Children Of The Day

Journey to the shores of Thessalonica with Beth Moore in this 9-session study on 1 & 2 Thessalonians.

Children of the Day opens on a June morning in 1953, when Sara Vandal, convinced that her husband has been having a decades-long affair, decides that she is too sick to get out of bed. With ten children in the house (and a possible eleventh on the way), this decision sets off a day of chaos, reflection and near disaster for the Vandal family. Sara’s husband, Oliver, heads to the town hotel and bar in Union Plains, Manitoba, where he has been the manager for the past twenty years—a position he suspects he’ll no longer have by the end of the day. In an attempt to avoid the unavoidable, Oliver decides instead to pay a visit to Alice Bouchard, his childhood sweetheart across the river. Throughout the day, both Oliver and Sara reflect on how their lives collided—a car accident that brought them together and tore them from the futures their families expected of them. Sara (from Sandra Birdsell’s previous novel, The Russländer) recalls her life in the big city of Winnipeg in the 1930s—a young Russian Mennonite woman lucky enough to escape the shackles of her overbearing culture. Oliver remembers his wedding day photograph—his the only Métis face in a crowd of Mennonites—and the precise moment when he suddenly grasped the enormity of his decision to “do the right thing.” The Vandal children, too, must deal with this unusual disruption of their daily routine. Alvina, the oldest, secretly handles the stress of her family, her plan to escape them all, and her discovery of the world’s evil in the only way she knows how. Emilie worries about losing her happy-go-lucky father while facing the town’s heretofore hidden racism head-on. The boys live up to their family name by recklessly taking chances and literally playing with fire. And since her mother won’t come out of her bedroom, Ruby, just a little girl herself, must take charge of the babies with danger lurking in every corner. By nightfall the extended Vandal family will be thrown together to work out the problems of the past and exorcise the ghosts that haunt them, which have all, in their own way, set this June day’s events in motion.

A celebration of children, families, and reading held annually since 1996, Children’s Day/Book Day, known as Día, emphasizes the importance of literacy for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In anticipation of Día’s fifteenth anniversary, the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) presents a collection of the best of its Día programming ideas, offering * A wealth of ready-to-use programs, easily adaptable for a variety of cultures * Cultural competency training tips to encourage outreach to minority populations * Interviews with library directors about the best ways to heighten awareness of cultural and literacy issues Complemented by numerous bilingual book suggestions, this resource is perfect for collection development, early literacy storytimes, and year-round program planning.

Katherine (Katya) Vogt is now an old woman living in Winnipeg, but the story of how she and her family came to Canada begins in Russia in 1910, on a wealthy Mennonite estate. Here they lived in a world bounded by the prosperity of their landlords and by the poverty and disgruntlement of the Russian workers who toil on the estate. But in the wake of the First World War, the tensions engulfing the country begin to intrude on the community, leading to an unspeakable act of violence. In the aftermath of that violence, and in the difficult years that follow, Katya tries to come to terms with the terrible events that befell her and her family. In lucid, spellbinding prose, Birdsell vividly evokes time and place, and the unease that existed in a county on the brink of revolutionary change. The Russländer is a powerful and moving story of ordinary people who lived through extraordinary times.

With simple language and a heartfelt message, an author's first book addresses the timely and timeless issue of what to do when bad things happen, encouraging children to be kind, laugh, play, and nurture the Earth.

The book includes a Bible verse for every day of the year, with a reading about the verse & how it applies to a young child's life, a simple question for further conversation between parent & child & a prayer that a you can say with your child as a response to the reading.

Part fun- and information-filled almanac, part good book guide, the Children's Book-a-Day Almanac is a new way to discover a great children's book--every day of the year! This fresh, inventive reference book is a dynamic way to showcase the gems, both new and old, of children's literature. Each page features an event of the day, a children's book that relates to that event, and a list of other events that took place on that day. Always informative and often surprising, celebrate a year of literature for children with The Children's Book-a-Day Almanac.