Little fibs can lead to big trouble! Julian hates bicycles. He thinks they are boring and stupid . . . and maybe just a little bit scary. But his best friend, Gloria, has just got a new bike, and all she wants is to go cycling with him. Julian needs to think of an excuse, and fast. Surely anything is better than braving a bicycle. Even if it means sweeping floors, weeding the garden and doing chores all summer . . .
Ann Cameron's beloved and bestselling chapter book series about Julian, his brother Huey, and his friend Gloria all begins right here! Julian has a big imagination. And he is great at telling stories. He can make people—especially his younger brother, Huey—believe just about anything. Like the story about the cats that come in the mail. Or the fig leaves that make you grow tall if you eat them off the tree. But some stories can lead to a heap of trouble, and that's exactly where Julian and Huey end up! This book has been selected as a Common Core State Standards Text Exemplar (Grades 2–3, Stories) in Appendix B. "You have to go a long way these days to find a book that leaves you feeling as happy as this one." —The New York Times "There's a glow here that's hard to resist." —Booklist
"If Julian has not already won readers' hearts with his [earlier] exploits, he will here when he tries to find out his father's secret dream for a birthday present. Surprised at hearing his father mumble 'two snakes,' Julian duly catches and presents them, only to discover that snakes are his father's recurring nightmare. Cameron's style is elegantly smooth and the characters come alive through easy dialogue and involving action."--Bulletin, Center for Children's Books.
Bestselling classic The Stories Julian Tells was just the beginning! Get ready for more of Julian's wonderful imagination in the Julian's World chapter book series! Julian isn’t afraid of lions or tigers, but he is scared of . . . bicycles? Julian’s friend Gloria has a brand-new bicycle. She makes riding it look easy, but Julian is scared. Bicycles are shiny, whizzing, wobbly things. And he’s not ready to ride one. But he can’t tell Gloria he’s scared, so he tells a fib instead. He almost gets away with it . . . until the fib backfires and he’s got an even bigger problem! "This is a perfectly constructed young reader, with neat turns in the plot, a loving family, and engaging dialogue." —Kirkus Reviews A Library of Congress Children's Book of the Year
If you loved The Stories Julian Tells, just wait until you meet his younger brother, Huey! This beloved and bestselling chapter book series is all about family, imagination, and friendship! It isn't easy being Julian's younger brother. When Huey has bad dreams, Julian says his are scarier. When Huey wants to study animal tracks, Julian says he's too young. But Huey isn't a baby. He's an adventurer, a chef, a tracker, and a scout. And he's about to show Julian—and the world—all that he can do.
From London to Ireland during the 1920s, this glorious, gripping, and richly textured story takes us to the heart of the remarkable real-life story of the Guinness Girls—perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and Julian Fellowes' Belgravia. Descendants of the founder of the Guinness beer empire, they were the toast of 1920s high society, darlings of the press, with not a care in the world. But Felicity knows better. Sent to live with them as a child because her mother could no longer care for her, she grows up as the sisters’ companion. Both an outsider and a part of the family, she witnesses the complex lives upstairs and downstairs, sees the compromises and sacrifices beneath the glamorous surface. Then, at a party one summer’s evening, something happens that sends shock waves through the entire household. Inspired by a remarkable true story and fascinating real events, The Glorious Guinness Girls is an unforgettable novel about the haves and have-nots, one that will make you ask if where you find yourself is where you truly belong.
Julian to the rescue! Grown-ups aren’t very good at solving crimes. That’s why it’s time for Julian, Huey and Gloria to take matters into their own hands. The crime-busting kids go on a mission to track down wanted criminals. They have a special motto, a secret code and plenty of plans. All they need now is their first crook . . .
Gloria is best friends with Julian and his little brother Huey, and she has as much to say as they do. There's the parrot that ruins the Valentine for her mother; Huey's dog, who needs to be cured of his squirrel obsession; and what happens when classmate Latisha tricks Gloria, Julian, and Huey-but they don't know until it's too late! Fans of Ann Cameron's best-selling chapter books about Julian and Huey will love Gloria, too. "This is where peace begins-in an ordinary neighborhood where children learn to address their problems with the help of wise adults who offer them good counsel while respecting the children enough to let them work out their own solutions . . . . Sparkles with humor." (The Horn Book)
From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending comes an extraordinary fictional portrait of the relentlessly fascinating Russian musician and composer Dmitri Shostakovich and a stunning meditation on the meaning of art and its place in society. • “Brilliant…. As elegantly constructed as a concerto.” —NPR 1936: Dmitri Shostakovich, just thirty years old, reckons with the first of three conversations with power that will irrevocably shape his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has suddenly denounced the young composer’s latest opera. Certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), Shostakovich reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, his daughter—all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, he will twice more be swept up by the forces of despotism: coerced into praising the Soviet state at a cultural conference in New York in 1948, and finally bullied into joining the Party in 1960. All the while, he is compelled to constantly weigh the specter of power against the integrity of his music.
Meet fourteen-year-old Gary. A self-described "tree-toad,"a sly and endearing geek, Gary has many unwieldy passions, chief among them his cousin Kate, his Underwood typewriter and the soft-porn masterpiece, High School Orgies. The folks of Lake Wobegon don't have much patience for a kid's ungodly obsessions, and so Gary manages to filter the hormonal earthquake that is puberty and his hopeless devotion to glamorous, rebellious Kate through his fantastic yarns. With every marvellous story he moves a few steps closer to becoming a writer. And when Kate gets herself into trouble with the local baseball star, Gary also experiences the first pangs of a broken heart. With his trademark gift for treading "a line delicate as a cobweb between satire and sentiment"(Cleveland Plain Dealer), Garrison Keillor brilliantly captures a newly minted post-war America and delivers an unforgettable comedy about a writer coming of age in the rural Midwest.
