Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?
By Yung ZhaoYear
Published:Â 2014
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? By award-winning writer Yong Zhao offers an entertaining, provocative insider’s account of the Chinese school system, revealing the secrets that make it both “the best and worst” in the world. Born and raised in China’s Sichuan province and a teacher in China for many years, Zhao has a unique perspective on Chinese culture and education. He explains in vivid detail how China turns out the world’s highest-achieving students in reading, math, and science—yet by all accounts Chinese educators, parents, and political leaders hate the system and long to send their kids to western schools. Filled with fascinating stories and compelling data, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon, offers a nuanced and sobering tour of education in China.
The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak
Year Published: 2005
The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller that is now a major motion picture, Markus Zusak’s unforgettable story is about the ability of books to feed the soul. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.
At Work in Penns Woods
By Joseph Speakman
Year Published: 2006
Non-Fiction – History
The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the most popular programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Over the nine years of the program, from 1933 to 1942, over two and one-half million unemployed young men found work on conservation projects across Depression-stricken America. “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,†as the CCC men were sometimes called, planted billions of trees, fought forest fires, did historic preservation work, and constructed recreational facilities in state and national parks. At Work in Penn’s Woods offers a rich and compelling portrait of Pennsylvania’s CCC program.
Cry My Beloved Country
By Alan Paton
Year Published:Â 1948
Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.
Winter of the World
By Ken Follett
Year Published:Â 2012
Winter of the World picks up right where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs and the beginning of the long Cold War.
Fall of Giants
By Ken Follett
Year Published:Â 2010
Historical Fiction
A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits…An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House…A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution.
From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again.
 Modern Teacher
by
Year Published: 2014
Co-authored by Shawn K. Smith, Ann M. Chavez and Garrett W. Seaman, this book takes readers on an engaging and enriching journey that defines highly-effective teaching and connects the isolated parts of instructional design and delivery into a coherent whole. Teacher as Architect, Second Edition, is a comprehensive guide for blended learning implementation as well as the integration of digital learning systems into classroom practice. The book provides educators at all levels with guidance for creating structures to organize, manage, store and collaborate with digital content and for discovering practical, useful tools for designing and delivering highly-effective instruction.
