The Heart Shaped Leaf

The Heart Shaped Leaf
Author: Shira Gefen
Publisher: Green Bean Books
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2018-09-30
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781784382629

Shira Geffen's beautiful and poetic story follows a little girl, Alona, on her journey home through a windswept park. She rests under a tree and eats an apple and, with each bite, a leaf falls off the tree. One of the leaves is different from the others - it is an enchanted, heart-shaped leaf, and it drops onto Alona's head and clings to her braid. The magical leaf protects her from the lead and she arrives home completely dry. Her father is waiting for her at home. He plucks the leaf out of her braid and serves her a bowl of lentil soup. When Alona gazes into the bowl of soup she sees a tree reflected there. "If you want to drink your soup, give me back my leaf!" says the tree, and tells her that the leaf is its heart, a heart in the shape of a leaf. Alona stands at the window and blows on the leaf, knowing it will find its way back. "Thank you," says the tree, which is still reflected in the soup. Shira Geffen's delicate, vivid and moving fantasy is perfectly illustrated by Polonsky's intricate pictures, full of movement and drawn from many and varied angles. The delicate texture breaks out of each one of them. This is a touching and gentle story, for 4-8 year old readers, with remarkable beauty, gentleness and delicacy.

The Humane Gardener

The Humane Gardener
Author: Nancy Lawson
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre:
ISBN: 1616896175

In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.

The Life of a Leaf

The Life of a Leaf
Author: Steven Vogel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2012-10-17
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0226859398

In its essence, science is a way of looking at and thinking about the world. In The Life of a Leaf, Steven Vogel illuminates this approach, using the humble leaf as a model. Whether plant or person, every organism must contend with its immediate physical environment, a world that both limits what organisms can do and offers innumerable opportunities for evolving fascinating ways of challenging those limits. Here, Vogel explains these interactions, examining through the example of the leaf the extraordinary designs that enable life to adapt to its physical world. In Vogel’s account, the leaf serves as a biological everyman, an ordinary and ubiquitous living thing that nonetheless speaks volumes about our environment as well as its own. Thus in exploring the leaf’s world, Vogel simultaneously explores our own. A companion website with demonstrations and teaching tools can be found here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/sites/vogel/index.html

Trees of Pennsylvania

Trees of Pennsylvania
Author: Ann Fowler Rhoads
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2005
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

Authoritative, encyclopedic, lavishly illustrated guide to the trees of the state and region—from the Morris Arboretum, the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The Book of the Heart

The Book of the Heart
Author: Eric Jager
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2000-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780226391168

In today's increasingly electronic world, we say our personality traits are "hard-wired" and we "replay" our memories. But we use a different metaphor when we speak of someone "reading" another's mind or a desire to "turn over a new leaf"—these phrases refer to the "book of the self," an idea that dates from the beginnings of Western culture. Eric Jager traces the history and psychology of the self-as-text concept from antiquity to the modern day. He focuses especially on the Middle Ages, when the metaphor of a "book of the heart" modeled on the manuscript codex attained its most vivid expressions in literature and art. For instance, medieval saints' legends tell of martyrs whose hearts recorded divine inscriptions; lyrics and romances feature lovers whose hearts are inscribed with their passion; paintings depict hearts as books; and medieval scribes even produced manuscript codices shaped like hearts. "The Book of the Heart provides a fresh perspective on the influence of the book as artifact on our language and culture. Reading this book broadens our appreciation of the relationship between things and ideas."—Henry Petroski, author of The Book on the Bookshelf

In Defense of Plants

In Defense of Plants
Author: Matt Candeias
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1642504548

The Study of Plants in a Whole New Light “Matt Candeias succeeds in evoking the wonder of plants with wit and wisdom.” ―James T. Costa, PhD, executive director, Highlands Biological Station and author of Darwin's Backyard #1 New Release in Nature & Ecology, Plants, Botany, Horticulture, Trees, Biological Sciences, and Nature Writing & Essays In his debut book, internationally-recognized blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias celebrates the nature of plants and the extraordinary world of plant organisms. A botanist’s defense. Since his early days of plant restoration, this amateur plant scientist has been enchanted with flora and the greater environmental ecology of the planet. Now, he looks at the study of plants through the lens of his ever-growing houseplant collection. Using gardening, houseplants, and examples of plants around you, In Defense of Plants changes your relationship with the world from the comfort of your windowsill. The ruthless, horny, and wonderful nature of plants. Understand how plants evolve and live on Earth with a never-before-seen look into their daily drama. Inside, Candeias explores the incredible ways plants live, fight, have sex, and conquer new territory. Whether a blossoming botanist or a professional plant scientist, In Defense of Plants is for anyone who sees plants as more than just static backdrops to more charismatic life forms. In this easily accessible introduction to the incredible world of plants, you’ll find: • Fantastic botanical histories and plant symbolism • Passionate stories of flora diversity and scientific names of plant organisms • Personal tales of plantsman discovery through the study of plants If you enjoyed books like The Botany of Desire, What a Plant Knows, or The Soul of an Octopus, then you’ll love In Defense of Plants.

There Is a Tribe of Kids

There Is a Tribe of Kids
Author: Lane Smith
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2016-05-03
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1626727562

Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal When a young boy embarks on a journey alone . . . he trails a colony of penguins, undulates in a smack of jellyfish, clasps hands with a constellation of stars, naps for a night in a bed of clams, and follows a trail of shells, home to his tribe of friends. If Lane Smith's Caldecott Honor Book Grandpa Green was an homage to aging and the end of life, There Is a Tribe of Kids is a meditation on childhood and life's beginning. Smith's vibrant sponge-paint illustrations and use of unusual collective nouns such as smack and unkindness bring the book to life. Whimsical, expressive, and perfectly paced, this story plays with language as much as it embodies imagination, and was awarded the 2017 Kate Greenaway Medal. This title has Common Core connections.

Sadie's Snowy Tu B'Shevat

Sadie's Snowy Tu B'Shevat
Author: Jamie S. Korngold
Publisher: Kar-Ben Publishing
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2017-12-19
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1512426776

"Sadie hopes to plant a tree outside to celebrate the holiday of Tu B'Shevat, but it is too snowy and cold. Instead, inspired by her grandmother's memories, she plants parsley instead"--

House of Leaves

House of Leaves
Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 738
Release: 2000-03-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375420525

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Manual of Object-teaching

Manual of Object-teaching
Author: Norman Allison Calkins
Publisher:
Total Pages: 482
Release: 1882
Genre: Object-teaching
ISBN:

W.S.N.S. is probably Washington State Normal School in Industry, Maine.