Tree in the Trail

Title: Tree in the Trail

Author: Holling Clancy Holling

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Age Category: Middle Grade

    Back Cover Synopsis: 

    A cottonwood tree watches the pageant of history on the Santa Fe Trail for over two hundred years.

"Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy." -- Jacques Maritain --

Sonnet 3 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 3

by William Shakespeare

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another;

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime:

So thou through windows of thine age shall see

Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.

But if thou live, remember'd not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

"A good laugh is sunshine in a house." -- William Makepeace Thackeray --

"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground." -- Theodore Roosevelt --

"Positive anything is better than negative nothing." -- Elbert Hubbard --

"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do by finding out what he will not do;  and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery." -- Samuel Smiles -- 

Pinocchio

 

Title: Pinocchio

Author: Carlo Collodi

Rating: ★★★★★

Age Category: Children's Literature/Middle Grade

    Back Cover Synopsis: 

    The hair-raising adventures of a naughty wooden puppet who longs to become a real boy. 

    When the old wood-carver, Geppetto, decides to make a wonderful puppet who can dance and turn somersaults, he has no idea of the trouble in store. For as the puppet takes shape, it gradually comes to life, learning to talk and play pranks. providing a constant source of exasperation and delight.

    This famous Italian story, first published in English in 1892, has been made into an equally famous film and has delighted generations of children. 

"Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement." -- Baltasar Gracian --

Sonnet 14 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 14

by William Shakespeare

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;

And yet methinks I have astronomy,

But not to tell of good or evil luck,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,

Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,

Or say with princes if it shall go well,

By oft predict that I in heaven find:

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

And, constant stars, in them I read such art

As truth and beauty shall together thrive,

If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;

Or else of thee this I prognosticate:

Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson --

"Never apologize for showing feeling, my friend. Remember that when you do so, you apologize for truth." -- Benjamin Disraeli --

"Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect." -- Theodore Parker --

"Dreams are the touchstones of our career." -- Henry David Thoreau --

The Fallacy Detective

Title: The Fallacy Detective

Authors: Nathaniel Bluedorn & Hans Bluedorn

Rating: ★★★★★

    Back Cover Synopsis: 

    What is a fallacy?

    A fallacy is an error in logic - a place where someone has made a mistake in his thinking. 

    This is a handy book for learning to spot common errors in reasoning.

• For ages twelve through adult
• Exercises with answer key
• Includes "The Fallacy Detective Game"

"Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain one's time. They say energy better devoted to productive endeavors." -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg --

Sonnet 1 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 1

William Shakespeare

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

"And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can." -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning --

"Talk about your blessings more than your burdens." -- Unknown --

"Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them." -- Hugh Miller --

"Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one's own, it's always twenty times better." -- Margaret Oliphant --

The Railway Children

Title: The Railway Children

Author: Edith Nesbit 

Rating: ★★★★★

Age Category: Middle Grade

    Back Cover Synopsis: 

    The Railway Children is a children's book by Edith Nesbit, originally serialised in The London Magazine during 1905 and first published in book form in 1906. It has been adapted for the screen several times, of which the 1970 film version is the best known.

    The story concerns a family who move to "Three Chimneys", a house near the Railway, after the father, who works at the Foreign office, is imprisoned after being falsely accused of spying. 

    

    The children befriend an Old Gentleman who regularly takes the 9:15 train near their home; he is eventually able to help prove their father's innocence, and the family is reunited. 

    The family take care of a Russian exile, Mr. Szczepansky, who came to England looking for his family and Jim. The theme of an innocent man being falsely imprisoned for espionage and finally vindicated might have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair, which was a prominent worldwide news item a few years before the book was written. 

"We rise by lifting others." -- Robert Ingersoll --

Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne

Now We Are Six

by A. A. Milne

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

"Believe you can and you're halfway there." -- Theodore Roosevelt --

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." -- Henry Ford --

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." -- Confucius --

"Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them." -- Lucy Maud Montgomery --

The Song Spinner

 

Title: The Song Spinner

Author: Pauline Le Bel

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Ages: 8 - 14

    Back Cover Synopsis: 

    In the land of Pindrop, noise is forbidden. Not even the sweet song of a bird is tolerated. But Aurora hears music in her head. So while she does her whispering exercises like other good children and wears her regulation Hushcloth, she dares to dream of a different life. It's not surprising then that Zantalalia should be the one to offer her more than dreams. Banished to the Water World because she refused to stop singing, Zantalalia has secretly returned to Pindrop in time for the Sunwatch.

    Why has she returned on the eve of the winter festival? What is the Song Spinner? Who has put the songs inside Aurora's head? And what chance do dreamers like Aurora have against Captain Nizzle of the Noise Police, who enforces the Hush Laws at any cost? Aurora is determined to find the answers in this lyrical fantasy with a score of fascinating characters. 

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval." -- Mark Twain --

"It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of." -- Emily Carr --