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Snowflake Bentley |
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| Author: |
Jacqueline Briggs Martin |
 Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0395861624 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 24 hours. |
Book Review
Most children are captivated by snow, but how many go on to make it their lifework? This beautiful biography, winner of the 1999 Caldecott Medal, tells the true story of a Vermont farm boy who was mesmerized by snowflakes. Wilson Bentley was fascinated by the six-sided frozen phenomena, and once he acquired a microscope with a camera, his childhood preoccupation took on a more scientific leaning. Bentley spent his life taking countless exquisite photographs (many that are still used in nature photography today), examining the tiny crystals and their delicate, mathematical structures. Jacqueline Briggs Martin tells this tale with simple, graceful prose that will engage children's imaginations. Edifying and snowflake-scattered sidebars offer more information about Bentley's methods and snowflake science. The artwork of Mary... |
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Here Comes Darrell |
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| Author: |
Leda Schubert |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0618416056 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 4–A delightful tale about seasonal life in northern New England. The story opens in winter as Darrell layers himself in long underwear, wool socks, and flannel shirts, readying himself to plow his neighbors' driveways. In springtime, the man and his dog deliver firewood in a dump truck, battling with mud season; in summertime, when the black flies are biting, he uses his backhoe on excavation jobs. Children will be captivated by the details of Darrell's labors, his machinery, and Schubert's imagery. When his truck is deep in the snow, the man rocks the truck back and forth, back and forth. The tires swirl, the engine whines, and the back end swings…. As he moves through the seasons and his chores, he procrastinates about fixing his own ailing barn. The book ends with a roof... |
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From the Cook's Garden |
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| Author: |
Ellen Ogden |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060008415 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 3-4 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
Plowing a field similar to that cultivated by last year's Local Flavors, by Deborah Madison (who provides the foreword here), Ogden extols the pleasures of preparing fresh-from-the-garden meals. Co-owner with husband Shepherd of The Cook's Garden, a popular mail-order seed company, Ogden emphasizes the quality, taste and variety of produce now available from home and farmers' markets. Her recipes exhibit a deft hand in building dishes with complementary flavors, as in Zesty Lemon Cucumber Soup or Herbed Ricotta Gnocchi with Spinach-Arugula Pesto. Ogden really shines with her section on salads, which includes the unusual Warm Spinach and Strawberry Salad and Grilled Radicchio and Gorgonzola Salad. Although the focus is solidly on vegetables, herbs and fruits, non-vegetarian dishes range from the simple Baked Scrod... |
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Four Seasons of Mary Azarian |
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| Author: |
Lilias Macbean Hart |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
1567921205 |
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From Booklist
Mary Azarian, recipient of the 1999 Caldecott Medal for the artwork in Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, works in wood. In her quiet Vermont studio, she coaxes form and feeling out of soft pine, bringing to life the beauty of the landscape she sees and imagines around her. This arresting retrospective displays 50 gorgeous, often full-page reproductions of her hand-colored woodcuts and an equal number of prints in black and white. Lilias Hart, another Vermonter, contributes the brief accompanying text, a mix of the lyrical and the concrete that stands up well to the sturdy, roughly textured pictures. Azarian's work is, perhaps, most appealing when it reflects the homey details of daily life through the year: a cornucopia of summer vegetables, children sledding down a hill, laundry flapping in the... |
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The Unsigned Valentine |
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| Author: |
Johanna Hurwitz |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060560533 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 3-4 days. |
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-7–Emma Meade, first encountered in Faraway Summer (Morrow, 1998) and Dear Emma (HarperCollins, 2002), continues to share details of family life on a farm in Vermont. Her journal entries begin during a drought in September, 1911, when her father hires a dowser, and end the following April, around the time of the sinking of the Titanic. Emma likes her brother Eddie's handsome friend, Cole, but when he comes by the house with some cider, her father tells him that the 15-year-old is too young to be courted. Emma feels embarrassed, and worries that pretty Josie Wheeler will win Cole's affections. Then, during a February choir practice, Emma gets an unsigned valentine that she guesses is from Cole. In a conveniently exciting ending, he rescues her when she falls into the river during a flood.... |
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Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel |
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| Author: |
Leslie Connor |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0618305645 |
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From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3-Instead of a pretty keepsake as a reminder of her homeland, the practical Miss Bridie selects a shovel to accompany her to a new life in America in 1856. Once in New York City, she uses it to plant flowers, which she sells to supplement her income from the millinery shop where she works. The implement is employed in a variety of ways over her lifetime, including clearing a pond for ice skating, digging postholes for fences on the farm she shares with her new husband, planting seeds for an apple orchard, and adding coal to the stove to keep her children warm. Azarian's accomplished woodcuts and watercolor illustrations adroitly convey the determination of a strong woman who lives a good, but often not easy, life. Through one or two sentences per page, the story shows her fortitude as she... |
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The Unsigned Valentine |
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| Author: |
Johanna Hurwitz |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060560541 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-7–Emma Meade, first encountered in Faraway Summer (Morrow, 1998) and Dear Emma (HarperCollins, 2002), continues to share details of family life on a farm in Vermont. Her journal entries begin during a drought in September, 1911, when her father hires a dowser, and end the following April, around the time of the sinking of the Titanic. Emma likes her brother Eddie's handsome friend, Cole, but when he comes by the house with some cider, her father tells him that the 15-year-old is too young to be courted. Emma feels embarrassed, and worries that pretty Josie Wheeler will win Cole's affections. Then, during a February choir practice, Emma gets an unsigned valentine that she guesses is from Cole. In a conveniently exciting ending, he rescues her when she falls into the river during a flood.... |
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When the Moon is Full |
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| Author: |
Penny Pollock |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0316713171 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
Azarian's (Snowflake Bentley) hand-painted woodcut prints provide evocative, haunting nature scenes for Pollock's (The Turkey Girl) eloquent poems in honor of each month's full moon. Each new spread reveals a spectacular nighttime vista; readers may well turn the pages as they would a calendar, pausing over the beauty of one scene, anticipating the next. Snow in February yields to sap buckets in March; raccoons feast on corn under the August moon while squirrels gather acorns on September nights. The poems vary in rhythm and mood, and are often arresting in their simplicity: "Lilies of the valley/ ring each silent bell/ when May's bright moon/ lightens up the dell"; in July, "Young bucks/ in the hayfield,/ antlers held aloft./ Moonbeams slanting down,/ show them velvet soft." Traditional Native American names for... |
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Llewellyn's 2005 Herbal Almanac |
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| Author: |
Michael Fallon (Editor) |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0738701394 |
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| Availability: |
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Book Description
Wildcraft in Your Window Box Powerful, wild, and magical, herbs are among nature's most versatile plants. Whether you have a bountiful backyard garden or simply a kitchen window box, you can enjoy the magical and practical benefits of herbs. Dig into this eclectic collection of articles on herb lore and the herbal arts, and you'll uncover tips on growing and gathering these marvelous plants, and using them for cooking, beauty, health, magic, and crafts. With more than twenty-five articles by nationally recognized herbalists, Llewellyn's Herbal Almanac offers you many ways to practice herbal wisdom, including: Starting an Herbal Garden by Pearlmoon The Aromatic Treasures of India by Stephanie Rose Bird The Lore and Magic of Honeysuckle by Tammy Sullivan Herbs for Menopause by Leeda Alleyn Pacotti Savory Herbs... |
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Barn Cat |
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| Author: |
Carol P. Saul |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0316761133 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 3-4 days. |
Book Review
"Barn cat at the red barn door, / Barn cat, what are you looking for?" So rings the playful refrain of this feline frolic through the farmyard (and through numbers 1 to 10). Readers are presented with a cat's-eye view of 1 green grasshopper, 2 brown crickets, 3 black-and-orange butterflies, all the way up to 10 sparrows. These distractions would seem compelling enough to a regular cat, but, for some reason, not to barn cat. Young readers will love counting the creatures in the bold, hand-colored woodcuts, which illustrator Mary Azarian created with a 19th-century hand press. And there's plenty to admire in the large, striped barn cat, whose careful expressions are clearly the work of an avid cat observer. Author Carol Saul's nimble verse trips and trills along the pages, buoying the cheerful audience--until the dramatic... |
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Faraway Summer |
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| Author: |
Johanna Hurwitz |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0380732564 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
The 120-year-old Fresh Air Fund, which gives free rural vacations to inner-city children, here provides readers the chance to explore not one but two period settings. In the summer of 1910, 12-year-old Hadassah (Dossi) Rabinowitz, born in Russia and now orphaned, leaves the small room she and her sister share on New York City's Lower East Side to spend two weeks with a Vermont farm family. She brings the blank book she has won for "best achievement" in her seventh-grade class, and her entries comprise the narrative. Hurwitz (author of the Class Clown books) does not attempt to ape a 12-year-old's writingAthe chapters are replete with dialogue and traditional exposition. The Meades have never met a Jewish person before but are open-minded. One daughter likes Dossi immediately; the other, standoffish at first,... |
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A Christmas like Helen's |
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| Author: |
Natalie Kinsey-Warnock |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0618231374 |
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From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 4–The author tells contemporary children what Christmas would have been like for her grandmother, living on a farm in Vermont before there were cars, electricity, or telephones. The engaging narrative and Azarian's fine, hand-colored woodcuts combine to raise the story above many similar nostalgic accounts of holidays past. Best suited for reading aloud, this gorgeous book might inspire grown-ups to share their own family stories with the children in their care.–V. W. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* K-Gr. 2. Kinsey-Warnock and Caldecott Medal-winner Azarian return to the Vermont landscape they mined in From Dawn Till Dusk (2002) to... |
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From Dawn till Dusk |
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| Author: |
Natalie Kinsey-Warnock |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Library Binding |
| ISBN: |
0618186557 |
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| Availability: |
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From Publishers Weekly
As her brothers and sisters argue about where they want to move when they grow up, the narrator asks her siblings to think of all the things they'd miss. When her brothers retort, "Who'd miss sugaring?" Kinsey-Warnock (A Farm of Her Own) describes the steps involved in collecting the sap and making it into syrup while Azarian's (Snowflake Bentley) full-spread woodcut illustration shows the family in the sugarhouse, snacking on aunt Eunice's doughnuts as they wait for the sap to boil. Season by season, the author (who bases the volume on her own memories) recounts the activities they share-looking for newborn kittens in the haymow, rescuing neighbors' trucks during the "mud season"-each one conveying a sense of family and community togetherness. The brothers' quips keep the narrative from becoming sentimental... |
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Faraway Summer |
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| Author: |
Johanna Hurwitz |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0613284801 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 3-5 weeks. We cannot guarantee availability of special order titles because publishers may run out of stock. We will notify you in 3-4 weeks if we are unable to get this title for you. |
From Publishers Weekly
The 120-year-old Fresh Air Fund, which gives free rural vacations to inner-city children, here provides readers the chance to explore not one but two period settings. In the summer of 1910, 12-year-old Hadassah (Dossi) Rabinowitz, born in Russia and now orphaned, leaves the small room she and her sister share on New York City's Lower East Side to spend two weeks with a Vermont farm family. She brings the blank book she has won for "best achievement" in her seventh-grade class, and her entries comprise the narrative. Hurwitz (author of the Class Clown books) does not attempt to ape a 12-year-old's writingAthe chapters are replete with dialogue and traditional exposition. The Meades have never met a Jewish person before but are open-minded. One daughter likes Dossi immediately; the other, standoffish at first,... |
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Where the Deer Were |
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| Author: |
Kate Barnes |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
1567921175 |
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| Availability: |
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A Gardener's Alphabet |
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| Author: |
Mary Azarian |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0618033807 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 2-True, there are great numbers of alphabet books, but when they are works of art they rise beyond teaching the letters. A Gardener's Alphabet is one of these. Azarian leads readers into the book with a two-page introduction that explains the importance of gardens in her life. The alphabet then begins, with one full-page illustration for each letter. The featured letter does not stand alone, but begins one word: "ARBOR," "BULBS," "COMPOST." The words are a mixture of nouns ("LAWN ORNAMENTS," "QUEEN ANNE'S LACE"); verbs ("DIG," "NIBBLE"); and types of gardens ("JAPANESE GARDEN," "KITCHEN GARDEN"). Words that may be unfamiliar to most children are not explained, e.g., "TOPIARY" and "XERISCAPE." The stunning black woodcuts, hand tinted with strong watercolors, are full of action and detail,... |
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