David De Vries

When Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Mary Ann, lose their jobs to the gasoline, electric, and diesel motor shovels, they go to a little country town where they find that one new job leads to another.

What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey? Shares a meal? Get drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface -- a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character - and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you. In this practical and amusing guide to literature, Thomas C. Foster...

"Part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the disappearance of Bach's manuscript of the suites in the eighteenth century; Pablo Casals's discovery and popularization of the music in the nineteenth century; and Siblin's own quest for the truth behind the suites at the dawn of the twenty-first century"--P. [4] of cover.

As Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight filled with untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, massacres and atrocities. He incisively ties America's current foreign policy back to this remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians.

"In April 1938, a man calling himself Josef Hofmann arrives at a boarding house in Hamm, Germany, and lets a room from the widow who owns it. Fifty years later, Walter Gersdorff, the widow's son, who was eleven years old in the spring of 1938, discovers the carefully hidden diary the boarder had kept during his stay, even though he should never have written any of its contents down. What Walter finds is a scathing chronicle of one the most tumultuous...

It was one of the most concentrated surges of creativity in the history of civilization. Between 1390 and 1537, Florence poured forth an astonishing stream of magnificent artworks. But Florentines did more during this brief period than create masterpieces. As citizens of a fractious republic threatened from below, without, and within, they also were driven to reimagine the political and ethical basis of their world, exploring the meaning and possibilities...

"A bold new biography of John Singer Sargent, the American expatriate artist"--

Today is Family Fun Day at the library, and a magician named David puts on a show with his special trick--having the children pull books out of his tall hat, books that touch their deepest dreams and unlock their hopes for their future.

The go-to bestselling guide to help young people navigate from a middle school book report to English Comp 101

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times bestselling author and professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers.

With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot,

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Jim's anxieties on his first day of school are happily forgotten when he makes a new friend.