David De Vries
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Summary
In this humorous version of the traditional tale, Jack's magic beanstalk produces so many beans that soon everyone in the village is sick of eating them, and mad at Jack, and when he climbs the beanstalk he finds that Mr. Giant is equally fed up with beans--but fortunately Mrs. Giant suggests a solution to their diet problem.
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Series
I survived volume 13
Summary
For eleven year-old Hugo Ballard, flying on the Hindenburg is a dream come true. Hugo, his parents, and his four-year-old sister Gertie, are making the thrilling four thousand mile journey across the Atlantic in a zeppelin as big as the Titanic. But as the zeppelin gets ready to land, a blast rocks the Hindenburg and fire consumes the ship. The entire disaster lasts a mere thirty-two seconds, but in those few seconds, Hugo finds himself separated...
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Summary
What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey? Shares a meal? Get drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface -- a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character - and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you. In this practical and amusing guide to literature, Thomas C. Foster...
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Series
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As Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight filled with untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, massacres and atrocities. He incisively ties America's current foreign policy back to this remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians.
8) Umberland
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Series
Everland volume 2
Summary
Bella, Gwen, and the Lost Boys have escaped to Alnwick Castle, but it is not the safe haven they hoped it would be for the "cure" for the Horologia virus has mutated into something even worse--so the Duchess Alyssa and Maddox Hadder set out searching for the virus's origin, an extinct poisonous apple, supposedly from a tree at the center of a labyrinth hidden deep within Germany and guarded by monsters.
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"I did have a murderous trip down South, but it was mighty interesting." In October 1913, Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on a tour of South America. The thrill-seeking adventurer had no idea that he would soon receive an offer he couldn't refuse: the chance to lead an expedition deep into the Amazon jungle to chart an unmapped river with his son Kermit and renowned Brazilian explorer Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon. Death on...
10) Echo
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Summary
Lost in the Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and finds himself entwined in a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica--and decades later three children, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California find themselves caught up in the same thread of destiny in the darkest days of the twentieth century, struggling to keep their families intact, and tied together by the music of the same harmonica.
12) Scaredy Squirrel
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The first book in the Scaredy Squirrel series is a comical story of an endearing squirrel who learns what can happen when he's brave enough to take a risk
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A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union-showing how Gorbachev's misguided reforms led to its demise
In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four-million strong, five-thousand nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism....
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May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad. Smart, fiercely political, devoted solely to the cause, and "with nothing to lose but their own lives," Hannie,...