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How to Eat Fried Worms |
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| Author: |
Thomas Rockwell |
 Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0440445450 |
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Book Review
How to Eat Fried Worms has happily repulsed children since its original publication in 1973. Now youngsters can experience this classic story in a whole new yucky way, by listening to it on audiocassette. Narrator Jay O. Sanders gives extra kick and vitality to this already lively yarn. He throws himself into the role of a 10-year-old boy, facing the most revolting bet of his life. Billy must eat 15 worms in 15 days--but the reward will be worth it: $50 for a shiny new minibike. Luckily, Billy's friends cook up these fat juicy grubs in a variety of appetizing ways--drenched in ketchup and mustard, fried in butter and cornmeal, and the pièce de résistance, a Whizband Worm Delight (an ice-cream worm cake). Sanders derives obvious pleasure from reading (and singing) out loud the hilarious rhymes and childish... |
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Mirette on the High Wire |
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| Author: |
Emily Arnold McCully |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0698114434 |
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Book Review
Mirette and the "Great Bellini" traverse the Paris skyline on high wire in the climactic scene of this picture book about conquering fear. The two meet at Mirette's mother's boarding house, where Bellini is staying with a troupe of traveling performers. Mirette persuades Bellini to teach her his art, and soon enough the two are performing above the rooftops of Paris. While Mirette gets to step outside her daily routine of peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors, Bellini manages to reaffirm his mastery. The story affords a spunky, down-to-earth role model for readers who like to dream big dreams. It also offers rich, scenic portraits of 19th century Paris. The book won the 1993 Caldecott Medal.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
In... |
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That's What Leprechauns Do |
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| Author: |
Eve Bunting |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0618354107 |
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From School Library Journal
Grade 1-3–As storm clouds gather ominously in the Irish sky, three diminutive leprechauns rouse themselves to dig up their pot of gold and place it at the end of the coming rainbow. Ari hurries Col and Boo along the country road, intent on accomplishing their task, but the friends cant resist stopping to pull some mischievous pranks along the way, because thats what leprechauns do. They paint the hooves of Mrs. Ballybunions cow bright scarlet, tie Old Jamie Bradleys drying long johns into a knot, and plant a yellow tennis ball in the nest of Miss Maudie Murphys hen. At last, as the raindrops begin to fall, the playful tricksters reach Padddywhackers Bog, dig up their treasure, and set it in place. As the rainbow arches across the sky to touch the pot of gold, the trio settles down to wait, but nobody... |
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Pizza Party! (Hello Readre! Level 1 Series) |
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| Author: |
Grace Maccarone |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0590475630 |
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Card catalog description
A group of children have fun making a pizza.
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School |
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| Author: |
Emily Arnold McCully |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0066238560 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
The exuberant mouse family of Picnic and First Snow returns in another fully captivating wordless picture book. Left alone with Mama while the eight older mice hurry off to school, the smallest mouse decides to follow them. This sibling manages to creep into school and take a seat without attracting the teacher's notice but is soon discovered when, in imitation of the others, it raises a hand andhorrors!is called upon. Happily, there is still time for the little mouse to enjoy snacks and a story hour with the class before Mama comes to claim it. Once again, McCully demonstrates that a picture can be worth a thousand words. Her watercolors ably capture the sudden loneliness and uncontainable curiosity of the youngest sibling left behind, and her portrayals of life in the family and classroom burst with happy... |
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Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor |
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| Author: |
Emily Arnold McCully |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0374348103 |
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From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3–This story of the first woman to receive a U.S. patent makes an excellent introduction to inventors and Womens History Month. Knight used tools inherited from her father to design and build her inventions. As a child, she was always sketching one of her brainstorms for toys and kites for her brothers. She once designed a foot warmer for her mother. Although it was never patented, Knights design for a safer loom saved textile workers from injuries and death. Later as an adult, she fought in court and won the right to patent her most famous invention, a machine that would make paper bags. Matties story is told in a style that is not only easy to understand, but that is also a good read-aloud. The watercolor-and-ink illustrations capture the spirited inventor and support the text in... |
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The Battle for St. Michaels |
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| Author: |
Emily Arnold McCully |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060287284 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Grade 3-5-Nine-year-old Caroline Banning, the fastest runner around, is the fictional protagonist of this beginning chapter book set against a historical backdrop. During the War of 1812, the Maryland town of St. Michaels is ill prepared to defend itself against a British invasion. In an attempt to hold off the siege on a stormy night, the local general suggests that the townspeople try to trick their enemy by hanging lanterns in the trees to draw the cannon fire away from the town. Caroline and her friend Robert get the word out and deliver messages between officers. McCully's resourceful heroine, action-packed plot, and dramatic watercolor paintings make for an exciting slice of history for competent independent readers.Jessica Snow, Boston Public LibraryCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Black Is Brown Is Tan |
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| Author: |
Arnold Adoff |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060287764 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Book Review
Originally published in 1973, Black Is Brown Is Tan was the first children's book to feature an interracial family. In this 21st-century version, with new, sunlight-drenched watercolors, Mom is still "a tasty tan and coffee pumpkin pie / with dark brown eyes and almond ears," and Daddy is "light with pinks and tiny tans / dark hair growing on my arms / that darken in the summer sun / brown eyes / big yellow ears." The happy, normal family goes about their day, drinking milk, barbecuing, spending time with grandmas and aunts and uncles, and reading stories. Throughout, they celebrate "all the colors of the race": black is brown is tan
is girl is boy
is nose is
face
is all
the
colors
of the race
This warm and loving story is just as meaningful today as it was... |
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Lulu Goes to Witch School: (I Can Read Book Series: Level 2) |
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| Author: |
Jane O'Connor |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0064441385 |
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From Publishers Weekly
In this I Can Read sequel to Lulu and the Witch Baby, Lulu is off to witch school with her broom and Dracula lunch box. Her teacher, Miss Slime, is pretty, with a long nose and wart on her chin. She teaches everyone to fly around in the graveyard, and Lulu proves herself worthy of the name "witch." Sandy Witch, howevera kid with an unholier-than-thou attitudeproves worthier than Lulu. The two harbor intense dislike for one another, but become friends when they both catch the lizard pox. This story is funny and full of the "gross" details kids lovelike having snake flakes for breakfast and eating lizard tarts. McCully's simple, freehand illustrations, washed in watercolors, add a good dose of silliness to an already absurd and fun idea. Ages 4-8. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers... |
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What Do Angels Wear |
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| Author: |
Eileen Spinelli |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060288868 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-K-Rhyming, fanciful answers to bedtime questions about angels showcase a child's inquisitive mind and a mother's patient love. The celestial beings are depicted as fairy-sized, but are otherwise ordinary-looking youngsters with wings. With mussed hair and robes askew, they are fully engaged in their activities, as described in the text: "Tell me, do they ever dance?/Every time they get a chance!/Tango, conga, bunny hop,/Hula, polka-they don't stop." Curving typeface scattered around and among oblivious angels enhances the airy, floating sensation created by the puffy clouds and airborne antics. The text has just enough bounce and grounding in day-to-day details (the sparkles that the cherubs put in their hair are offset by the wool socks they wear in winter) to avoid greeting-card territory. The... |
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If You Grew Up With George Washington |
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| Author: |
Ruth Belov Gross |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0590451553 |
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Book Description
This book tells you what it was like to live in Virginia during the colonial times of the 1730's and 1740's.
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Nora's Ark |
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| Author: |
Natalie Kinsey-Warnock |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
068817244X |
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From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3–Set during the Flood of 1927 in Vermont, Kinsey-Warnock's story reveals the tangled emotions and disrupted lives produced by natural disaster. When Wren's Grandpa starts building his wife a new house on a hill, she insists that she has everything she needs in the farmhouse where they raised their eight children. Before the structure is finished, unprecedented rainfall swells the nearby river and drives the family into it. Soon they are joined by 20 people and a variety of livestock. Despite their losses, the neighbors bolster one another's spirits with stories and songs. However, Grandma and Wren cannot put aside their worries about Grandpa, who has not returned from trying to save his heifers. At daybreak, they set out in a rowboat and eventually rescue him from the tree where he... |
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The Field of the Dogs |
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| Author: |
Katherine Paterson |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060294744 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 24 hours. |
From Publishers Weekly
Originally published chapter by chapter in newspapers as part of the "Breakfast Serials" program, this disappointing story juggles an uneasy mix of realism and fantasy. Narrator Josh has just moved from Virginia to Vermont with his mother, her new husband and their infant son. During a snow day (forcing his school closing), Josh searches for his dog, Manch, and finds the pooch in a field playing--and laughing--with three canine pals (Manch tells the alpha dog, Ace, that they'll have to set some ground rules for play, and Ace responds, "Well, it's always three to one. Twelve legs to four"). Josh then listens as they talk in human speech about the River Gang, a rival group of larger dogs headed up by a fierce weimaraner. Manch never speaks in human words to Josh again until Ace is badly hurt, hit by a snowplow... |
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The Boston Coffee Party: (I Can Read Book Series: Level 3) |
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| Author: |
Doreen Rappaport |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0064441415 |
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From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3 There really was a ``Boston Coffee Party'' during the American Revolution in which women punished a selfish merchant who was hoarding his coffee bean stock during the wartime shortage until the price was high enough for profit. Rappaport tells a story based on this historic detail from the point of view of two young sisters of that time, in words that are easy to read but convey the feelings of the time and the action of the plot. Greedy merchant Thomas has already held back sugar; when they find him doing the same with coffee, the women of the sewing circle plan their ``party'' for revenge. Although their knowledge of history and of the original Boston Tea Party may be vague, young readers and listeners have probably seen and heard enough about the American Revolutionary period and its... |
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Nora's Ark |
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| Author: |
Natalie Kinsey-Warnock |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0060295171 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3–Set during the Flood of 1927 in Vermont, Kinsey-Warnock's story reveals the tangled emotions and disrupted lives produced by natural disaster. When Wren's Grandpa starts building his wife a new house on a hill, she insists that she has everything she needs in the farmhouse where they raised their eight children. Before the structure is finished, unprecedented rainfall swells the nearby river and drives the family into it. Soon they are joined by 20 people and a variety of livestock. Despite their losses, the neighbors bolster one another's spirits with stories and songs. However, Grandma and Wren cannot put aside their worries about Grandpa, who has not returned from trying to save his heifers. At daybreak, they set out in a rowboat and eventually rescue him from the tree where he... |
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The Field of the Dogs |
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| Author: |
Katherine Paterson |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0064421473 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
Originally published chapter by chapter in newspapers as part of the "Breakfast Serials" program, this disappointing story juggles an uneasy mix of realism and fantasy. Narrator Josh has just moved from Virginia to Vermont with his mother, her new husband and their infant son. During a snow day (forcing his school closing), Josh searches for his dog, Manch, and finds the pooch in a field playing--and laughing--with three canine pals (Manch tells the alpha dog, Ace, that they'll have to set some ground rules for play, and Ace responds, "Well, it's always three to one. Twelve legs to four"). Josh then listens as they talk in human speech about the River Gang, a rival group of larger dogs headed up by a fierce weimaraner. Manch never speaks in human words to Josh again until Ace is badly hurt, hit by a snowplow... |
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Ballot Box Battle |
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| Author: |
Emily Arnold McCully |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0679893121 |
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| Availability: |
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From Publishers Weekly
On Election Day 1880, the women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton teaches her young neighbor a lesson in gumption. "McCully's art and story deliver [a relevant message] gracefully," said PW. Ages 5-8.- gracefully," said PW. Ages 5-8. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4?History, the subtle and not-so-subtle oppression of women, and the redoubtable character of Elizabeth Cady Stanton are made real and alive in this colorfully illustrated story set in the summer of 1880. Cordelia loves to ride on Mrs. Stanton's old horse and hear the stories of her neighbor's own girlhood. Despite her efforts to ride and excel in Greek, young Elizabeth's only praise was to hear "Oh, my daughter, you should have been a boy!" Cordelia's... |
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