Annie Lee Cavallaro, adopted as a baby from China, is pursuing her life-long dream of becoming a scientist. While attending a conference at Harvard, Annie meets someone who will change not only her life, but the lives of millions of others. In this sweeping novel that encompasses three continents, ‘A Bottle of Rain’ chronicles Annie’s amazing rise to the forefront of the scientific community with the discovery of a lifetime.
A Bottle of Rain is a kind of love story involving a mute clown, a blind gypsy fortune-teller, FBI agents, an award-winning poet told to teach fiction, and the last Kickapoo Indian girl born in Champaign County, who has returned to the Land of Lincoln in search of her parents. You'll get a brief history of computers, a not so brief history of the Kickapoo Indian Tribe (told in an unorthodox manner), a revisionist view of Abraham Lincoln.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins comes a twelfth collection of poetry offering over fifty new poems that showcase the generosity, wit, and imaginative play that prompted The Wall Street Journal to call him “America’s favorite poet.” The Rain in Portugal—a title that admits he’s not much of a rhymer—sheds Collins’s ironic light on such subjects as travel and art, cats and dogs, loneliness and love, beauty and death. His tones range from the whimsical—“the dogs of Minneapolis . . . / have no idea they’re in Minneapolis”—to the elegiac in a reaction to the death of Seamus Heaney. A student of the everyday, Collins here contemplates a weather vane, a still life painting, the calendar, and a child lost at a beach. His imaginative fabrications have Shakespeare flying comfortably in first class and Keith Richards supporting the globe on his head. By turns entertaining, engaging, and enlightening, The Rain in Portugal amounts to another chorus of poems from one of the most respected and familiar voices in the world of American poetry. Praise for The Rain in Portugal “Nothing in Billy Collins’s twelfth book . . . is exactly what readers might expect, and that’s the charm of this collection.”—The Washington Post “This new collection shows [Collins] at his finest. . . . Certain to please his large readership and a good place for readers new to Collins to begin.”—Library Journal “Disarmingly playful and wistfully candid.”—Booklist
It's time to put on your rain gear for a rainy-day romp! With spring come April showers. It's time to put on a raincoat, grab an umbrella, and head outdoors. The worms like rain, and so do the fish and frogs. But what about the cat and dog? In this lyrical picture book, one spunky little girl discovers just who likes rain—and who doesn't—as she explores the rainy-day habits of the world around her. Here is the second offering in Wong Herbert Yee's charming seasonal quartet. The simple text and interactive question-and-answer format make this book perfect for reading aloud with preschoolers any time of the year. Who Likes Rain? is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
