![]() ![]() My latest novel for kids and parents, GROWING UP RITA, is the story of a mother and daughter caught up with the problems of immigration. I write about the world we live in, and the world inside my head. I write about kids who populate the margins of society, who have something big to face in life, who take action on their own behalf, and who are aided along the way by adults who live on the margins themselves. Everything about their lives is determined by adults, often to their detriment. They don't have lobbyists because they don't have money. We pay lip service to the idea that they are the future, but we short change them. Most of all I believe that kids get the short end of the stick. I think love, hope, romance and our imaginations are the best way to do it. I grew up seeing hypocrisy pretty much everywhere I looked. ![]()
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![]() London Below is a place that belongs to various baronies and duchies and is littered with people, streets, trains and other things that have just been forgotten. ![]() Neverwhere is the original alternate London story. The alternate London trope in fantasy is a favourite (a post on this someday) and noone does it better than Neil Gaiman. When Richard is left with very little choice to go to this London Below, he is left with one option. There is a London with rat speakers, angels, vicious assasins and train stations that never existed. After saving the life of an injured young woman named Door, Richard is suddenly confronted with the fact that the London he knew is not the only London. Richard Mayhew’s life takes an unexpected turn after a small act of kindness. And I dragged reading this book out for an entire week. This book, is shockingly, the only Neil Gaiman book I have never read. Good evening and apologies for my absence! I have been work busy, a bit exhausted and had an impromptu weekend away which was well needed. ![]() But if this is all there is, then I don’t want to be sane.’ ![]() ![]() ![]() They open an inexpensive Indian restaurant opposite an esteemed French relais-that of the famous chef Madame Mallory-and infuse the sleepy town with the spices of India, transforming the lives of its eccentric villagers and infuriating their celebrated neighbor. The boisterous Haji family takes Lumière by storm. ![]() ![]() But when tragedy pushes the family out of India, they console themselves by eating their way around the world, eventually settling in Lumière, a small village in the French Alps. Lively and brimming with the colors, flavors, and scents of the kitchen, The Hundred-Foot Journey is a succulent treat about family, nationality, and the mysteries of good taste.īorn above his grandfather’s modest restaurant in Mumbai, Hassan first experienced life through intoxicating whiffs of spicy fish curry, trips to the local markets, and gourmet outings with his mother. He is an artist.Īnd so begins the rise of Hassan Haji, the unlikely gourmand who recounts his life’s journey in Richard Morais’s charming novel, The Hundred-Foot Journey. He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along once a generation. ![]() ![]() ![]() She translated Aesop's Fables from Middle English into Anglo-Norman French and wrote Espurgatoire seint Partiz, Legend of the Purgatory of St. She is the author of the Lais of Marie de France. She was proficient in Latin, as were most authors and scholars of that era, as well as Middle English and possibly Breton. Marie de France wrote in Francien, with some Anglo-Norman influence. She is considered by scholars to be the first woman known to write francophone verse. However, one written description of her work and popularity from her own era still exists. Virtually nothing is known of her life both her given name and its geographical specification come from her manuscripts. ![]() She lived and wrote at an unknown court, but she and her work were almost certainly known at the royal court of King Henry II of England. 1160–1215) was a poet, possibly born in what is now France, who lived in England during the late 12th century. ![]() Marie de France from an illuminated manuscript ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s Fresh Air called it, “a big beautifully written novel…that succeeds in being both serious art and immersive entertainment.” Following a twenty-five-bidder auction, the feature film rights to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow were acquired by Temple Hill and Paramount Studios. Her tenth novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was published by Knopf in July of 2022 and was an instant New York Times Best Seller, a Sunday Times Best Seller, a USA Today Best Seller, a #1 National Indie Best Seller, and a selection of the Tonight Show’s Fallon Book Club. The Stori GABRIELLE ZEVIN is a New York Times best-selling novelist whose books have been translated into forty languages. ![]() GABRIELLE ZEVIN is a New York Times best-selling novelist whose books have been translated into forty languages. ![]() ![]() ![]() His nearly twenty years with The Times included work as an Asian affairs specialist. ![]() Peter Hopkirk has traveled widely over many years in the regions where his books are set-Central Asia, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. a reminder of just how absorbing was the world Kipling knew, and how fabulous was his transformation of it into literature." -Richard Bernstein, New York Times ![]() Hopkirk illustrates how creatively and thoroughly the reading of a work of fiction can shape a whole life's experience." - John R. ![]() "In an original combination of autobiography, travel writing, and literary detective work, Hopkirk manages accessibly to tell the story of Kim and his own obsession with it. "This is a fascinating, brilliantly written book, as interesting in its description of the author's journeys as it is in its investigation of the reality that lies behind 'the finest novel in the English language with an Indian theme,'" as Kim has been described by Nirad Chaudhuri." -T. Fascinated since childhood by this strange tale of an orphan boy's recruitment into the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk here explores the many mysteries surrounding Kipling's great novel. This book is for all those who love Kim, the masterpiece of Indian life in which Kipling immortalized the Great Game, the centuries-old power struggle between Russia and Great Britain in the depths of Central Asia. ![]() ![]() ![]() Tao also accompanies his grandpa Pete on banjo, guitar & vocals around the world. ![]() Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, raised in Nicaragua, is usually on the road with The Mammals - a rocking folk ensemble that delights audiences across the USA and beyond. As a soloist, his songs are deeply poetic and compelling. His electrifying performances combine the roots rock influence he picked up in New Jersey with a joyous, powerful Puerto Rican foundation. Tito Auger fronts Puerto Rico's legendary rock band Fiel a la Vega. They speak to universal longings for social justice, a healthy environment, an end to war, and respect for one another. His widely beloved songs draw on Puerto Rico's rich poetry and folklore. Roy has since come to embody his country's soulful independence of spirit. QUE VAYA BIEN - Roy Brown, Tito Auger & Tao Rodriguez-Seeger Roy Brown's music was formed in the social movements of the '70s. ![]() ![]() ![]() But they are equally welcome at home during anxious days of following the news cycle or insomniac nights of worrying about the future. Mandel’s deeply imagined, philosophically profound reckonings with life in an age of disaster would indeed be appropriate companions alongside a plastic cup of wine and a tray of reheated food (if we’re lucky). But her entire body of work-her new novel, The Glass Hotel, is her fifth-can be read as a response to Pye’s demand. ![]() ![]() John Mandel used these lines as an epigraph to her second novel, The Singer’s Gun (2010), a book haunted by 9/11. “We stand in need of something stronger now: the travel book you can read while making your way through this new, alarming world.” With tanks now standing guard at London’s Heathrow Airport, what was once an ordinary plane trip had acquired “an element of thoroughly unwanted suspense.” The usual reading material, Pye argued, would no longer do. Writing in The New York Times in June 2003, less than two years after the events of September 11 shattered the complacency with which many Americans conducted their lives, the British critic Michael Pye lamented an unlikely casualty of the new era: the ability to occupy ourselves with a superficial novel while sitting in an airport lounge or drifting at 30,000 feet. Illustration: Paul Spella Sal Alas / Westend61 / Getty ![]() ![]() ![]() Our school is a keen participant in international programmes, such as Erasmus and, for a small city like Bath, our student population is comparatively diverse, with many students having roots in different parts of the world. St Gregory’s is a mixed comprehensive school of about 1,000 students (aged 11-18) in the West of England. Bronze and Sunflower, by Cao Wenxuan, tr. It struck me that a book club that focused on Chinese literature in translation could bring a new dimension to our students’ reading and open up new worlds and ideas to them. Helen Wang and Frances Weightman talked about the wealth of literature being written for young people in China and how little of this writing is known in the West. The inspiration for our book group came from a talk I attended a few years ago at the UK’s Annual Chinese Teaching Conference (aka the IOE Confucius Institute Annual Chinese Conference in London). We invited Theresa to tell us more about the bookclub… They spoke frankly and eloquently about the books they had read. At a symposium on Chinese children’s literature in 2016 she played a video in which she interviewed two of her teenage students about the Chinese books they had read. ![]() She took the initiative a few years ago to set up a Chinese book group. Theresa Munford teaches Chinese at a secondary school in the UK. ![]() ![]() ![]() She saw lettuce and carrots in their tank, as well as seeds and nuts. They liked to eat many of the things that Stella liked to eat. They would creep around looking for a bigger shell, then climb out of the small one and into the larger one. Stella thought that was a funny name and that the crabs were funny as they skedaddled around the tank, carrying their homes on their back.ĭaddy also explained that there were extra empty shells in there too, because the crabs were always growing and getting to big for their houses. Daddy told her they were homes to hermit crabs. But they came to another sandy-bottomed glass tank and this one held moving sea shells. Some had nothing and were houses to big spiders with hairy legs. Next, they turned a corner and came to more aquariums, but these did not old fish and there was no water in them. ![]() She especially liked the little red and blue ones that darted to and fro in groups. First daddy walked her around the many fish tanks holding brightly colored fish from the size of her thumb to the size of daddy’s head. Her eyes darted everywhere as her nose inhaled the smells of water, straw, and pine litter. Stella held tightly to her daddy’s hand as they walked into the pet shop. ![]() |