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Showing 1 - 20 of 29 items
By Allen Say. 2017
An imagined biography of James Castle--a deaf, autistic artist--whose exceptional talent was recognized later in life. Despite mistreatment and being…
misunderstood, James presents his personal view of the world through art that now hangs in major museums throughout the world. For grades 2-4. 2017By Langston Hughes. 1995
By Jonah Winter, Ana Juan. 2002
By Jonah Winter, Jeanette Winter. 1991
This story of Diego Rivera, the greatest muralist of Mexico--and of the world--shows how his passion for painting and love…
for his country combined to make a powerful art celebrating the Mexican people. Told in Spanish and English. For grades 2-4. 1991By Linda LeGarde Grover. 2014
Dale Ann, Theresa, and Margie, are American Indian women coming of age in the 1970's. They navigate love, economic hardship,…
loss, and changing family dynamics on Mozhay Point reservation. When Theresa meets Michael Washington, he introduces her to his father, Zho Wash, and the three women begin looking at their people's history. UnratedBy Patti Smith. 2011
By John Harrington, Gabrielle Tayac. 2006
Details the daily routine of Naiche Woosah Tayac, a rural Maryland boy. Discusses his Piscataway and Apache family heritage, tribal…
customs, and traditional ceremonies, such as the awakening of Mother Earth, that are still observed today. For grades 4-7. 2002By John Harrington, Miranda Belarde-Lewis. 2004
Ten-year-old Lydia Mills discusses her school year in Juneau and her summer in Alaska's coastal communities. She describes the Tlingit…
traditions that she and her brother Thomas are learning as members of the Shark Clan, including their respect for the natural world. For grades 4-7. 2004By Jacqueline Davies, Melissa Sweet. 2004
Recounts how passionately the young Frenchman who made his home in America loved birds. Describes the numerous drawings and paintings…
he made of birds, their nests, and eggs and reveals the way he determined whether migrating birds return to the same place in the spring. For grades 2-4. 2004By Irving Stone. 1984
Fictional biography of the passionate and beleaguered Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Based on the three volumes of van…
Gogh's letters to his brother, Theo. Basis for an Academy Award-winning movie. 1934By Jennifer Bryant, Jennifer F. Bryant. 1994
Presents biographical details and the artistic development of the French painter and poster designer. Suffering from broken legs as a…
teenager, Henri was forced to limit his physical activities, but he continued to draw. As an adult, he enjoyed the nighttime entertainments of Paris and often used them as the subject of his painting. For junior and senior high readersBy Francine Jacobs, Patrick Collins. 1992
The Native Americans who lived in the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean islands were the Tainos, gentle people who peacefully…
greeted Columbus when he landed in the Bahamas in 1492. The Tainos, who believed that their white visitors were gods, opened their homes and villages to the explorers, who were only trying to find gold. This led to the virtual destruction of the Tainos. For grades 5-8 and older readers. 1992By Jean Fritz, Hudson Talbott. 2001
The story behind the American Horse at the Frederik Meijer Gardens. An artistic idea envisioned but never finished by Leonardo…
da Vinci, the horse was subsequently completed by a pair of American artists in 1999. One bronzed statue remains in Milan, Italy, and the other resides in Grand Rapids. A 2002 Michigan Notable book. For grades 3-6. 2001. Award winnerBy Rachel Lindsay. 2018
A graphic memoir about the treatment of mental illness, treating mental illness as a commodity, and the often unavoidable choice…
between sanity and happiness.In her early twenties in New York City, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Rachel Lindsay takes a job in advertising in order to secure healthcare coverage for her treatment. But work takes a strange turn when she is promoted onto the Pfizer account and suddenly finds herself on the other side of the curtain, developing ads for an antidepressant drug. She is the audience of the work she's been pouring over and it highlights just how unhappy and trapped she feels, stuck in an endless cycle of treatment, insurance and medication. Overwhelmed by the stress of her professional life and the self-scrutiny it inspires, she begins to destabilize and while in the midst of a crushing job search, her mania takes hold. Her altered mindset yields a simple solution: to quit her job and pursue life as an artist, an identity she had abandoned in exchange for medical treatment. When her parents intervene, she finds herself hospitalized against her will, and stripped of the control she felt she had finally reclaimed. Over the course of her two weeks in the ward, she struggles in the midst of doctors, nurses, patients and endless rules to find a path out of the hospital and this cycle of treatment. One where she can live the life she wants, finding freedom and autonomy, without sacrificing her dreams in order to stay well.By Sheryl James. 2013
Over the course of its history, the state of Michigan has produced its share of folktales and lore. Many are…
familiar with the Ojibwa legend of Sleeping Bear Dunes, and most have heard a yarn or two told of Michigan's herculean lumberjack, Paul Bunyan. But what about Detroit's Nain Rouge, the red-eyed imp they say bedeviled the city's earliest residents? Or Le Griffon, the Great Lakes' original ghost ship that some believe haunts the waters to this day? Or the Bloodstoppers, Upper Peninsula folk who've been known to halt a wound's bleeding with a simple touch thanks to their magic healing powers? In Michigan Legends, Sheryl James collects these and more stories of the legendary people, events, and places from Michigan's real and imaginary past. Set in a range of historical time periods and locales as well as featuring a collage of ethnic traditions--including Native American, French, English, African American, and Finnish--these tales are a vivid sample of the state's rich cultural heritage. This book will appeal to all Michiganders and anyone else interested in good folktales, myths, legends, or lore.By Sheila Fischman, Monique Durand. 2003
Inspired by the lives of two great artists - Evelyn Rowat, fashion illustrator, and René Marcil, painter - The Painter's…
Wife, a novel about art and passion, is written in a language as brilliant and intense as the mercurial lives of its completely contradictory characters.By Linda Legarde Grover. 2014
Set in northern Minnesota, The Road Back to Sweetgrass follows Dale Ann, Theresa, and Margie, a trio of American Indian…
women, from the 1970s to the present, observing their coming of age and the intersection of their lives as they navigate love, economic hardship, loss, and changing family dynamics on the fictional Mozhay Point reservation. As young women, all three leave their homes. Margie and Theresa go to Duluth for college and work; there Theresa gets to know a handsome Indian boy, Michael Washington, who invites her home to the Sweetgrass land allotment to meet his father, Zho Wash, who lives in the original allotment cabin. When Margie accompanies her, complicated relationships are set into motion, and tensions over "real Indian-ness" emerge. Dale Ann, Margie, and Theresa find themselves pulled back again and again to the Sweetgrass allotment, a silent but ever-present entity in the book; sweetgrass itself is a plant used in the Ojibwe ceremonial odissimaa bag, containing a newborn baby's umbilical cord. In a powerful final chapter, Zho Wash tells the story of the first days of the allotment, when the Wazhushkag, or Muskrat, family became transformed into the Washingtons by the pen of a federal Indian agent. This sense of place and home is both tangible and spiritual, and Linda LeGarde Grover skillfully connects it with the experience of Native women who came of age during the days of the federal termination policy and the struggle for tribal self-determination. The Road Back to Sweetgrass is a novel that that moves between past and present, the Native and the non-Native, history and myth, and tradition and survival, as the people of Mozhay Point navigate traumatic historical events and federal Indian policies while looking ahead to future generations and the continuation of the Anishinaabe people.By Gerald Vizenor. 1991
"If you must read a book on Columbus," declared the Los Angeles Times in its review of The Heirs of…
Columbus, "this is the one." Gerald Vizenor's novel reclaims the story of Chrisopher Columbus on behalf of Native Americans by declaring the explorer himself to be a descendent of early Mayans and follows the adventures of his modern-day, mixedblood heirs as they create a fantastic tribal nation.The genetic heirs of Christopher Columbus meet annually at the Stone Tavern at the headwaters of the Mississippi to remember their "stories in the blood" and plan their tribal nation. They are inspired by the late-night talk radio discourses of Stone Columbus, a trickster healer who became rich as the captain of the sovereign bingo barge Santa Maria Casino, anchored in the international waters of the Lake of the Woods. The heirs' plan to reclaim their heritage enrages the government and inspires the tribal nations in a comic tale of mythic proportions.Vizenor is a mixedblood Chippewa who writes fiction in the trickster mode of Native American tradition, using humor to challenge received ideas and subvert the status quo. In The Heirs of Columbus he "reveals not only how Indians have staved off the tidal wave of assimilation," noted the San Francisco Chronicle, "but also how, through humor and persistence, they sometimes reverse the direction of cultural appropriation and, in the process, transform the alien values imposed on them.""Vizenor understands the wilder, irrational, half-mad parts of the Discoverer's soul as few people ever have," noted Kirkpatrick Sale in the Nation; "Columbus is appropriated here in an entirely new way, made to be an Indian in service to his Indian descendents." And the Voice Literary Supplement said "Even more rousing than Vizenor's deconstruction of Columbus, though, is his alternative vision of an American identity."By César Aira. 2019
Birthday is among the very best of Aira—it will surprise readers new to his work, and will deeply satisfy his…
many fans Before you know it you are no longer young, and by the way, while you were thinking about other things, the world was changing—and then, just as suddenly you realize that you are fifty years old. Aira had anticipated his fiftieth—a time when he would not so much recall years past as look forward to what lies ahead—but the birthday came and went without much ado. It was only months later, while having a somewhat banal conversation with his wife about the phases of the moon, that he realized how little he really knows about his life. In Birthday Aira searches for the events that were significant to him during his first fifty years. Between anecdotes ,and memories, the author ponders the origins of his personal truths, and meditates on literature meant as much for the writer as for the reader, on ignorance, knowledge, and death. Finally, Birthday is a little sad, in a serene, crystal-clear kind of way, which makes it even more irresistible.By Cherie Dimaline. 2019
A #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLEROne of the most anticipated books of the summer for Time, Harper's Bazaar, Bustle and Publishers Weekly'Deftly…
written, gripping and informative. Empire of Wild is a rip-roaring read!' Margaret Atwood'Empire of Wild is doing everything I love in a contemporary novel and more. It is tough, funny, beautiful, honest and propulsive' Tommy Orange, author of There There 'Dimaline turns an old story into something newly haunting and resonant' New York Times'Close, tight, stark, beautiful - rich where richness is warranted, but spare where want and sorrow have sharpened every word. Dimaline has crafted something both current and timeless' NPR'Revelatory... Gritty and engaging, this story of a woman and her missing husband is one of candor, wit and tradition'Ms. Magazine Broken-hearted Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for almost a year - ever since he went missing on the night they had their first serious argument. One hung-over morning in a Walmart parking lot in a little town near Georgian Bay, she is drawn to a revival tent where the local Métis have been flocking to hear a charismatic preacher. By the time she staggers into the tent the service is over, but as she is about to leave, she hears an unmistakable voice.She turns, and there is Victor. Only he insists he is not Victor, but the Reverend Eugene Wolff, on a mission to bring his people to Jesus.With only two allies - her Johnny-Cash-loving, 12-year-old nephew Zeus, and Ajean, a foul-mouthed euchre shark with deep knowledge of the old Métis ways - Joan sets out to remind the Reverend Wolff of who he really is. If he really is Victor, his life and the life of everyone she loves, depends upon her success.Inspired by traditional Métis legends, Cherie Dimaline has created a propulsive, stunning and sensuous novel.