Marta And The Manger Straw

In World War II Poland, a young girl receives straw at the Christmas Eve service to bring to her impoverished family. But on her way home, Marta meets others who are much poorer than she, and she shares her piece until there is nothing left. In spite of the lack of straw--though perhaps because of her generous heart—Marta finds riches she never expected in this tender tale of Christmas giving. The Traditions of Faith series features stories of how significant Christian traditions emerged from around the world. These traditions continue to be practiced today and encompass many different holidays. Each Traditions of Faith book includes an author’s note about the history of the tradition, and ideas and activities to adopt into one's own family celebrations.

This Traditions of Faith book features a unique Ukrainian Celebration of New Life in Christ—the coloring and exchange of pysanky eggs at Eastertime. Children love coloring Easter eggs. Easter Eggs for Anya is a story to explain one of the origins of this tradition. In early nineteenth-century Ukraine, Christians celebrated Easter by exchanging colorful, hand-decorated pysanky eggs—but with Papa away at the war and Mama struggling to make ends meet, Anya’s family was too poor to buy eggs to decorate. That is, until Anya discovered an abandoned nest of goose eggs and began planning an Easter surprise. But God had an even better surprise in store, and when the eggs unexpectedly began to hatch, Anya learned what the Easter story teaches: spring brings gifts of myriad new beginnings, just as the risen Christ gave the gift of new life to us all. This book features a note about the origin and history of the tradition and offers family ideas and activities. Easter Eggs for Anya: Part of the Traditions of Faith Around the World series Offers family-friendly activities for the holiday Full-color illustrations Factual information about the Ukranian Easter tradition

Throughout his career, Eduardo Galeano has turned our understanding of history and reality on its head. Isabelle Allende said his works "invade the reader's mind, to persuade him or her to surrender to the charm of his writing and power of his idealism." Mirrors, Galeano's most ambitious project since Memory of Fire, is an unofficial history of the world seen through history's unseen, unheard, and forgotten. As Galeano notes: "Official history has it that Vasco Núde Balboa was the first man to see, from a summit in Panama, the two oceans at once. Were the people who lived there blind??" Recalling the lives of artists, writers, gods, and visionaries, from the Garden of Eden to twenty-first-century New York, of the black slaves who built the White House and the women erased by men's fears, and told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes, Mirrors is a magic mosaic of our humanity.