Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

A compelling collection of words, with the talents of 13 major poets, including Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Walter Dean Myers.

The Burden, edited by award-winning Detroit newspaper columnist Rochelle Riley, is a powerful collection of essays that create a chorus of evidence that the burden is real. The Burden expresses the voices of well-known Americans, such as actor/director Tim Reid who compares slavery to a cancer diagnosis, and former Detroit News columnist Betty DeRamus who recounts the discrimination she encountered as a young Black Detroiter in the south.

The editors who brought us Unsettling America and Identity Lessons have compiled a short-story anthology that focuses on themes of racial and ethnic assimilation. With humor, passion, and grace, the contributors lay bare poignant attempts at conformity and the alienation sometimes experienced by ethnic Americans. But they also tell of the strength gained through the preservation of their communities, and the realization that it was often their difference from the norm that helped them to succeed.

The all-time classic, best-selling ode to the love shared between parent and child. Perfect for new parents, baby showers, christenings, and sharing at bedtime. A day in the life of parent and child - full of smiles and giggles, messes and meals, boundless energy and well-earned rest. Not to mention lots of love. Here, in simple rhyming verse, is one such day. Share it with others and treasure the memories.

While walking to school one day, Andy meets a lion and soon makes a new friend. A tale of gratitude and helping out our neighbors, children of all ages will love this retelling of the classic folktale "Androcles and the Lion".

A wily fox, notorious for stealing eggs, meets his match when he encounters a bold little girl in the woods who insists upon proof that he is a fox before she will be frightened.

In this brilliant collection, the follow-up to her New York Times best seller Reading Like a Writer, the distinguished novelist, literary critic, and essayist celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers she admires above all others. In an age defined by hyper-connectivity and constant stimulation, Francine Prose makes a compelling case for the solitary act of reading and the great enjoyment it brings. Inspiring and illuminating, What to Read and Why includes selections culled from Prose’s previous essays, reviews, and introductions.

The Exiled Leader: He was known as the Butcher of Jonasport. Zander Krycek made a choice that saved his world of Ithaca, but doomed his reputation and banished him to a planet far, far away. The Evil Empire: The Orlov Combine intends to swallow Ithaca in the same way they have devoured so many worlds, creating a "company planet" where the residents are litle beter than slaves.

Valerie Flournoy and Jerry Pinkney created a warmhearted intergenerational story that became an award-winning perennial. Since then children from all sorts of family situations and configurations continue to be drawn to its portrait of those bonds that create the fabric of family life.

The first time Teresa saw Brother was the way she would think of him ever after. Tree fell head over heels for him. It was love at first sight in a wild beating of her heart that took her breath. But it was a dark Friday three weeks later when it rained, hard and wicked, before she knew Brother Rush was a ghost.

Jazmin Shelby was "born with clenched fists" - which is okay, since she's got a lot of fighting ahead of her. Her dad died a couple of years back, and now that her mom's in the hospital, it's just her and her big sister, CeCe. But that's fine by Jazmin. She's got her friends, her school, lots of big plans for the future - and a zest for life and laughter that's impossible to resist.

Jan Karon's legions of fans will love this timeless story about the endearing white kitten named Violet, charmingly written by Melanie Cecka. Ms. Karon searched for three years to find a storytelling voice authentic to Cynthia Coppersmith. She was personally involved in every step of the creation of this book.

After being initiated into a neighbor's family by a solemn backyard ceremony, a young Russian-American girl and her African-American brothers determine to buy their gramma Eula a beautiful Easter hat. But their good intentions are misunderstood, until they discover just the right way to pay for the hat that Eula's had her eye on. A loving family story woven from the author's childhood.

In Red Right Hand, Charlie Tristan Moore was thrust into a nightmarish world of lurking Lovecraftian horrors when The Man In Black, a diabolical Elder God, chose her as his unwilling Acolyte. Discovering her own power, Charlie ultimately defied The Man In Black, but at a cost. Now armed with a magic coat made from the skin of a flayed angel, Charlie is out to destroy The Man In Black and save her boyfriend Daniel - and she doesn't care how many bloodthirsty gods and monsters get in her way....

Jordan is going to join a gang. But just as he's about to start his future with the Cobras, his past calls him back. Way back - to the 19th-century, where he meets his ancestors and gets a bitter taste of what life was like for them as slaves. Jordan must live with the constant threat of the whip's lash. His journey back in time will strike a chord with any young person who has felt trapped by hard times and difficult choices.

Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.

Stranded humans must adapt alien technology to survive on a dangerous planet. Lost in the dark, half a year into their journey to the colony world of Tantalus, Sakura Kimei, her family, and her best friend, the alien "Bemmie" nicknamed Whips, are torn from the safety of their colony ship. In a crippled lifeboat, they have one chance to find a habitable world. But even then they will find that their apparent salvation is a world of a thousand secrets.

Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out of Kentucky - but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County. That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem.

Jill McCorkle's new collection of 12 short stories is peopled with characters brilliantly like us - flawed, clueless, endearing. These stories are also "animaled" with all manner of mammal, bird, fish, reptile - also flawed and endearing. She asks, what don't humans share with the so-called lesser species? Looking for the answer, she takes us back to her fictional home town of Fulton, North Carolina, to meet a broad range of characters facing up to the double-edged sword life offers hominids.

Charlie Tristan Moore isn't a hero. She's a survivor. Already wrestling with the demons of her past, she is tested as never before when she arrives home one night to find herself under attack by three monstrous skinhounds straight out of a nightmare. Just as hope seems lost, she is saved by the sinister Man in Black, dressed in a long, dark coat that seems to possess a life of its own and wielding a black-bladed sword in his grisly red right hand.