Gugu's House


Book Description

Kukamba loves helping her grandmother decorate her mud home in a dusty Zimbabwe village, but when the annual rains partially destroy all her art work, Kukamba learns to see the goodness of the rains.




Reading the World with Picture Books


Book Description

This valuable reference guide provides suggestions of picture books set in more than 70 countries in each continent of the world, along with standards-based activities. Reading the World with Picture Books presents an exhaustive collection of booktalk options with picture books that are set in the major countries of each continent. Hundreds of children's books with an international flavor are organized by continent and then by country, and suggested activities accompany the titles, encouraging students to interpret information related to historical or geographic concepts and use problem-solving skills. Activities range from those appropriate for beginners to experienced researchers/writers. All call for high-level thinking and most provide opportunities to respond in creative ways. In addition, all of the activities are keyed to selected national standards in language arts and social studies. The picture books suggested are not only excellent choices to capture a booktalk audience's attention and educate young readers about world culture, but also to demonstrate how human beings have adapted to the various environments of the world.




Multicultural Picturebooks


Book Description

"Picturebook," spelled as a single word to identify its unique qualities and to differentiate the genre from other books with illustrations, is one that tells a story either in pictures alone or in almost equal partnership with text. The picturebook has great potential for bridging the differences among us; the concept of a story is one common to all, a shared experience that sets the stage for communication. And the goal of multiculturalism is to emphasize the positive attributes of human society, the outstanding, rather than the stereotype. Because children born today will interact with people from different cultures much more than previous generations, it is important that they are taught about other cultures, starting at a young age. Multicultural picturebooks are, therefore, an excellent teaching tool for meeting this educational challenge. The picturebooks profiled are appropriate for children in grades K - 4 but can be used with older children, depending on the curriculum and the students' comprehension level. Books covering Asia and the Pacific, The Middle East, Africa, South America, North America (Native Americas, Inuit, etc.), and books specific to the immigrant experience are profiled. Each book is described in one paragraph that includes an engaging review of the story line, special features of the content, the look and style of the artwork, interior design, and layout of the book. The authors emphasize that the visual qualities of picturebooks affect their ability to tell stories about people whose values and behaviors are different from those of the reader. The analyses, therefore, used in selecting the books include not only the informational content, but also the emotional content--the feelings generated by the text and art. In choosing books for this volume, the authors have used the following criteria: ]Does the book tell an engaging story?]Do the illustrations convincingly portray and represent humans, animals, and objects?]Is the use of the media consistent?]Do the text and the pi




Frog


Book Description

The sweeping history of modern China through the lens of the nation's controversial one-child policy. Frog opens with a playwright nicknamed Tadpole who plans to write about his aunt. In her youth, Gugu-- the beautiful daughter of a famous doctor and staunch Communist-- is revered for her skill as a midwife. But when her lover defects, Gugu's own loyalty to the Party is questioned. She decides to prove her allegiance by strictly enforcing the one-child policy, keeping tabs on the number of children in the village, and performing abortions on women as many as eight months pregnant.--




Seriously Speaking


Book Description




Incomplete Without My Brother, Adonis


Book Description

“We walked on a patch of grass that seemed to have been burnt a few hours earlier, with soot covering our feet. There, in front of us, lay my beloved brother, Adonis, lifeless, his body facing up. There were numerous stab wounds on his body, including his face, and his lumber jacket was half burnt.” Thus begins Kaizer Nyatsumba’s tragic story of his twin brother’s horrible murder. It is also an intriguing look into aspects of South African life hitherto unknown to many. They were twins of a special kind, the closest of friends, and each other’s confidantes. Their mothers were sisters, they were inseparable when they grew up, they were the first graduates in the extended family, and were the ones the family depended on for leadership. When Adonis was brutally murdered in the Pretoria area in June 2009, Kaizer was shattered and his life irrevocably changed. A part of him died with Adonis, and he has yet to come fully to terms with the loss. A very private man, the author bares his soul in this book.




Drum


Book Description




Moto


Book Description




Three Original Plays


Book Description




A New Grammar of Dyirbal


Book Description

R. M. W. Dixon's landmark 1972 grammar of the Dyirbal language of North Queensland is one of the best-known and most widely-cited language descriptions in the history of linguistics. In the fifty years since its publication, Dixon has continued his detailed work on the language, extending and refining the descriptions in light of more recent theoretical advances. The resulting A New Grammar of Dyirbal offers a comprehensive contemporary grammar of the language, reanalysed in myriad ways and drawing on an extensive corpus of texts. Among its many new features are further discussion of the applicative/causative derivation; a fresh focus on the role of the pervasive 'pivot', the syntactic linking of S and O functions; a detailed account of the two antipassives and their semantic contrast and phonological conditioning; and an extended account of relative clauses. The volume is accompanied by a companion website hosting the full set of textual data on which the grammar is based, as well as a thesaurus/dictionary of nouns, adjectives, and verbs across ten dialects of Dyirbal.




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