Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, "what is best in me." Here is the missing piece of the story.
What do you get when you combine elements of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? You get this exciting steampunk adventure. And though Slade borrows from the classics, the story is original and a fun read. Modo, a young hunchback, is rescued from a traveling freak show by the mysterious Victorian Englishman, Mr. Socrates. He is raised in isolation and trained to master his extraordinary physical powers, which include the ability to alter his deformed features and take on any appearance.
Set in 1700, Rowland's outstanding 13th Sano Ichiro mystery (after 2007's The Snow Empress) finds Sano, whom the shogun raised to the rank of chamberlain several books back, waging a fierce struggle with his chief rival, Lord Matsudaira. The stakes are raised at the outset when Matsudaira's forces almost succeed in killing Sano's wife and occasional sleuthing partner, Reiko. The chamberlain soon suspects that someone else may have been behind the attack, but soon he faces a more daunting task.
From Tamar Myers, author of The Witch Doctor's Wife, comes a spellbinding tale of equatorial Africa and a child torn dangerously between two worlds. In 1945, an infant left inadvertently to die in the jungles of the Belgian Congo is discovered by a young Bashilele tribesman on a mission to claim the head of an enemy. Recognized as human--despite her pale white skin and strange blue eyes--the baby is brought into the tribe and raised as its own. Thirteen years later, the girl--now called "Ugly Eyes"--will find herself at the center of a controversy that will rock two separate societies.
When Writing Workshop Isn't Working: Answers to Ten Tough Questions, Grades 2-5
Writing is hard work. Teaching it can be even harder. As most teachers know, writer's workshop doesn't always go as planned, and many find there are obstacles that they consistently struggle with. In his role as a literacy coordinator and teacher, Mark Overmeyer has heard the same issues raised again and again by both new and experienced colleagues.
