This beloved Newbery Medal-winning book is the first of five books in Patricia MacLachlan's chapter book series about the Witting family. Set in the late nineteenth century and told from young Anna's point of view, Sarah, Plain and Tall tells the story of how Sarah Elisabeth Wheaton comes from Maine to the prairie to answer Papa's advertisement for a wife and mother. Before Sarah arrives, Anna and her younger brother Caleb wait and wonder. Will Sarah be nice? Will she sing? Will she stay? This children's literature classic is perfect for fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books, historical fiction, and timeless stories using rich and beautiful language. Sarah, Plain and Tall gently explores themes of abandonment, loss and love. This anniversary edition includes author Patricia MacLachlan's Newbery speech, a discussion guide, and a reading list. Read the rest of the Sarah books by Patricia MacLachlan: Skylark, Caleb's Story, More Perfect than the Moon, and Grandfather's Dance.
A novel in blank verse by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, published in 1857. The first-person narrative, which comprises some 11,000 lines, tells of the heroine's childhood and youth in Italy and England, her self-education in her father's hidden library, and her successful pursuit of a literary career. Initially resisting a marriage proposal by the philanthropist Romney Leigh, Aurora later surrenders her independence and weds her faithful suitor, whose own idealism has also since been tempered by experience. Aurora's career, Romney's social theories, and a melodramatic subplot concerning forced prostitution elicit the author's vivid observations on the importance of poetry, the individual's responsibility to society, and the victimization of women.
M.C.'s family is rooted to the slopes of Sarah's Mountain. His great-grandmother escaped to the mountain as a runaway slave and made it her home. It bears her name, and her descendants have lived there ever since. When M.C. looks out from atop the gleaming forty-foot pole that his father planted in the mountain for him -- a gift for swimming the Ohio River -- he sees only the rolling hills and shady valleys that stretch out for miles in front of him. And M.C. knows why his father never wants his family to leave. But when M.C. looks behind, he sees only the massive remains of strip mining -- a gigantic heap of dirt and debris perched threateningly on a cliff above his home. And M.C. knows they cannot stay. So when two strangers arrive in the hills, one bringing the promise of fame in the world beyond the mountains and the other the revelation that choice and action both lie within his grasp, M.C.'s life is changed -- forever. In 1974, Virginia Hamilton dazzled the world with her powerful account of a young man's coming of age trapped between heritage of his mountain home and his desires for the future. Twenty-five years later, M.C. Higgins, the Great remains the only novel ever to win the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award. It is truly an American classic.
Flannery O'Connor's haunting first novel of faith, false prophets, and redemptive wisdom Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes's existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.
Based on a harrowing true story, the groundbreaking #1 New York Times bestseller, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, is a story of love, power, sex, and death during the sexual revolution of the 1970s. Theresa Dunn spends her days as a schoolteacher whose rigid Catholic upbringing has taught her to find happiness by finding the right man. But at night, her resentment of those social mores and fear of attachment lead her into the alcohol-and-drug fueled underworld of singles' bars, where she engages in a pattern of dangerous sexual activity that threatens her safety and, ultimately, her life. Looking for Mr. Goodbar is "uncommonly well-written and well-constructed fiction, easily accessible, but full of insight and intelligence and illumination" (The New York Times Book Review). With more than four million copies in print, this seminal novel--a lightning rod for controversy upon its publication--has become a cultural touchstone that has forever influenced our perception of social rebellion and sexual empowerment.
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