Like The Willow Tree Dear America

Two-time Newbery Award-winning author Lois Lowry brings a brand-new, beautiful diary to the Dear America series!Suddenly orphaned by the Spanish flu epidemic in the fall of 1918, eleven-year-old Lydia Pierce and her fourteen-year-old brother, Daniel, of Portland, Maine, are taken by their uncle to be raised in the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. Thrust into the Shakers' unfamiliar way of life, Lydia must grapple with a new world that is nothing like the one she used to know.Now separated from her beloved brother, for men and women do not mix in this community, Lydia must adjust to many changes. But in time, and with her courageous spirit, she learns to find the joy in life again.

Literacy stations should be more than just busy work. Simply Stations: Writing shows how to ensure that kids are purposefully and effectively practicing comprehension, deeper thinking, vocabulary, and communication skills every day. You’ll be amazed at what your students can do when you incorporate this important station with intention! Debbie Diller has been refining literacy stations for over 40 years, working with thousands of teachers and students. She gives everything you need to plan, teach, and refresh the Writing station year-round, including... Step-by-step instructions for launching and maintaining the station; Whole-group lesson plans, based on key literacy standards, to introduce and support partner work; Printable teacher and student tools; On-the-spot assessment ideas and troubleshooting tips; Lists of grade-level specific materials; and Countless real-classroom photos so you see the possibilities first-hand. Simply Stations: Writing gives you invaluable tips, solutions, and insight that can transform the way your students learn. It’s time to boost the impact of your literacy stations! Don’t miss the other books in the Simply Stations series! Visit corwin.com/simplystations for more.

Newbery Honor author Kathryn Lasky's CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL is back in print with a gorgeous new package!To twelve-year-old Minnie Swift, Christmas is not going to be the time of bounty she's used to. It is 1932 -- the middle of the Great Depression -- and jobs are scarce and Papa seems more worried each day. But when their orphaned cousin comes to live with them, the Swifts are quick to rearrange the beds and make room for her. Minnie, thrilled to have another youngster in the home, is resolved to make this Christmas memorable in spite of the hard times. Through her diary entries, Minnie captures the darkness of the Great Depression, the optimism of a small Midwestern family, the fortitude of the American spirit, and the magic of Christmas.

Lois Lowry is a celebrated children’s book author and winner of several prestigious awards including two Newbery Medals. For middle school readers, this illuminating and fascinating book offers information on Lowry’s life and career. It unveils her early influences, which includes the tragic inspiration for her first book, and why she enjoys being a writer. Motivate your readers with this thoughtful biography about an artist who used her work to get through a difficult situation.

“Shakerism teaches God’s immanence through the common life shared in Christ’s mystical body.” Like many religious seekers throughout the ages, they honor the revelation of God but cannot be bound up in an unchanging set of dogmas or creeds. Freeing themselves from domination by the state religion, Mother Ann Lee and her first followers in mid-18th-century England labored to encounter the godhead directly. They were blessed by spiritual gifts that showed them a way to live the heavenly life on Earth. The result of their efforts was the fashioning of a celibate communal life called the Christlife, wherein a person, after confessing all sin, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, can travel the path of regeneration into ever- increasing holiness. Pacifism, equality of the sexes, and withdrawal from the world are some of the ways the faith was put into practice. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Shakers contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on Shaker communities, industries, individual families, and important people. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Shakers.

Stealing America's Future makes a comparison of today's America to late 19th Century Europe using two rare books, The Conventional Lies of our Civilization by Nordau, describing Europe's elitist leadership, and The Soviets at Work by Lenin, outlining the Russian Revolution as it took place. Not a part of the discussion of history, both provide frightening detail about the nuances of the geopolitics of Europe, circa 1900, that relate to today's America. Using heartwarming family stories, humorous anecdotes, incisive criticism, and cold factual analysis, it describes how progressive liberalism, with its attempts at social engineering and excessive permissiveness, has brought social and economic disaster to America. David Letterman relating to Sarah Palin "I fear he sees her as more man than he will ever be and more woman than he will ever get." Bill Maher relating to Michelle Obama ..".my only conclusion about Maher is that he is just another angry little bully who is fearful of powerful women..." Is it time to separate the North American Continent into a federation of smaller component nations better reflecting the economics and ethos of these individual component nations, yet having our common defense as the only connection or do we need to get back to the Constitution our founders gave to us? Raised in a poor farm family in Pawnee County, Nebraska, Dr. Steiner had the ethics of hard work and family values as his primary guide post to succeed. Working his way through college and graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1973, he located his dental practice in an economically impacted area of Omaha, Nebraska where he also worked in a public health clinic, developing insights with regard to what motivates people. He is a pilot and an accomplished martial artist, attaining several black belts. He was featured in a Sun-Up Interview by the Omaha World Herald's, Robert McMorris, and was also featured in an interview by William Rush in the League of Human Dignity paper, where Sensei Steiner outlined his martial arts training strategies for handicapped persons. He was called by Charles Kuralt to panel a discussion of the Gulf Crisis for CBS News before the Gulf War.

A willow tree, soft and flowy on the outside, unbreakable and strong on the inside, left to brave the lashings and extremities of wind and storm but never quite breaking Hanako Ishigaki was just 9 years old when her father decided to uproot the family from traditional and beautiful Kyoto and migrate to Hawaii. "You are not uprooting this family to some strange outlandish place where we will have to start all over again and maybe never be accepted," his wife ranted. "Why, Kazuo? Why? We are Japanese and we should live here till the day we die." But this was one time Kazuo Ishigaki refused to budge. We follow Hanako's arduous journey to Hawaii on a passenger liner and the shock of finding no one waiting for them there. By a sheer stroke of luck, if one could call it that, the Ishigaki family, used to much better times and lives, ended up in Kauia Island in a Japanese settlement called Furusato to work in a sugar plantation alongside thousands of Japanese migrants. The book describes the colorful lives of the Japanese migrant community in Hawaii in the eyes of the young Hanako and the conflict of two cultures, east and west. How eventually did Hanako end up in the big city, Honolulu, where she was to meet James Robertson and start a love affair that was to span and survive 35 years of separation, war and betrayals to end one cold afternoon in a sterile hospital room where the loose ends of two people's lives and passion finally came together to find closure. And then, one day, at the peak of the post Pearl Harbor backlash on Japanese Americans, when Hanako thought that living behind barbed wires at the Japanese American internment camp of Manzaner, they had hit rock bottom, there was that dreaded knock on the front door and a soldier served a deportation order to Japan on them..... This story is told against a gripping backdrop of war and the horrors and humiliations of the Japanese American war internment camps following Pearl Harbor. But even in the most dire and hopeless circumstances people can dream and Hanako and her best friend, Melanie Tanaka dreamt of pitching their unusual talent in fashion designing into the world of haute couture and high fashion. The odds against them were as unscalable as Mount Fuji in winter but dreams were free.... As the overcrowded ship carrying hundreds of deportees labeled "enemy aliens" approached the shores of Japan, Hanako told herself firmly. "We're going to be all right here, I'm sure of that!" Was she right? Or would things get really bad before they became better? So many things happened to shake and test the strength of this willow tree that readers may ask how did she continue to get up after each blow? This book is based on the true story of the turbulent life of Hanako Ishigaki as she was tossed around by the winds of migration, war internment camps and an incredibly unlikely and impossible love affair woven into it to add poignance to a story of great courage and determination to survive and succeed against all odds. How will it end?