![]() X marks the spot (trace an x on child's back) Usually at this point the child dissolves into helpless giggles." (Blow on the back of the child's neck as you say "Whoo")ĬHILL YOUR BONES! (Tickle the child incessantly) With a pinch (Lightly pinch the back of their neck)Īnd a squeeze (Gently squeeze either their shoulder or neck)Īnd a ocean breeze. Trickle down, (Then down the child's back) Trickle up, (Run your fingers up the child's back) (Trace a circle, then tap the child's back right in the center.) X marks the spot (Trace an X on the child's back) ![]() Thanks! - Mamá Lisa.īronwyn wrote me in August 2005, "You have "X Marks The Spot" I saw it and remembered my mother (or was it my friend Rene?) teaching this song to me when I was in first or second grade. ![]() If anyone is familiar with any other versions of this song, please send them to me. My sister Gwen made up "and a tap on your knees" when she couldn't remember the original line. This is the rhyme as best as I can piece it together. ![]() My older sisters used to "sing-song" this rhyme to me while making the motions that go with the words. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Perhaps most visually dazzling is the cubist riot as strikers battle police amid escaping cattle. Jurgis, briefly prosperous as a strong-arm man for the Democratic machine, smokes a cigar the smoke forms an image of his dead son and evicted family. ![]() ![]() When Jurgis is jailed for beating the rich rapist Connor, a series of panels suffused with a dull, red glow draw readers closer and closer to Jurgis's face, until they see that the glint in his eye is fire. Kuper uses an innovative full-color stencil technique with the immediacy of graffiti to give Sinclair's story new life. The story follows Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkis and his family as they are eaten up and spit out by capitalism (represented by Chicago's packing houses). Kuper replaces it, however, with unmatched pictorial drama. His unenviable task is condensing a 400-page novel into a mere 48 pages, and, inevitably, much of the narrative drama is lost. When Kuper initially drew it, he was already a well-known left-wing comics artist. Originally published in 1991 as part of a short-lived revival of the Classics Illustrated line, this adaptation of Sinclair's muckraking socialist novel succeeds because of its powerful images. ![]() ![]() ![]() If Luxa had dived for that tunnel and made it, the entrance soon would have been flooded with the waves churned up by the serpents. Gregor suddenly remembered the tunnel Twitchtip had been guiding them to. He could see little scrape marks on the delicate skin of her scalp. Gregor separated her curls with his fingers. ![]() I bump head," Boots said, rubbing the top of her head. "Boots," said Gregor, "you know when we saw the big." He didn't know what to call those things. Gregor held her on his lap while she gobbled up enough dinner for ten toddlers. "But Twitchtip was sure there was water between us, and they didn't answer Ares."Īfter a while, Dulcet came in with a clean and shiny Boots. "It seems," Vikus said at last, "they did not perish in the Tankard." Gregor tried to piece it together in his head. He followed Vikus to the dining room, where they'd last eaten with Ripred, and they both took a seat. Since it was Dulcet, he made his hands let go. ![]() I will bathe her and bring her back directly," said Dulcet. When she tried to take Boots out of Gregor's arms, he resisted. ![]() ![]() ![]() Now, I did have some trouble getting over a pretty serious bout of literary snobbery I used to be all about the classics and the classics only. ![]() And this trait has proven to be what makes a classic just ask any professor of literature. No matter the genre, if there is at least some little bit of emotion, a situation, a theme, or so on, to which a reader can relate, well, that’s the good part. Universality – Encarta says: “relating to, affecting, or including everyone in a group or situation relating to, affecting, or accepted by the whole world” – is what makes me, a twenty-first century American, want to jump cannon-ball-style into Tolstoy’s 187Os Russia in Anna Karenina. For me, and I daresay many others, universality is the most significant standard. People have different ideas of what makes a book good. ![]() “Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.” ![]() ![]() His mom left when he was a young child and he has no contact with her. ![]() Thom (Thom? Really? Is anyone named Thom? Commentators, please advise!) is a high school basketball player who volunteers with underprivileged kids in his spare time. I can’t fault the craft or content of Hero, but I found it strangely easy to put down. Personally, though, I want my romance to have some joy, and I want even my darkest superheroes to get at least a few moments to revel in their powers (or, in Batman’s case, their “wonderful toys”). Not every love story or superhero story has to be fun. ![]() That’s not surprising, because it deals with some very painful topics. It was solidly written, painful, and touching, and although I haven’t the foggiest idea of what it’s like to be a gay teen it had the feel of honesty to it. Y’all know I can’t resist a geek/romance crossover, so I had to check out Hero, a YA novel about a gay teen superhero that involves a love story. ![]() ![]() ![]() produced a PBS series on Reconstruction and a companion book, “Stony the Road,” exploring those same years when, as Foner says, the United States “made its first attempt. This past spring Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. “We live at a moment in some ways not unlike the 1890s and early 20th century, when state governments, with the acquiescence of the Supreme Court, stripped black men of the right to vote and effectively nullified the constitutional promise of equality.” ![]() “Recently, we have experienced a slow retreat from the ideal of racial equality,” he writes. Foner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning history professor emeritus at Columbia University, has written many books about the Civil War, Reconstruction and slavery, but this one seems particularly attuned to the current political moment. ![]() ![]() But the most important underlying theme of the book is the dilemma of good over evil. ![]() Inkheart unfolds several themes with which readers can relate. Dustfinger, a character read from Inkheart by her father, betrays them and goes with her and her aunt Elinor to rescue her father. When Meggie finds all about Capricorn and his evil things, she finds her dad missing, taken by Capricorn. This power invites the attention of villainous Capricorn, who plans to use Mo to bring to life both evil characters and great riches from books like Treasure Island and The Arabian Nights. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke is a wonderful story within a story that is a delightful blend of fantasy and reality revolving around the adventures of a little girl Meggie and her father, Mo who has a special gift of bringing alive the characters he reads out of novels. ![]() ![]() He did it right there with the tip of his nose touching my own and his forehead against mine too. ![]() He ended every worry I’d ever had about there being someone after him. ![]() I blinked so fast I knew I was about two point five seconds away from losing my shit.Īnd then Ivan ended me. I will drag your stubborn, beautiful ass kicking and screaming back to me because nobody else will ever be good enough for you.” “You’re not ever going to be anyone else’s partner. Not like it ever will again,” he finished, pressing his forehead against mine, his eyes intense and heartbreaking. “You mean so much to me that that’s why whatever happens doesn’t really matter to me. “I love you so fucking much, Jasmine, that if I broke my ankle during a program, I would get up and finish it for you, to get you what you’ve always wanted.” “I love you so much, if I can’t skate with you, I don’t want to skate with anyone else.” “I love you so much I spend all day with you, and it still isn’t enough for me,” he kept going. ![]() ![]() ![]() Among other commendations he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the International Man Booker Prize, twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively. ![]() ![]() Roth’s lasting contribution to literature was widely recognised throughout his lifetime, both in the US and abroad. Roth was the author of thirty-one books, including those that were to follow the fortunes of Nathan Zuckerman, and a fictional narrator named Philip Roth, through which he explored and gave voice to the complexities of the American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Ten years later, the publication of his fourth novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, brought Roth both critical and commercial success, firmly securing his reputation as one of America’s finest young writers. In 1959, Roth published Goodbye, Columbus – a collection of stories, and a novella – for which he received the National Book Award. After graduating from Weequahic High School in 1950, he attended Bucknell University, Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, where he received a scholarship to complete his M.A. The second child of second-generation Americans, Bess and Herman Roth, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933. ![]() ![]() ![]() When he helped save Thormod’s life he was set free and went with him when he returned to his homeland in Denmark. ![]() In Dublin Jestyn was bought by a young Viking named Thormod and became his thrall. A clash with a group of raiders ended up with him being taken to the Dublin Slave Market. One evening a sudden storm broke and Jestyn was sent to get the yearlings to safety but they never made it home. I was listening to a podcast on Ukraine which traced the country’s history and they mentioned this book, and as we have the book but I’d never read it, I decided to do so now.īlood Feud follows the fictitious character of Jestyn Englishman, part Saxon, part Briton (?) who was left an orphan at the age of twelve after his stepfather rejected him when his mother died.Ī cattleherd gave him work and lodging and for five years he was quite happy. As she herself said, “I write for children aged 8 to 88.” This ability to appeal to a wide age range is obvious in Blood Feud. Rosemary Sutcliff is considered to be one of the finest writers of historical novels for children but her writing is appealing for adult readers as well. ![]() |