A twelve-year-old boy sees a UFO in a neighbour's suburban backyard during the early Sixties. He then decides to devote his life to his vision. By the mid-Seventies, he is a published and somewhat stoned-out science fiction writer. Slowly, but, surely his fiction, his reality and his sexuality merge into one ongoing hallucination of self as he descends into the gritty mind-set of a crack addict.
Much literature for children appears in the form of series, in which familiar characters appear in book after book. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, authors began to write science fiction series for children. These early series generally had plots that revolved around inventions developed by the protagonist. But it was the development and use of rocket and atomic science during World War II that paved the way for interesting and exciting new themes, conflicts, and plots. While much has been written about the early juvenile science fiction series, particularly the Tom Swift books, comparatively little has been written about children's science fiction series published since 1945. This book provides a broad overview of this previously neglected topic. The volume offers a critical look at the history, themes, characters, settings, and construction of post-1945 juvenile science fiction series, including the A.I. Gang, the Animorphs, Commander Toad, Danny Dunn, Dragonfall Five, the Magic School Bus, and Space Cat. The book begins with an introductory history of juvenile science fiction since 1945, with chapters then devoted to particular topics. Some of these topics include the role of aliens and animals, attitudes toward humor, the absence and presence of science, and the characterization of women. A special feature is an appendix listing the various series. In addition, the volume provides extensive bibliographical information.
Designed to aid adults—parents, teachers, librarians—in selecting from the best of recent children's literature, this guide provides 1,400 reviews of books published between 1979 and 1984. This volume carries on the tradition established by Zena Sutherland's two earlier collections covering the periods from 1966 to 1972 and 1973 to 1978. Her 1973 edition of The Best in Children's Books was cited by the American School Board Journal as one of the outstanding books of the year in education.
1975 Kenny fell in love with motorcycles; it was his gateway to freedom. Motorcycles were a big part of his life, and in 2008 a near fatal motorcycle vs car accident changed his life forever. This book details the events of his life and struggles with rehabilitation.
Gather up your wooden stakes, your blood-covered hatchets, and all the skeletons in the darkest depths of your closet, and prepare for a horrifying adventure into the darkest corners of comics history. Dark Horse Comics further corners the market on high quality horror storytelling with one of the most anticipated releases of the decade, a hardcover archive collection of legendary Creepy Magazine. This groundbreaking material turned the world of graphic storytelling on its head in the early 1960s, as phenomenal young artists like Bernie Wrightson and Neal Adams reached new artistic heights with their fascinating explorations of classic and modern horror stories. *Brilliant, classic Creepy stories from 1964-1966 raised from the dead after twenty-five years. *Featuring work by such comics luminaries as Joe Orlando, Al Williamson, Alex Toth, and Frank Frazetta. * Archive editions of Creepy will be the cornerstone of any comic-book library. *Volume One reprints the first five terrifying issues of the magazine's original run, reprinted in the original magazine size!
Robots That Talk and Listen provides a forward-looking examination of speech and language in robots from technical, functional, and social perspectives. Contributors address cultural foundations as well as the linguistic skills and technologies that robots need to function effectively in real-world settings. Among the most difficult and complex is the ability to understand and use language. Speech-enabled automata are already serving as interactive toys, teacher’s aides, and research assistants. These robots will soon be joined by personal companions, industrial co-workers, and military support automata. The social impact of these and other robots extends well beyond the specific tasks they perform. Contributors tackle the most knotty of those issues, notably acceptance of advanced, speech-enabled robots and developing ethical and moral controls for robots. Topics in this book include: • Language and Beyond: The True Meaning of “Speech Enabled” • Robots in Myth and Media • Enabling Robots to Converse • Language Learning by Automata • Handling Noisy Settings • Empirical Studies of Robots in Real-World Environments • Acceptance of Intelligent Robots • Managing Robots that Can Lie and Deceive • Envisioning a World Shared with Intelligent Robots
Author James T. Charnock shares the best from his thirty-plus years' experience teaching language arts in The Creative Teacher, a teachers' guide filled with student activities in writing, public speaking, researching, dramatizing, and more. This is the second edition of the 2005 publication, A Non-Workbook, Non-Textbook Approach to Teaching Language Arts. Charnock's clarity, energetic style, and practical approach make this book a worthy addition to your teaching library. You will be impressed with how simple and fun teaching language arts can be when compared with the onerous and complicated methods propagated in the past. About the Author James T. Charnock, MEd, is a veteran teacher of more than thirty years at the elementary and junior high levels. For most of those years he was a certified reading-language arts specialist. In addi-tion to creating educationally oriented market products, Charnock has been a feature writer/children's book reviewer for The Reading Teacher, a national reading journal, and has served on the editorial board of Language Arts, a national English journal. Former top students have honored Charnock four times in Who's Who Among America's Teachers. He has also been listed in Who's Who in the East. The Creative Teacher is Charnock's second edition to his 2005 publication, A Non-Workbook, Non-Textbook Approach to Teaching Language Arts. In addition, Charnock has published Mt. Horeb: The Lit-tle White Schoolhouse on Little Deer Creek, about the history and memories of one of Maryland's last one-room schoolhouses, where he started his education. Charnock lives in a suburb of Philadelphia, where he con-tinues as a freelance writer, often serving as a seminar speaker on the teaching of writing and classroom art.
Things have been pretty stable at the Blades of Heart Guild. Things change, however, when Folami gets a message from an old friend. He must go back to Centrica, a land torn by war, and now must finish what he started. With his friends along the way, will Folami be able to end this war once and for all? In the sequel to Book of the Sage and book 2 of the Umbrus Chronicles, this book continues the journies of Joakim Umbrus, Folami Ari, and Alexis Kokkinos in the wild world of Neoria, where magic and technology rule the world.
