Children Of The Black Glass

Two years ago Tell and Wren's mother went down the mountain and never came back; now, with their father blinded by a shard of black glass, the two children will take the same journey to try and save their father.

Howl’s Moving Castle meets Neil Gaiman in this “dark and flinty” (Booklist) middle grade fantasy, set in a world as mesmerizing as it is menacing, following children on a quest to save their father who get embroiled in the sinister agendas of rival sorcerers. In an unkind alternate past, somewhere between the Stone Age and a Metal Age, Tell and his sister Wren live in a small mountain village that makes its living off black glass mines and runs on brutal laws. When their father is blinded in a mining accident, the law dictates he has thirty days to regain his sight and be capable of working at the same level as before or be put to death. Faced with this dire future, Tell and Wren make the forbidden treacherous journey to the legendary city of Halfway, halfway down the mountain, to trade their father’s haul of the valuable black glass for the medicine to cure him. The city, ruled by five powerful female sorcerers, at first dazzles the siblings. But beneath Halfway’s glittery surface seethes ambition, violence, prejudice, blackmail, and impending chaos. Without knowing it, Tell and Wren have walked straight into a sorcerers’ coup. Over the next twelve days, they must scramble first to save themselves, then their new friends, as allegiances shift and prejudices crack open to show who has true power.

Profiling 24 of the adult children of the most recognizable figures in the civil rights movement, this book collects the intimate, moving stories of families who were pulled apart by the horrors of the struggle or brought together by their efforts to change America. The whole range of players is covered, from the children of leading figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and martyrs like James Earl Chaney to segregationists like George Wallace and Black Panther leaders like Elaine Brown. The essays reveal that some children are more pessimistic than their parents, whose idealism they saw destroyed by the struggle, while others are still trying to change the world. Included are such inspiring stories as the daughter of a notoriously racist Southern governor who finds her calling as a teacher in an all-black inner-city school and the daughter of a famous martyr who unexpectedly meets her mother's killer. From the first activists killed by racist Southerners to the current global justice protestors carrying on the work of their parents, these profiles offer a look behind the public face of the triumphant civil rights movement and show the individual lives it changed in surprising ways.

A new, interactive approach to storytime, The Whole Book Approach was developed in conjunction with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and expert author Megan Dowd Lambert's graduate work in children's literature at Simmons College, offering a practical guide for reshaping storytime and getting kids to think with their eyes. Traditional storytime often offers a passive experience for kids, but the Whole Book approach asks the youngest of readers to ponder all aspects of a picture book and to use their critical thinking skills. Using classic examples, Megan asks kids to think about why the trim size of Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline is so generous, or why the typeset in David Wiesner's Caldecott winner,The Three Pigs, appears to twist around the page, or why books like Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express and Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar are printed landscape instead of portrait. The dynamic discussions that result from this shared reading style range from the profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an essential part of storytime.

Vivian Gibson's bestselling memoir of growing up in the 1950s in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood has been hailed by critics as "a spare, elegant jewel of a work" and "a love letter to Gibson's childhood."

A New York Times bestseller “Should be required reading in every classroom.” —Nic Stone, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin “A true love letter to Los Angeles.” —Brandy Colbert, award-winning author of Little & Lion “A brilliantly poetic take on one of the most defining moments in Black American history.” —Tiffany D. Jackson, author of Grown and Monday’s Not Coming Perfect for fans of The Hate U Give, this unforgettable coming-of-age debut novel explores issues of race, class, and violence through the eyes of a wealthy black teenager whose family gets caught in the vortex of the 1992 Rodney King Riots. Los Angeles, 1992 Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year and they’re spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. They can already feel the sunny days and endless possibilities of summer. Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of the black kids. As violent protests engulf LA and the city burns, Ashley tries to continue on as if life were normal. Even as her self-destructive sister gets dangerously involved in the riots. Even as the model black family façade her wealthy and prominent parents have built starts to crumble. Even as her best friends help spread a rumor that could completely derail the future of her classmate and fellow black kid, LaShawn Johnson. With her world splintering around her, Ashley, along with the rest of LA, is left to question who is the us? And who is the them?

Six-time Coretta Scott King Award winner and four-time Caldecott Honor recipient Bryan Collier brings this classic, inspirational poem to life, written by poet Useni Eugene Perkins. Hey black child, Do you know who you are? Who really are?Do you know you can be What you want to be If you try to be What you can be? This lyrical, empowering poem celebrates black children and seeks to inspire all young people to dream big and achieve their goals.

Includes "After Yang," the basis for the acclaimed A24 film After Yang, starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Haley Lu Richardson, and directed by Kogonada. A New York Times Notable Book “A darkly mesmerizing, fearless, and exquisitely written work. Stunning, harrowing, and brilliantly imagined.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago. In “The Cartographers,” the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In “After Yang,” the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become. Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary and singular voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.

Gerald tells of the very unusual animals he would add to the zoo, if he were in charge.

This work examines the development of African American literature for young people--in terms of recurrent thematic content and underlying philosophies--from 1920 to the present. Johnson provides a close reading of various texts including 1) The Brownies' Book magazine, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois and Jessie Fauset from January 1920 through December 1921; 2) fiction, non-fiction, and poetry written by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps in the 1930s and 1940s, and the historical fiction that their work prefigures; 3) the picture book canon of Lucille Clifton, poet laureate of Maryland and Pulitzer nominee, and one of the most prolific writers of verse and prose for children. The book also features illustrations representing books published between 1920 and the present. Included among these is a cover from The Brownies' Book magazine, a wood-cut from Hughes and Bontemps' 1932 Popa and Fifina, and a painting from Harriet and the Promised Land, written and illustrated by celebrated artist Jacob Lawrence, and an illustration by John Steptoe. Telling Tales takes a fresh new look at material that has long been neglected. Until recently, most critics have examined not African American children's literature itself, but (mis) representations and stereotypes of black people in mainstream literature. This current study is an attempt to redirect critical inquiry in the field. The book creates a space for further critical study that will more fully explore issues herein: the relationship between the publishing industry and the development of African American children's literature; the nature of the relationship between African American adult and children's literature; the relationship between word and image, and more. Most importantly, the book provides a useful introduction and model for reading this literature for a broad audience that includes parents, teachers, librarians, other educators, and scholars of African American letters.