Told in their separate voices, sixteen-year-old Prince Oliver, who wants to break free of his fairy-tale existence, and fifteen-year-old Delilah, a loner obsessed with Prince Oliver and the book in which he exists, work together to seek his freedom.

Suitable for teachers and speech and language therapists working in the fields of language and literacy, and concerned with developing inferencing skills in their students, this book contains a collection of 300 texts which are graded, and lead the student gradually from simple tasks.

Michael Anthony, 20-year reading workshop practitioner at the secondary level, and Joan Kaywell, acclaimed author and advocate for young adult literature in learning, present Between the Lines, a creative paradigm shift for the English Language Arts workshop classroom. In contrast to the traditional sustained silent reading and individual conferencing model, an impractical commitment for most teachers, BtL invites collaborative engagement and active inquiry among students as well as on-demand writing and integrated YA literature, all designed to support existing middle and secondary level ELA classroom curriculum instruction and national academic learning standards while empowering English educators toward improved student literacy achievement and the creation of lifelong readers. The classroom activities, with student-friendly names like Book Chat Check and Pop Goes the Question, promote animated discussions in social learning contexts and produce writings supported by textual evidence from student selected texts. Clear step by step directions for facilitation and authentic models of resulting student writing are shared along with a standards-based lesson plan suitable for grades 6-12. Ongoing teacher/student journal conversations validate independent reader thought processes and provoke differentiated learning experiences. The book includes Common Core State Standards-based strategies for responding to students meaningfully and for inviting extensions beyond the book, motivating increasingly complex and connective writings. Sample dialogue journal entries are shared along with insightful commentary and practical analysis. Everything needed for implementing Between the Lines is contained within these pages, including a user friendly appendix filled with fully reproduceable classroom workshop materials, tips for reducing the teacher reading and writing loads, and suggestions for building an enviable classroom library stocked with award-winning adolescent literature.

The story begins with a parting of the sands - the construction of the Suez Canal that united the Mediterranean with the Arabian Sea. It opened the door of opportunity for people living insecurely on the fringes of a turbulent Europe. The Middle East is understood today through the lens of unending conflict and violence. Lost in the litany of perpetual strife and struggle are the layers of culture and civilisation that accumulated over centuries, and which give the region its cosmopolitan identity. It was once a region known poetically as the Levant - a reference to the East, where the sun rose. Amid the bewildering mix of races, religions and rivalries, was above all an affinity with the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Today any mixing of this trinity of faiths is regarded as a recipe for hatred and prejudice. Yet it was not always this way. There was a time, in the last century, when Arabs and Jews rubbed shoulders in bazaars and teashops, worked and played together, intermarried and shared family histories. Michael Vatikiotis's parents and grandparents were a product of this forgotten pluralist tradition, which spanned almost a century from the mid-1800s to the end of the Second World War in 1945. The Ottoman empire, in a last gasp of reformist energy before it collapsed in the 1920s, granted people of many creeds and origins generous spaces to nestle into and thrive. The European colonial order that followed was to reveal deep divisions. Vatikiotis's family eventually found themselves caught between clashing faiths and contested identity. Their story is of people set adrift, who built new lives and prospered in holy lands, only to be caught up in conflict and tossed on the waves of a violent history. Lives Between the Lines brilliantly recreates a world where the Middle East was a place to go to, not flee from, and the subsequent start of a prolonged nightmare of suffering from which the region has yet to recover.