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The Kindness of Strangers |
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| Author: |
John Boswell |
 Book Review
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Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0226067122 |
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Ships within 3-4 days. |
From Library Journal
The author of the widely acclaimed Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (LJ 6/1/80) has now given us this original and fascinating work on abandoned children. It should be made available to every student of medieval and early modern Europe. And at a time when abortion, child abuse, and abandonment are much in the news, the book should have broad general interest. Abandonment of children--by leaving them, selling them, or consigning them to someone else--was practiced from Greek antiquity to early modern times by parents of all social classes, because of poverty, incest, shame, self-interest, inheritance, or to improve the child's future. Most children were rescued and survived due to "the kindness of strangers." Based on a careful exploration of ancient and medieval sources, this book will deservedly... |
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Assasin (Lady Grace Mystery Series #1) |
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| Author: |
Patricia Finney |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0385731515 |
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From Booklist
Reviewed with Grace Cavendish's Betrayal.Gr. 4-7. This new series, ostensibly the diaries (or daybooks) of Lady Grace Cavendish (the real author is British writer Patricia Finney), takes place in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, where Grace serves as a lady-in-waiting. With plenty of twenty-first-century spunk, she solves mysteries that are turning the court upside down. In Assassin, one of Grace's suitors is murdered, and the 13-year-old's cool-headed calculations prove that the lord to whom she has given her hand is not the killer as everyone supposes. He is also not the man Grace believes him to be, so she gives him the boot. In betrayal, another young lady-in-waiting seems to have eloped with Sir Francis Drake, but Grace uses her prognosticating skill and masquerades as a boy to prove otherwise.... |
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Cognitive Coaching: A Foundation for Renaissance Schools |
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| Author: |
Arthur L. Costa, Robert J. Garmston |
Book Review
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Hardcover
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| ISBN: |
192902441X |
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Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks |
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Discovering Great Artists: Hands-on Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters |
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| Author: |
MaryAnn F. Kohl |
Book Review
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Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0935607099 |
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Amazing Leonardo da Vinci Inventions You Can Build Yourself (Build It Yourself series) |
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| Author: |
Maxine Anderson |
Book Review
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Paperback
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| ISBN: |
0974934429 |
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From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8-Anderson has combined biography with doable activities that mirror ideas found in Leonardo's notebooks. Using common household objects (duct tape, foil, cereal boxes, paper-towel tubes, etc.), readers can make a parachute, hydrometer, invisible ink, walk-on-water shoes, etc. Anderson introduces each project with an explanation of why Leonardo came up with the idea and whether he created just the sketch or the sketch and the object. Detailed steps and illustrations provide clarity. Adult supervision is noted where appropriate. Readers will probably be more interested in the activities than in Leonardo's life and the Renaissance background that Anderson provides, but this title will be a welcome addition to schools in which cross-curricular teaming is in place. Science classes can re-create... |
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The Renaissance Man and His Children |
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| Author: |
Louis Haas |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0312175639 |
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Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Library Journal
A letter from the Florentine writer Boccaccio to his friend Petrarch in 1366 led Haas (medieval and early modern history, Duquesne Univ.) to question the conventional view of childbearing during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. That view, based largely on the work of 20th-century historian Philippe Aries, held that Europeans of that period did not recognize childhood as a separate stage of human development, that they saw children as miniature versions of themselves, and that they formed no emotional attachment to their own children. The 1366 letter that caught the attention of Haas expresses the joy that Boccaccio felt on meeting Petrarch's five-year-old daughter and the grief he felt over the death of his own young daughter, who was the same age as Petrarch's. Boccaccio's pain was no different from what... |
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Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister |
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| Author: |
Gregory Maguire |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0060987529 |
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Book Review
Gregory Maguire's chilling, wonderful retelling of Cinderella is a study in contrasts. Love and hate, beauty and ugliness, cruelty and charity--each idea is stripped of its ethical trappings, smashed up against its opposite number, and laid bare for our examination. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister begins in 17th-century Holland, where the two Fisher sisters and their mother have fled to escape a hostile England. Maguire's characters are at once more human and more fanciful than their fairy-tale originals. Plain but smart Iris and her sister, Ruth, a hulking simpleton, are dazed and terrified as their mother, Margarethe, urges them into the strange Dutch streets. Within days, purposeful Margarethe has secured the family a place in the home of an aspiring painter, where for a short time, they find happiness. But... |
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Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence |
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| Author: |
Philip Gavitt |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0472101838 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Book Description
A study in the ideology of wealth and poverty
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Leonardo and the Flying Boy |
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| Author: |
Laurence Anholt |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover
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| ISBN: |
0764152254 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships in 24 hours |
From Publishers Weekly
Anholt (Camille and the Sunflowers) continues his imaginative series about great artists with this cleverly executed and engaging account of one of Leonardo da Vinci's real-life apprentices. When Leonardo tells Zoro that one day "people will sail through the clouds and look down at the world below," the boy believes him. After all, "anything seemed possible in Leonardo's busy studio." But when Zoro and Salai, a mischievous urchin Leonardo has taken in (also seen in Guido Visconti and Bimba Landmann's The Genius of Leonardo, reviewed Sept. 18), sneak into their master's secret workshop and take his flying machine for a spin, there's trouble ahead. The story is relayed with verve, and the spry colored-pencil drawings that detail Zoro's escapades boast numerous comic touches (such as Leonardo nearly tripping over... |
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Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance |
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| Author: |
Nicholas Terpstra |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0801881846 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Review
"Carefully researched and vigorously written." -- Choice
Book Description
Nearly half of the children who lived in the cities of the late Italian Renaissance were under fifteen years of age. Grinding poverty, unstable families, and the death of a parent could make caring for these young children a burden. Many were abandoned, others orphaned. At a time when political rulers fashioned themselves as the "fathers" of society, these cast-off children presented a very immediate challenge and opportunity.In Bologna and Florence, government and private institutions pioneered orphanages to care for the growing number of homeless children. Nicholas Terpstra discusses the founding and management of these institutions, the procedures for placing children into them, the children's daily routine and... |
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Deception |
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| Author: |
Grace Cavendish |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0385733216 |
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Book Description
Queen Elizabeth is furious at the production delays of her new coin. To escape her bad temper, Lady Grace and her fellow Maids of Honour skate down the frozen River Thames to the eagerly anticipated Frost Fair. But a gruesome discovery on the ice–a dead man with coins covering his eyes–interrupts the winter revelry. As the Queen’s Lady Pursuivant, Grace must unravel the mystery.
Uncover a dangerous world of counterfeiting and corruption inside the private daybooke of Lady Grace, the queen’s favorite Maid of Honour.
All miscreants and ill-thinkers, keep out! The Lady Grace Mysteries come to us from the most privy and secret daybooke of Lady Grace Cavendish, Maid of Honour to her Gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I of that name.
Excerpt. © Reprinted... |
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Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance |
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| Author: |
Laban Carrick Hill |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover
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| ISBN: |
0316814113 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships in 24 hours |
From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-Hill explains the violence, frustration, and dreams of economic opportunity that led to the African-American migration to the North at the beginning of the 20th century. He describes the sense of pride, responsibility, and rights engendered by participation in World War I and the white resentment that resulted in such violence that James Weldon Johnson "dubbed the summer of 1919 the `Red Summer'" in response to the bloodshed. The author discusses why blacks settled in Harlem and how it became the "Mecca of the New Negro," attracting the likes of Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay. Also highlighted are publications such as the National Urban League's Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, which not only supplied forums for these writers but also attempted to generate income for them and... |
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Catherine, Called Birdy |
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| Author: |
Karen Cushman |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0064405842 |
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From Publishers Weekly
A Newbery Honor Book, this witty and wise fictive diary of a 13th-century English girl, according to PW, "introduces an admirable heroine and pungently evokes a largely unfamiliar setting." Ages 12-up. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 6-9-This unusual book provides an insider's look at the life of Birdy, 14, the daughter of a minor English nobleman. The year is 1290 and the vehicle for storytelling is the girl's witty, irreverent diary. She looks with a clear and critical eye upon the world around her, telling of the people she knows and of the daily events in her small manor house. Much of Birdy's energy is consumed by avoiding the various suitors her father chooses for her to marry. She sends them all packing with assorted... |
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The Children of Renaissance Florence |
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| Author: |
Richard C. Trexler |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
086698156X |
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| Availability: |
This title is not currently available. |
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Who Was Leonardo da Vinci (Who Was... ) |
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| Author: |
Roberta Edwards, True Kelley (Illustrator) |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback
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| ISBN: |
0448443015 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks |
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My Children Made Me a Renaissance Mom! |
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| Author: |
Jayne Williams |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
1418431885 |
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| Availability: |
Print-on-demand title. Ships within 5-15 days. |
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Crispin: The Cross of Lead |
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| Author: |
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Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0786816589 |
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Book Review
Genre-jumping author Avi clocks in here with his 50th book, Crispin: The Cross of Lead, an action-packed historical narrative that follows the frantic flight of a 13-year-old peasant boy across 14th-century England. After being declared a "wolf's head" by his manor's corrupt steward for a crime he didn't commit (meaning that anyone can kill him like a common animal--and collect a reward), this timid boy has to flee a tiny village that's the only world he's ever known. But before our protagonist escapes, Avi makes sure that we're thoroughly briefed on the injustices of feudalism--the countless taxes cottars must pay, the constant violence, the inability of a flawed church to protect its parishioners, etc. Avi then folds in the book's central mystery just as the boy is leaving: "Asta's son," as he's always been ... |
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Encyclopedia of the Harlem Literary Renaissance (Literary Movements) |
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| Author: |
Lois Brown |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover
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| ISBN: |
081604967X |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships in 24 hours |
From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up–More than 600 essays on novelists, poets, playwrights, journalists, publishers, individual works, newspapers, and other publications are included. The volume also has entries for guilds and awards and prizes, as well as venues for literary activity such as the Neighborhood Playhouse and Lincoln Theatre. Writers include well-known figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. Scholars such as Alain Locke and Jessie Redmon Fauset warrant longer entries, along with the critic Arnaud Wendell Bontemps and journalist Dorothy West. Each biographical entry is peppered with cross-references, making it easy to find facets of the writers life and work discussed elsewhere in the book. Most notably, well-known novels, plays, and poems have their own entries in... |
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A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind & the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age |
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| Author: |
William Manchester |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0316545562 |
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Book Review
It speaks to the failure of medieval Europe, writes popular historian William Manchester, that "in the year 1500, after a thousand years of neglect, the roads built by the Romans were still the best on the continent." European powers were so absorbed in destroying each other and in suppressing peasant revolts and religious reform that they never quite got around to realizing the possibilities of contemporary innovations in public health, civil engineering, and other peaceful pursuits. Instead, they waged war in faraway lands, created and lost fortunes, and squandered millions of lives. For all the wastefulness of medieval societies, however, Manchester notes, the era created the foundation for the extraordinary creative explosion of the Renaissance. Drawing on a cast of characters numbering in the hundreds,... |
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King of Shadows (Aladdin Fantasy) |
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| Author: |
Susan Cooper |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback
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| ISBN: |
068984445X |
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Usually ships in 24 hours |
From Publishers Weekly
"Cooper brilliantly weaves past and present together, using London's Globe Theatre as a backdrop, to demonstrate the timelessness of Shakespeare's works and the theater at large," said PW in a boxed review. Ages 10-14. (June)n Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Grade 5-8-Orphan Nat Field is chosen as part of an American theater group to perform at the new Globe Theatre in London. Nat's big role will be Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, his debut is pushed 400 years into the past when he is put to bed with a high fever and wakes up in Elizabethan England. Forced to adapt or be discovered, Nat figures out his situation quickly with judicious questions that result in naturally occurring explanations of the times, the plays, and... |
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The Midwife's Apprentice |
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| Author: |
Karen Cushman |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
006440630X |
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Book Review
Karen Cushman likes to write with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, and her feisty female characters firmly planted in history. In The Midwife's Apprentice, which earned the 1996 Newbery Medal, this makes a winning combination for children and adult readers alike. Like her award-winning book Catherine, Called Birdy, the story takes place in medieval England. This time our protagonist is Alyce, who rises from the dung heap (literally) of homelessness and namelessness to find a station in life--apprentice to the crotchety, snaggletoothed midwife Jane Sharp. On Alyce's first solo outing as a midwife, she fails to deliver. Instead of facing her ignorance, Alyce chooses to run from failure--never a good choice. Disappointingly, Cushman does not offer any hardships or internal wrestling to warrant Alyce's final epiphanies,... |
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The Shakespeare Stealer (Shakespeare Stealer) |
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| Author: |
Gary Blackwood |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback
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| ISBN: |
0141305959 |
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Usually ships in 24 hours |
From Publishers Weekly
This tale of a 14-year-old Yorkshire orphan sent by a rival theater manager to steal the as-yet-unpublished Hamlet in 1601 London "excels in the lively depictions of Elizabethan stagecraft and street life," wrote PW. Ages 10-14. (July) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-7AYoung Widge is an Elizabethan Oliver Twist with a talent for shorthand. Raised in an orphanage, he is apprenticed to an unprincipled clergyman who trains Widge to use a cryptic writing system that he's invented to pirate sermons from other rectors. Hired by a mysterious traveler, the boy is hauled off to London to attend performances of Hamlet in order to transcribe the script for another theater company. Naturally, all does not go smoothly, and in the... |
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Birth of Venus |
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| Author: |
Sarah Dunant |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0812968972 |
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Book Review
Sarah Dunant's gorgeous and mesmerizing novel, Birth of Venus, draws readers into a turbulent 15th-century Florence, a time when the lavish city, steeped in years of Medici family luxury, is suddenly besieged by plague, threat of invasion, and the righteous wrath of a fundamentalist monk. Dunant masterfully blends fact and fiction, seamlessly interweaving Florentine history with the coming-of-age story of a spirited 14-year-old girl. As Florence struggles in Savonarola's grip, a serial killer stalks the streets, the French invaders creep closer, and young Alessandra Cecchi must surrender her "childish" dreams and navigate her way into womanhood. Readers are quickly seduced by the simplicity of her unconventional passions that are more artistic than domestic: Dancing is one of the many things I should be good at that I... |
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Eyewitness: Renaissance |
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| Author: |
Alison Cole |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover
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| ISBN: |
078945582X |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships in 24 hours |
The New York Times
...a mini museum between the covers of a book. [Eyewitness series]
School Library Journal
These books' striking visual impact will draw in even the most casual readers. [Eyewitness series]
See all Editorial Reviews
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The Night Dance |
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| Author: |
Suzanne Weyn |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Mass Market Paperback |
| ISBN: |
1416905790 |
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From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up–This light, entertaining tale combines the Arthurian legend of the Lady of the Lake, Grimms Twelve Dancing Princesses, and elements of romance novels. After Sir Ethans wife, Vivienne, disappears, he vows that no one shall leave him again. He builds an enormous manor that keeps his 12 daughters from the outside world. A crack in a wall is discovered by the youngest, Rowena, and provides a long-desired escape route. At the battle of Camlan, King Arthur is mortally wounded and his knight Bedivere swears that he will honor his sovereigns final request to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake (Vivienne). On his journey, he battles the evil Morgan le Fey to protect the sword and meets a monk who sends him in Rowenas direction. They meet in the woods as the young woman discovers her power of... |
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Exile (Lady Grace Mysteries) |
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| Author: |
Jan Burchett, Sara Vogler |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover
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| ISBN: |
0385733224 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships in 24 hours |
From Booklist
Gr. 4-7. Running down the alphabet, Exile is the fifth title in the series that began with Assassin (2004), written by Patricia Finney, though the purported author of all the volumes is Lady Grace Cavendish, protege of Queen Elizabeth I. In this tale, a jewel is stolen from an exiled noble from Sharakand. When a laundry maid is falsely accused of the crime, Grace tries to discover the thief's identity. Less convincing than the portrayals of the English characters are the colorful but cardboard figures of the visitors from Sharakand. Still, this is an enjoyable mystery, which moves swiftly to a satisfying conclusion. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
There’s a new arrival—a... |
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