Building an Orchestra of Hope

Building an Orchestra of Hope
Author: Carmen Oliver
Publisher: Eerdmans Young Readers
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2022-10-25
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1467465909

An exuberantly illustrated true story about innovation, community, and the power of music. In Cateura, Paraguay, a town built on a landfill, music teacher Favio Chavez longed to help the families living and working amid the hills of trash. How could he help them find hope for the future? Favio started giving music lessons to Cateura’s children, but soon he encountered a serious problem. He had more students than instruments! But Favio had a strange and wonderful idea: what if this recyclers’ town had its own recycled orchestra? Favio and Colá, a brilliant local carpenter, began to experiment with transforming garbage into wonder. Old glue canisters became violins; paint cans became violas; drainpipes became flutes and saxophones. With repurposed instruments in their hands, the children of Cateura could fill their community—and the world—with the sounds of a better tomorrow. Based on an incredible true story, Building an Orchestra of Hope offers an unforgettable picture of human dignity reclaimed from unexpected sources. Carmen Oliver’s inviting words and Luisa Uribe’s dynamic illustrations create a stirring tribute to creativity, resilience, and the transformative nature of hope.

Ada's Violin

Ada's Violin
Author: Susan Hood
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2016-05-03
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1481430955

A town built on a landfill. A community in need of hope. A girl with a dream. A man with a vision. An ingenious idea.

A Voice for the Spirit Bears

A Voice for the Spirit Bears
Author: Carmen Oliver
Publisher: Kids Can Press Ltd
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1525303066

The true story of a boy who fought to protect a rare subspecies of bear. As a child, Simon Jackson found navigating the world of the school playground difficult. He felt most at home in the woodlands, learning about and photographing wildlife. At thirteen, Simon became fascinated with spirit bears, a rare subspecies of black bear that were losing their habitat to deforestation. Simon wanted to do something to protect them. He decided he had to become their voice. But first, he would have to find his own. The inspiring message is clear: one child’s voice truly can change the world.

Rehearsing the Middle School Orchestra

Rehearsing the Middle School Orchestra
Author: Sandy Goldie
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2019-05-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1574634992

(Meredith Music Resource). In this highly informative compendium, nationally renowned orchestra directors share their unique expertise concerning rehearsal philosophy, intonation, tone and bow control, setup and fundamentals, articulation, planning, warm-ups, recruiting, community building, and more. These educators have honed their skills through years of experience and have inspired countless young musicians. Each chapter presents their insights and individual approaches to developing musical excellence in their students. As an added benefit, the book includes lists of the authors' favorite composers, arrangers, and works for grades 1-4.

The Sound of Hope

The Sound of Hope
Author: Kellie D. Brown
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1476670560

Since ancient times, music has demonstrated the incomparable ability to touch and resonate with the human spirit as a tool for communication, emotional expression, and as a medium of cultural identity. During World War II, Nazi leadership recognized the power of music and chose to harness it with malevolence, using its power to push their own agenda and systematically stripping it away from the Jewish people and other populations they sought to disempower. But music also emerged as a counterpoint to this hate, withstanding Nazi attempts to exploit or silence it. Artistic expression triumphed under oppressive regimes elsewhere as well, including the horrific siege of Leningrad and in Japanese internment camps in the Pacific. The oppressed stubbornly clung to music, wherever and however they could, to preserve their culture, to uplift the human spirit and to triumph over oppression, even amid incredible tragedy and suffering. This volume draws together the musical connections and individual stories from this tragic time through scholarly literature, diaries, letters, memoirs, compositions, and art pieces. Collectively, they bear witness to the power of music and offer a reminder to humanity of the imperative each faces to not only remember, but to prevent another such cataclysm.

The Twilight Library

The Twilight Library
Author: Carmen Oliver
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2022-09-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0735844968

Oliver and Lora have created an homage to the ability of words to paint pictures in the imagination more powerful than anything the real world holds. – School Library Journal Snuggle up for a story that’s sure to captivate your senses! There’s a special place deep in the heart of the wilderness where the creatures of the night gather—where everyone wants to go—where the Night Librarian spins a tale of mystery. Fireflies, nighthawks, bats, mice, and brightly colored beetles make themselves comfortable on the forest floor as the Night Librarian transports them into the land of imagination with her silver silken stories. From feasts of tangy berries and salty seeds, to honey comb hives and whisker kisses, to the scent of evergreens, crashing waves of blue oceans, and echoing canyons, Carmen Oliver’s lyrical text and Miren Asiain Lora’s ethereal art is sure to evoke your senses and send you into dreamland to spin stories of your own.

Before We Were Strangers

Before We Were Strangers
Author: Renée Carlino
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501105787

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

Children of the Stone

Children of the Stone
Author: Sandy Tolan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2015-07-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1408853051

Children of the Stone is the unlikely story of Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a boy from a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah who confronts the occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream a reality. That dream is of a music school in the midst of a refugee camp in Ramallah, a school that will transform the lives of thousands of children through music. Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli musician and music director of La Scala in Milan and the Berlin Opera, is among those who help Ramzi realize his dream. He has played with Ramzi frequently, at chamber music concerts in Al-Kamandjati, the school Ramzi worked so hard to build, and in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that Barenboim founded with the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said. Children of the Stone is a story about music, freedom and conflict; determination and vision. It's a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the past and future of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children see new possibilities for their lives. Above all, Children of the Stone chronicles the journey of Ramzi Aburedwan, and how he worked against the odds to create something lasting and beautiful in a war-torn land.

Books to Build On

Books to Build On
Author: E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
Publisher: Delta
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2009-10-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0307567214

The invaluable grade-by-grade guide (kindergarten—sixth) is designed to help parents and teachers select some of the best books for children. Books to Build On recommends: • for kindergartners, lively collections of poetry and stories, such as The Children’s Aesop, and imaginative alphabet books such as Bill Martin, Jr.’s Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Lucy Micklewait’s I Spy: An Alphabet in Art • for first graders, fine books on the fine arts, such as Ann Hayes’s Meet the Orchestra, the hands-on guide My First Music Book, and the thought-provoking Come Look with Me series of art books for children • for second graders, books that open doors to world cultures and history, such as Leonard Everett Fisher’s The Great Wall of China and Marcia Willaims’s humorous Greek Myths for Young Children • for third graders, books that bring to life the wonders of ancient Rome, such as Living in Ancient Rome, and fascinating books about astronomy, such as Seymour Simon’s Our Solar System • for fourth graders, engaging books on history, including Jean Fritz’s Shh! We're Writing the Constitution, and many books on Africa, including the stunningly illustrated story of Sundiata: Lion King of Mali • for fifth graders, a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that retains much of the original language but condenses the play for reading or performance by young students, and Michael McCurdy’s Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass • for sixth graders, an eloquent retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the well-written American history series, A History of US . . . and many, many more!

Building Home

Building Home
Author: Eric John Abrahamson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2013-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520953428

Building Home is an innovative biography that weaves together three engrossing stories. It is one part corporate and industrial history, using the evolution of mortgage finance as a way to understand larger dynamics in the nation‘s political economy. It is another part urban history, since the extraordinary success of the savings and loan business in Los Angeles reflects much of the cultural and economic history of Southern California. Finally, it is a personal story, a biography of one of the nation‘s most successful entrepreneurs of the managed economy —Howard Fieldstad Ahmanson. Eric John Abrahamson deftly connects these three strands as he chronicles Ahmanson’s rise against the background of the postwar housing boom and the growth of L.A. during the same period. As a sun-tanned yachtsman and a cigar-smoking financier, the Omaha-born Ahmanson was both unique and representative of many of the business leaders of his era. He did not control a vast infrastructure like a railroad or an electrical utility. Nor did he build his wealth by pulling the financial levers that made possible these great corporate endeavors. Instead, he made a fortune by enabling the middle-class American dream. With his great wealth, he contributed substantially to the expansion of the cultural institutions in L.A. As we struggle to understand the current mortgage-led financial crisis, Ahmanson’s life offers powerful insights into an era when the widespread hope of homeownership was just beginning to take shape.