Two of her stories, Polly Peppers Chicken Pie and Phronsie Peppers New Shoes, proved to be very popular with readers. The success of Harrietts short stories prompted her to write the nowfamous Five Little Peppers series. This series was first published in 1881, the year that Stone married Daniel Lothrop. Daniel had founded the D. Lothrop Company of Boston, who published Harrietts books under her pseudonym, Margaret Sidney. Harriett eventually wrote over 30 books; in addition to the Five Little Peppers series she wrote a number of books on patriotic themes, including A Little Maid of Concord Town (1898) and A Little Maid of Boston (1910).  (less)

full of that special kind of wisdom. It is also a message of courage, hope, and humor springing from generations of ?good common sense.? Roth provides these stories to verify that happiness is a choice we make as we live our lives; it is a matter of our own doing. Whether related to business, family relationships, or physical or spiritual challenges, Roth's common sense advice is uncommon inspiration for all. These chapters from real life include intriguing titles like: Walk in My Shoes, The Perfect ?10, ? Friends, Souls for Sale and You Don?t Get What You Deserve. If there is one underlying theme for Candor U, Class in Session! it is this: Life is a continuing exercise in everyday opportunities to grow and triumph; those who succeed are those who never stop learning! ?Jim Roth's book is a how-to manual on incorporating ethical and moral values into your business world, and making that an extension of your personal life. Jim also cares about the world's children, and he has been sponsoring children though the Christian Children's Fund since he was a junior in college.? John F. Schultz, Ph.D., President, Christian Children's Fund ?Mr. Roth shares the valuable lessons he has learned from ordinary people in ordinary situations on the importance of integrity, compassion, fairness, and a people centered focus. His real life stories offer profound life lessons.? Ellen Kreidman, Ph.D., Author of Light His Fire and Light Her Fire ?Jim Roth's reflections on living withhis peers and with himself provide insight on how we support each other. Readers understand that our God transcends our living and that every day matters in human relations.? Dr. Howard P. Johnson, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Engineering Emeritus ?I had the pleasure of working with Jim Roth in his career at Cargill. Jim was smart, had strong personal beliefs and work ethic, and was a determined leader. As described in his book, he has a keen awareness of the environment around him.? Ernest S. Micek, Retired CEO, Cargill, Inc.  (less)

and George Walthall. Her stern father liked his independence and kept his children in school, in spite of what the boss said. Her mother was strong, warm, and competent: she could bundle tobacco all day long, or make a family dessert out of nothing but ash potatoes. Older siblings who had moved North to find work would come and go.PAlthough it was the Depression, and Sunday shoes were so precious they were carried, not worn, Mabel's life was full, with family and friends, church activities, work, and the humor and deviltry of a rural childhood. There were falls into the hogpen, brushes with haints, disasterous haircuts, sibling spats, and billy goat attacks. When hardscrabble times got better, there was food -- the good fried sweet potato pies, Momma's butterbeans, bunion stew -- and the promise of an easier life to come.PThis oral history is told for children in Mabel's strong voice in a series of vignettes. This is the story of an American place and time today's youth need to understand. The whites rode the school buses and the coloreds walked, but still there was the whole society of people, both black and white, who had little or nothing, and who got by through hard work, faith, and sharing the good things when they came.PTeachers covering a unit on the Depression, or the African-American experience in the South, will want to add this book to their shelves. It is illustrated with black-and-white photographs of the time.  (less)

DAY OF MARCH 1882brbrAda was born first, taking Lilla’s share of good luck with her. Or so everyone said. I’m not sure whether this was a Chinese myth to do with twins or just some family comparison of their two lives—for who can resist comparing the lives of twins? But when Lilla struggled into the world thirty minutes after her sister, she wailed, fists clenched, as if she already knew that she was going to have to fight to make up for being born without her fair share of fortune.brbrAs far as the amah who looked after the two of them was concerned, Ada was Number One Daughter and Lilla, Number Two. When the amah picked up Ada to be fed first, Lilla learned to scream so that she was not forgotten. On the cold, dark mornings of those freezing north China winters that numbed the babies’ fingers and noses, Ada was the first to be swaddled in layers of warm clothes and Lilla had to shout to show that she was cold, too. The moment that a thick, slippery, silk ribbon was carefully woven into Ada’s plaits, Lilla pushed through her stutter to demand one for herself. And if Ada’s ribbon was pink, Lilla made sure that she had a pink one as well. “Right from the start,” I was told, “they had the most terrible fights—their shoes had to be put on each foot at the same time.”brbrTo look at, Lilla and Ada were identical. Rummaging through the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, I found a photograph of the pair of them, taken by a visitor to Chefoo when they were about eight years old. In it, they both have exactly the same pale, heart-sh@TXõÂ? )ÿ¾Û€  (less)

Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood./I/blockquotePSo begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.PPerhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing shoes repaired with tires, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.PImbued with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion -- and movingly read in his own voice --IAngela's Ashes/Iis a glorious audiobook that bears all the marks of a classic.  (less)

CHINA, THE SECOND-TO-LAST DAY OF MARCH 1882brbrAda was born first, taking Lilla’s share of good luck with her. Or so everyone said. I’m not sure whether this was a Chinese myth to do with twins or just some family comparison of their two lives—for who can resist comparing the lives of twins? But when Lilla struggled into the world thirty minutes after her sister, she wailed, fists clenched, as if she already knew that she was going to have to fight to make up for being born without her fair share of fortune.brbrAs far as the amah who looked after the two of them was concerned, Ada was Number One Daughter and Lilla, Number Two. When the amah picked up Ada to be fed first, Lilla learned to scream so that she was not forgotten. On the cold, dark mornings of those freezing north China winters that numbed the babies’ fingers and noses, Ada was the first to be swaddled in layers of warm clothes and Lilla had to shout to show that she was cold, too. The moment that a thick, slippery, silk ribbon was carefully woven into Ada’s plaits, Lilla pushed through her stutter to demand one for herself. And if Ada’s ribbon was pink, Lilla made sure that she had a pink one as well. “Right from the start,” I was told, “they had the most terrible fights—their shoes had to be put on each foot at the same time.”brbrTo look at, Lilla and Ada were identical. Rummaging through the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, I found a photograph of the pair of them, taken by a visitor to Chefoo when they were about eight years old. In it, t@Aù™™™™šÿ¾Û€  (less)

stepmother./ibrbrThere are lots of stepmothers in my favourite book of fairy tales. Don't go, 'Yuck, boring!' Fairy tales are seriously cool,imuch/iscarier than any X-rated video you've ever secretly watched at a sleepover. Snow White's stepmother is the scariest of all.brbrShe doesn'tilook/iscary. She looks beautiful in the picture in my book - though her long queen's robes are spoilt because Hannah tried to colour them with purple wax crayon. I was FURIOUS. I felt like snapping the book shut and smacking Hannah round the head with it, even though she's only little and didn'timean/ito spoil the picture.brbrI minded so because it's such a special book. It used to be our mum's when she was a little girl. She gave it to me. Snow White's mum died when she was born so she got this stepmother who looked so lovely that her magic mirror said she was fairest of them all. But she was evil and mean and dead jealous when the mirror said Snow White was the fairest now, so the stepmother tried to have her chopped into bits and then she poisoned her with an apple and she fell down dead and was kept in a glass coffin until a handsome prince came by (I) and brought her back to life. The wicked stepmother was so maddened that she boiled with rage and her shoes stayed so red hot she couldn't take them off and she had to dance until she died.brbrShe must have had awful blisters. I've got one where my old trainers are rubbing. Dad doesn't always get it together when we need new shoes. It's not his fault he's so busy. Yes it is. I'm not making excuses for my dad any more. I can't stick him now. And I especially can't sti@$.záG®ÿ¾Û€  (less)

Jungle Book, The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Treasure Island.brOther Leon Garfield books published by Oxford University Press: Devil-in-the-Fog, Black Jack, and Mr Corbett's Ghost.brLeon Garfield was born and educated in Brighton, England. His art studies were interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served in the Army Medical Corps. After the war he worked as a hospital laboratory technician until he gave this up to devote himself to writing. His books have been widely translated and have won many international and British literary awards. In 1981 he was nominated for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award. He was married with a daughter and lived in North London.brbr  (less)

stepmother./ibrbrThere are lots of stepmothers in my favourite book of fairy tales. Don't go, 'Yuck, boring!' Fairy tales are seriously cool,imuch/iscarier than any X-rated video you've ever secretly watched at a sleepover. Snow White's stepmother is the scariest of all.brbrShe doesn'tilook/iscary. She looks beautiful in the picture in my book - though her long queen's robes are spoilt because Hannah tried to colour them with purple wax crayon. I was FURIOUS. I felt like snapping the book shut and smacking Hannah round the head with it, even though she's only little and didn'timean/ito spoil the picture.brbrI minded so because it's such a special book. It used to be our mum's when she was a little girl. She gave it to me. Snow White's mum died when she was born so she got this stepmother who looked so lovely that her magic mirror said she was fairest of them all. But she was evil and mean and dead jealous when the mirror said Snow White was the fairest now, so the stepmother tried to have her chopped into bits and then she poisoned her with an apple and she fell down dead and was kept in a glass coffin until a handsome prince came by (I) and brought her back to life. The wicked stepmother was so maddened that she boiled with rage and her shoes stayed so red hot she couldn't take them off and she had to dance until she died.brbrShe must have had awful blisters. I've got one where my old trainers are rubbing. Dad doesn't always get it together when we need new shoes. It's not his fault he's so busy. Yes it is. I'm not making excuses for my dad any more. I can't stick him now. And I especially can't sti@ (õÂ? ÿ¾Û€  (less)

has also published a children’s book,bCat’s Eye Corner/b.bChapter OnebrbrTheft/bbrbrIn the month of May, 1898, on his wedding night, Thomas Griffith Smolders was chased around his hotel room, not by his bride, as you might expect, but by a ball of fire -- luminous and strangely cool. Needless to say, this was a clandestine event, occurring as it did in a private room in a small hotel that was located in a provincial city in Canada. The world was looking elsewhere, already busily nurturing the Twentieth Century in its dark nursery. Mussolini was fifteen, Hitler a boy of nine, Franco, the “little sausage,” only six. The ball lightning, that rare phenomenon, was scarcely moments old, having been conceived in the heat and humidity of the day, born out of the belly of omen and mystery. The thing sailed in through the open window of the Belvedere Hotel in London, Ontario, hissing like an angry cat.brbrOnly moments before, Grif had taken off his shoes and arranged his morning coat on the back of a chair, fastidiously straightening it, dusting off a few specks of dandruff, attending to it as if he were dressing a younger brother. He was prepared to take much longer over the matter of his trousers, and had begun to pace the floor while he considered what their removal would ultimately entail. It was his suspicion that his bride knew much more than he did about how the evening’s scheduled pleasures were to be conducted, and he was right. She was waiting for him in the adjoining bedroom, dressed in absolutely nothing but her frightening knowledge.brbrGrif, pacing pacing, heard someone cry out in the street be?У×=p¤ÿ¾Û€  (less)

stepmother./ibrbrThere are lots of stepmothers in my favourite book of fairy tales. Don't go, 'Yuck, boring!' Fairy tales are seriously cool,imuch/iscarier than any X-rated video you've ever secretly watched at a sleepover. Snow White's stepmother is the scariest of all.brbrShe doesn'tilook/iscary. She looks beautiful in the picture in my book - though her long queen's robes are spoilt because Hannah tried to colour them with purple wax crayon. I was FURIOUS. I felt like snapping the book shut and smacking Hannah round the head with it, even though she's only little and didn'timean/ito spoil the picture.brbrI minded so because it's such a special book. It used to be our mum's when she was a little girl. She gave it to me. Snow White's mum died when she was born so she got this stepmother who looked so lovely that her magic mirror said she was fairest of them all. But she was evil and mean and dead jealous when the mirror said Snow White was the fairest now, so the stepmother tried to have her chopped into bits and then she poisoned her with an apple and she fell down dead and was kept in a glass coffin until a handsome prince came by (I) and brought her back to life. The wicked stepmother was so maddened that she boiled with rage and her shoes stayed so red hot she couldn't take them off and she had to dance until she died.brbrShe must have had awful blisters. I've got one where my old trainers are rubbing. Dad doesn't always get it together when we need new shoes. It's not his fault he's so busy. Yes it is. I'm not making excuses for my dad any more. I can't stick him now. And I especially can't sti?Р (less)