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Thursday, 23 October 2025
My Father's Dragon

Title: My Father's Dragon
Author: Ruth Stiles Gannett
Rating: ★★★★☆
Age Category: Middle Grade
Back Cover Synopsis:
A group of lazy animals on Wild Island have captured a baby dragon and put him to work. The little dragon can fly, so they are forcing him to act as a flying ferry across a dangerous river. The dragon doesn't like it.
So goes the story that reaches a kind-hearted boy named Elmer Elevator ("my father"). Elmer, carrying a bag of most unusual supplies, sets out on a secret journey to rescue the dragon. How Elmer uses these supplies to beguile the nasty inhabitants of Wild Island and free the dragon is one of the most exciting adventures ever.
Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Tuesday, 21 October 2025
Sonnet 21 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 21
by William Shakespeare
So is it not with me as with that Muse
Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse
Making a couplement of proud compare,
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O' let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:
Let them say more than like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
Monday, 20 October 2025
"At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne --
Sunday, 19 October 2025
Saturday, 18 October 2025
Thursday, 16 October 2025
The Old Man and the Sea

Title: The Old Man and the Sea
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Rating: ★★★★★
Age Category: Adult Literature
Back Cover Synopsis:
"The best that has been said and thought." -- Benedicton Classics, Oxford
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
Sonnet 36 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 36
by William Shakespeare
Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one:
So shall those blots that do with me remain
Without thy help by me be borne alone.
In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which though it alter not love's sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
But do not so; I love thee in such sort
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
Sunday, 12 October 2025
Saturday, 11 October 2025
Thursday, 9 October 2025
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Title: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Author: Barbara Robinson
Rating: ★★★★★
Age Category: Middle Grade
Back Cover Synopsis:
The Herdmans are absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lie and steal and smoke cigars (even the girls). They talk dirty, hit little kids, cuss their teachers, set fire to Fred Shoemaker's old broken-down toolhouse, and take the name of the Lord in vain. So no one is prepared when the Herdmans invade church one Sunday - and decide to take over the annual Christmas Pageant.
None of them has ever heard the Christmas story before. Their interpretation - the Wise Men are a bunch of dirty spies and Herod needs a good beating - has a lot of people up in arms. But the actual pageant is full of surprises for everyone, starting with the Herdmans themselves.
"[The book] had me laughing so hard I could hardly read. Don't miss this hilarious and touching book." -- The Boston Globe
Tuesday, 7 October 2025
Sonnet 6 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 6
by William Shakespeare
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
Sunday, 5 October 2025
Saturday, 4 October 2025
Friday, 3 October 2025
Thursday, 2 October 2025
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Title: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Author: Frederick Douglass
Rating: ★★★★☆
Age Category: Adult Literature
Back Cover Synopsis:
A classic story of agonizing circumstances and enduring hope, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an eloquent account of a young man's life under slavery and his eventual escape.
Written to promote the abolitionist cause, it became the best-selling fugitive slave narrative of the era. This autobiography is a powerful reminder of the brutality of slavery and the terrors that African-American people were forced to endure.
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