love. And then there's Avi's whale, with its graceful bulk and keening song, a whale that becomes more than an obsession.

It's 1850, and a marvellous international exhibition is being planned in Paris. The publicity agents claim that this exhibition will be so fascinating that a whale has swum all the way up the Seine to see it. Not likely? Well, Sylvie, from a small country village, decides to go and see for herself. Along the way, she tumbles through a series of crazy adventures, because everyone, but everyone, has some sort of interest in this exhibition. Especially a notorious gang of crooks that wants to steal one of the prize exhibits, the fabulous crown jewels of an Indian Raja. A lot of people end up looking for Sylvie: the gang, the cops, two fanatically comical detectives, and an assortment of larger-than-life characters. Also looking for Sylvie is her admirer, Emile, who flatly doesn't believe there is a whale, but has a very good reason to hope that there " is " one. Can the twinkle-eyed Captain Duval supply the necessary whale, all in the name of love? This material is free of any royalty obligation for use by schools and amateur dramatic groups. It may be produced on stage, used for play-reading, or simply read for fun.

Providing helpful guides to traveling with children, these easy-to-use handbooks offer a variety of fun-filled, educational, hassle-free activities available in cities and regions around the world, along with planning tips, addresses, admission prices, age appropriateness and nearby lodgings and restaurant recommendations.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Mark Helprin’s powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present. In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.