Butterflies and Angels


Book Description

Let me talk about my experience as a cancer survivor. Physically and mentally I have been to places you dont ever want to visit. I have stood at the edge and stared into a dark void. Yet I have Dignity Spirit and Courage. Since the year 2002, is when my illnesses started. I have colitis, lupus, and dead lunate bone in my wrist and now have no bones in my right wrist. I had skin cancers, fibromyalgia osteoporosis, spinal stenosis, herniated discs, and renal failure. In 2008, I heard the words I never wanted to hear, you have breast cancer. Life is what you make it. I am making mine a good one, filled with happiness, smiles and love. You are more than welcome to come and join me.




Before We Were Free


Book Description

Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind. From renowned author Julia Alvarez comes an unforgettable story about adolescence, perseverance, and one girl’s struggle to be free.




Butterflies, Buses, and a Guardian Angel


Book Description

A teacher's memories of childhood poverty, heartbreak, and loneliness were mirrored in the eyes of her students. This begins a story of teaching, tragedy, and triumph. Inspired by euphoric dreams with loved ones on the other side, a mysterious "go ahead" voice, and her mother's caring nature, she began a program to provide faith, hope and love for the children. She called it Suspreno. Likened to a butterfly by the children, the teacher suffers the loss of her mother and adorns her resting place with one final lavender rose. The teacher and the kids stick together and survive a myriad of adventures. Although there were dangers on their fifteen-year odyssey, it's clear this group was guided and protected by guardian angels. Together, they also experience exhilaration when they crowd onto buses headed for "one more taste of heaven" at Suspreno meetings. This book will make you want to examine your place in life and look deeper into the eyes of every little child you see.




Ghostbelly


Book Description

In this courageous memoir, Elizabeth Heineman “illuminates the complex emotional landscape of stillbirth—putting into frank and poetic words the unspeakable experience of simultaneously grieving and mothering a baby who has died” (Deborah L. Davis). Ghostbelly is Elizabeth Heineman’s personal account of a home birth that goes tragically wrong—ending in a stillbirth—and the harrowing process of grief and questioning that follows. It’s also Heineman’s unexpected tale of the loss of a newborn: before burial, she brings the baby home for overnight stays. Does this sound unsettling? Of course. We’re not supposed to hold and caress dead bodies. But then again, babies aren’t supposed to die. Interwoven with her own accounts of mourning, Heineman examines the home-birth and maternal health-care industry, the isolation of midwives, and the scripting of her own grief. With no resolution to sadness, Heineman and her partner learn to live in a new world: a world in which they face each day with the understanding of the fragility of the present.




Butterflies at the Window


Book Description

The date is May 22, 2011. Elly's "very good" graduation day becomes even better when three enormous butterflies appear at her bedroom window; incredibly beautiful, almost other-worldly in their splendor. Her first thought is, "Thank You, Jesus! You know how I love butterflies." But when Elly, then her mother, then other members of the McConnell clan begin to see them in the most unlikely places, their presence begins to feel strangely ominous. And when they appear to be watching the family's every move, it's hard to avoid a growing sense of foreboding. On this perfect spring Sunday, when families across southwest Missouri are celebrating their high school graduations, could these exquisite creatures actually be harbingers of looming tragedy? Then a rare and massive EF5 tornado unexpectedly turns that bright day in May dark and deadly. As the storm of the century bears down, can the McConnell family survive? And in the midst of unspeakable terror and devastation, why are so many children of the tornado seeing butterfly people? Sandi McReynolds is a life-long resident of Southwest Missouri who found herself intrigued by the butterfly people stories that abounded after the monstrous Joplin Tornado of May, 2011; and more than inspired by the generosity and faith of her community. "Butterflies at the Window" is a novel recounting some of those stories based on true and very personal events involving family and friends.




Photography and Imagination


Book Description

As the prototypical exemplar of modern visual technology, photography was once viewed as a way to enable vision to bypass imagination, producing more reliable representations of reality. But as an achievement of technological modernity, photography can also be seen as a way to realize a creation of the imagination more vividly than can painting or drawing. Photography and Imagination investigates, from diverse points of view focusing on both theory and practice, the relation between these two terms. The book explores their effect on photography’s capacity, through various forms and modalities of imaginative investments and displacements, to affect even reality itself.




An Obsession With Butterflies


Book Description

Sharman Apt Russell again blends her lush voice and keen scientific eye in this marvelous book about butterflies. From Hindu mythology to Aztec sacrifices, butterflies have served as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation. Even during World War II, children in a Polish death camp scratched hundreds of butterflies onto the walls of their barracks. But as Russell points out in this rich and lyrical meditation, butterflies are above all objects of obsession. From the beastly horned caterpillar, whose blood helps it count time, to the peacock butterfly, with wings that hiss like a snake, Russell traces the butterflies through their life cycles, exploring the creatures' own obsessions with eating, mating, and migrating. In this way, she reveals the logic behind our endless fascination with butterflies as well as the driving passion of such legendary collectors as the tragic Eleanor Glanville, whose children declared her mad because of her compulsive butterfly collecting, and the brilliant Henry Walter Bates, whose collections from the Amazon in 1858 helped develop his theory of mimicry in nature. Russell also takes us inside some of the world's most prestigious natural history museums, where scientists painstakingly catalogue and categorize new species of Lepidoptera, hoping to shed light on insect genetics and evolution. A luminous journey through an exotic world of obsession and strange beauty, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who's ever watched a butterfly mid-flight and thought, as Russell has, "I've entered another dimension."




Fanciful Butterflies Stained Glass Coloring Book


Book Description

These 16 stained glass butterfly images soar to imaginative heights! Posed against backgrounds of sunbursts, clouds, and lush tropical gardens, the butterflies feature wings decorated with flowers and other fanciful figurative designs.




The Language of Butterflies


Book Description

In this “deeply personal and lyrical book” (Publishers Weekly) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Horse, Wendy Williams explores the lives of one of the world’s most resilient creatures—the butterfly—shedding light on the role that they play in our ecosystem and in our human lives. “[A] glorious and exuberant celebration of these biological flying machines…Williams takes us on a humorous and beautifully crafted journey” (The Washington Post). From butterfly gardens to zoo exhibits, these “flying flowers” are one of the few insects we’ve encouraged to infiltrate our lives. Yet, what has drawn us to these creatures in the first place? And what are their lives really like? In this “entertaining look at ‘the world’s favorite insect’” (Booklist, starred review), New York Times bestselling author and science journalist Wendy Williams reveals the inner lives of these delicate creatures, who are far more intelligent and tougher than we give them credit for. Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles each year from Canada to Mexico. Other species have learned how to fool ants into taking care of them. Butterflies’ scales are inspiring researchers to create new life-saving medical technology. Williams takes readers to butterfly habitats across the globe and introduces us to not only various species, but “digs deeply into the lives of both butterflies and [the] scientists” (Science magazine) who have spent decades studying them. Coupled with years of research and knowledge gained from experts in the field, this accessible “butterfly biography” explores the ancient partnership between these special creatures and humans, and why they continue to fascinate us today. “Informative, thought-provoking,” (BookPage, starred review) and extremely profound, The Language of Butterflies is a “fascinating book [that] will be of interest to anyone who has ever admired a butterfly, and anyone who cares about preserving these stunning creatures” (Library Journal).




In the Time of the Butterflies


Book Description

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, internationally bestselling author and literary icon Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies is "beautiful, heartbreaking and alive ... a lyrical work of historical fiction based on the story of the Mirabal sisters, revolutionary heroes who had opposed and fought against Trujillo." (Concepción de León, New York Times) Alvarez’s new novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, is coming April 2, 2024. Pre-order now! It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters--Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé--speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression. "Alvarez helped blaze the trail for Latina authors to break into the literary mainstream, with novels like In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents winning praise from critics and gracing best-seller lists across the Americas."—Francisco Cantú, The New York Times Book Review "This Julia Alvarez classic is a must-read for anyone of Latinx descent." —Popsugar.com "A gorgeous and sensitive novel . . . A compelling story of courage, patriotism and familial devotion." —People "Shimmering . . . Valuable and necessary." —Los Angeles Times "A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” —St. Petersburg Times "Alvarez does a remarkable job illustrating the ruinous effect the 30-year dictatorship had on the Dominican Republic and the very real human cost it entailed."—Cosmopolitan.com