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A history of words for children / by Richards, Mary Agnes.; Blake, Rose,1987-;
Includes bibliographical references, Internet addresses and index.Filmography.The first word -- Writing words -- Reading words -- Learning words -- Powerful words -- Secret words -- Poetic words -- The last word.A History of Words for Children explores the uniquely human ability to share thoughts using words. Written in a lively narrative style, this book presents a history of the world through language, introducing young readers to the civilizations, inventions, and writers who have shaped the way we communicate. Divided into themed chapters to help young minds grasp difficult concepts, the book explores what words are and how humans communicate; the development of writing implements; the history of printed books; the process of learning another language; dialects and accents and the way language can reflect our identity; the power of words to calm, inspire, and rally crowds; graffiti's role in spreading messages; codes and invented languages; the patterns of poetry; the future of words; and languages facing extinction. Featuring examples like the Grimm Brothers, Emily Dickinson, and King Ashurbanipal's library, the book also includes illustrations by Rose Blake that add a cast of humorous and helpful characters to explain the wide variety of ideas. A History of Words for Children inspires creative minds and helps them understand how we communicate.LSC
Subjects: Language and languages;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A Truce That Is Not Peace [electronic resource] : by Toews, Miriam.aut; CloudLibrary;
In this breathtaking memoir of stunning emotional force and electrifying honesty, one of Canada's most iconic writers tells her own story for the first time. “Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempt at an answer from Toews—all unsatisfactory to the organizer—surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide more than fifteen years ago. She has been keeping up, she realizes, an internal correspondence with her beloved sibling, attempting to fill a silence she can barely comprehend. As Toews turns to face that silence, we come to see that the question “why I write” is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.    A masterwork of non-fiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact every creative person makes with memory. Wildly original yet intimately, powerfully precise; momentous, hilarious, wrenching, and joyful—this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her personal world and inventing a brilliant literary form to hold it.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Personal Memoirs; Death, Grief, Bereavement;
© 2025., Knopf Canada,
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Bleaker house : chasing my novel to the end of the world / by Stevens, Nell,1985-author.;
"On a frozen island in the Falklands, with only penguins for company, a young would-be writer struggles to craft a debut novel ... and instead writes a funny, clever, moving memoir that heralds the arrival of a fresh new literary talent. Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but somehow life kept getting in the way. Then came an irresistible opportunity: she won a fellowship to spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Did she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Um, no. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock off the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she imagined she could finally rid herself of distractions and write her 2,500 words a day. In three months, surely she'd have a novel, right? It's true that there aren't many distractions on Bleaker, other than sheep, penguins, paranoia and the weather. But as Nell gets to work on her novel--a delightful Dickensian fiction she calls Bleaker House--she discovers that an excruciatingly erratic Internet connection and 1100 calories a day (as much food as she could carry in her suitcase, budgeted to the raisin) are far from ideal conditions for literary production. With deft humour, this memoir traces Nell's island days and slowly reveals details of the life and people she has left behind in pursuit of her art. They pop up in her novel, as well, as memoir and novel start to reflect one another. It seems that there is nowhere Nell can run--neither a remote island nor the pages of her notebook--to escape herself. A whimsical, entertaining, thought-provoking blend of memoir and travelogue, laced with tongue-in-cheek writing advice, Bleaker House brilliantly captures the hopes, fears, self-torture and humour of being young and yearning to make a creative life. With winning honesty and wit, Nell's race to finish her book emerges as a fascinating narrative in its own right."--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Stevens, Nell, 1985-; Stevens, Nell, 1985-; Authors, English; Authorship.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Saved by a song : the art and healing power of songwriting / by Gauthier, Mary,author.;
"From the Grammy nominated folk singer and songwriter, an inspiring exploration of creativity and the redemptive power of song Mary Gauthier was twelve years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny's old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day. Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn't until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to. Today, Gauthier is a decorated musical artist, with numerous awards and recognition for her songwriting, including a Grammy nomination. In Saved by a Song, Mary Gauthier pulls the curtain back on the artistry of songwriting. Part memoir, part philosophy of art, part nuts and bolts of songwriting, her book celebrates the redemptive power of song to inspire and bring seemingly different kinds of people together"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Gauthier, Mary.; Singers; Popular music;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Tonight in Jungleland : the making of Born to run / by Carlin, Peter Ames,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the making of Bruce Springsteen's ground-breaking album, Born to Run -- one of the most iconic records in rock history -- Tonight in Jungleland combines lush music writing with unprecedented inside access to Springsteen, his bandmates, and the full story behind every song ... and coincides with the album's 50th anniversary in August 2025. From the opening piano notes of "Thunder Road," to the final outro of "Jungleland" -- with American anthems like "Born to Run" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" in between -- Bruce Springsteen's seminal album, Born to Run, established Springsteen as a creative force in rock and roll. With his back against the wall, he wrote what has been hailed as a perfect album, a defining moment, and a roadmap for what would become a legendary career. Peter Ames Carlin, whose bestselling biography, Bruce, gave him rare access to Springsteen's inner circle, now returns with the full story of the making of this epic album. Released in August, 1975, Born to Run now celebrates its 50th anniversary. Carlin reveals a treasure trove of untold stories, detailing the writing and recording of every song, as well as the intense and at times tortuous process that mimicked the fault lines in Springsteen's psyche and career, even as it revealed the depth of his vision. A must-read for any music fan, Tonight in Jungleland takes us inside a hallowed creative process and lets us experience history"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Springsteen, Bruce.; Rock music;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The trouble with fairy tales : a memoir / by Johnson, Plum,author.;
"Plum Johnson, author of the bestselling, award-winning memoir about her parents, They Left Us Everything, turns her gaze toward her own fascinating romantic and creative history. This witty, energetic, surprising memoir explores the fairy tale models of romantic love that a young Plum, and most girls of her generation, absorbed -- of the prince who awakens the princess with a kiss, of the pied piper who irresistibly draws his followers close to the cliff's edge, of the tragic, damaged man who needs help -- but might turn out to be a terrible Bluebeard in disguise. These models shaped her life, but creativity has been an equally powerful influence. From the plays she wrote and put on as a child, through a college-age "improv" in which she slipped into the role of personal cook for a wealthy American, to decades of painting, inventing, and ultimately her revelatory, life-changing return to her first love, writing -- creation has been a life-force through joy and pain, triumph and terrible loss. The Trouble With Fairytales rings with wisdom, elegance, and hilarity, and will serve as an affirmation for all those who desire to write, paint, garden, invent, and create, but feel that they aren't "allowed," or that it is too late. Go forth and create; it might just save your life"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Johnson, Plum.; Johnson, Plum; Authors, Canadian; Authors; Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.); Fairy tales; Women authors;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Secret identity : a novel / by Segura, Alex,1980-author,illustrator.;
"From Anthony Award-winning writer Alex Segura comes Secret Identity, a rollicking literary mystery set in the world of comic books. It's 1975 and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn't care. She's an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn't have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn't matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call "The Lethal Lynx," Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he's found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to piece together what happened to him, to hang on to her piece of the Lynx, which turns out to be a runaway hit. But that's complicated by a surprise visitor from her home in Miami, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living. Alex Segura uses his expertise as a comics creator as well as his unabashed love of noir fiction to create a truly one-of-a-kind novel--hard-edged and bright-eyed, gritty and dangerous, and utterly absorbing"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Cartoonists; Comic books, strips, etc.; Comic books, strips, etc.; Murder; Superheroes;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A Truce That Is Not Peace [electronic resource] : by Toews, Miriam.aut; Toews, Miriam.nrt; CloudLibrary;
In this breathtaking memoir of stunning emotional force and electrifying honesty, one of Canada's most iconic writers tells her own story for the first time. "Why does Miriam Toews write? A Truce That Is Not Peace answers the question in a hundred ways, all of them original, autobiographical, deeply painful, funny, oblique, confounding—just as those of us who believe her to be one of the greatest living North American writers have come to expect. A Truce That Is Not Peace is the best memoir you will read all year." —Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity “Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempt at an answer from Toews—all unsatisfactory to the organizer—surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide more than fifteen years ago. She has been keeping up, she realizes, an internal correspondence with her beloved sibling, attempting to fill a silence she can barely comprehend. As Toews turns to face that silence, we come to see that the question “why I write” is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.    A masterwork of non-fiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact every creative person makes with memory. Wildly original yet intimately, powerfully precise; momentous, hilarious, wrenching, and joyful—this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her personal world and inventing a brilliant literary form to hold it.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Personal Memoirs; Death, Grief, Bereavement;
© 2025., Penguin Random House,
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Cinema speculation / by Tarantino, Quentin,author.;
"The long-awaited first work of nonfiction from the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: a deliriously entertaining, wickedly intelligent cinema book as unique and creative as anything by Quentin Tarantino. In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans--and all movie lovers--could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT's and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever."--
Subjects: Film criticism.; Tarantino, Quentin; Tarantino, Quentin; Film criticism; Motion pictures;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The arrangement / by Warlick, Ashley,author.;
"An irresistible novel about food, desire, and the real-life love triangle between M.F.K Fisher, her husband, and the man she left him for--the true love of her life Los Angeles, 1934. Mary Frances is on the cusp of becoming M.F.K. Fisher--the writer whose artful personal essays about food created a genre. She is hungry, and not just for food: she wants Tim, her husband Al's charming friend, who encourages her writing and seems to understand her better than anyone. Mary Frances and Al no longer share the things that once bound them together--a good glass of wine, a fine meal, their creative energy, and even their affection and intimacy. After a night's transgression with Tim, it's only a matter of time before Mary Frances claims what she truly desires, plunging all three of them into a tangled triangle of affection that will have far-reaching effects on their families, their careers, and their lives. Set in California, France, and the Swiss Alps, The Arrangement is a sparkling, sensual, and completely enveloping story of love, passion, and a woman well ahead of her time, who had the courage to be--and to take--exactly who she wanted"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Biographical fiction.; Historical fiction.; Love stories.; Fisher, M. F. K. (Mary Frances Kennedy), 1908-1992; Adultery; Man-woman relationships; Triangles (Interpersonal relations);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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