Search results for ""author sarah ardizzone""

An international sensation, Small Country is a beautiful but harrowing tale of coming-of-age in the face of civil war.'A luminous debut novel…Faye dramatises the terrible nostalgia of having lost not only a childhood but also a whole world to war' GuardianBurundi, 1992. For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expat neighbourhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister, Ana, is something close to paradise. These are happy, carefree days spent with his friends sneaking cigarettes and stealing mangoes, swimming in the lake and riding bikes in the streets they have turned into their kingdom. But dark clouds are gathering over this small country, and soon their peaceful idyll will shatter when Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda are brutally hit by war.‘Unforgettable… Gaël Faye’s talent is breathtaking’ Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers

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Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015 Buttologist is down on his uppers. His girlfriend, Original Colour, has cleared out of their Paris studio and run off to the Congo with a vertically challenged drummer known as The Mongrel. She's taken their daughter with her. Meanwhile, a racist neighbour spies on him something wicked, accusing him of 'digging a hole in the Dole'. And his drinking buddies at Jips, the Afro-Cuban bar in Les Halles, pour scorn on Black Bazaar, the journal he keeps to log his sorrows. There are days when only the Arab in the corner shop has a kind word; while at night his dreams are stalked by the cannibal pygmies of Gabon. Then again, Buttologist wears no ordinary uppers. He has style, bags of it (suitcases of crocodile and anaconda Westons, to be precise). He's a dandy from the Bacongo district of Brazzaville - AKA a sapeur or member of the Society of Ambience-makers and People of Elegance. But is flaunting sartorial chic against tough times enough for Buttologist to cut it in the City of Light?

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'I used to be ever so small, hardly as high as a dandelion. Until I grew tall enough to tickle the clouds.' Telling the life story of a single tree, and of all the creatures that have nestled in its branches, this is a gorgeously illustrated?ode to the web of life that connects everything in the natural world.

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Yamina Taleb is approaching her seventieth birthday. Not that she's sure exactly when to celebrate it, since her Algerian identity papers state a different date of birth to her French ones. These days, Yamina strives for a quiet life and to be, at best, invisible. The closest she gets to drama is flashing her pensioner's bus pass in the style of police officers she's seen on television or scooping 'revolutionary' bargains in the form of plastic kitchenware gadgets. But Yamina's children feel differently. They are made to feel out of place in Paris, and it hurts. Then, for the first time in forty years, the whole family take a holiday from the city - not a return trip to the motherland, but a holiday in France. In the privacy of their villa-with-pool rental, it becomes clear to them all: there is no 'going back'. Alternating fragments from Yamina's Algerian past with those of her Paris present, Discretion spans the history of colonial conflict from the Second World War to the present day. A tribute to mothers everywhere, it is also the story of a modern French family feeling their way through the puzzle of their history - and finding one another as they go along.

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Discover the real story behind Disney’s latest blockbuster adaptation The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, and the iconic Nutcracker Christmas ballet, as told by Alexandre Dumas‘How could you imagine, silly child, that this toy, which is made of cloth and wood, could possibly be alive?’The nutcracker doll that mysterious Godfather Drosselmeyer gives to little Marie for Christmas is no ordinary toy. On Christmas Eve, as the clocks strike midnight, Marie watches as the Nutcracker and her entire cabinet of playthings come to life and boldly do battle against the evil Mouse King and his armies.But this is only the start of the tale.Read on for enchantment and transformation; enter a world by turns fantastical and sinister, a kingdom of dolls and spun-sugar palaces, and learn the true history of the brave little Nutcracker.

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In this incredibly moving and powerful story about climate change by one of France’s greatest writers for children, the world is run by !ndustry and the only thing that matters is to buy, buy, buy. People live in crowded cities where cars are stacked vertically and shopping centres run miles into the sky. On the day Celeste starts school on the 110th floor of a tower block, she meets a lonely, young boy. The next day she doesn't return. Her blood has become as polluted as the seas and rivers. On a mission to save her, the boy battles the forces of !ndustry and takes her far, far away. Will the world realise the truth of Celeste’s disease? Will there be time for her, and the planet, to recover?

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Daniel Pennac has never forgotten what it was like to be a very unsatisfactory student, nor the day one of his teachers saved his life by assigning him the task of writing a novel. This was the moment Pennac realized that no-one has to be a failure for ever. In School Blues, Pennac explores the many facets of schooling: how fear makes children reject education; how children can be captivated by inventive thinking; how consumerism has altered attitudes to learning. Haunted by memories of his own turbulent time in the classroom, Pennac enacts dialogues with his teachers, his parents and his own students, and serves up much more than a bald analysis of how young people are consistently failed by a faltering system. School Blues is not only universally applicable, but it is unquestionably a work of literature in its own right, driven by subtlety, sensitivity and a passion for pedagogy, while embracing the realities of contemporary culture.

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Mourad and his family live in Nice. His retired father spends his days fixing up things in the backyard; his mother, bemoaning the loss of her natal village in North Africa. Dounia, the eldest, is a staunch feminist; Mina, the youngest, blushes when the scented shower gel ad comes on. Mourad is strangely torn between a desire for freedom and the fear of his worst nightmare: that of becoming an overweight bachelor with salt and pepper hair. On her eighteenth birthday, Dounia leaves home for good. She is no longer part of the family. Ten years later, Mourad's father has a stroke and makes his son promise to patch things up with his estranged sister, now a lawyer with an aspiring career in politics. Appointed to the Parisian suburbs as a teacher-in-training, Mourad tracks down Dounia and battles to span the gulf separating her and the rest of the family.

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This beautiful book invites readers to join the Artful Sketcher on an exclusive tour of one of the most creative factories they'll ever know: the Little Factory of Potential Illustration. The factory is full of eccentric artists who just love making pictures, not to mention some oddball animals and astonishing machines. From the get-go readers can doodle, experiment with different techniques or simply draw alongside LIFIPO's resident team of artists. There's a games pocket at the back with some weird and wonderful dominos, and heaps of activities throughout exploring among other things collage, patternmaking, sculpture and composition. Children will be delighted to find that at the end of their tour they are given their very own office and their first solo exhibition! Exploring art techniques, geometry and game-playing simultaneously, this beautiful and humorous book is perfect for budding artists.

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