The Last Children of Mill Creek

The Last Children of Mill Creek
Author: Vivian Gibson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781948742641

Vivian Gibson grew up in Mill Creek, a neighborhood of St. Louis razed in 1955 to build a highway. Her family, friends, church community, and neighbors were all displaced by urban renewal. In this moving memoir, Gibson recreates the every day lived experiences of her family, including her college-educated mother, who moved to St. Louis as part of the Great Migration, her friends, shop owners, teachers, and others who made Mill Creek into a warm, tight-knit, African-American community, and reflects upon what it means that Mill Creek was destroyed by racism and "urban renewal."

Cabin on Trouble Creek

Cabin on Trouble Creek
Author: Jean Van Leeuwen
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2008-11-13
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0142411647

After clearing enough forest to build a log cabin for their new home, Pa returns east to fetch the rest of the family, while young brothers Daniel and Will stay behind to watch the land. Pa had planned to return within six weeks . . . but something must have gone wrong. Now the boys must survive the winter with only a few supplies and their ability to invent and improvise. But are they alone in the woods? Jean Van Leeuwen?s engrossing novel of pioneer survival is based on a true incident.

Mapping Decline

Mapping Decline
Author: Colin Gordon
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2014-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812291506

Once a thriving metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, is now a ghostly landscape of vacant houses, boarded-up storefronts, and abandoned factories. The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay. "Not a typical city," as one observer noted in the late 1970s, "but, like a Eugene O'Neill play, it shows a general condition in a stark and dramatic form." Mapping Decline examines the causes and consequences of St. Louis's urban crisis. It traces the complicity of private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, and federal housing policies in the "white flight" of people and wealth from the central city. And it traces the inadequacy—and often sheer folly—of a generation of urban renewal, in which even programs and resources aimed at eradicating blight in the city ended up encouraging flight to the suburbs. The urban crisis, as this study of St. Louis makes clear, is not just a consequence of economic and demographic change; it is also the most profound political failure of our recent history. Mapping Decline is the first history of a modern American city to combine extensive local archival research with the latest geographic information system (GIS) digital mapping techniques. More than 75 full-color maps—rendered from census data, archival sources, case law, and local planning and property records—illustrate, in often stark and dramatic ways, the still-unfolding political history of our neglected cities.

The Children in the Woods

The Children in the Woods
Author: Frederick Busch
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1994
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

"Recipient of the 1991 PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story, Frederick Busch confirms his achievement in this unsettling and affecting collection of new and selected stories. Like Hansel and Gretel, the characters in The Children in the Woods are concerned with survival; in the subtle playing out of this dark fairy tale, Busch makes palpable the themes of love, loss, alienation, and disillusionment." "In "Critics," it is the hierarchy of familial relationships that isolates an only child; in "The Settlement of Mars," a young boy's first recognition of the adult world is a frightening and disorienting experience; in "My Father, Cont.," a child fantasizes he will be abandoned by his bickering parents; and in "Folk Tales," a man's reappraisal of his life is catalyzed by the discovery of old correspondence in his mother's safe-deposit box after she dies. In all of these stories Busch is a master at exposing the vulnerability that resonates in each of the characters. As Shelby Hearon proclaimed in the New York Times Book Review of Absent Friends, Busch's most recent collection, "These stories hit us where we live: alone."" "Busch's previous collections of stories and his highly acclaimed novels Closing Arguments and Long way from Home have established his reputation as a writer of powerful literary fiction. The distillation of twenty years of story collections by Frederick Busch, The Children in the Woods is further testimony to the integrity and distinction of his work. Containing eight previously uncollected stories, The Children in the Woods is an opportunity for both old fans and those newly acquainted with his work to celebrate this remarkable writer."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

St. Louis

St. Louis
Author: John Aaron Wright
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738533629

Since the founding of St. Louis, African Americans have lived in communities throughout the area. Although St. Louis' 1916 "Segregation of the Negro Ordinance" was ruled unconstitutional, African Americans were restricted to certain areas through real estate practices such as steering and red lining. Through legal efforts in the court cases of Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, Jones v. Mayer in 1978, and others, more housing options became available and the population dispersed. Many of the communities began to decline, disappear, or experience urban renewal.

Dear Wild Child

Dear Wild Child
Author: Wallace J. Nichols
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1647007879

A story inspired by a letter from a father to his daughter about wildfire, loss, and learning that we carry our homes inside us wherever we go In the shade of ancient redwood trees, by a creek, not far from the ocean, a father builds a house for his newborn daughter, where she grows up wild and strong in their coastal canyon home. When a wildfire takes back their beloved house, a father writes his now-grown daughter a letter telling her it’s gone. Inspired by the real letter the author wrote his daughter, this poignant story—written together by father and daughter—joyfully declares that a home is more than just wood and stone; it is made of love and can never be taken away. You carry home with you wherever you go.

Children of the Mill

Children of the Mill
Author: David Hanson
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2014-07-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472220420

Channel 4's The Mill captivated viewers with the tales of the lives of the young girls and boys in a northern mill. Focusing on the lives of the apprentices at Quarry Bank Mill, David Hanson's book uses a wealth of first-person source material including letters, diaries, mill records, to tell the stories of the children who lived and worked at Quarry Bank throughout the nineteenth century. This book perfectly accompanies the television series, satisfying viewers' curiosity about the history of the children of Quarry Bank. It reveals the real lives of the television series' main characters: Esther, Daniel, Lucy and Susannah, showing how shockingly close to the truth the dramatisation is. But the book also goes far beyond this to create a full and vivid picture of factory life in the industrial revolution. David Hanson has written an accessible narrative history of Victorian working children and the conditions in which they worked.

The Broken Heart of America

The Broken Heart of America
Author: Walter Johnson
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541646061

A searing portrait of the racial dynamics that lie inescapably at the heart of our nation, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis. From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America's most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil War's first general emancipation, and the nation's first general strike—a legacy of resistance that endures. A blistering history of a city's rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America will forever change how we think about the United States.

The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee (Origami Yoda #3)

The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee (Origami Yoda #3)
Author: Tom Angleberger
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2012-08-07
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1613124562

The Secret of the Fortune Wookieeis the third case file of the New York Times bestselling Origami Yoda series from Tom Angleberger! Is it possible to have a case file without Origami Yoda? With Dwight suspended, McQuarrie Middle School is missing its most famous attendee: Origami Yoda. And no Yoda means no case file mystery to solve. But then something BIG happens. Something BIG and HAIRY. It’s a Fortune Wookiee, a paper fortune teller in the form of Chewbacca. Sara brings it to school as a gift from Dwight, and it seems to give advice that’s just as good as Yoda’s. Mysterious, it is! Tommy, Kellen, and Harvey are on the case. And when their classmates start having strange “Dwight sightings” (sightings of Dwight in which he is acting WAY too normal), the boys have TWO mysteries to solve. The closer they get, the more possible it seems that Origami Yoda will be back . . . “A chorus of spot-on middle-school voices and plenty of laughs are wrapped around this tale of friendship and seasoned with Star Wars references.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) Includes Black-and-White Illustrations and Instructions for folding your own origami Chewbacca. The Origami Yoda series The Strange Case of Origami Yoda Darth Paper Strikes Back The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett Princess Labelmaker to the Rescue! Emperor Pickletine Rides the Bus Art2-D2’s Guide to Folding and Doodling: An Origami Yoda Activity Book

The House on Sprucewood Lane

The House on Sprucewood Lane
Author: Caroline Slate
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2002-03-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0743422511

From the outside, some families appear to be untouchable. No conflicts within could cause ugliness or bitterness; no external force could shatter their assured, confident aura. The world saw the McQuade family through such a prism -- a slice of suburban perfection, a page-from-a-magazine existence for Melanie and Tom McQuade and their two gifted children. But Melanie's sister, documentary filmmaker Lex Cavanaugh, knows that nothing is as it appears; the truth of any picture lies in the eye of the beholder. And soon an unthinkable crime will shake Lex to the core, challenging everything she has known about her estranged family -- and herself. Lex receives the wrenching news in an urgent e-mail from her nephew, Jared: his ten-year-old sister Calista, a talented gymnast with Olympic potential, has been found murdered. Rushing from her home in London to Melanie's house in exclusive Westport, Connecticut, Lex re-enters a family living out its worst nightmare -- with each of the members cast in the light of suspicion, even among themselves. As the homicide investigation unfolds, a startling, unexpected group portrait reveals itself: Lex's obsessive, controlling sister, her TV-personality brother-in-law, and the intensely unhappy young Jared, in whom Lex sees her childhood self. Sifting through a decade of hidden indiscretions, raw resentments, and buried truths, Lex knows she must unlock the secrets of the past if there is any hope at all for their future. With a fresh voice and an unsparing eye, Caroline Slate has crafted a literary gem that is at the same time a tense, disarming psychological thriller in the tradition of Jacquelyn Mitchard and Ruth Rendell -- a page-turner that exposes the chilling, entangled secrets which may tear one family apart.