Alexandra's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 06 Aug 2024 11:55:18 -0700 60 Alexandra's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Millennium Approaches (Angels in America, #1)]]> 92250
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.]]> 119 Tony Kushner 1559360615 Alexandra 5 4.27 1993 Millennium Approaches (Angels in America, #1)
author: Tony Kushner
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Alexandra 5 4.57 2005 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/04/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)]]> 1423 137 Reduced Shakespeare Company 1557831572 Alexandra 5 4.44 2000 The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)
author: Reduced Shakespeare Company
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/12/09
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]]> Room 7937843
Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.]]> 321 Emma Donoghue Alexandra 5 4.04 2010 Room
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> The Lovely Bones 12232938
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.]]> 372 Alice Sebold 0316166685 Alexandra 5 3.87 2002 The Lovely Bones
author: Alice Sebold
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Boy in the Striped Pajamas]]> 39999
Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter one.]]> 224 John Boyne 0385751079 Alexandra 5 4.17 2006 The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
author: John Boyne
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World]]> 10235 Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity"—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners in Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.]]> 333 Tracy Kidder 0812973011 Alexandra 5 4.19 2003 Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
author: Tracy Kidder
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures]]> 12609 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.]]> 341 Anne Fadiman 0374525641 Alexandra 5 4.20 1997 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
author: Anne Fadiman
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> The Invention of Hugo Cabret 9673436 534 Brian Selznick Alexandra 5 4.22 2007 The Invention of Hugo Cabret
author: Brian Selznick
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> Mystic River 21671
Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood.

A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.]]> 416 Dennis Lehane 0060584750 Alexandra 5 4.17 2001 Mystic River
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> Feed 169756 Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon—a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world—and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.]]> 308 M.T. Anderson 0763622591 Alexandra 5 3.55 2002 Feed
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> Maniac Magee 139463 Jeffrey Lionel "Maniac" Magee might have lived a normal life if a freak accident hadn't made him an orphan. After living with his unhappy and uptight aunt and uncle for eight years, he decides to run--and not just run away, but run. This is where the myth of Maniac Magee begins, as he changes the lives of a racially divided small town with his amazing and legendary feats.]]> 184 Jerry Spinelli 0590452037 Alexandra 5 3.89 1990 Maniac Magee
author: Jerry Spinelli
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> The Help 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 Alexandra 5 4.46 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close]]> 4588
The key belonged to his father, he's sure of that. But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open?

So begins a quest that takes Oskar - inventor, letter-writer and amateur detective - across New York's five boroughs and into the jumbled lives of friends, relatives, and complete strangers. He gets heavy boots, he gives himself little bruises and he inches ever nearer to the heart of a family mystery that stretches back fifty years. But will it take him any closer to, or further from, his lost father?]]> 326 Jonathan Safran Foer 0618711651 Alexandra 5 3.98 2005 Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
author: Jonathan Safran Foer
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> The Secret Life of Bees 37435 The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.]]> 302 Sue Monk Kidd 0142001740 Alexandra 5 4.10 2001 The Secret Life of Bees
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Al Capone Does My Shirts (Tales from Alcatraz, #1)]]> 89716 225 Gennifer Choldenko Alexandra 4 3.84 2004 Al Capone Does My Shirts (Tales from Alcatraz, #1)
author: Gennifer Choldenko
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> Bad Boy: A Memoir 152104
As a boy, Myers was quick-tempered and physically strong, always ready for a fight. He also read voraciously—he would check out books from the library and carry them home, hidden in brown paper bags in order to avoid other boys' teasing. He aspired to be a writer.

But while growing up in a poor family in Harlem, his hope for a successful future diminished as he came to realize fully the class and racial struggles that surrounded him. He began to doubt himself and the values that he had always relied on, attending high school less and less, turning to the streets and to his books for comfort.

Supports the Common Core State Standards.]]> 214 Walter Dean Myers 0064472884 Alexandra 4 3.73 2001 Bad Boy: A Memoir
author: Walter Dean Myers
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> Give a Boy a Gun 350507 208 Todd Strasser 0689848935 Alexandra 4 3.86 2000 Give a Boy a Gun
author: Todd Strasser
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2010/12/30
date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence]]> 228823 179 Geoffrey Canada 0807004235 Alexandra 4 4.03 1995 Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence
author: Geoffrey Canada
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins Alexandra 5 4.34 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Joey Pigza Loses Control (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)]]> 1945835 Sequel to Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, National Book Award finalist

When Joey Pigza meets his dad for the first time in years, he meets a grown-up version of his old out-of-control self. Carter Pigza is as wired as Joey used to be—before his stint in special ed, and before he got his new meds.

Joey's mom reluctantly agrees that he can stay with his dad for a summer visit, which sends Joey racing with sky-high hpes that he and Carter can finally get to know each other. But as the weeks whirl by, Carter has bigger plans in mind: He decides that just as he has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, Joey can do the same and become as normal as any kid, without the help of a doctor's prescription. Carter believes Joey can do it, and Joey wants to believe him more than anything in the world.

Here is the continuation of the acclaimed Joey Pigza story, affirming not only that Joey Pigza is a true original but that it runs in the family.

]]> 208 Jack Gantos 0613496779 Alexandra 4 3.64 2000 Joey Pigza Loses Control (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)
author: Jack Gantos
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)]]> 6148028 Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.]]> 391 Suzanne Collins 0439023491 Alexandra 4 4.34 2009 Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> In One Person 12758317 New York Times bestselling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect," a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of "terminal cases," The World According to Garp.

In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself "worthwhile.]]> 425 John Irving 1451664125 Alexandra 5 3.68 2012 In One Person
author: John Irving
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> The Fault in Our Stars 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]> 313 John Green Alexandra 5 4.13 2012 The Fault in Our Stars
author: John Green
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom]]> 819842 206 Lisa D. Delpit 1565841808 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.11 1995 Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom
author: Lisa D. Delpit
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/08/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Perestroika (Angels in America, #2)]]> 92254 Angels in America, Perestroika steers the characters introduced in Millennium Approaches from the opportunistic eighties to a new sense of community in the nineties.]]> 158 Tony Kushner 1559360739 Alexandra 5 4.24 1993 Perestroika (Angels in America, #2)
author: Tony Kushner
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/01/08
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]]> And Still I Rise 9814129

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 0 Maya Angelou 0739334689 Alexandra 4 4.21 1978 And Still I Rise
author: Maya Angelou
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2010/12/10
date added: 2011/05/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963]]> 108077 The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 , celebrates 20 years with this anniversary edition featuring a special letter from Christopher Paul Curtis and an introduction by noted educator Dr. Pauletta Bracy.
Enter the hilarious world of ten-year-old Kenny and his family, the Weird Watsons of Flint, Michigan. There's Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, and brother Byron, who's thirteen and an "official juvenile delinquent." When Momma and Dad decide it's time for a visit to Grandma, Dad comes home with the amazing Ultra-Glide, and the Watsons set out on a trip like no other. They're heading South to Birmingham, Alabama, toward one of the darkest moments in America's history.]]> 224 Christopher Paul Curtis 044022800X Alexandra 5 4.00 1995 The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963
author: Christopher Paul Curtis
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2011/01/01
date added: 2011/01/04
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]]> Stargirl (Stargirl, #1) 22232
Leo Borlock follows the unspoken rule at Mica Area High School: don't stand out--under any circumstances! Then Stargirl arrives at Mica High and everything changes--for Leo and for the entire school. After 15 years of home schooling, Stargirl bursts into tenth grade in an explosion of color and a clatter of ukulele music, enchanting the Mica student body.

But the delicate scales of popularity suddenly shift, and Stargirl is shunned for everything that makes her different. Somewhere in the midst of Stargirl's arrival and rise and fall, normal Leo Borlock has tumbled into love with her.

In a celebration of nonconformity, Jerry Spinelli weaves a tense, emotional tale about the fleeting, cruel nature of popularity--and the thrill and inspiration of first love.]]> 186 Jerry Spinelli 0439488400 Alexandra 5 3.76 2000 Stargirl (Stargirl, #1)
author: Jerry Spinelli
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/30
date added: 2011/01/04
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]]> Zeitoun 6512154
Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.]]> 342 Dave Eggers 1934781630 Alexandra 5 4.05 2009 Zeitoun
author: Dave Eggers
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/30
date added: 2011/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)]]> 968 The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, and The da Vinci Code

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.

In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever.

The Da Vinci Code heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller utterly unpredictable right up to its stunning conclusion.]]> 489 Dan Brown Alexandra 5 3.92 2003 The da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)
author: Dan Brown
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/21
date added: 2011/01/04
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]]> Under the Mercy Trees 8873797
After the disappearance of Leon Owenby, his younger brother and central narrator, Martin, returns to the family’s Willoby County, N.C., mountain town from his life as a destitute writer in New York City to aid in the search for Leon and support his other siblings. The year is 1986; Martin leaves behind his ex-lover, Dennis, and their many friends sick and dying from AIDS. Back home, he must face his painful past, his extended family to whom he is closeted, and his high school girlfriend (who still carries a torch for him). Many months of searching reveal more about the searchers than about Leon; the secrets and resentments in the Owenby family run deep and bubble to the surface unexpectedly.

It’s problematic that with so many family issues coming to light, Martin’s sexuality is ignored and remains a secret, but Newton’s use of multiple viewpoints and distinct voices is adept and lively, and helps to fill in the thin premise of Leon’s disappearance. With many novels of this construction, a reader tends to favor one voice over the rest. Not so here; Newton delivers across the board with these characters, who run the gamut from perky to depressive, desperate to schizophrenic.]]> 352 Heather Newton 0062001345 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.51 2010 Under the Mercy Trees
author: Heather Newton
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/01/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It]]> 5948644 Award-winning writer Maile Meloy's return to short stories explores complex lives in an austere landscape with the clear-sightedness that first endeared her to readers.

Meloy's first return to short stories since her critically acclaimed debut, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is an extraordinary new work from one of the most promising writers of the last decade.

Eleven unforgettable new stories demonstrate the emotional power and the clean, assured style that have earned Meloy praise from critics and devotion from readers. Propelled by a terrific instinct for storytelling, and concerned with the convolutions of modern love and the importance of place, this collection is about the battlefields-and fields of victory-that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children, and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship. A ranch hand falls for a recent law school graduate who appears unexpectedly- and reluctantly-in his remote Montana town. A young father opens his door to find his dead grandmother standing on the front step. Two women weigh love and betrayal during an early snow. Throughout the book, Meloy examines the tensions between having and wanting, as her characters try to keep hold of opposing forces in their lives: innocence and experience, risk and stability, fidelity and desire.

Knowing, sly, and bittersweet, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It confirms Maile Meloy's singular literary talent. Her lean, controlled prose, full of insight and unexpected poignancy, is the perfect complement to her powerfully moving storytelling.]]> 240 Maile Meloy 159448869X Alexandra 5 3.83 2009 Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
author: Maile Meloy
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/12/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories]]> 111126 Hateship Loveship), Alice Munro achieves new heights, creating narratives that loop and swerve like memory, and conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves.

A tough-minded housekeeper jettisons the habits of a lifetime because of a teenager’s practical joke. A college student visiting her brassy, unconventional aunt stumbles on an astonishing secret and its meaning in her own life. An incorrigible philanderer responds with unexpected grace to his wife’s nursing-home romance.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best, tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.]]> 323 Alice Munro 0375727434 Alexandra 5 4.08 2001 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories
author: Alice Munro
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/12/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children (Language, Culture, and Teaching Series)]]> 594000
*describes how she and her students negotiated a critical literacy curriculum;
*shows how they dealt with particular social and cultural issues and themes; and
*shares the insights she gained as she attempted to understand what it means to frame one's teaching from a critical literacy perspective.

Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children is specifically useful for early elementary (K-3) teachers as a demonstration of classroom applications of critical literacy that they can try in their own classrooms. It is equally relevant to all concerned with issues of social justice and equity in school settings and the political nature of education, and to educators at all levels who are interested in finding ways to make their curriculum critical. For preservice teachers, this book offers a model for envisioning their future practice and for recognizing the important relationship between theory and practice. Teacher educators and consultants will find this book valuable as an example of how to put a critical edge on teaching. It is intended for use as a text in reading, language arts, literacy, social justice, critical literacy, and early childhood education courses.]]> 158 Vivian Maria Vasquez 0805840532 Alexandra 4 4.35 2004 Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children (Language, Culture, and Teaching Series)
author: Vivian Maria Vasquez
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2010/12/06
date added: 2010/12/10
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]]> Habibi 215693
The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine. Though her father grew up there, Liyana knows very little about her family’s Arab heritage. Her grandmother and the rest of her relatives who live in the West Bank are strangers and speak a language she can’t understand. It isn’t until she meets Omer that her homesickness fades. But Omer is Jewish, and their friendship is silently forbidden in this land. How can they make their families understand? And how can Liyana ever learn to call this place home?]]> 272 Naomi Shihab Nye 0689825234 Alexandra 4 3.63 1997 Habibi
author: Naomi Shihab Nye
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2010/12/09
date added: 2010/12/10
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]]> Peter 657732 that, with someone I don't even like.� Peter is fifteen, a typical Australian boy who enjoys riding his dirt bike and wants to be a photographer. In his world, a boy is considered a man only if he obeys an unwritten set of rules: he must seek out danger, talk rough, get girls—any girl. If he's different, he's labeled a “poof.� Pressured by his peers and by society to conform to this stereotyped male image, Peter feels both confused and repelled. His confusion, and his horror, increase when he finds that he is attracted to his brother's friend David, who is gay. Here is a daring, exceptionally honest novel about sexuality and the need to be true to oneself. Peter shares his every muddle and perception with us, and his candor just might help us find our own way.]]> 229 Kate Walker 0618111301 Alexandra 5 3.81 1991 Peter
author: Kate Walker
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/09
date added: 2010/12/10
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]]> The White Tiger 1768603
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.

Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.

The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation —and a startling, provocative debut.]]> 276 Aravind Adiga 1416562591 Alexandra 5 3.76 2008 The White Tiger
author: Aravind Adiga
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/06/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Number the Stars 47281 137 Lois Lowry 0440227534 Alexandra 5 4.19 1989 Number the Stars
author: Lois Lowry
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Let the Great World Spin 5941033
Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.� A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent� (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.]]> 351 Colum McCann 1400063736 Alexandra 5 3.95 2009 Let the Great World Spin
author: Colum McCann
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/03/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children]]> 119729
The distinguished author of Praying for Sheetrock and two-time National Book award finalist puts a human face on the AIDS crisis in Africa.

When Haregwoin Teferra’s husband and 23-year-old daughter died within a few years of each other, her middle-class life in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was shattered. Bereft and with little to live for, Haregwoin became a recluse. Her self-imposed exile to a hut near her daughter’s grave was interrupted when a priest delivered first one, then another, orphaned teenager into her care. To everyone’s surprise, the children thrived, and so did Haregwoin. As word spread, children of all ages began to appear at her modest home: an infant brought by a dying mother, an orphaned brother and sister whose grandfather was too poor to feed them, a baby left on her doorstep. Haregwoin’s small compound became known as the rare place where ailing parents and impoverished families could safely leave their children. Soon Haregwoin was caring for sixty children, running an unofficial orphanage and day school, and learning first-hand about her country’s and her continent’s greatest challenge: the AIDS pandemic that is leaving millions of children without parents to care for them.

With the flair and grace of a novelist and the reportorial instincts of a seasoned journalist, Melissa Fay Greene gets to the heart of the AIDS crisis, in a story that is nevertheless one of hope. There Is No Me Without You is the story of Haregwoin and her children: a story of struggle and despair, but also of the triumph of saved lives, and the renewed happiness of children welcomed by adoptive parents in Ethiopia, America, and around the world. Haregewoin’s remarkable story convinces us that the crisis in Africa touches every one of us in some fundamental way. At heart, this book is about children and the parents they need to care for them.]]> 472 Melissa Fay Greene 1596911166 Alexandra 5 4.25 2006 There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children
author: Melissa Fay Greene
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2010/06/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> A Ship Made of Paper 129387 Scott Spencer 0099471256 Alexandra 5 3.20 2003 A Ship Made of Paper
author: Scott Spencer
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2010/08/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Cutting for Stone 3591262
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
(front flap)]]> 560 Abraham Verghese 0375414495 Alexandra 5 4.32 2009 Cutting for Stone
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/06/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America]]> 3245249
What would it take?

That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives—their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.

Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.
]]> 296 Paul Tough 0618569898 Alexandra 5 4.15 2008 Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America
author: Paul Tough
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2010/07/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Woolvs in the Sitee 1309651 40 Margaret Wild 1590785002 Alexandra 5 3.79 2006 Woolvs in the Sitee
author: Margaret Wild
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Pale Fire 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Alexandra 5 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood]]> 481005 A Library Journal Best Book of 2001

Part autobiography and part social history, Nega Mezlekia's Notes from the Hyena's Belly offers an unforgettable portrait of Ethiopia, and of Africa, during the 1970s and '80s, an era of civil war, widespread famine, and mass execution.

"We children lived like the donkey," Mezlekia remembers, "careful not to wander off the beaten trail and end up in the hyena's belly." His memoir sheds light not only on the violence and disorder that beset his native country, but on the rich spiritual and cultural life of Ethiopia itself. Throughout, he portrays the careful divisions in dress, language, and culture between the Muslims and Christians of the Ethiopian landscape. Mezlekia also explores the struggle between western European interests and communist influences that caused the collapse of Ethiopia's social and political structure―and that forced him, at age 18, to join a guerrilla army. Through droughts, floods, imprisonment, and killing sprees at the hands of military juntas, Mezlekia survived, eventually emigrating to Canada. In Notes from the Hyena's Belly he bears witness to a time and place that few Westerners have understood.]]> 368 Nega Mezlekia 0312289146 Alexandra 4 3.87 2000 Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood
author: Nega Mezlekia
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF 4130425 386 0615214088 Alexandra 5 3.57 SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF
author: David Whitman; Foreword-Chester E. Finn
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2008/05/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> The Skin I'm In 751635 176 Sharon G. Flake 0786813075 Alexandra 5 4.17 1998 The Skin I'm In
author: Sharon G. Flake
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> The Whipping Boy 11824

A shout comes echoing up the stairway. "Fetch the whipping boy!"

A young orphan named Jemmy rouses from his sleep. "Ain't I already been whipped twice today? Gaw! What's the prince done now?" It was forbidden to spank, thrash, or whack the heir to the throne. Jemmy had been plucked from the streets to serve as whipping boy to the arrogant and spiteful Prince Brat.

Dreaming of running away, Jemmy finds himself trapped in Prince Brat's own dream at once brash and perilous.

In this briskly told tale of high adventure, taut with suspense and rich with colorful characters, the whipping boy and Prince Brat must at last confront each other.

Award-winning author Sid Fleischman again blends the broadly comic with the deeply compassionate in this memorable novel.

]]> 90 Sid Fleischman 0060521228 Alexandra 5 3.60 1986 The Whipping Boy
author: Sid Fleischman
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Stone Fox 817982 96 John Reynolds Gardiner 0064401324 Alexandra 4 4.04 1980 Stone Fox
author: John Reynolds Gardiner
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/01
date added: 2010/12/05
shelves:
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]]> Bronx Masquerade 72441 176 Nikki Grimes 0142501891 Alexandra 4 3.95 2001 Bronx Masquerade
author: Nikki Grimes
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> The Great Gilly Hopkins 163465 The Great Gilly Hopkins is looking for a home. She's a foster kid who's been angry, lonely, and hurting for so long that's she's always ready for a fight. Be on the lookout for her best barracuda smile, the one she saves for well-meaning social workers. Watch out for her most fearful look, a cross between Dracula and Godzilla, used especially to scare shy foster brothers. Don't be fooled by her "Who me?" expression, guaranteed to trick foster parents, teachers, and anyone who gets in her way.

It's Gilly Hopkins vs. the world! And so far, Gilly seems to be winning. But what she doesn't realize is that every time she wins, she really loses, until she discovers a love as formidable as any enemy she's ever known.]]> 148 Katherine Paterson 0435124773 Alexandra 5 3.85 1978 The Great Gilly Hopkins
author: Katherine Paterson
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Pictures of Hollis Woods 828084
is the place where a baby was abandoned

is the baby's name

is an artist

is now a twelve-year-old girl

who's been in so many foster homes she can hardly remember them all. When Hollis is sent to Josie, an elderly artist who is quirky and affectionate, she wants to stay. But Josie is growing more forgetful every day. If Social Services finds out, they'll take Hollis away and move Josie into a home. Well, Hollis Woods won't let anyone separate them. She's escaped the system before; this time, she's taking Josie with her. Still, even as she plans her future with Josie, Hollis dreams of the past summer with the Regans, fixing each special moment of her days with them in pictures she'll never forget. Patricia Reilly Giff captures the yearning for a place to belong in this warmhearted story, which stresses the importance of artistic vision, creativity, and above all, family.]]> 166 Patricia Reilly Giff 0439692393 Alexandra 5 4.02 2002 Pictures of Hollis Woods
author: Patricia Reilly Giff
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Bluish 541211
Friendship isn't always easy. Natalie is different from the other girls in Dreenie's fifth-grade class. She comes to school in a wheelchair, always wearing a knitted hat. The kids call her "Bluish" because her skin is tinted blue from chemotherapy. Dreenie is fascinated by Bluish -- and a little scared of her, too. She watches Bluish and writes her observations in her journal. Slowly, the two girls become good friends. But Dreenie still struggles with Bluish's illness. Bluish is weak and frail, but she also wants to be independent and respected. How do you act around a girl like that?]]> 128 Virginia Hamilton 0439367867 Alexandra 2 3.49 1999 Bluish
author: Virginia Hamilton
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Darnell Rock Reporting 1152875 135 Walter Dean Myers 0440411572 Alexandra 2 3.80 Darnell Rock Reporting
author: Walter Dean Myers
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Monster 44184 Monster.

Fade In: Interior Court. A guard sits at a desk behind Steve. Kathy O'Brien, Steve's lawyer, is all business as she talks to Steve.

O'Brien
Let me make sure you understand what's going on. Both you and this king character are on trial for felony murder. Felony Murder is as serious as it gets. . . . When you're in court, you sit there and pay attetion. You let the jury know that you think the case is a serious as they do. . . .

Steve
You think we're going to win ?

O'Brien (seriously)
It probably depends on what you mean by "win."

Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is on trial for murder. A Harlem drugstore owner was shot and killed in his store, and the word is that Steve served as the lookout.

Guilty or innocent, Steve becomes a pawn in the hands of "the system," cluttered with cynical authority figures and unscrupulous inmates, who will turn in anyone to shorten their own sentences. For the first time, Steve is forced to think about who he is as he faces prison, where he may spend all the tomorrows of his life.

As a way of coping with the horrific events that entangle him, Steve, an amateur filmmaker, decides to transcribe his trial into a script, just like in the movies. He writes it all down, scene by scene, the story of how his whole life was turned around in an instant. But despite his efforts, reality is blurred and his vision obscured until he can no longer tell who he is or what is the truth. This compelling novel is Walter Dean Myers's writing at its best.]]> 281 Walter Dean Myers 0064407314 Alexandra 5 3.74 1999 Monster
author: Walter Dean Myers
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> Esperanza Rising 89763 304 Pam Muñoz Ryan 043912042X Alexandra 4 4.03 2000 Esperanza Rising
author: Pam Muñoz Ryan
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Soldier's Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers]]> 52560
The "shooting war" turned out to be the horror of combat and the wild luck of survival; how it feels to cross a field toward the enemy, waiting for fire. When he entered the service he was a boy. When he came back he was different; he was only 19, but he was a man with "soldier's heart," later known as "battle fatigue."]]> 128 Gary Paulsen 0440228387 Alexandra 5 3.66 1998 Soldier's Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers
author: Gary Paulsen
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2010/12/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography]]> 17994 Fermat’s Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.

Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world’s most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it. It will also make you wonder how private that e-mail you just sent really is.]]> 432 Simon Singh 0385495323 Alexandra 5 4.29 1999 The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
author: Simon Singh
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word]]> 150280 196 Linda Christensen 0942961250 Alexandra 5 4.32 2000 Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word
author: Linda Christensen
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom]]> 6705633 287 Linda Christensen 0942961439 Alexandra 5 4.39 2009 Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom
author: Linda Christensen
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2010/12/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop]]> 251802 255 Ellin Oliver Keene 0435072374 Alexandra 5 4.16 1997 Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop
author: Ellin Oliver Keene
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2009/08/01
date added: 2010/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood]]> 7043591 268 James Houghton 0615316743 Alexandra 5 3.74 2009 The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
author: James Houghton
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/04/01
date added: 2010/12/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families]]> 25109 688 J. Anthony Lukas 0394746163 Alexandra 5 4.31 1985 Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
author: J. Anthony Lukas
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2010/02/01
date added: 2010/12/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Autobiography of My Dead Brother]]> 588890 Shooter and Monster.]]> 224 Walter Dean Myers 0060582936 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.85 2005 Autobiography of My Dead Brother
author: Walter Dean Myers
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/12/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Sunrise Over Fallujah 2205226
Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's the code name. But the young men and women in the military's Civil Affairs Battalion have a simpler name for WAR.

In this new novel, Walter Dean Myers looks at a contemporary war with the same power and searing insight he brought to the Vietnam war of his classic, FALLEN ANGELS. He creates memorable characters like the book's narrator, Birdy, a young recruit from Harlem who's questioning why he even enlisted; Marla, a blond, tough-talking, wisecracking gunner; Jonesy, a guitar-playing bluesman who just wants to make it back to Georgia and open a club;]]> 304 Walter Dean Myers 0439916240 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.73 2008 Sunrise Over Fallujah
author: Walter Dean Myers
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/12/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Fallen Angels 436609 Sunrise Over Falluja in hardcover.

A coming-of-age tale for young adults set in the trenches of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, this is the story of Perry, a Harlem teenager who volunteers for the service when his dream of attending college falls through. Sent to the front lines, Perry and his platoon come face-to-face with the Vietcong and the real horror of warfare. But violence and death aren't the only hardships. As Perry struggles to find virtue in himself and his comrades, he questions why black troops are given the most dangerous assignments, and why the U.S. is there at all.]]> 309 Walter Dean Myers 0590409433 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.98 1983 Fallen Angels
author: Walter Dean Myers
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/12/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators]]> 1542927
Nakkula and Toshalis explore how factors such as social class, peer and adult relationships, gender norms, and the media help to shape adolescents� sense of themselves and their future expectations and aspirations.]]> 304 Michael J. Nakkula 1891792318 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.63 2006 Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators
author: Michael J. Nakkula
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/12/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community]]> 111214
Alfie Kohn challenged these widely accepted premises, and with them the very idea of classroom "management," when the original edition of Beyond Discipline was published in 1996. Since then, his path-breaking book has invited hundreds of thousands of educators to question the assumption that problems in the classroom are always the fault of students who don't do what they're told; instead, it may be necessary to reconsider what it is that they've been told to do--or to learn. Kohn shows how a fundamentally cynical view of children underlies the belief that we must tell them exactly how we expect them to behave and then offer "positive reinforcement" when they obey.

Just as memorizing someone else's right answers fails to promote students' intellectual development, so does complying with someone else's expectations for how to act fail to help students develop socially or morally. Kohn contrasts the idea of discipline, in which things are done to students to control their behavior, with an approach in which we work with students to create caring communities where decisions are made together.

Beyond Discipline has earned the status of an education classic, a vital alternative to all the traditional manuals that consist of techniques for imposing control. For this 10th anniversary edition, Kohn adds a new afterword that expands on the book's central themes and responds to questions from readers. Packed with stories from real classrooms around the country, seasoned with humor and grounded in a vision as practical as it is optimistic, Beyond Discipline shows how students are most likely to flourish in schools that have moved toward collaborative problem solving--and beyond discipline.]]> 182 Alfie Kohn 1416604723 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.96 1996 Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community
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]]> <![CDATA[Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes]]> 541132 Punished By Rewards presents an argument unsettling to hear but impossible to dismiss.]]> 398 Alfie Kohn 0395710901 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.17 1993 Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes
author: Alfie Kohn
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1993
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]]> <![CDATA[Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers]]> 791444
Here at last is an up-to-date anthropology of this critically formative period. Prize-winning education reporter Linda Perlstein spent a year immersed in the lunchroom, classrooms, hearts, and minds of a group of suburban Maryland middle schoolers and emerged with this pathbreaking account. Perlstein reveals what's really going on under kids' don't-touch-me facade while they grapple with schoolwork, puberty, romance, and identity. A must-read for parents and educators, Not Much Just Chillin' offers a trail map to the baffling no-man's-land between child and teen.]]> 288 Linda Perlstein 0345475763 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.44 2003 Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers
author: Linda Perlstein
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.44
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]]> Up the Down Staircase 160320 Up the Down Staircase is one of the best-loved novels of our time. It has been translated into sixteen languages, made into a prize-winning motion picture, and staged as a play at high schools all over the United States; its very title has become part of the American idiom.

Never before has a novel so compellingly laid bare the inner workings of a metropolitan high school. Up the Down Staircase is the funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic teacher whose clash with school bureaucracy is a timeless lesson for students, teachers, parents--anyone concerned about public education. Bel Kaufman lets her characters speak for themselves through memos, letters, directives from the principal, comments by students, notes between teachers, and papers from desk drawers and wastebaskets, evoking a vivid picture of teachers fighting the good fight against all that stands in the way of good teaching.]]> 368 Bel Kaufman 0060973617 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.94 1965 Up the Down Staircase
author: Bel Kaufman
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1965
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]]> <![CDATA[Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade]]> 1159222
To see if this world is producing better students, Linda Perlstein immersed herself in a suburban Maryland elementary school. The resulting portrait -- detailed, human, and truly thought-provoking -- is marked by the same narrative gifts and expertise that made Not Much Just Chillin' so illuminating.

The school, once deemed a failure, is now held up as an example of reform done right. Perlstein explores the rewards and costs of that transformation, through the experiences of the people who lived it. Nine-year-olds meditate to activate their brains before exams and kindergartners write paragraphs. Teachers attempt to address diverse needs at the same time they are expected to follow daily scripts, and feel compelled to focus on topics that will be tested at the expense of those that won't. The principal attempts to keep it all together, in the face of immense challenges.

Perlstein provides the first detailed view of how new education policies are modified by human realities. Tested will be talked about, thought about, written about -- and will almost certainly play an important role in the national debate as the federal education law come up for renewal.]]> 320 Linda Perlstein 0805080821 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.97 2007 Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade
author: Linda Perlstein
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]]> Work Hard. Be Nice. 5182673
KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (KIPP teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. Illuminating the ups and downs of the KIPP founders and their students, Mathews gives us something quite a hopeful book about education.]]> 336 Jay Mathews 1565125169 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.82 2009 Work Hard. Be Nice.
author: Jay Mathews
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2009
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]]> Among Schoolchildren 86700 352 Tracy Kidder 0380710897 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.96 1989 Among Schoolchildren
author: Tracy Kidder
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
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]]> The Freedom Writers Diary 47304 Ěý
Now a public television documentary,Ěý Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart
Ěý
In 1994, an idealistic first-year teacher in Long Beach, California, named Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk� students. She had intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust. She was met by uncomprehending looks—none of her students had heard of one of the defining moments of the twentieth century. So she rebooted her entire curriculum, using treasured books such as Anne Frank’s diary as her guide to combat intolerance and misunderstanding. Her students began recording their thoughts and feelings in their own diaries, eventually dubbing themselves the “Freedom Writers.�
Ěý
Consisting of powerful entries from the studentsâ€� diaries and narrative text by Erin Gruwell,Ěý The Freedom Writers DiaryĚý is an unforgettable story of how hard work, courage, and determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students. In the two decades since its original publication, the book has sold more than one million copies and inspired a major motion pictureĚý Freedom Writers . And now, with this twentieth-anniversary edition, readers are brought up to date on the lives of the Freedom Writers, as they blend indispensable takes on social issues with uplifting stories of attending college—and watch their own children follow in their footsteps.Ěý The Freedom Writers DiaryĚý remains a vital read for anyone who believes in second chances.]]> 316 Erin Gruwell 038549422X Alexandra 0 to-read 4.14 1999 The Freedom Writers Diary
author: Erin Gruwell
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1999
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]]> <![CDATA[Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation]]> 51537 284 Jonathan Kozol 0060976977 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.26 1995 Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation
author: Jonathan Kozol
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1995
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]]> <![CDATA[Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Updated Edition]]> 65326 Other People’s Children has sold over 150,000 copies since its original hardcover publication. This anniversary paperback edition features a new introduction by Delpit as well as new framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne.

In a radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur Award–winning author Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better “cultural transmitters� in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and “other people’s children� struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system.

A new classic among educators, Other People’s Children is a must-read for teachers, administrators, and parents striving to improve the quality of America’s education system.]]> 240 Lisa D. Delpit 1595580743 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.13 1995 Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Updated Edition
author: Lisa D. Delpit
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1995
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]]> <![CDATA[The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education]]> 6954133 The Death and Life of the Great American School System is a radical change of heart from one of America’s best-known education experts.

Diane Ravitch—former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum—examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today’s most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril.

Ravitch includes clear prescriptions for improving America’s schools:
*Leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or businessmen
*Devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning
*Expect charter schools to educate the kids who need help the most, not to compete with public schools
*Pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not “merit pay� based on deeply flawed and unreliable test scores
*Encourage family involvement in education from an early age
The Death and Life of the Great American School System is more than just an analysis of the state of play of the American education system. It is a must-read for any stakeholder in the future of American schooling.]]> 283 Diane Ravitch 0465014917 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.05 2010 The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
author: Diane Ravitch
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.05
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]]> <![CDATA[Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year]]> 163677
Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esmé now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running. As relevant and iconoclastic as when it was first published, Educating Esmé is a classic, as is Madame Esmé herself.]]> 206 Esmé Raji Codell 1565122798 Alexandra 5 3.91 1999 Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year
author: Esmé Raji Codell
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56]]> 42601
From one of America’s most celebrated educators, an inspiring guide to transforming every child’s education

In a Los Angeles neighborhood plagued by guns, gangs, and drugs, there is an exceptional classroom known as Room 56. The fifth graders inside are first-generation immigrants who live in poverty and speak English as a second language. They also play Vivaldi, perform Shakespeare, score in the top 1 percent on standardized tests, and go on to attend Ivy League universities. Rafe Esquith is the teacher responsible for these accomplishments. From the man whom The New York Times calls “a genius and a saint� comes a revelatory program for educating today’s youth. In Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire! , Rafe Esquith reveals the techniques that have made him one of the most acclaimed educators of our time. The two mottoes in Esquith’s classroom are “Be Nice, Work Hard,� and “There Are No Shortcuts.� His students voluntarily come to school at 6:30 in the morning and work until 5:00 in the afternoon. They learn to handle money responsibly, tackle algebra, and travel the country to study history. They pair Hamlet with rock and roll, and read the American classics. Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire! is a brilliant and inspiring road map for parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about the future success of our nation’s children.]]> 256 Rafe Esquith 0670038156 Alexandra 1 3.93 2007 Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56
author: Rafe Esquith
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
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]]> <![CDATA[Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools]]> 25078
"An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children." -- New York Times Book Review]]> 262 Jonathan Kozol 0060974990 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.25 1991 Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
author: Jonathan Kozol
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1991
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]]> <![CDATA[Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century]]> 7946339 A collection of new essays by an interdisciplinary team of authors that gives a comprehensive introduction to race and ethnicity.

Doing Race focuses on race and ethnicity in everyday life: what they are, how they work, and why they matter. Going to school and work, renting an apartment or buying a house, watching television, voting, listening to music, reading books and newspapers, attending religious services, and going to the doctor are all everyday activities that are influenced by assumptions about who counts, whom to trust, whom to care about, whom to include, and why. Race and ethnicity are powerful precisely because they organize modern society and play a large role in fueling violence around the globe.

Doing Race is targeted to undergraduates; it begins with an introductory essay and includes original essays by well-known scholars. Drawing on the latest science and scholarship, the collected essays emphasize that race and ethnicity are not things that people or groups have or are, but rather sets of actions that people do.

Doing Race provides compelling evidence that we are not yet in a “post-race� world and that race and ethnicity matter for everyone. Since race and ethnicity are the products of human actions, we can do them differently. Like studying the human genome or the laws of economics, understanding race and ethnicity is a necessary part of a twenty first century education.]]> 608 Hazel Rose Markus 039393070X Alexandra 0 to-read 4.14 2010 Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century
author: Hazel Rose Markus
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.14
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]]> <![CDATA[Identity Politics Reconsidered (Future of Minority Studies)]]> 643113 302 Linda MartĂ­n Alcoff 1403964467 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.31 2006 Identity Politics Reconsidered (Future of Minority Studies)
author: Linda MartĂ­n Alcoff
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.31
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]]> <![CDATA[Learning from Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles]]> 1770662 Learning from Experience, Paula Moya offers an alternative to some influential philosophical assumptions about identity and experience in contemporary literary theory. Arguing that the texts and lived experiences of subordinated people are rich sources of insight about our society, Moya presents a nuanced universalist justification for identity-based work in ethnic studies.

This strikingly original book provides eloquent analyses of such postmodernist feminists as Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Norma AlarcĂłn, and Chela Sandoval, and counters the assimilationist proposals of minority neoconservatives such as Shelby Steele and Richard Rodriguez. It advances realist proposals for multicultural education and offers an understanding of the interpretive power of Chicana feminists including CherrĂ­e Moraga, Gloria AnzaldĂşa, and Helena MarĂ­a Viramontes. Learning from Experience enlarges our concept of identity and offers new ways to situate aspects of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in discursive and sociopolitical contexts.]]> 247 Paula M.L. Moya 0520230140 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.15 2002 Learning from Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles
author: Paula M.L. Moya
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average rating: 4.15
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]]> <![CDATA[For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf]]> 58098
From its inception in California in 1974 to its Broadway revival in 2022, the Obie Award–winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country for nearly fifty years. Passionate and fearless, Shange’s words reveal what it meant to be a woman of color in the 20th century.

First published in 1975, when it was praised by The New Yorker for “encompassing…every feeling and experience a woman has ever had,� for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be read and performed for generations to come. Now with new introductions by Jesmyn Ward and Broadway director Camille A. Brown, and one poem not included in the original, here is the complete text of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.]]> 64 Ntozake Shange Alexandra 0 to-read 4.28 1975 For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf
author: Ntozake Shange
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1975
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning]]> 70378 The best way to teach is to learn together with the students. One of the rare breed of teachers who do know this is Nancie Atwell.
- The New York TimesReading this book can be revolutionary. . . . Atwell leads us to new understandings of teaching and learning in a workshop classroom.
- Voices from the Middle When first published in 1987, this seminal work was widely hailed for its honest examination of how teachers teach, how students learn, and the gap that lies in between. In depicting her own classroom struggles, Nancie Atwell shook our orthodox assumptions about skill-and-drill-based curriculums and became a pioneer of responsive teaching. Now, in the long awaited second edition, Atwell reflects on the next ten years of her experience, rethinks and clarifies old methods, and demonstrates new, more effective approaches.

The second edition still urges educators to "come out from behind their own big desks" to turn classrooms into workshops where students and teachers create curriculums together. But it also advocates a more activist role for teachers. Atwell writes, "I'm no longer willing to withhold suggestions and directions from my kids when I can help them solve a problem, do something they've never done before, produce stunning writing, and ultimately become more independent of me."

More than 70 percent of the material is new, with six brand-new chapters on genres, evaluation, and the teacher as writer. There are also lists of several hundred minilessons, and scripts and examples for teaching them; new expectations and rules for writing and reading workshops; ideas for teaching conventions; new systems for record keeping; lists of essential books for students and teachers; and forms for keeping track of individual spelling, skills, proofreading, homework, writing, and reading.

The second edition of In the Middle is written in the same engaging style as its predecessor. It reads like a story - one that readers will be pleased to learn has no end. As Atwell muses, "I know my students and I will continue to learn and be changed. I am resigned - happily - to be always beginning for the rest of my life as a teacher."

]]> 546 Nancie Atwell 0867093749 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.27 1987 In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning
author: Nancie Atwell
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1987
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]]> <![CDATA[Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion]]> 3063035
But the same engineering marvels are shattering centuries-old assumptions about privacy, identity, free expression, and personal control as more and more details of our lives are captured as digital data.

Can you control who sees all that personal information about you? Can email be truly confidential, when nothing seems to be private? Shouldn’t the Internet be censored the way radio and TV are? Is it really a federal crime to download music? When you use Google or Yahoo! to search for something, how do they decide which sites to show you? Do you still have free speech in the digital world? Do you have a voice in shaping government or corporate policies about any of this?

Blown to Bits offers provocative answers to these questions and tells intriguing real-life stories. This book is a wake-up call to the human consequences of the digital explosion.

Preface xiii

Chapter 1: Digital Explosion: Why Is It Happening, and What Is at Stake? 1
Chapter 2: Naked in the Sunlight: Privacy Lost, Privacy Abandoned 19
Chapter 3: Ghosts in the Machine: Secrets and Surprises of Electronic Documents 73
Chapter 4: Needles in the Haystack: Google and Other Brokers in the Bits Bazaar 109
Chapter 5: Secret Bits: How Codes Became Unbreakable 161

Chapter 6: Balance Toppled: Who Owns the Bits? 195
Chapter 7: You Can’t Say That on the Internet: Guarding the Frontiers of Digital Expression 229
Chapter 8: Bits in the Air: Old Metaphors, New Technologies, and Free Speech 259

Conclusion: After the Explosion 295
Appendix: The Internet as System and Spirit 301
Endnotes 317
Index 347]]> 366 Hal Abelson 0137135599 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.51 2008 Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion
author: Hal Abelson
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2008
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]]> <![CDATA[The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal]]> 713492

Labeled “dyslexic and profoundly learning disabled,� Jonathan Mooney was a short-bus rider—a derogatory term used for kids in special education. To learn how others had moved beyond labels, he bought his own short bus and set out cross-country, looking for kids who had dreamed up magical, beautiful ways to overcome the obstacles that separated them from the so-called normal world.

The Short Bus is his irreverent and poignant record of that odyssey, meeting thirteen people in thirteen states who taught Mooney that there’s no such thing as normal—and that to really live, every person must find their own special way of keeping on.Ěý The Short Bus is a unique gem, propelled by Mooney’s heart, humor, and outrageous rebellions.]]> 288 Jonathan Mooney 0805074279 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.61 2007 The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal
author: Jonathan Mooney
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.61
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]]> <![CDATA[Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two]]> 175395 231 Joseph Bruchac 0142405965 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.90 2005 Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two
author: Joseph Bruchac
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2005
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]]> What I Saw and How I Lied 4052117 284 Judy Blundell 0439903467 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.54 2008 What I Saw and How I Lied
author: Judy Blundell
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2008
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]]> Slave: My True Story 178460
Mende was sold to a wealthy Arab family who lived in Sudan's capital city, Khartoum. So began her dark years of enslavement. Her Arab owners called her "Yebit," or "black slave." She called them "master." She was subjected to appalling physical, sexual, and mental abuse. She slept in a shed and ate the family leftovers like a dog. She had no rights, no freedom, and no life of her own.

Normally, Mende's story never would have come to light. But seven years after she was seized and sold into slavery, she was sent to work for another master—a diplomat working in the United Kingdom. In London, she managed to make contact with other Sudanese, who took pity on her. In September 2000, she made a dramatic break for freedom.

Slave is a story almost beyond belief. It depicts the strength and dignity of the Nuba tribe. It recounts the savage way in which the Nuba and their ancient culture are being destroyed by a secret modern-day trade in slaves. Most of all, it is a remarkable testimony to one young woman's unbreakable spirit and tremendous courage.
]]> 367 Mende Nazer 1586483188 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.24 2002 Slave: My True Story
author: Mende Nazer
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2002
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]]> The Thing Around Your Neck 5587960
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her remarkable debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which critics hailed as "one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years" (Baltimore Sun), with "prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes" (The Boston Globe); The Washington Post called her "the twenty-first-century daughter of Chinua Achebe." Her award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun became an instant classic upon its publication three years later, once again putting her tremendous gifts - graceful storytelling, knowing compassion, and fierce insight into her characters' hearts - on display. Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

In "A Private Experience," a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she's been pushing away. In "Tomorrow is Too Far," a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the center of "Imitation" finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to reexamine them.

Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, these stories map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them. The Thing Around Your Neck is a resounding confirmation of the prodigious literary powers of one of our most essential writers.]]> 218 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0307271072 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.24 2008 The Thing Around Your Neck
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average rating: 4.24
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]]> Purple Hibiscus 126381
When Nigeria begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili’s father sends her and her brother away to stay with their aunt, a University professor, whose house is noisy and full of laughter. There, Kambili and her brother discover a life and love beyond the confines of their father’s authority. The visit will lift the silence from their world and, in time, give rise to devotion and defiance that reveal themselves in profound and unexpected ways.

This is a book about the promise of freedom; about the blurred lines between childhood and adulthood; between love and hatred, between the old gods and the new.]]> 336 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Alexandra 0 to-read 4.14 2003 Purple Hibiscus
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2003
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]]> Half of a Yellow Sun 18749 A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,� Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.]]> 435 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 1400044162 Alexandra 0 to-read 4.34 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2006
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]]> In the Shadow of No Towers 17001 In the Shadow of No Towers. As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, cartoonist Spiegelman presents a highly personalized, political, and confessional diary of his experience of September 11 and its aftermath. In 10 large-scale pages of original, hard-hitting material (composed from September 11, 2001 to August 31, 2003), two essays, and 10 old comic strip reproductions from the early 20th century, Spiegelman expresses his feelings of dislocation, grief, anxiety, and outrage over the horror of the attacks—and the subsequent "hijacking" of the event by the Bush administration to serve what he believes is a misguided and immoral political agenda. Readers who agree with Spiegelman's point of view will marvel at the brilliance of his images and the wit and accuracy of his commentary. Others, no doubt, will be jolted by his candor and, perhaps, be challenged to reexamine their position.

The central image in the sequence of original broadsides, which returns as a leitmotif in each strip, is Spiegelman's Impressionistic "vision of disintegration," of the North Tower, its "glowing bones...just before it vaporized." (As downtown New Yorkers, Spiegelman and his family experienced the event firsthand.) But the images and styles in the book are as fragmentary and ever-shifting as Spiegelman's reflections and reactions. The author's closing comment that "The towers have come to loom far larger than life...but they seem to get smaller every day" reflects a larger and more chilling irony that permeates In the Shadow of No Towers. Despite the ephemeral nature of the comic strip form, the old comics at the back of the book have outlasted the seemingly indestructible towers. In the same way, Spiegelman's heartfelt impressions have immortalized the towers that, imponderably, have now vanished. —Silvana Tropea]]> 48 Art Spiegelman 0670915416 Alexandra 0 to-read 3.67 2004 In the Shadow of No Towers
author: Art Spiegelman
name: Alexandra
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2010/12/04
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]]> Mick Harte Was Here 500799 How could someone like Mick die?

He was the kid who freaked out his mom by putting a ceramic eye in a defrosted chicken, the kid who did a wild dance in front of the whole school—and the kid who, if only he had worn his bicycle helmet, would still be alive today. But now Phoebe Harte's twelve-year-old brother is gone, and Phoebe's world has turned upside down.

With her trademark candor and compassion, beloved middle-grade writer Barbara Park tells how Phoebe copes with her painful loss in this story filled with sadness, humor—and hope. Chosen by "Publishers Weekly" as one of their Best Books of 1996. "A full-fledged and fully convincing drama."�(Publishers Weekly]]> 89 Barbara Park 0590929836 Alexandra 5 4.28 1995 Mick Harte Was Here
author: Barbara Park
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> Colored People: A Memoir 320783 Ěý
A winner of the Chicago Tribune ’s Heartland Award and the Lillian Smith Prize, Colored People is a pungent and poignant masterpiece of recollection, a work that extends and deepens our sense of African American history even as it entrances us with its bravura storytelling]]> 216 Henry Louis Gates Jr. 067973919X Alexandra 5 4.10 1994 Colored People: A Memoir
author: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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date added: 2010/12/04
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]]> The Year of Miss Agnes 707616 A year they'll never forget
Ten-year-old Frederika (Fred for short) doesn't have much faith that the new teacher in town will last very long. After all, they never do. Most teachers who come to their one-room schoolhouse in remote, Alaska leave at the first smell of fish, claiming that life there is just too hard.
But Miss Agnes is different—she doesn't get frustrated with her students, and she throws away old textbooks and reads Robin Hood instead! For the first time, Fred and her classmates begin to enjoy their lessons and learn to read and write—but will Miss Agnes be like all the rest and leave as quickly as she came?]]> 128 Kirkpatrick Hill 0689851243 Alexandra 5 4.18 2000 The Year of Miss Agnes
author: Kirkpatrick Hill
name: Alexandra
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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date added: 2010/12/04
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