![]() ![]() Their remarkable book about the experience became a sensation and is recognized today as the birth of American archeology. ![]() Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome. In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the unforgettable true story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood - each already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome - sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. ![]() In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. A captivating history of two men who dramatically changed their contemporaries' view of the past." ( Kirkus) ![]()
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![]() But when the CIA comes calling, Victor must pose as his victim to identify the dead man's next mark, a mission that takes him across Europe to the bloody streets of Rome. In sweltering Algiers, ultra-efficient hitman Victor executes a fellow assassin. A conspiracy begins to unwind and suddenly this perfect assassin becomes the perfect target. With each name Victor crosses off his list, the game grows far more complex - and far more lethal. Worst of all, Victor is given just two days to take down his targets, forcing him to compromise his usual extreme care. ![]() And he has a list: three names, three victims. ![]() The mysterious assassin known only as Victor is locked in an uneasy alliance with the CIA. and takes the fight to his would-be killers. With meticulous style, Victor plans his escape. ![]() ![]() When a Paris job goes spectacularly wrong, Victor finds himself running for his life across four continents, pursued by a kill squad and investigated by secret services from more than one country. No one knows what truly motivates the hunter. His world is one of paranoia and obsessive attention to detail his morality lies either dead or dying. Victor is an assassin, a man with no past and no surname. ![]() ![]() ![]() The foundation's flagship programme is the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. ![]() The establishment of the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation in 2015 cemented Wilbur's passion for empowering writers, promoting literacy and advancing adventure writing as a genre. An international phenomenon, his readership built up over fifty-five years of writing, establishing him as one of the most successful and impressive brand authors in the world. He became a full-time writer in 1964 following the success of When the Lion Feeds, and has since published over fifty global bestsellers, including the Courtney Series, the Ballantyne Series, the Egyptian Series, the Hector Cross Series and many successful standalone novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. ![]() Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. ![]() ![]()
![]() ![]() So, Robert had Gloria, a girl younger than Phiona, teach her the fundamentals of chess. Robert didn’t expect Phiona to come back because of all the teasing she suffered, but she came back the next day. The boys who had already been playing chess for a while made fun of her. Robert was a Christian missionary who had a dream of empowering the kids of Katwe through the game of chess. He led her to a dusty veranda where she met Robert for the first time. One day in 2005, while Phiona was searching for food on the streets of Katwe, she spotted her brother and decided to follow him. People search for food on the dangerous streets and often struggle to stay in one place for a long time because they can’t afford rent. Life in Katwe is tough-little or no education, poor sanitation, crimes, violence, and extreme poverty. ![]() The Queen of Katwe is a true story about an amazing Ugandan girl named Phiona Mutesi. ![]() ![]() ![]() I appreciated the fact that Lucy is won over by her less-than perfect pet, a process depicted as much in the artwork as in the text, as this highlights the importance of loving our companions (fantastical or otherwise) and caring for their welfare, as opposed to looking upon them as trophies. ![]() In this respect it also reminded me of Vikki VanSickle and Cale Atkinson's If I Had a Gryphon. With a story that reminded me of Kate Beaton's recent The Princess and the Pony, which also featured a young girl who was dissatisfied with her equine companion, A Unicorn Named Sparkle is a sweet little book, one sure to have appeal for young children who dream of having their own fantastical pet. only to find that this unicorn may have some redeeming qualities after all. Disappointed with her purchase, Lucy decides to send Sparkle back. Her visions of a dazzling creature with blue hair and a pink mane and tail, one who loves wearing a necklace of flowers and who will make a good impression at show-and-tell, prove less than prophetic however, as the real Sparkles turns out to be a runty little thing with brown spots, who has long ears, smells funny, and isn't particularly cooperative in doing unicorn-like things. Excited at the prospect of getting her very own unicorn - and for the bargain price of twenty-five cents! - Lucy imagines what Sparkle (for so she plans to name her new friend) will be like. ![]() ![]() ![]() “Suddenly, it was the talk of the country,” Hall told The Associated Press in 1986. The story was so popular it even spawned a movie of the same name and a television series. It sold millions of copies and Riley won a Grammy for best female country vocal performance and an award for single of the year from the Country Music Association. ![]() The song about a mother telling a group of busybodies to mind their own business was witty and feisty and became a No. His breakthrough was writing “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” a 1968 international hit about small-town hypocrisy recorded by Jeannie C. The middle initial “T” was added when he got his recording contract to make the name catchier. Newman, Dave Dudley and Johnny Wright, but he had so many songs that he began recording them himself. Hall settled in Nashville in 1964 and first established himself as a songwriter making $50 a week. ![]() He turned to writing when he got back stateside and was discovered by Nashville publisher Jimmy Key. Army in 1957 for four years including an assignment in Germany. Hall began playing in a bluegrass band, but when that didn’t work out he started working as a disc jockey in Morehead, Kentucky. He started playing guitar at age 4 and wrote his first song by the time he was 9. Hall, the fourth son of an ordained minister, was born near Olive Hill, Kentucky, in a log cabin built by his grandfather. ![]() ![]() My anger took control and I avenged myself by slaying both of them and hurling their bodies in a trench, like two dead cockroaches.” It would take an accomplished psychotherapist and dream interpreter to plumb the depths of what al-Shaykh reveals of the relations, as fraught as any in Faulkner, of cloistered women and fearful men and those ever-watchful black slaves. ![]() ![]() Says one sorrowful shah to his brother early on, “I caught my wife in the arms of one of the kitchen boys in her quarters before I set out to come to you. It’s not just the sex, but also the sexual violence and mistrust that run like a swift current below the stories. Denatured into fables for children, the tales of Ali Baba, magical caves, flying carpets and Sindbad the sailor lost any such erotic possibilities, which al-Shaykh very gamely restores with the unmistakable conjuring of “he stick, the thing, the pigeon, the panther, the shish kebab, the cock” and dizzying tales of noblewomen ravished by African slaves-in short, the sort of things that ought to find these once-tame stories a whole new audience. ![]() Elegant, pointed retelling of the classic of medieval Arabian literature by Lebanese novelist and journalist al-Shaykh ( The Locust and the Bird, 2009, etc.).Īs Sir Richard Burton well knew, the tales that Scheherazade spun in order to keep from having her sultan husband chop off her head were full of erotic moments, explicit and implicit alike. ![]() ![]() ![]() The lack of role-models… Are we getting better on that I wonder? Liz Prince memoir chronicles her struggles through school, bullies, the trails of friendship and romance. Tomboy is a good book for looking at gender expression and the constraints placed on trying to be that individual by others. Tomboy highlights yet again how there isn’t just one way to be. It’s not until later in the book that somebody wise points this out: ![]() She was much happier in boy’s clothes, being friends with boys because girls = “ugh”. Tomboy follows award-winning author and artist Liz Prince through her early years and explores–with humor, honesty, and poignancy–what it means to “be a girl.”Ģ00words (or less) review: Growing up Liz Prince struggled with the expectations society places on ‘being a girl’. ![]() But with the forces of middle school, high school, parents, friendship, and romance pulling her this way and that, “the middle” wasn’t exactly an easy place to be. But she wasn’t exactly one of the guys, either. Synopsis: Growing up, Liz Prince wasn’t a girly girl, dressing in pink tutus or playing pretty princess like the other girls in her neighborhood. Graphic Novel / Memoir / Gender Expression ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Grammar component: Short and long e sounds.Literature Activity Guide for Freckle Juice includes: Readability Level: end of 2nd, beginning of 3rd grade Synopsis: Freckle Juice by Judy Blume: Andrew Marcus desperately wants freckles! He’d do anything to get them, even buy a secret recipe from the dreaded Sharon. Each guide helps young readers practice individual skills while maintaining an appreciation of the literature. This fun book teaches young learners about self-acceptance. 7Sisters Literature Activity Guide for Freckle Juice guides younger elementary students through developmentally-appropriate phonics and comprehension skills.Įlementary Literature Activity Guide for Freckle Juice is designed to teach and/or reinforce necessary skills for students who are in the process of learning to read. Here’s a fun, developmentally-appropriate activity guide: Literature Activity Guide for Freckle Juice! ![]() |