Reviews (1)

It Happened At a Hanging
This book is an extraordinarily well crafted historical teen fantasy/drama. It has excellent plot development, and the main characters are well developed along with the rest of the story. Having previously read a less than glowing review of this book, I did not have the most positive expectations when I was presented this book for consideration by a colleague. I was reading it with an extremely critical viewpoint and wondering when it was going to fall apart. What I got was a story that kept me wondering what the following pages were going to bring, and I was compelled to read on. I found the author's ability to end a chapter in such a way that leaves the reader with questions that can only be answered in the pages that followed exceptional. This book is a page turner, and I couln't wait. I finished this book in one day. I not only own this book, I cherish it. Hattie Clark may not be a household name, but she will get my endorsement for this work. This book is absolutely on my "gift to give" list. ... Read more

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Outstanding Resource
This book places an outline of world history in an attractive format. There are color maps and illustrations to accompany the highlights of different time periods. There are sections about languages, rulers, politics, agriculture, inventions, and more. A time chart with specific dates runs along the right hand page. Following the section about the twentieth century is a world time chart. On this chart, the dates run down the left and the names of the continents are across the top. This allows you, at a glance, to compare what was happening around the world. This atlas contains a glossary, index of maps, and general index as further study aids. An outstanding addition to home or class libraries. ... Read more

Book Description

This colorful book looks at the practical clothes worn by people through the ages.It also examines the distinctive styles, fashions and materials adopted by different cultures throughout the world.Try creating your own Roman toga or a Japanese Netsuke Fox, and discover the fashions of the past. ... Read more

Book Description

During the days of Nazi terror in Europe, many Jewish children were taken from their families and hidden. Régine Miller was one such child, who left her mother, father, and brother when she was 10 years old. Utterly alone as she is shunted from place to place, told to tell no one she is Jewish, she hears that her mother and brother have been taken by the SS, the German secret police. Only her desperate hope that her father will return sustains her. At war’s end she must learn to live with the terrible truth of “the final solution,” the Nazi’s extermination camps.

The people who sheltered Régine cover a wide spectrum of human types, ranging from callous to kind, fearful to defiant, exploitive to caring. This is a story of a brave girl and an equally brave woman to tell the story so many years later. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Escaping The Clutches Of Hitler
Escaping The Clutches Of Hitler,

I liked this book because I enjoy reading about the Holocaust and I always about people who went through the Holocaust. This book is about is different because it is about a girl that hid the whole entire time.
Her name is Regine Miller and she went threw a series of different houses and all different types of them. Regine Miller was born in Brussels to parents who had escaped the anti-Semitism of Eastern Europe. She was 10 years old in 1942. She didn't understand why the Jews were being restricted from bike, certain hours of the day, and the yellow star they had to wear. In the mean time her mom, Mrs. Miller was getting sicker and they, at the time, didn't know what from. Regine was one of the best writers in the grade. She loved to write. As the war progressed her father, Maurice Miller, heard that the Nazis were deporting Jews but he would not leave his wife, since she could barely walk. One day a nock came from the door. Mr. Miller went to answer it and there was a messenger there and he had a message that read that his son, Leon Miller, was to report to the rail road station Mr. Miller ignored the notice and shoved the messenger down the stairs the next day the same messenger came again and again it said he had to report to the rail road station but this time it also said if he didn't the Nazis would take and kill there whole entire family. So they decided to that they had to make him go. They never saw him again.
Her father at that point decided that it was not safe here for Regine. So he arranged for her to go and live with some one in Brussels. Her name was Madame Andre, she did not let Regine do anything she could not go out side nor talk to any one her father came once every three weeks. Her father suddenly stopped coming then her aunt came to drop off the money then a girl named Nicole started coming. Regine lived there for about one year and about a month before she left Madame Andre got extremely worried that she would become caught so she arranged with a lady called Nicole to move Regine.
She went to a new family just about 30 miles away there she was made to work and she ended up with calluses and injured hands. When Nicole found out she immediately moved Regine to a different home.
This new house she stayed with a couple that did not have any kids and they were Catholic!!!!!!!!!! This is a problem she is Jewish and they are Catholic how is she not to let them know she is not Jewish. Regine had no idea how she was going to pull this off. She tried to copy every thing they did they were a nice couple that treated Regine like their own. Regine did not know anything about being catholic. They asked her many questions like are you baptized? , Where are your parents? They finally realized she was Jewish but did not mention it and kept her there at their home and did seem to care.
Finally Regine went and looked for any survivors of her family and found only her uncle she has only seen once in her entire life.

Living in Brussels and Experiencing Past and Present
I am a 6th grade teacher at an International School in Brussels. We are reading this book as a whole class read aloud. The book is very interesting as it talks about places that the kids know and live. Regine's story, as told in this book, has contributed greatly to the authenticity of the children's learning. Tomorrow we are taking a quick ride on the tram a few stops to the old Gestapo Headquarters to see just how integrated the Nazis were in every day life for the Belgians. I whole heartedly recommend this book. Tragic and hopeful.

It was about a girl that was Jewish and had a difficult life
Absolutly amazing like a trilogy of life but in different ways that were being written for a young girl that wanted to pour her heart out in the Jewish world that had to be kept a secret for her. It was truly a great biography of what life became for a girl that could not stay long unless she loved it there for it was her coice and a destiny to make it within her. It was a spectaculur book of what Jewish life was like for I have never lived in such a difficult life and it was a masterpiece of what seemed like a lifetime ago in a world that nobody has ever lived in before and a young girl told everyone her life that she had lived in her world of privacy where nothing was to be told to anyone. ... Read more

Book Description

What did Roman nobles eat for dinner?Where did gladiatorsfight to the death?How did the Romans heat their baths?The answersto these questions and many more are packed within the pages ofPockets:Ancient Rome. ... Read more

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concise, to the point; yet comprehensive
Nifty little pocket-sized reference/general info/history on ancient Rome in all its aspects. Great companion book for classes doing literature. Gives a brief, all-around background of history, society, arts, general life. Fun book! ... Read more

Book Description

J. Patrick Lewis's poems include odes to such great monuments as Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, Hagia Sophia, the Great Wall of China, Mount Rushmore, and the Guggenheim Museum. Each poem and monument will have one spread, with 13 monuments being featured in this 32 page book. There will be a spread in the back of the book with a map showing the locations of the monuments along with brief historical information on each site , some background on the photographer, and history of the photograph. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Maryland, My Maryland, the northern most southern state
Michael Burgan begins his look at "Maryland" for the America the Beautiful, Second Series by declaring the state to be "America in Miniature" in the first chapter.The description comes form a visiting writer in 1920s and is predicated on the fact that the Chesapeake Bay, which defines both the state's geography and economy, is situated between flat, coastal plains on the east and the Appalachian Mountains on the western edge.Burgan also underscores that because of slavery and plantations, Maryland was more like a southern state than a northern one, but that Baltimore was as much of an industrial center as anything to found in the northern states.As H. L. Mencken described it, Maryland was a "safe middle place" that offered a balanced mix of land, people and ideas.

All of the volumes in this series devote three chapters to the history of the state under discussion.Chapter Two, "Land of Freedom," begins with the arrival of the first Europeans and ends with the colony becoming a state.Chapter Three, "Creativity and Conflict," covers from the War of 1812 through he Civil War to the "oyster wars" of the 1870s and 1880s, while the 20th century is detailed in Chapter Four, "Troubles and Successes."Chapter Five looks at the state "From the Mountains to the Bay," including not only geographical features but also the state's wildlife.

The rest of the volume focuses on what it is like to live in Maryland. Chapter Six, "Communities Large and Small" compares the life in the country with those in the big city of Baltimore, the City of Many Names.The government of the state is covered in Chapter Seven, "Democracy in Action," where we get to find out about the state symbols such as the state flower (Black-eyed Susan) and the fact it was the first state to have an official sport (jousting, believe it or not).Chapter Eight is about "Bay and Fields, Offices and Labs," and surveys the Maryland economy, which is dominated by the wealth form the water of Chesapeake Bay.Chapter Nine, "Life in the Free State," looks at where and how people live in Maryland, while Chapter Ten, "Pleasures for the Mind and Body," is all about the state's history of creative pursuits and leisure activities.

Throughout the book there are informative sidebars that provide all sorts of interesting details about famous Marylanders such as Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, Edgar Allan Poe, Johns Hopkins and Cal Ripken (infamous ones too, like Spiro Agnew), and assorted topics of interest from the first planned community of Greenbelt and the surveying of the Mason-Dixon line to what exactly is a Terp and a recipe for Crab Cakes.Burgan's look at "Maryland" is filled with full-color photograph and original maps, with the back of the book offering a Timeline that parallels U.S. and Maryland history, pages of Fast Facts, and the expected list of places To Find Out More.The big irony is that the northern most southern state produced more than its fair share of noted Africa-Americans: to the above short list you can add Billie Holiday and Thurgood Marshall. ... Read more

Book Description

Take a look back at what it was like to be a pirate, find out who they were and how they lived, and learn of their swashbuckling adventures. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Good Civil War Book
There are thousands of books out there about the Civil War, and you might wonder why we need another one.But this one is kind of different because it concentrates mainly on the weapons (including cannons and armored ships) used in the war.In this case there's quite a bit of fascinating info packed into a small book, one that is easy to read but also detailed. ... Read more

Book Description

The American West beckons and new cities spring up across the plains. Meet P.T. Barnum, Ida B. Wells, Mark Twain, Lee Yick, Thaddeus Stevens, Thomas Alva Edison, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Mary Antin, and a nasty fellow named Jim Crow. Turn these pages and read all about them. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Recommended for ages 8-12...AND EVERYONE ELSE TOO
This book is really supposed to be for little kids in elementary school, but I am reading it to understand my U.S. history class in high school, because it conveys our history with such clarity, and doesn't muddle things up like big ol' textbooks. SO BUY THIS NOW!You won't regret it...I wish I could have given this book more than 5 stars.

A time of great hope and incredible change in U.S. history
"Reconstructing America 1865-1890," the 7th volume in Joy Hakim's A History of US series, expands the notion of reconstruction, usually applied only to the Southern states of the former Confederacy to include the entire nation. In her preface to the volume Hakim declares "Are We Equal? Are We Kidding?" Her point is to underscore the Declaration of Independence's famous proposition that all men are created equal and to point out that ending slavery does not really free people if they are denied education and jobs. However, while the issue of racial division begins and ends this book, Hakim covers the entire domestic history of the United States in between the Civil War and the rise of the nation as a world power.

This volume does not have a formal structure but you can still find four rather distinction units. The first (Chapters 1-10) talks specifically about Southern Reconstruction and the fight between President Andrew Johnson and Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the Radical Republicans in Congress. The second (Chapters 11-18) tells about the opening of the West and Indians ordered to reservations. The third (Chapters 19-25) contrasts the world of Boss Tweed and Thomas Nast, P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain, with the immigrants who came to both coasts of the country. The fourth (Chapters 26-37) starts with the beginning of the movement towards rights for women and ends with Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois taking on the Jim Crow laws, with the birth of the Industrial Revolution and its patron saint Thomas Alva Edison in between.

As you can see, this is an inelegant division of these 37 chapters at best. But in the second half of the 19th-century of American history lacks the direction of the first, where the nation was hurdling towards Civil War. The idea that America was indeed reconstructing, or remaking itself, makes sense. However, there is no finality to the story at this point because equality between the sexes and the races are still a half and full century away respectively. One sign of the changing focus of history is that George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn is literally a marginal topic while the story of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce gets an entire chapter.

These volumes are wonderfully illustrated, with historic photographs, paintings, and in this particular volume political cartoons that help bring the period alive. Throughout the book you will find detailed features on subjects such as the first conservationist, John Wesley Powell, and the Route of the Nez Perce in 1877. As always the margins are crammed with notes, definitions, mini-biographies, and choice quotations. For children raised on computers and the Internet it is clear that Hakim is speaking their language, and for parents home schooling their children they will find Hakim to be an active teacher who anticipates questions and concerns from students even when she is writing and book and they are reading it. This is an excellent series of American history textbooks.

It's Not What You're Probably Thinking...
When I first saw this book, I thought that it would be like the awful textbooks they force you to read in schools across the country (i.e. "and then Washington retired, and Adams became president,etc.,etc."), but it wasn't boring at all. Joy Hakim's fabulous writing and the fun facts and illustrations scattered throughout this book make history seem like an ongoing story, instead of an endless monologue. Good for kids and adults alike! ... Read more

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A highly stimulating educational resource
Peter Ackroyd's The Beginning is an informed and informative nonfiction resource for young adults which superbly organizes and presents our latest scientific understanding of how the Earth was formed, how life evolved, and showcasing an era when humans were at the mercy of the elements and their environment. Brilliant color illustrations and what the latest discoveries in astronomy and paleontology have taught us about the Earth's history fill the pages of this exciting and highly stimulating educational resource. Very highly recommended for school and community library collections, The Beginning is the first title in Peter Ackroyd's new and forthcoming "Voyages Through Time" series from DK Publishing. ... Read more

Book Description

Did you know that Columbus was not actually searching for America when he found it? Or that many of the explorers after him were looking for a sea route to China instead? During the golden age of exploration, men set sail with hopes of finding different travel routes, treasures, and spices. The fact that they came ashore on uncharted land was not only one of the greatest accidents of all time, it also led to one of the greatest discoveries -- the New World!

From Columbus to Cabrillo, this book follows the adventures and misadventures of twelve famous explorers from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nancy Winslow Parker has mapped out a truly enjoyable and educational journey filled with dozens of detailed and colorful illustrations depicting the explorers' ships, equipment, and travel routes.