First-person narratives of 27 former SC slaves edited from WPA slave narratives.

Celebrate the freedom to read with this timely, empowering middle-grade debut in the spirit of The View from Saturday or Frindle. When twelve-year-old June Harper's parents discover what they deem an inappropriate library book, they take strict parenting to a whole new level. And everything June loves about Dogwood Middle School unravels: librarian Ms. Bradshaw is suspended, an author appearance is canceled, the library is gutted, and all books on the premises must have administrative approval. But June can't give up books . . . and she realizes she doesn't have to when she spies a Little Free Library on her walk to school. As the rules become stricter at school and at home, June keeps turning the pages of the banned books that continue to appear in the little library. It's a delicious secret . . . and one she can't keep to herself. June starts a banned book library of her own in an abandoned locker at school. The risks grow alongside her library's popularity, and a movement begins at Dogwood Middle--a movement that, if exposed, could destroy her. But if it's powerful enough, maybe it can save Ms. Bradshaw and all that she represents: the freedom to read. Equal parts fun and empowering, this novel explores censorship, freedom of speech, and activism. For any kid who doesn't believe one person can effect change...and for all the kids who already know they can!

Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind. From renowned author Julia Alvarez comes an unforgettable story about adolescence, perseverance, and one girl’s struggle to be free.

CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, by Marquis Whos Who in the World writer Paul Heidelberg, is a novel about life, art and music in San Francisco during The Roaring Sixties. The novel revolves around life at the San Francisco Art Institute, which the author attended for four years before earning a degree in painting and creative writing (Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead studied at the art institute, and Janis Joplin worked in the school cafeteria before attaining rock star status). The book, set in The Sixties, which the author considers to have been from about 1965-75, has a painter as female protagonist and a painter and poet as male protagonist. It includes poetry readings at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Avenue, where Janis Joplin had her first paying job as a singer, and incorporates poetry into prose. The book includes the authors Theory Of Relativity Of Ping-Pong Balls of people constantly meeting and parting he had formulated while living in Europe. Other characters who figure into the books progress and conclusion include a sculptor who graduated from art institute in the late 1960s who has an upbeat personality and often ends a sentence with laughter: ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES includes scenes from wild art exhibition openings, to free performances by such musicians as blues great Charlie Musselwhite (in a San Francisco bar) and Dr. John, who led a New Orleans-style musical parade up Columbus Avenue in North Beach. The book includes scenes in Morocco in 1971, and Essouira Peter, a Yale University graduate who had tuned in, turned on and dropped out, to Barbayanni in 1960s Greece. Barbayanni, Uncle John, lived in the village of Mallia, Crete and wore the black baggy pants, high black goatskin boots and other accoutrements of a proud Cretan the clothing that had been worn by the grandfather of the writer Nikos Kazantzakis. The great Cretan writer is also an important figure in the book. Another key figure is the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. As author Heidelberg writes in the beginning pages of CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, the book is not merely a remembrance of The Sixties, but it is also a remembrance of all times when artists and others have been Chasing Freedom, as Federico Garcia Lorca did in the 1920s and 1930s. The novel concludes at a great rock concert in San Francisco. (The price of the book includes a suitable-for-framing Fine Art Print, the cover illustration, created by using modern computer software to alter a photographic transparency taken at the San Francisco Art Institute during The Sixties.)

In Ghana today, many people who suffer from a variety of human ills wander from one pastor to another in search of a spiritual cure. Because of the way cultural beliefs about the spiritual world have interwoven with their Christian faith, many Ghanaian Christians live in bondage to their fears of evil spiritual powers, seeing Jesus as a superior power to use against these malevolent spiritual forces. In For Freedom or Bondage? Esther Acolatse argues that Christian pastoral practices in many African churches include too much influence from African traditional religions. She examines Ghana Independent Charismatic churches as a case study, offering theological and psychological analysis of current pastoral care practices through the lenses of Barth and Jung. Facilitating a three-strand conversation between African traditional religion, Barthian theology, and Jungian analytical psychology, Acolatse interrogates problematic cultural narratives and offers a more nuanced approach to pastoral care.

Comfort, O comfort my people. . . In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.' The second part of the book of Isaiah rings with proclamations and prophecies that find their fulfilment in the Gospels and are still being fulfilled by followers of Jesus today. In Freedom is Coming Nick Baines invites you to think about what it meant for people in Isaiah's day to be living in exile, and how the prophet encouraged them to keep their faith alive despite the apparent hopelessness of their situation. At the same time, this book helps you to see the connections between Isaiah's time and ours, and how his vision of God's truth and justice spreading throughout the world can comfort, challenge and inspire God's people now, just as it did back then. Read this book and find out how you too can become a 'light to the nations' as, once again, we approach the celebration of Christ's birth and the new world that God has promised to bring into being.