Booktalk: It’s a challenge to transform the Nutcracker Suite’s romantic orchestra into jumpin’ jazz melodies, but that’s exactly what Duke Ellington and his collaborator, Billy Strayhorn, did.
BONUS! CD recording included.
Snippet:“I want to challenge myself…create music that can’t be categorized,” answered Duke. “Got any ideas?”
Booktalk: Bring in the big rigs! The bulldozer, the excavator, the loader and other heavy machinery all have important tasks to accomplish at the job site digging, lifting, carrying, dumping, moving, shaping.
Booktalk: The story of the national cemetery–from the Revolutionary War to the present.
Snippet:Born during the Civil War, Arlington would become the last resting place for soldiers from all America’s conflicts, including the Revolutionary War.
Booktalk:If the World Were a Village has been newly revised with updated statistics, several new activities and completely new material on food security, energy and health. By exploring the lives of the 100 villagers, children will discover that life in other nations is often very different from their own.
Snippet: Welcome to the global village …what if we imagined that the whole population of the world as a village of just 100 people? In this imaginary village, each person would represent 69 million (69 000 000) people from the real world.
Booktalk: Gertrude Simmons, also known as Zitkala-Sa (which means Red Bird) was born in 1876 on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota. She willingly left her home at age eight to go to a boarding school in Indiana. But Zitkala-Sa soon found herself caught between two worlds–white and Native American.
Snippet: The IRON HORSE
February 1884 From my playmates I heard that two paleface missionaries from the Land of Red Apples were in our village. They were from that class of white men who wore big hats and carried large hearts. When they came to our house, an interpreter who knew a smattering of my language joined them.
Booktalk: Alberto loved floating over Paris in his personal flying machine called a dirigible. He would tie it to a post, climb down, and spend the day shopping or meeting friends for coffee. But he wanted to make his invention even better.
Snippet:A crowd gathered around, excited to see the handsome Brazilian in person. “One day you’ll all have a flying machine!” he called out.
Booktalk: Follow Romare Bearden’s journey as a young boy in North Carolina who travels by train with his parents up to Harlem. This biography was inspired by one of Bearden’s collage paintings.
Snippet: “I snip a patch of color and add a cut-out face.
Oh! I glue on jazzy blue for sky and add another face.
People walk into my work as if it’s always been their place.
My hands sing the blues when I paint and cut and paste. I never know what I’ll create when I paint and cut and paste. I use paper, fabrics, photos, and nothing goes to waste.”
