Well hello there. My name is like, Val. I’m, like, an ostrich, ya know. But I bet you knew that. You’re a smart one, you are. But even if you’re smart, I’m a lot smarter. And I’m better looking. Don’t I look just grand? Meet Val, the vain ostrich, and let her tell you all about her life and what it is like to be an ostrich in Africa. Ages 7 to 10. Reading level: 3.4 LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from classic stories, to mysteries, to books of knowledge. Many books are appropriate for hi-lo readers. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

Well hello there. My name is like, Val. I’m, like, an ostrich, ya know. But I bet you knew that. You’re a smart one, you are. But even if you’re smart, I’m a lot smarter. And I’m better looking. Don’t I look just grand? Meet Val, the vain ostrich, and let her tell you all about her life and what it is like to be an ostrich in Africa. Ages 7 to 10. Educational Versions have exercises to meet Common Core standards. LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from classic stories, to mysteries, to books of knowledge. Many books are appropriate for hi-lo readers. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

Goaded by the taunts of the village children, a youngster runs deep into the jungle searching for her real mother--an ostrich.

The Book of the Knight Zifar (or Cifar), Spain's first novel of chivalry, is the tale of a virtuous but unfortunate knight who has fallen from grace and must seek redemption through suffering and good deeds. Because of a curse that repeatedly deprives him of that most important of knightly accoutrements—his horse—Zifar and his family must flee their native India and wander through distant lands seeking to regain their rank and fortune. A series of mishaps divides the family, and the novel follows their separate adventures—alternatively heroic, comic, and miraculous—until at length they are reunited and their honor restored. The anonymous author of Zifar based his early fourteenth-century novel on the medieval story of the life of St. Eustacius, but onto this trunk he grafted a surprising variety of narrative types: Oriental tales of romance and magic, biblical stories, moralizing fables popular since the Middle Ages, including several from Aesop, and instructions in the rules of proper knightly conduct. Humor in the form of puns, jokes, and old proverbs also runs through the novel. In particular, the foolish/wise Knave offers a comic contrast to the heroic Knight, whom he must continually rescue through the application of common sense. Zifar was to have an important influence on later Spanish literature, and perhaps on Cervantes' great tale of a knight and his squire, Don Quixote. All those with an interest in Spanish literature and medieval life will be grateful for Mr. Nelson's excellent translation, which brings to life this extraordinary early novel.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. The Last Boer War is an 1899 non-fiction book by Haggard about the Boer War of 1881. Jess is a story of Jess Croft who lives with sister Bessie and old Silas, a farmer raising ostriches on the great Transvaal veldt. He is a reserved and aloof, with a quietness about her brought on by the misfortunes of her young childhood, when she and Bessie arrived motherless from England to South Africa. Then an Englishman, Captain John Niel, arrives to try his hand at the farming life. To his eyes, Bessie is lively and lovely of face and figure – yet Jess is mystery, with a bright and roving mind and splendid, searching eyes. Unwillingly the three of them are drawn together, then torn apart, by the emotions.