![]() ![]() ![]() With the help of her friends, Mildred sets out to prove that she is just as talented and capable as Ethel, and maybe even more so. In The Worst Witch Strikes Again, Mildred returns to school for her second year, only to find that her arch-nemesis Ethel has been made head girl. Along the way, she makes friends with the studious Maud Spellbody and the mischievous Enid Nightshade and clashes with her snobbish classmate Ethel Hallow. Despite her shortcomings, Mildred is determined to become a great witch and make her mark at Miss Cackle's Academy. In The Worst Witch, readers are introduced to Mildred Hubble, a clumsy and accident-prone young witch who is constantly getting into trouble at school. This box set includes all seven books in the series, from The Worst Witch to The Worst Witch and The Wishing Star. Written by British author Jill Murphy, the series follows the adventures of Mildred Hubble, a young witch at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches. ![]() The Worst Witch is a classic children's book series that has captured the hearts of readers for generations. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Nothing my father could say would prevent Luca’s Familia from exercising vengeance for making them lose face. Even if I still managed to escape Luca’s watchful eyes and that of his henchmen, my breach of our agreement would mean war. Death was the only acceptable end to a marriage in our world. Now, as hundreds of faces from the Chicago and New York Familias stared back at us, flight was no longer an option. I should have run when I still had the chance. “I enter alive and I will have to get out dead.” The last few words of the oath that men swore when they were inducted into the mafia could just as well have been the closing of my wedding vow: There was no way out of this union for me. Until death do us part wasn’t an empty promise as with so many other couples that entered the holy bond of marriage. A daily reminder of the golden cage I’d be trapped in for the rest of my life. ![]() What was meant as a sign of love and devotion for other couples was nothing but a testament of his ownership of me. Luca’s strong hand was firm and steady as he took mine and slipped the ring onto my finger. ![]() My fingers shook like leaves in the breeze as I raised them, my heartbeat hummingbird quick. ![]() ![]() ![]() Truth – handcrafted and honest display of materials and structure.Sacrifice – dedication of man's craft to God, as visible proofs of man's love and obedience. ![]() The essay was published in book form in May 1849 and is structured with eight chapters an introduction and one chapter for each of the seven 'Lamps', which represent the demands that good architecture must meet, expressed as directions in which the association of ideas may take the observer: John ruskin the seven lamps of architecture.The Seven Lamps also proved a great popular success, and received the approval of the ecclesiologists typified by the Cambridge Camden Society, who criticised in their publication The Ecclesiologist lapses committed by modern architects in ecclesiastical commissions. Ruskin offered little new to the debate, but the book helped to capture and summarise the thoughts of the movement. Pugin and others had already advanced the ideas of the Revival and it was well under way in practice. To an extent, they codified some of the contemporary thinking behind the Gothic Revival. The 'lamps' of the title are Ruskin's principles of architecture, which he later enlarged upon in the three-volume The Stones of Venice. The Seven Lamps of Architecture is an extended essay, first published in May 1849 and written by the English art critic and theorist John Ruskin. ![]() ![]() ![]() Yes, her fairy godrobot (who resembles a stylish update of Rosie from The Jetsons) hooks her up with an atomic blue space suit, but it’s up to Cinderella to fix the ship that she pilots to the Royal Space Parade. Writing in playful, clever rhymes, Underwood ( The Quiet Book) gives this Cinderella welcome agency and independence. With her wide eyes, pink hair, and work goggles, Hunt’s Cinderella looks like she’s stepped out of a contemporary indie webcomic, and her extraterrestrial world hints at mid-century illustration influences. ![]() Like Cinder for the picture-book crowd, this futuristic take on Cinderella recasts the heroine as a skilled mechanic, one who studies rocket-ship repair late into the night. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() A question arose in him: how the hell did Tom Wolfe do it? Lewis was an avid reader but this was the first time he’d had the sense of a real living writer finding and telling the intimate stories behind all those words on the page. When he opened the book and started reading, however, he was entranced by Wolfe’s scathing and hilarious observation of New York’s leftwing elites. Lewis was 12 years old, and of the words in that book’s title, he understood only “the”. In the story Lewis recalled how his admiration began when he pulled down a copy of Wolfe’s book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers from his father’s bookshelves at home in New Orleans in 1972. ![]() L ate last year, the American journalist Michael Lewis wrote a long story for Vanity Fair about his first and abiding literary hero, Tom Wolfe. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It was fascinating to see which sections had anchored themselves in the back of my mind after reading it once 14 years ago. Would it hold up, now I’m twice the age I was when I first read it? When I opened that copy a few days ago, I did feel a glimmer of worry. I bought another in 2017, when I did two events in Australia alongside Garth Nix – something my younger self would never have believed would happen. It not only restored my faith that fantasy had room for me, but helped convince me I could write my own.Īt some point, I mislaid my copy. This was a thrilling, extraordinarily detailed fantasy that centred on a young woman, to the point that her name was the title of the book. From the first chapter, I couldn’t get enough of it. Except for the Harry Potter books, I didn’t pick up another fantasy for years.Įventually, when I was about 14, a friend persuaded me to read Sabriel. ![]() Unfortunately in the book, Arwen doesn’t fight the Nazgûl – a realisation that crushed a 10-year-old girl who longed to see herself in the stories she loved. As soon as the credits rolled, I ran to a bookshop to buy the whole trilogy. In 2001, I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and for the first time, I saw a woman use a sword. ![]() ![]() ![]() In a few days, the entire school ends up smelling of anti-lice solution. However, she recommends the parents to use a whitish lye-like solution, smelling of chemicals, the same one the teachers end using. ![]() Half the kids have lice, they’re found when school starts, upon the medical check, when the nurse uncoils their hair with the expert gesture of chimpanzees – just short of cracking the chitin shells of the captured insects between her teeth. ![]() I can’t avoid getting lice – I am a teacher in a periphery school. ![]() Enough are left among the teeth of the comb and I clean them away with the old toothbrush, the one with the musty end. I always have nits, I keep shaking them away when I comb my hair in the bathroom: nacre coloured little eggs, shining blackishly on the sink surface. I got lice again but I no longer find it surprising, scary or sickening. An important English excerpt has been translated by Rodica Guja. Published at the end of 2015, it quickly generated an out pour of reactions, texts and reviews in Romanian literary journals, as well as a powerful response from Romanian readers. Part novel, part metaphysical essay and poem, Solenoid (which is about to get a new paperback edition) is a sum of themes and images to be found in Mircea Cărtărescu’ s work. ![]() ![]() Alaska takes the reader on a journey through one of the bleakest, richest, most foreboding, and highly inviting territories in our Republic, if not the world. Praise for Alaska "Few will escape the allure of the land and people describes. ![]() A spellbinding portrait of a human community fighting to establish its place in the world, Alaska traces a bold and majestic saga of the enduring spirit of a land and its people. As his characters struggle for survival, Michener weaves together the exciting high points of Alaska's story: its brutal origins the American acquisition the gold rush the tremendous growth and exploitation of the salmon industry the arduous construction of the Alcan Highway, undertaken to defend the territory during World War II. Michener guides us through Alaska's fierce terrain and history, from the long-forgotten past to the bustling present. ![]() ![]() In this sweeping epic of the northernmost American frontier, James A. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Such work provided a great opportunity for fans to pose, get their fix and stroke their beards. We had Clive Barker who provided not only comparable brain food but did so via the medium of the horror genre. Let other’s sit around and debate Proust or Kafka. You have to bring your imagination and intellect with you when you read his work. ![]() Barker has always had a gift for characters and is an author that doesn’t give his readers everything on a plate. Expectations among fans were high as they prepared themselves for another cerebral, densely plotted and philosophical tale. In August 1989 Clive Barker released his fifth major novel, The Great and Secret Show. These were halcyon days for fan boys and girls. Despite the yolk of the Video Recordings Acts and the scaremongering of the tabloid press over “Video nasties”, horror fiction both in print and on the big screen was elevated to new levels due to the creativity of one British author and director. Oh, to be a twenty something horror fan during the genre renaissance of that decade. I consumed all his work voraciously and sought out magazine and television interviews with him whenever I could, finding the man equally as fascinating as his work. During the eighties, I was an avid fan of the novelist Clive Barker. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It was the challenge of imagining the response of the people to the calamity that inspired Brooks to write her novel and to portray their fears, faith, and moral choices.īrooks worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and covered dozens of crises in the Middle East, Gulf States, Africa, and the Balkans in the 1980s and 90s. During the scourge, several individuals showed immense courage, nursing the sick and dying. The terrified villagers shut down their village, preventing anyone from leaving or visiting in order to try to contain the danger. Unbeknownst to them, the lethal bacteria arrived on a bolt of cloth, bringing agonizing disfigurement and indiscriminate death to villagers within days of exposure. In this novel Brooks portrays the plight of the inhabitants of a tiny village called Eyam in the north of England, who were hit by bubonic plague in 1665. ![]() In her comments about the events of September 11, Brooks drew parallels with the historical figures of her just-published first novel, Year of Wonders. Brooks’s fiction deals explicitly with the subject of courage in the face of calamity, and she wrote with authority as someone who had first-hand knowledge of ethnic cleansing and war. Courage: On the Record with Geraldine BrooksĪfter September 11, 2001, the Australian-born author and journalist Geraldine Brooks wrote about the heroism shown by the firefighters of New York City, the passengers on Flight 93, and the way catastrophic events can bring out extraordinary self-sacrifice. ![]() |