The Wednesday Wars

Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0618724834
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
In this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt tells the witty and compelling story of a teenage boy who feels that fate has it in for him, during the school year 1968-68. Seventh grader Holling Hoodhood isn't happy. He is sure his new teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts. Holling's domineering father is obsessed with his business image and disregards his family. Throughout the school year, Holling strives to get a handle on the Shakespeare plays Mrs. Baker assigns him to read on his own time, and to figure out the enigmatic Mrs. Baker. As the Vietnam War turns lives upside down, Holling comes to admire and respect both Shakespeare and Mrs. Baker, who have more to offer him than he imagined. And when his family is on the verge of coming apart, he also discovers his loyalty to his sister, and his ability to stand up to his father when it matters most.

Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip (Sneak Peek)

Author: Jordan Sonnenblick
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545461197
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 24

Book Description

Just Like That

Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher: Clarion Books
ISBN: 0544084772
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Book Description
In this poignant, perceptive, witty novel, Gary D. Schmidt brings authenticity and emotion to multiple plot strands, weaving in themes of grief, loss, redemption, achievement, and love. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students from wealthy backgrounds. In a parallel story, Matt Coffin has wound up on the Maine coast near St. Elene's with a pillowcase full of money lifted from the leader of a criminal gang, fearing the gang's relentless, destructive pursuit. Both young people gradually dispel their loneliness, finding a way to be hopeful and also finding each other.

Trouble

Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547487738
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
“Henry Smith’s father told him that if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you.” But Trouble comes careening down the road one night in the form of a pickup truck that strikes Henry’s older brother, Franklin. In the truck is Chay Chouan, a young Cambodian from Franklin’s preparatory school, and the accident sparks racial tensions in the school—and in the well-established town where Henry’s family has lived for generations. Caught between anger and grief, Henry sets out to do the only thing he can think of: climb Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine, which he and Franklin were going to climb together. Along with Black Dog, whom Henry has rescued from drowning, and a friend, Henry leaves without his parents’ knowledge. The journey, both exhilarating and dangerous, turns into an odyssey of discovery about himself, his older sister, Louisa, his ancestry, and why one can never escape from Trouble.

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher: Yearling
ISBN: 0553494953
Category : Clergy
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Turner Buckminster is purely miserable. Not only is he the son of the new minister in a small Maine town, but he is shunned for playing baseball differently from the local boys.

What Came from the Stars

Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547612133
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
In a desperate attempt for survival, a peaceful civilization on a faraway planet besieged by a dark lord sends its most precious gift across the cosmos into the lunchbox of Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

William Shakespeare's Star Wars

Author: Ian Doescher
Publisher: Quirk Books
ISBN: 1594746559
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
The New York Times Best Seller Experience the Star Wars saga reimagined as an Elizabethan drama penned by William Shakespeare himself, complete with authentic meter and verse, and theatrical monologues and dialogue by everyone from Darth Vader to R2D2. Return once more to a galaxy far, far away with this sublime retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Authentic meter, stage directions, reimagined movie scenes and dialogue, and hidden Easter eggs throughout will entertain and impress fans of Star Wars and Shakespeare alike. Every scene and character from the film appears in the play, along with twenty woodcut-style illustrations that depict an Elizabethan version of the Star Wars galaxy. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for.

Pay Attention, Carter Jones

Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher:
ISBN: 0544790855
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
Sixth-grader Carter must adjust to the unwelcome presence of a know-it-all butler who is determined to help him become a gentleman, and also to deal with burdens from the past.

New & Old Wars

Author: Mary Kaldor
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745638643
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Deals with the implications of 'the new wars' in the post 9-11 world. This work shows how old war thinking in Iraq has greatly exacerbated what is the archetypal new war - with insurgency, chaos and the occupying forces' lack of direction prescient of a different kind of conflict emerging in the 21st Century.

Testing Wars in the Public Schools

Author: William J. Reese
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075692
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
Written tests to evaluate students were a radical and controversial innovation when American educators began adopting them in the 1800s. Testing quickly became a key factor in the political battles during this period that gave birth to America's modern public school system. William J. Reese offers a richly detailed history of an educational revolution that has so far been only partially told. Single-classroom schools were the norm throughout the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century. Pupils demonstrated their knowledge by rote recitation of lessons and were often assessed according to criteria of behavior and discipline having little to do with academics. Convinced of the inadequacy of this system, the reformer Horace Mann and allies on the Boston School Committee crafted America's first major written exam and administered it as a surprise in local schools in 1845. The embarrassingly poor results became front-page news and led to the first serious consideration of tests as a useful pedagogic tool and objective measure of student achievement. A generation after Mann's experiment, testing had become widespread. Despite critics' ongoing claims that exams narrowed the curriculum, ruined children's health, and turned teachers into automatons, once tests took root in American schools their legitimacy was never seriously challenged. Testing Wars in the Public Schools puts contemporary battles over scholastic standards and benchmarks into perspective by showcasing the historic successes and limitations of the pencil-and-paper exam.