Of Enemies And Endings

Rory and her friends are determined to stop the Snow Queen once and for all in this thrilling conclusion to the Ever Afters series, which Kirkus Reviews calls a “fast-paced combination of middle school realism and fairy-tale fantasy.” How will this tale end? The whole fairy-tale world is on high alert. The Snow Queen and her minions are targeting Characters, and Ever After School is the only safe refuge left. Rory Landon knows a final confrontation is inevitable, and she worries about the safety of her family and friends—particularly Chase, who has been acting very strange lately. Will Rory be able to count on Chase when she needs him most? Is she strong enough to put an end to the Snow Queen’s terrible reign once and for all? Only one thing is certain: it’s time for Rory to find out if her tale ends in happily-ever-after.

"Rory Landon and her friends are determined to stop the Snow Queen once and for all in this final book in The Ever Afters series!"--

Eleven-year-old Rory, daughter of a famous actress and a famous movie director, finds herself becoming a celebrity in her own right as she helps create a new fairy tale as a participant in the after-school program, Ever After School.

Rory might be ready to star in her own fairy tale, but there’s more danger than happily-ever-after in this third book in the Ever After series, which Kirkus Reviews calls a “fast-paced combination of middle school realism and fairy-tale fantasy.” Life at Ever After School has become familiar for Rory. She’s been on two quests, she’s a great sword fighter, and she has terrific friends. But familiar is no fairy tale, and Rory is still anxiously awaiting the chance to star in her own. But as her connection to the Snow Queen continues to grow, Rory realizes her starring role might be well underway. When the Snow Queen sends the Pied Piper to kidnap several children, including the sibling of a fellow EAS-er, the teachers think the rescue mission is too dangerous and won’t send any kids. But Rory, Chase, and Lena are determined to help, and it’s not long before they find themselves in more trouble than they can handle. Then again, it wouldn’t be Ever After School if things worked out according to plan…

This book looks closely at the endings of narrative digital games, examining their ways of concluding the processes of both storytelling and play in order to gain insight into what endings are and how we identify them in different media. While narrative digital games share many representational strategies for signalling their upcoming end with more traditional narrative media – such as novels or movies – they also show many forms of endings that often radically differ from our conventional understanding of conclusion and closure. From vast game worlds that remain open for play after a story’s finale, to multiple endings that are often hailed as a means for players to create their own stories, to the potentially tragic endings of failure and "game over", digital games question the traditional singularity and finality of endings. Using a broad range of examples, this book delves deeply into these and other forms and their functions, both to reveal the closural specificities of the ludonarrative hybrid that digital games are, as well as to find the core elements that characterise endings in any medium. It examines how endings make themselves known to players and raises the question of how well-established closural conventions blend with play and a player’s effort to achieve a goal. As an interdisciplinary study that draws on game studies as much as on transmedial narratology, Forms and Functions of Endings in Narrative Digital Games is suited for scholars and students of digital games as well as for narratologists yet to become familiar with this medium.

When Rory realizes fairy tales are the real deal at Ever After School, she embarks on a classic quest to fulfill her destiny in this “fast-paced combination of middle school realism and fairy-tale fantasy” (Kirkus Reviews). Rory Landon has spent her whole life being known as the daughter of a famous movie star mom and director dad. So when she begins a new after-school program and no one knows who her family is, Rory realizes something is different. After she ends up fighting a fire-breathing dragon on her first day, she realizes the situation is more unusual than she could have imagined. It turns out the only fame that matters at Ever After School is the kind of fame earned from stories Rory thought were fictional. But as Rory soon learns, fairy tales are very real—and she is destined to star in one of her own. This first installment of The Ever Afters series reimagines classic fairy tale characters in a modern context, merging familiar fantasy with the everyday realities of middle-grade existence.

The English-Ciyawo dictionary has been designed to help Yawo learners improve their English language skills for undertaking secondary school and university in the following ways: It helps a Yawo learner identify and learn the 3,000 most important and frequently used words in the English language. It gives a learner the most important meanings of each English word. It shows a learner how an English word is used in a sentence and also gives a translation of each sentence in Ciyawo to help a learner fully grasp the meaning.

Entrances: Gregorian Chant in Daily Life is going to surprise you. Rembert Herbert locates the origins of chant, not in medieval monasticism as most would have it, but in the older wisdom of the Early Church fathers. If you have tried (and failed) to enter into the difficult, even alien scriptural commentaries of the fathers, Entrances will help. And once you are introduced to the mind (the "symbolic mind") and method of the fathers, you may read scripture and sing chant very differently. Entrances offers help, advice, and reassurance to those who long to form a choir and worship with this challenging, rewarding music. The style of singing used in chant -- so different from other Western music -- is examined in detail, and the systematic explanations of chant notation will alleviate most singers' fear of square notes, neumes, the occasional dragging punctum, and other oddities. To these basics have been added twelve appendices that offer information ranging from a pronunciation guide for "church Latin" to several liturgies, complete with commentary, rubrics, and musical settings. Book jacket.