The House as a Symbol


Book Description




The House as Setting, Symbol, and Structural Motif in Children's Literature


Book Description

This study examines the function and significance of houses in children's literature, concentrating on a close reading of a large number of representative texts. The houses that children live in, move to or visit in these novels are especially striking and unforgettable. Throughout the fiction the house is a dominant setting, occupying a prominent place and producing a powerful imaginative impact upon the reader. This book addresses the need for a comprehensive examination of the symbolic and structural patterns of domestic settings in children's literature. It was written especially for those who would like to see children's literature placed in the same context and judged by the same criteria as its adult counterpart.




The House on Mango Street


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from.




The Wednesday Wars


Book Description

In this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt tells the witty and compelling story of a teenage boy who feels that fate has it in for him, during the school year 1968-68. Seventh grader Holling Hoodhood isn't happy. He is sure his new teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts. Holling's domineering father is obsessed with his business image and disregards his family. Throughout the school year, Holling strives to get a handle on the Shakespeare plays Mrs. Baker assigns him to read on his own time, and to figure out the enigmatic Mrs. Baker. As the Vietnam War turns lives upside down, Holling comes to admire and respect both Shakespeare and Mrs. Baker, who have more to offer him than he imagined. And when his family is on the verge of coming apart, he also discovers his loyalty to his sister, and his ability to stand up to his father when it matters most.




Everyday Use


Book Description

Presents the text of Alice Walker's story "Everyday Use"; contains background essays that provide insight into the story; and features a selection of critical response. Includes a chronology and an interview with the author.




A Dolls House


Book Description

A Doll's House by Henrick Ibsen tells the story of Nora, a woman who is treated like a doll in her own home. Set in Victorian Norway, Nora eventually flees her marriage and children in an attempt to discover herself despite being confined by patriarchal society. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes




We Have Always Lived in the Castle


Book Description

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.




The House of the Father As Fact and Symbol


Book Description

The first two volumes on patrimonialism in Ugarit and the ancient Near East, this book opens with a lengthy introduction on the interpretation of social action and households in the ancient world. Following this foundation, Schloen embarks on a societal and domestic study of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Ugarit in its wider Near Eastern context.




Home Environments


Book Description

The present volume in the series focuses on homes, residences, and dwellings. Although many fields have had a long-standing interest in different aspects of home environments, the topic has recently come to the forefront in the interdisciplinary environment and behavior field. Researchers and theorists from many disciplines have begun to meet regularly, share ideas and perspectives, and move the investigation of psychological, social, and behavioral aspects of home environments to the central arena of environment and behavior studies. This volume representative-though not comprehensive attempts to provide a sampling of contemporary perspectives on the study of home environments. As in previous volumes, the authors are drawn from a variety of disciplines, including environmental design fields of architecture and planning, and from the social science fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history. This diversity of authors and perspectives makes salient the principle that the study of homes in relation to behav ior requires the contributions of many disciplines. Moreover, the chap ters in this volume reflect an array of research and theoretical view points, different scales of home environments (e.g., objects and areas, the home as a whole, the home as embedded in neighborhood and communities, etc.), design and policy issues, and, necessarily, a com parative and cross-cultural perspective. Home environments are at the core of human life in most cultures, and it is hoped that the contributions to this volume display the excite ment, potential, and importance of research and theory on homes.




All the Light We Cannot See


Book Description

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).