Showing posts with label pennsylvania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pennsylvania. Show all posts
Jan 5, 2018
Dec 1, 2017
Jul 4, 2017
Jan 7, 2017
May 1, 2015
Groundhog Day (DVD)
Summary: Teamed with a relentlessly cheerful producer and a smart-aleck cameraman, TV weatherman Phil Connors is sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities. But on his way out of town, Phil is caught in a giant blizzard, which he failed to predict, and finds himself stuck in small-town hell. Just when things couldn't get any worse, they do. Phil wakes the next morning to find it's Groundhog Day all over again-- and again-- and again.
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Dec 2, 2013
From Norvelt to nowhere - Gantos
From Norvelt to nowhere - Gantos, Jack
Summary: After an explosion, a new crime by an old murderer, and the sad passing of the founder of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack accompanies his slightly mental elderly mentor, Miss Volker, on a cross-country run as she pursues the oddest of outlaws.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Whodunit this time? The murder of yet another old lady starts off this rambunctious sequel to Gantos' Newbery Medal–winning Dead End in Norvelt (2011). Is it old Spizz, who is on the lam after confessing to the murder of nine others? Is it Miss Volker, young Jack's mentor? Could it be Mr. Huffer, the local undertaker? Before the mystery can be solved, Jack finds himself en route to Hyde Park with Miss Volker to pay tribute to the recently deceased Eleanor Roosevelt, who founded Norvelt. Once there, Miss Volker receives word that her twin sister has died (or been murdered?) in Miami, and so the two catch the first train south. When first Spizz—whom Miss Volker has vowed to shoot on sight—and then Mr. Huffer show up, our heroes decamp to Washington, D.C.; buy a battered old VW; and hit the long and winding road to the Sunshine State, pursued by the usual suspects, plus a mysterious ferret-faced fellow. Yes, there's more than a little of the outré in this mystery-cum-farce that unspools episodically, building suspense along the way. Gantos does an excellent job of keeping readers guessing about his characters: are they the good Dr. Jekyll or the evil Mr. Hyde or perhaps a bit of both? Whichever, fans of Dead End in Norvelt won't want to miss this lively sequel. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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Jan 1, 2013
The twelve tribes of Hattie - Ayana Mathis
Summary: In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* This was not the life smart and lovely Hattie expected to live after fleeing Jim Crow Georgia in 1923 and settling in Philadelphia. Two years later, married (at 16) to an irresponsible man, she is poor, cold, hungry, and desperate as her twin babies sicken with pneumonia. Writing with stunning authority, clarity, and courage, debut novelist Mathis pivots forward in time, spotlighting intensely dramatic episodes in the lives of Hattie's nine subsequent children (and one grandchild to make the "twelve tribes"), galvanizing crises that expose the crushed dreams and anguished legacy of the Great Migration. While Hattie grows more stoic with each birth and each betrayal, her children struggle with her survival strategies, which they perceive as her coldness and anger. Hattie's daughters are epically depressed. Two sons end up in the South, shocked by its "backward country ways": Floyd, a jazz musician painfully conflicted over his attraction to men, and badly scarred Six, who discovers a gift for preaching. Late in life, Hattie thinks, "Here we are sixty years out of Georgia, . . . and there's still the same wounding and the same pain." Mathis writes with blazing insight into the complexities of sexuality, marriage, family relationships, backbone, fraudulence, and racism in a molten novel of lives racked with suffering yet suffused with beauty. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Jan 5, 2012
Dead end in Norvelt - John Gantos
Summary: In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.
Library Media Connection
The town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania was founded in 1934 to provide out-of-work miners with affordable housing. By 1962, when this story takes place, the town is in decline. Jack's summer plans are thwarted when his mother places him under "house arrest," allowing him only to help arthritic Miss Volker. She dictates obituaries and historical facts to Jack who types them up and takes them to the newspaper office. When Miss Volker is accused of poisoning the women who died that summer, Jack sets out to clear her name. This is an interesting coming of age story. The town of Norvelt does exist, and author Jack Gantos did live there as a child. The town is populated by a series of eccentric characters who contribute to the humor of the story, and the relationship that develops between Jack and Miss Volker rings true. Gantos fans will find this one of his best works. Charlotte Decker, Librarian and Educational Reviewer, Cincinnati, Ohio [Editor's Note: Available in e-book format.] RECOMMENDED ¬ 2011 Linworth Publishing, Inc.
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Aug 3, 2010
Fragile beasts: a novel - Tawni O'Dell
Fragile beasts: a novel - O'Dell, Tawni
Summary: Presents the story of brothers Kyle and Klint, whose precarious lives in Pennsylvania coal country are further challenged by their alcoholic father's death, until they are taken in by a septuagenarian curmudgeon with a tragic past. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
Their father was a notorious drunk; their mother, a self-absorbed shrew who callously abandoned them for life with another man. After their father is killed in a senseless accident, teenage brothers Klint and Kyle Hayes face being returned to their mother's custody against their will. For Klint, the move to Arizona would mean sacrificing his attention-getting baseball career at the height of the college and pro-scouting season. For sensitive and artistic Kyle, holding onto the only home he has ever known is essential to making sure his brother achieves the success necessary to free them both from the oppression of their small, western Pennsylvania mining town. Salvation comes in the unlikely form of Candace Jack, a wealthy and reclusive elderly woman who is persuaded to give the boys a home, and herself a second chance to feel love again. In this tough and tender tale, O'Dell's triumphant portrait of loss and rejection, sanctuary and redemption, shines with poignancy, dignity, and transcendent joy. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
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