Winter Reads - Reluctant Readers & Prize-Winning Authors

This moderately abridged graphic adaptation of "Great Expectations" encourages readers to enjoy classical literature while remaining faithful to Charles Dickens' original work. Readers follow the wonderful tale of Pip, Miss Havisham, and the spiteful Estella at their own pace. Alternative text versions are offered for different reading levels and teacher resources are available with lesson plans and activities for students from grade 6 and up. The striking color artwork captures the ambiance of Victorian life and makes the story more accessible than ever.

School Library Journal (09/01/2009):
Gr 7 Up--This classic tale is condensed into a fast-paced format that, in the "Original Text", still contains much of Dickens's original phrasing. The language remains the real charm of the story--Pip is not a terribly likable character, as he is far too concerned with station and class and is too easily ashamed of his past--and the adaptation works wonderfully as an abridgment accompanied by expressive artwork that accurately depicts the era.
Notes at the end offer more information about Dickens's time and the political climate that form the context for the novel. "Quick Text" is a plain-language translation that reads well and is likely to attract a more reluctant audience.

Cast onto the waters by his power-hungry brother Antonio, Prospero, the Duke of Milan, has been living on a distant island for a dozen years along with his daughter Miranda. In his years of banishment, Prospero has developed strong magical powers -- powers that not only allow him to deduce that Antonio is on a nearby ship, but to cause the ship to run aground. At long last, Prospero has a chance to get revenge on those who have wronged him. But, will he also ruin Miranda's chance for happiness?

"The Tempest" is considered by many critics to be Shakespeare's crowning glory. This full-color graphic novel presents the sparkling romantic comedy just as Shakespeare intended: in its original and unabridged format, and in its original setting. As with the other titles in this well-received series, it encourages readers to discover classical literature while staying true to Shakespeare's vision. Also available are the Original Text version, with the Bard's unabridged work, and a Quick Text version, with less dialogue for a fast-paced read.

Like a well-crafted stage play, "Just Passin' Thru" delivers one suspenseful scene after another. But in this historic setting -- a store on the Appalachian Trail called Mountain Crossings -- the characters who show up are no fictional creations. They are the real-life stars of the author's new life as a backpack-purging, canteen-selling, hostel-running, bandage-taping, lost-child finding, argument-settling, romance-fixing, chili-making man of many faces.

Like any good drama, there are the good guys (and gals) and the weirdos, too. Some show up once (and that's enough), and some appear again and again. Some are friends, and some dangerous. But all are united by two things: the author's story-capturing talent, and whatever it is that lures them to attempt (or conquer) a 2,200-mile path that climbs and plummets from Georgia to Maine.

Publishers Weekly (08/24/2009):
From National Book Awardwinner Alexie comes a new collection of stories, poems, question and answer sequences, and hybrids of all three and beyond. In a penetrating voice that mixes humor with anger, Alexie pointedly asks, If it is true that children pay for the sins of their fathers, then is it also true that fathers pay for the sins of their children?

Many of the stories revolve around the complexities of fatherhood; in the title story, the Native American narrator recalls his alcoholic father's death as he confronts his own mortality, and The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless is the tale of an eccentric vintage clothing salesman whose sexual attraction to his wife fades following the birth of their children.

The collection also contains stirring defenses of artistic integrity; Fearful Symmetry is an incisive account of working as a young screenwriter for a Hollywood studio, and the poem Ode to Mix Tapes endorses hard work as the key ingredient behind any creation. Alexie unfurls highly expressive language, and while at times his jokes bomb and the characters' anger can feel forced, overall this is a spiritedly provocative array of tragic comedies. "(Oct.)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for her second novel "The Inheritance of Loss," Kiran Desai is one of the most talented writers of her generation.

Now available for the first time as a Grove Press paperback, "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard"--Desai's dazzling debut novel--is a wryly hilarious and poignant story that simultaneously captures the vivid culture of the Indian subcontinent and the universal intricacies of human experience.

Sampath Chawla was born in a time of drought into a family not quite like other families, in a town not quite like other towns. After years of failure at school, failure at work, of spending his days dreaming in tea stalls, it does not seem as if Sampath is going to amount to much--until one day he climbs a guava tree in search of peaceful contemplation and becomes unexpectedly famous as a holy man, sending his tiny town into turmoil. A syndicate of larcenous, alcoholic monkeys terrorize the pilgrims who cluster around Sampath's tree, spies and profiteers descend on the town, and none of Desai's outrageous characters goes unaffected as events spin increasingly out of control.

Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry's caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence.

Long before organic produce was available at your local supermarket, Berry was farming with the purity of food in mind. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection. Drawn from more than thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellers The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Pollan, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat.

The essays address such concerns as: How does organic measure up against locally grown? What are the differences between small and large farms, and how does that affect what you put on your dinner table? What can you do to support sustainable agriculture? A progenitor of the Slow Food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. "Eating is an agricultural act," he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy.

Carolyn Chute's newest paperback returns to her beloved town of Egypt, Maine and delivers a rousing, politically charged portrait of those living on the margins of our society.

"The School on Heart's Content Road" begins with Mickey Gammon, a fifteen-year-old dropout who has been evicted from home and seeks shelter in the Settlement a rural cooperative in alternative energy, farm produce, and local goods, founded by "the Prophet." Falsely demonized by the media as a compound of sin, the Settlement's true nature remains foreign to outsiders. There, Mickey meets another deserted child, six-year-old "Secret Agent Jane" a cunning, beautiful girl whose mother is in jail on false drug charges and who prowls the Settlement in heart-shaped sunglasses, imagining her childish plans to ruin the community will win her mother's freedom. As they struggle to adjust to their new, complex surrogate family, Mickey and Jane witness the mounting unrest within the Settlement's ranks, which soon builds to a shocking crescendo.
Vehement and poetic, "The School on Heart's Content Road" questions the nature of family, culture, and authority in an intensely diverse nation. It is an urgent plea from those who have been shoved to the fringes of society, but who refuse to be silenced.