Leaving Johnny Behind


Book Description

In the tradition of Why Johnny Can't Read written by Rudolph Flesch in the 1950s, Leaving Johnny Behind provides a comprehensive examination of the barriers that deny children adequate literacy training. This book describes the obstacles faced by a school principal from Milwaukee's central city when he attempted to implement research-based reading practices. Upon further examination, he discovered that the reading establishment generally rejects the product of legitimate science, choosing instead to engage in a never-ending interfusion of the latest innovations, modifications, and gimmicks. This condition, Anthony Pedriana observes, has a disparate impact on poor and minorities, those who suffer from dyslexia and other forms of reading disability, and those for whom English is a second language.




House of Leaves


Book Description

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.




The Whalestoe Letters


Book Description

Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love. Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.




Leaving My Little Mountain Home (far behind)


Book Description

Leaving My Little Mountain Home (far behind) begins when Beth Ann Amberson is fourteen years old and trying to convince her Mama that she is old enough to get married. The reader will get to know Beth Ann as a close friend before the conclusion of the book as she moves through the different stages of her life. The ending of the book may come to soon. Leaving My Little Mountain Home (far behind) is intended to evoke memories from the reader, both sweet and bittersweet, some happy and some sad. It is written in true Appalachian dialect and takes the reader on Beth Ann''s long journey called life.




Leaving Him Behind


Book Description

Based on over 200 interviews and 13 years of counseling experience, psychologist Sandra Kahn has written the first guide to offer help to women whose unresolved issues keep them emotionally bound to their ex-husbands, even years after a divorce is final. • Does your ex-husband still have the key to your house? • Does your anger about your divorce prevent you from trusting in new relationships? • Do you allow yourself to be seduced by your ex-husband and then hate yourself for letting it happen? If you said yes to any of the above, you may be a victim of the ex-wife syndrome. Psychotherapist Sandra S. Kahn has observed time and again that divorced women often find it difficult to separate from their ex-husbands, even when the marriage is over. Held captrive by strong emotions—fear, anger, shame, even love—they relive the past when they need to make a break and forge a new, self-sufficient life. In Leaving Him Behind, Kahn helps women to recognize how they are still trapped by a marriage gone bad—and what they can do about it. She offers a step-by-step program to regain self-confidence and independence. Praise for Leaving Him Behind “Chock full of advice any divorced woman could use.”—The Toronto Star “Thoughtful . . . Helpful . . . Long-divorced women could benefit from [her] advice.”—The Cincinnati Post “How to transform . . . into a self-sufficient matriarch, capable of assuming full responsibility for oneself and one’s children . . . Useful hard-nose advice.”—Kirkus Reviews




Behind the Hedge 2Nd Edition


Book Description

BEHIND THE HEDGE A Corruption o Time, Talent & Treasure Tom Whitman, behind the wheel on Route 66 heading east with Allison at his side and their cat Caesar curled up on the backseat, would soon find himself immersed in a maelstrom of unimagined dimension. Newly appointed headmaster of Florence Bruce Seminary, Tom was heading toward an unexpected clash of styles and of cultural expectations. His ingrained instincts for sound management were about to challenge the charismatic but lackadaisical leadership style let behind by the former headmaster. In some respects, the differences would be as great as the clash between Indian and white had been three hundred and fifty years earlier. Violence perpetrated on the school and the community by both bystander and combatant would be traumatic. Rules, laws, agreements, accepted tenets of human behavior, simple decency, contracts—written and unwritten—among people of accepted good standing and integrity would be thrown away with abandon or gleefully ignored. In their place, frontier justice—any means to achieve the ends—would be sufficient justification or actions of intense cruelty. The most basic assumptions regarding safety, fair play, due process and continuity would be destroyed; and those who believed that the operating assumptions at Florence Bruce Seminary were based on decency, dignity and respect would be horrified at the level to which these values were betrayed.




In Fear of Her Life


Book Description

Smith is the pseudonym for a woman who lived in fear of her life for 22 years. Married at 16 to a Dublin criminal, she endured years of relentless mental and physical torture until she found the strength to fight back. This is her courageous story told with brutal honesty and at times humour. It chronicles her descent to the brink of suicide and consequent rebuilding of her life. This unique account is essential reading for all those who have ever endured cruelty at the hands of a man, or another human being for that matter. It gives hope to all those who have been victimised. The names and identities of the characters in the book have been changed to protect the author




Grace


Book Description

A New York Times Best Book of the Year A universal story of freedom, love, and motherhood, this sweeping, intergenerational saga features a group of outcast women during one of the most compelling eras in American history. For a runaway slave in the 1840s south, life on the run can be just as dangerous as life under a sadistic Massa. That's what fifteen–year–old Naomi learns after she escapes the brutal confines of life on an Alabama plantation and takes refuge in a Georgia brothel run by a gun–toting Jewish madam named Cynthia. Amidst a revolving door of gamblers and prostitutes, Naomi falls into a love affair with a smooth–talking white man named Jeremy. The product of their union is Josey, whose white skin and blond hair mark her as different from the others on the plantation. Having been taken in as an infant by a free slave named Charles, Josey has never known her mother, who was murdered at her birth. Josey soon becomes caught in the tide of history when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reaches her and a day of supposed freedom turns into one of unfathomable violence that will define Josey—and her lost mother—for years to come.




Johnny's Pheasant


Book Description

An encounter with a pheasant (which may or may not be sleeping) takes a surprising turn in this sweetly serious and funny story of a Native American boy and his grandma "Pull over, Grandma! Hurry!” Johnny says. Grandma does, and Johnny runs to show her what he spotted near the ditch: a sleeping pheasant. What Grandma sees is a small feathery hump. When Johnny wants to take it home, Grandma tries to tell him that the pheasant might have been hit by a car. But maybe she could use the feathers for her craftwork? So home with Grandma and Johnny the pheasant goes . . . It’s hard to say who is most surprised by what happens next—Grandma, Johnny, or the pheasant. But no one will be more delighted than the reader at this lesson about patience and kindness and respect for nature, imparted by Grandma’s gentle humor, Johnny’s happy hooting, and all the quiet wisdom found in Cheryl Minnema’s stories of Native life and Julie Flett’s remarkably evocative and beautiful illustrations.




Young Whit and the Traitor's Treasure


Book Description

This Odyssey book series explores the history of the much-loved character John Avery Whittaker. The series introduces newcomers to the larger world of Odyssey. For readers who are already Odyssey-philes, the novels provide the history of the franchise’s most important character. Whit and his family (father, Harold; stepmother, Fiona; half-sister, Charlie) have just moved to Provenance, NC, in the middle of the Great Depression. Harold will be teaching at nearby Duke University. Not-quite-10-year-old Johnny soon makes a friend in Emmy, who lives across the street and joins him in his adventures. At his new school, he encounters a bully who makes his life miserable, and he makes a new friend in Huck, the custodian. Both of them play key roles in the mysteries and action. The central mystery in book 1 involves Confederate gold missing since the end of the Civil War and the question of whether Johnny’s ancestor was the coward and thief who stole it, as everyone believes.