Ten-year-old Immy and her family have run away from their storm cloud of problems to a tiny village in Cambridgeshire, England, where her depressed physician father can take a sabbatical and get back on his feet. Luckily, they find an adorable thatched cottage to begin a new life in. But their new home comes with one downside: in the backyard, there is an ancient, dark, and fierce-looking mulberry tree that has ceased bearing any fruit. There's a...

Retells an old Chinese folk tale in which a greedy rich man is outwited by a beggar to whom he sells the shade of his mulberry tree.

"The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed,"--Amazon.com. Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a...

Sure, almost all kids know Benjamin Franklin as one of America's Founding Fathers, a man with a hand in both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. And they may even have some vague idea that he once flew a kite during a lightning storm. What Kathleen Krull sets out to do in this very different biography is show Ben Franklin the "natural philosopher" (the term for scientists back in the 1700s), whose experiments led to important...

Tapa cloth or ngatu as it is called in Tonga, is cloth made from the bark of the mulberry tree. The inner bark is beaten into fine sheets and painted using traditional designs. After centuries of use, ngatu has literally become the fabric of Tongan society.

A virulent disease carried by foxes is spreading across Europe. In London an urgent cull is underway, spearheaded by Frank Smith, the young master of the Hyde Park Hunt. But for Britain's paranoid Prime Minister, fox flu is a chance to foist the ultimate in surveillance technology on an unsuspecting population: the Mulberry Tree system, secretly bought from the Chinese. When biochemist Christophe Hardy discovers the conspiracy, he finds himself caught...

"From the award-winning Native American literary writer Diane Glancy comes a book about travel, belonging, and home. Travel is not merely a means to bring us from one location to another. 'My sense of place is in the moving,' Glancy writes. For her the road is home--its own satisfying destination. But the road also makes demands on us: asking us to be willing to explore the incomprehensible parts of the landscapes we inhabit and pass through--as well...

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 The first silk merchants were Chinese merchants, who would pull a colorful swatch of silk from a pouch and show it to the lady of the house. The gods themselves could not resist: Isis was said to have draped herself in fine silk yielding diverse colors. #2 The Romans knew about Chinese silk, but they did not know China. They believed that silk grew directly on the...

Vincent van Gogh was one of the world's most famous and prolific 19th century painters, yet, only sold one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, (1888) for 400 Francs. The painting, which sold in Brussels just a few months before van Gogh's death at the age of 37, was to provide the artist with a legacy that would see him become a global inspiration for the future of art. Through sheer commitment, and determination, Van Gogh created an artistic...

Five short stories weave around everyday circumstances when sudden disruptions test, pull, strain, shake, and nearly snap the characters' relationships. Are the ties binding them together fragile or unbreakable? Silly HobbyJustina wants to hear good news from her literary agent, but she didn't expect her confidence to be derailed by hoity-toity neighbor Lola's offhand comment. A hilarious series of events at her three year-old's birthday party distracts...