Whether curled up on a sofa with a good mystery, lounging by the pool with a steamy romance, or brooding over a classic novel, Americans love to read. Despite the distractions of modern living, nothing quite satisfies many individuals more than a really good book. And regardless of how one accesses that book—through a tablet, a smart phone, or a good, old-fashioned hardcover—those choices have been tallied for decades. In Bestseller: A Century of America’s Favorite Books, Robert McParland looks at the reading tastes of a nation—from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Through extensive research, McParland provides context for the literature that appealed to the masses, from low-brow potboilers like Forever Amber to Pulitzer-Prize winners such as To Kill a Mockingbird. Decade by decade, McParland discusses the books that resonated with the American public and shows how current events and popular culture shaped the reading habits of millions. Profiles of authors with frequent appearances—from Ernest Hemingway to Danielle Steel—are included, along with standout titles that readers return to year after year. A snapshot of America and its love of reading through the decades, this volume informs and entertains while also providing a handy reference of the country’s most popular books. For those wanting to learn more about the history of American culture through its reading habits, Bestseller: A Century of America’s Favorite Books is a must-read.
Superheroes meet social justice as the wildly popular webcomic comes to print, blending action with relatable young-adult drama and remarkably thoughtful philosophy. This full-color collection features over 300 pages of the ongoing series plus a brand-new short story. Alison Green used to be a superhero. With unlimited strength and invulnerability, she fought crime with a group of other teens under the alter ego Mega Girl. All that changed after an encounter with Menace, her mind-reading arch-enemy, who showed her evidence of a sinister conspiracy that made battling giant robots seem suddenly unimportant. Now Alison is going to college in New York City, trying to find ways to actually help the world while making friends and getting to class on time. It's impossible to escape the past, however, and trouble comes in the form of mysterious murders, ex-teammates with a grudge, robots with a strange sense of humor, an inconvenient crush, a cantankerous professor, and many different kinds of people who think they know the best way to be a hero.
This book explores modern representations of the Black Death, a medieval pandemic. The concept of cultural memory is used to examine the ways in which journalists, writers of fiction, scholars and others referred to, described and explained the Black Death from around 1800 onwards. The distant medieval past was often used to make sense of aspects of the present, from the cholera pandemics of the nineteenth-century to the climate crisis of the early twenty-first century. A series of overlapping myths related to the Black Death emerged based only in part on historical evidence. Cultural memory circulates in a variety of media from the scholarly article to the video game and online video clip, and the connections and differences between mediated representations of the Black Death are considered. The Black Death is one of the most well-known aspects of the medieval world, and this study of its associated memories and myths reveals the depth and complexity of interactions between the distant and recent past.
Read widely and read often - create a classroom environment where independent reading thrives Independent reading is more than just "drop everything and read" – it is a gateway to writing, critical thinking, discussion, and deeper learning. Author Jarred Amato, an accomplished middle and high school English teacher and founder of Project LIT Community, believes in the power of independent reading not only to turn around the reading attitudes of students but also to help them achieve huge gains in all areas of literacy, learning, and civic engagement. Many teachers have pushed aside independent reading in the time crunch to teach all the content and skills in the curriculum — or because of pressure to stay true to a traditional literary canon. Instead of looking at it as either/or, Just Read It shows teachers how to make independent reading "yes, and." Dr. Amato’s Read and WRAP (write, reflect, analyze, participate) framework helps teachers cultivate meaningful learning experiences with daily dedication of independent reading time, followed by writing, reflection, conversation, and community-building lessons and activities. With thoughtful, student-centered structures and strategies to sustain independent reading success, this book Provides detailed insights on transforming the principles of access, choice, time, and community into actions Shows how to support student interests and varied reading levels Offers ready-to-go activities to initiate Read and WRAP routines at the start of the school year, keep momentum going, and finish the year strong to ensure continued literacy growth Demonstrates how to leverage student feedback to fine-tune the Read and WRAP routines Discusses various options for incorporating independent and whole-class novels into the curriculum Offers a game plan to "level up" IR, including how to launch and lead a Project LIT chapter We live in a time when choosing what we read is critically important, and this book offers all the tools teachers need to guide students along the path to true literacy. Just Read It is perfect for anyone who believes in the power of books to change students’ lives and nurture a life-long love for reading.
Equipping Space Cadets: Primary Science Fiction for Young Children argues for the benefits and potential of “primary science fiction,” or science fiction for children under twelve years old. Science fiction for children is often disregarded due to common misconceptions of childhood. When children are culturally portrayed as natural and simple, they seem like a poor audience for the complex scientific questions brought up by the best science fiction. The books and the children who read them tell another story. Using three empirical studies and over 350 children’s books including If I Had a Robot Dog, Bugs in Space, and Commander Toad in Space, Equipping Space Cadets presents interdisciplinary evidence that science fiction and children are compatible after all. Primary science fiction literature includes many high-quality books that cleverly utilize the features of children’s literature formats in order to fit large science fiction questions into small packages. In the best of these books, authors make science fiction questions accessible and relevant to children of various reading levels and from diverse backgrounds and identities. Equipping Space Cadets does not stop with literary analysis, but also presents the voices of real children and practitioners. The book features three studies: a survey of teachers and librarians, quantitative analysis of lending records from school libraries across the United States, and coded read-aloud sessions with elementary school students. The results reveal how children are interested in and capable of reading science fiction, but it is the adults, including the most well-intentioned librarians and teachers, who hinder children's engagement with the genre due to their own preconceptions about the genre and children.
In this extraordinary book, USA Today Bestselling author Marion Kummerow weaves a story of strength, heartbreak, and coming of age in the Third Reich. 17-year-old Lotte is headstrong and stubborn, impulsive and outspoken, and an avowed enemy to injustice. In Nazi Germany, this can cost you your life. Sent to the countryside by her mother to escape the worst of the war, Lotte longs to return to Berlin. Bored and lonely, she seeks an escape from the tedious daily routine of her remote hamlet. When four Jewish children turn to her for help, she finally finds a purpose: protect the children and help them to escape. Her act of humanity will cost her and those she loves, dearly. Because there are worse things than boredom. There is Ravensbrück. In the notorious concentration camp, girls die. Only women survive. "...a wonderfully engaging tale of resistance and resilience that echoes across the decades." "The truth must be told, and never forgotten." A heart wrenching novel of courage – perfect for readers of The Book Thief, Diary of Anne Frank, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Topics: Berlin, World War Two, WWII, German Literature, Historical Fiction, Resistance, European Literature, Heartbreaking Story of Love and Redemption, Jewish and Holocaust History, Concentration Camps, Espionage, Nazi Party, Gestapo, Holocaust, Forbidden Love, rebellious teenager, rescuing children, high stakes survival story, teen holocaust fiction Perfect for fans of Ann Bennett, Lucinda Riley, Dinah Jefferies, Victoria Hislop, Marius Gabriel, Tracy Chevalier, Fiona Valpy, Deborah Swift, Jenny Ashcroft, Petra Durst-Benning, Nicola Cornick, Janet MacLeod Trotter, Jean Grainger, Clare Flynn, Kate Furnivall, Kristin Hannah. Sharon Maas, Anna Jacobs, Helen Carey, Catherine Hokin, Sarah Lark, Tania Crosse, Rhys Bowen, Angela Petch, Hazel Gaynor, Roberta Kagan, Anna Stuart, Kate Hewitt, Ellie Midwood, Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger, Eoin Dempsey, Suzanne Goldring
There She Goes Again interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart,There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.
In 1977, Marcia Muller invaded the all-male domain of detective literature and within a decade was established as the mother of the female hardboiled private eye. She is now the author of four detective series, including the critically acclaimed Sharon McCone series of more than two dozen novels. This collection critically assesses Marcia Muller's writing and reevaluates current critical views on women's detective fiction in general. In the first two of the book's three sections, essays explore Muller's engagement with modern and postmodern feminism, ethnicity, and the socially underprivileged. The third section focuses on one of Muller's major themes, the trauma of history. Drawing from the feminist, historicist, mythic, psychoanalytic, and cultural approaches found in all three sections, the conclusion offers a panoramic perspective on Muller's accomplishments.
Desperately searching for a way to recover her memory, a young American woman on the run must unlock a terrible secret from her past Discovered in a ditch by the side of a country road in France, Eve has only good American dentistry and a ferry ticket scribbled with Arabic letters to suggest her identity. That, and a bullet wound in her brain that she miraculously survives, even as it destroys her memory. Only a few scattered violent images remain—or are they dreams?—along with one undeniable physical fact: she has had a child. When the nuns who have sheltered her for a year are brutally massacred, Eve realizes that whoever she was in her past life, she had powerful enemies. Just half a step ahead of her pursuers, she lights out for Morocco in an attempt to retrace her steps and discover her past. Away from the convent, she begins to discover things that startle her—among them, her capacity for violence and her facility with guns. Was she a spy? Who is the dying man in her nightmares? As she searches through spice-scented souks and glamorous nightclubs for clues to her past, she has to figure out who is after her, and why—before it's too late. Within scenes of heart-stopping terror, Jenny Siler's lyrical writing and memorable images stand out. As Marilyn Stasio said of Easy Money in The New York Times Book Review, Siler's is "a voice that gets your attention like a rifle shot."
