Little Soldiers

Author: Lenora Chu
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062367870
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; Real Simple Best of the Month; Library Journal Editors’ Pick In the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, a hard-hitting exploration of China’s widely acclaimed yet insular education system that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education When students in Shanghai rose to the top of international rankings in 2009, Americans feared that they were being "out-educated" by the rising super power. An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Lenora Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic super-achievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school? Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China’s state-run public school system. The results were positive—her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends—but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers, and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education. What she discovered is a military-like education system driven by high-stakes testing, with teachers posting rankings in public, using bribes to reward students who comply, and shaming to isolate those who do not. At the same time, she uncovered a years-long desire by government to alleviate its students’ crushing academic burden and make education friendlier for all. The more she learns, the more she wonders: Are Chinese children—and her son—paying too high a price for their obedience and the promise of future academic prowess? Is there a way to appropriate the excellence of the system but dispense with the bad? What, if anything, could Westerners learn from China’s education journey? Chu’s eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education.

Little Soldier

Author: Bernard Ashley
Publisher: Hachette Children's
ISBN: 1408315262
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 154

Book Description
When Kaninda survives a brutal attack on his village in East Africa he joins the rebel army, where he's trained to carry weapons, and use them. But aid workers take him to London, to a new family and a comprehensive school. Clan and tribal conflicts are everywhere, and on the streets it's estate versus estate, urban tribe against urban tribe. All Kaninda wants it to get back to his own war and take revenge on his enemies. But together with Laura Rose, the daughter of his new family, he is drawn into a dangerous local conflict that is spiraling out of control.

Soldiers Falling Into Camp

Author: Robert Kammen
Publisher: Leatherneck Publishing
ISBN: 0977903907
Category : Indians of North America
Languages : en
Pages : 55

Book Description

Airfix's Little Soldiers

Author: Jean-Christophe Carbonel
Publisher: Figures and Toys
ISBN: 9782352500896
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Airfix was founded in 1939, initially manufacturing inflatable rubber toys. Now, they are synonymous with the modeling hobby. This book covers 50 years of the famous Airfix plastic soldier, from its production beginnings in 1958 through to the present day, detailing every figure Airfix has ever produced.

Two Little Soldiers

Author: Guy de Maupassant
Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof
ISBN: 8726666804
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 11

Book Description
Jean and Luc are two best friends serving in the army. Life as a soldier is unforgiving, but every Sunday provides a ray of hope for the two soldiers as they walk down the Seine river and lunch in a forest that reminds them of home. The idyllic countryside of Champioux is, to them, a little heaven. Yet when a milkmaid catches one of the soldier’s eyes, the two friends’ ordered world begins to unravel. A simple tale of friendship, love, and loss, "Two Little Soldiers" is a masterful portrayal of Maupassant’s knowledge of the human soul and condition. Perfect for readers of Hemingway, this short story is tinged with the tragedy of war seen through the lives of everyday soldiers. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a famous French writer, often referred to as the father of the short story. A prolific writer, his best known works include "Bel-Ami", "Une Vie" and "The Necklace", alongside some 300 short stories, travel books, and poetry. A master of style and dramatic narrative, Maupassant’s stories are drawn to themes of war, the working class, and the human condition. One of his greatest influences was Gustave Flaubert, who introduced him to some of the central names of the time such as Emile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, and Henry James.

And Then There Were None

Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312330873
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
And Then There Were None is the signature novel of Agatha Christie, the most popular work of the world's bestselling novelist. It is a masterpiece of mystery and suspense that has been a fixture in popular literature since it was originally published in 1939. First there were ten-a curious assortment of strangers summoned to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to any of them, is nowhere to be found. The ten guests have precious little in common except that each has a deadly secret buried deep in their own past. And, unknown to them, each has been marked for murder. Alone on the island and trapped by foul weather, one by one the guests begin to fall prey to the hidden murderer among them. With themselves as the only suspects, only the dead are above suspicion.

Little Soldiers

Author: Olga Kucherenko
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191610992
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Germany's war against the Soviet Union raised a small army of child soldiers. Thousands of those below the enlistment age served with regular and paramilitary formations, even though they were not formally mobilised or allowed at the front. For several decades after the war, these youngsters played an important part in Soviet remembrance culture, though their true experiences were obscured by the myth of the Great Patriotic War. Situated at the crossroads of social, cultural, and military history, Little Soldiers is the first to tell the story of the Soviet Union's child soldiers in a critical and systematic fashion. Focusing on the mechanisms and psychological consequences of propaganda on Soviet children, as well as their combat deployment, Kucherenko adopts a three-tier approach to writing the history of childhood: 'from above', 'from below', and 'from within'. A wide variety of new sources provide insight into young soldiers' combat motivations and the roles they played in the field, as well as their routine experiences and relationship with older comrades. Far from being victims, Soviet child soldiers emerge as independent social actors capable of making choices about their behaviour . Little Soldiers interconnects with matters of increasing importance: the role of propaganda in military conflicts, the totalization of warfare, child-soldiering, and social reflexivity.

The Play of Little Soldier

Author: Bernard Ashley
Publisher: Heinemann
ISBN: 9780435125813
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Book Description
This is a wonderful adaptation of Bernard Ashley's critically acclaimed novel of the same name, which was short listed for the Carnegie and the Guardian Fiction Awards. Kaninda is an ex-child soldier from East Africa, orphaned and living in London. When a child from a nearby estate is hit by a car, he is drawn into an inter-estate conflict. The story combines current conflicts in London with real war in Africa. Little Soldier is a gritty and gripping play with a fast-moving, exciting plot which will hook boys. The play can be used to explore: different cultures (set in Africa in London) urban gang culture and moral questions literary and dramatic techniques and devices.

Good Little Soldiers

Author: Dianne Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781537205618
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Book Description
During WWII, Lithuanian collaborator Silvestras Griekshell had been plucked from a Nazi death camp and sent on covert missions by his Allied handlers. Now during the Cold War, he'd been redeployed as Steve Griggs, a nondescript American husband and father of four serving stateside as a cook in the U.S. Army. Though still doing black-bag jobs on the side, this dangerous, volatile man was consumed by an insatiable appetite for sadistic violence and psychological torture. And now, his obsessions involved his own children. Our story begins just as Griggs and his lovely wife place Dianne and Steven in a secret multigenerational program for experimentation, study and training with psychedelic enhancement. With each episode the brave boy and his clever sister survive, we come to appreciate how they have managed to prevail, and like Hansel & Gretel, emerge from this matrix of horror, triumphant and transformed. SONDRA LONDON has published confessions of serial killers and researched some of the most depraved criminal minds of our time. After twenty-four years of studying the real-life monsters in cages where Murder Road comes to a dead end, Sondra declares that nothing in the true-crime genre compares to this vivid and intimate account of surviving mortal terror at the hands of the unindicted murderer SILVESTRAS.

One Minute's Silence

Author: David Metzenthen
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1743316240
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 56

Book Description
Winner of the CBCA Crichton Award for New Illustrators in the CBCA Awards, 2015 Honour Book for Picture Books in the CBCA Awards, 2015 In one minute of silence you can imagine sprinting up the beach in Gallipoli in 1915 with the fierce fighting Diggers, but can you imagine standing beside the brave battling Turks as they defended their homeland from the cliffs above... In the silence that follows a war long gone, you can see what the soldiers saw, you can feel what the soldiers felt. And if you try, you might be able to imagine the enemy, and see that he is not so different from you... In One Minute's Silence, you are the story, and the story is yours - to imagine, remember and honour the brothers in arms on both sides of the conflict, heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives. A moving and powerful reflection on the meaning of Remembrance Day.