From the time she was a very young girl, Rachel Carson felt a bond with nature. Growing up in Pennsylvania, she spent hours exploring meadows and woods, dreaming of seeing the ocean. As Rachel grew older, she combined her gift for writing with her love of nature, producing award-winning books about the sea. But her best-known achievement was the publication of Silent Spring, an account of the dangerous effects of pesticides on plants and animals. With Silent Spring, Rachel helped create a movement to ban these harmful chemicals. Her findings helped to assure that future generations would be able to dream about the ocean and listen to crickets.
With ears like a bat and webbed toes, it seems as if ten-yearold Jake could fly right out of reality into the freedom of his dreams. No more worries about asthma, special reading class, or his parents' fighting-just sky. But Jake can't simply fly away. There's his little sister, Cassie, to tell stories to when the night sounds become frightening, amazing facts to learn from his best friend Luke, and a safe place-Dragon's Nest-to build in the backyard. This beautifully written middle grade novel tells the courageous story of Jake-a night watchman-a protector in the truest sense of the word who finds hope in crickets, friends, teachers, and dreams.
This exercise routine hosted by professional dancer and fitness expert Barbi Powers leads viewers through a complete ballet and classical dance inspired workout, designed to increase core strength, balance, and grace, all while teaching viewers the most popular poses and moves in modern dance and ballet. ~ Cammila Albertson, Rovi
One day, a little cricket is born and meets a big cricket who chirps his welcome. But the little cricket cannot make a sound. The cricket meets many insects, but it isn't until he meets a beautiful female cricket that he can finally chirp "hello!" Excerpt: Hello! whispered a praying mantis, scraping its huge front legs together. The little cricket wanted to answer, so he rubbed his wings together. But nothing happened. Not a sound.
After Chester lands, in the Times Square subway station, he makes himself comfortable in a nearby newsstand. There, he has the good fortune to make three new friends: Mario, a little boy whose parents run the falling newsstand, Tucker, a fast-talking Broadway mouse, and Tucker's sidekick, Harry the Cat. The escapades of these four friends in bustling New York City makes for lively listening and humorous entertainment. And somehow, they manage to bring a taste of success to the nearly bankrupt newsstand. Join Chester Cricket and his friends in this classic children's book by George Selden, with illustrations by Garth Williams. The Cricket in Times Square is a 1961 Newbery Honor Book.
Intended as a literary study guide with activities designed for group and individual projects. Includes a book summary, author information, vocabulary builders, comprehension and discussion questions and cross-curricular activities. Some pages are reproducible for classroom use.
Listening to Crickets is the story of a grandfather telling his grandson about his life as a sharecropper in Mississippi and his escape from sharecropping to a better way of life. In the process of telling this story the grandfather imparts lessons about life, love, faith, hope, angels and God. It is based on a true story as told to me by my mother. The names of all family members involved are true. The name Gilmore was substituted for the name of the actual land owner.
From the bestselling author of The Mountain Between Us comes the moving story of a man with a painful past, a little girl with a doubtful future, and a shared journey toward healing for both of their hearts. It begins on the shaded town square in a sleepy Southern town. A spirited seven-year-old has a brisk business at her lemonade stand. But the little girl’s pretty yellow dress can’t quite hide the ugly scar on her chest. Her latest customer, a bearded stranger, drains his cup and heads to his car, his mind on a boat he's restoring at a nearby lake. The stranger understands more about the scar than he wants to admit. And the beat-up bread truck careening around the corner with its radio blaring is about to change the trajectory of both their lives. Before it's over, they'll both know there are painful reasons why crickets cry . . . and that miracles lurk around unexpected corners. “Charming characters and twists that keep the pages turning.” —Southern Living A Southern Living Book of the Month selection Stand-alone contemporary Christian fiction (approx. 85,000 words) Also by Charles Martin: The Water Keeper, The Mountain Between Us, Send Down the Rain, and Chasing Fireflies
The Songs of Insects is a celebration of the chirps, trills, and scrapes of seventy-seven common species of crickets, katydids, locusts, and cicadas native to eastern and central North America. The photographs in this book will surprise and delight all who behold them. Many of the insects' colors are brilliant and jewellike, and they are displayed beautifully here. This book and accompanying CD provide a unique doorway to enjoyment of the insect concerts and solos that dominate our natural soundscape during the summer and autumn. The text includes information on the natural history of insects, identification tips, and an appreciation of insect song. A seventy-minute audio CD features high-quality recordings of the songs of all species, track-keyed to the information presented in the text.
Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Winner of the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award “[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animal groups and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets, and shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just, and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act.
