If Creators Are Like Wizards is a spellbinding tale about building from the heart.This short story takes readers on an unforgettable adventure through the imagination of writers, artists, orators, architects, musicians, and builders.If creators are like wizards, then pencils are like magic wands. Sprinkle a little pixie dust and "POOF," you've created a universe filled with marvelous ideas.Written with love by Jamie Russo. Beautifully illustrated by Ash Lamb.

To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood takes its central premise, as the title indicates, from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Upon their return to The Emerald City after killing the Wicked Witch of the West, the task the Wizard assigned them, Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Lion learn that the wizard is a “humbug,” merely a man from Nebraska manipulating them and the citizens of both the Emerald City and of Oz from behind a screen. Yet they all continue to believe in the powers they know he does not have, still insisting he grant their wishes. The image of the man behind the screen—and the reader’s continued pursuit of the Wizard—is a powerful one that has at its core an issue central to the study of children’s literature: the relationship between the adult writer and the child reader. As Jack Zipes, Perry Nodelman, Daniel Hade, Jacqueline Rose, and many others point out, before the literature for children and young adults actually reaches these intended readers, it has been mediated by many and diverse cultural, social, political, psychological, and economic forces. These forces occasionally work purposefully in an attempt to consciously socialize or empower, training the reader into a particular identity or way of viewing the world, by one who considers him or herself an advocate for children. Obviously, these “wizards” acting in literature can be the writers themselves, but they can also be the publishers, corporations, school boards, teachers, librarians, literary critics, and parents, and these advocates can be conservative, progressive, or any gradation in between. It is the purpose of this volume to interrogate the politics and the political powers at work in literature for children and young adults. Childhood is an important site of political debate, and children often the victims or beneficiaries of adult uses of power; one would be hard-pressed to find a category of literature more contested than that written for children and adolescents. Peter Hunt writes in his introduction to Understanding Children’s Literature, that children’s books “are overtly important educationally and commercially—with consequences across the culture, from language to politics: most adults, and almost certainly the vast majority in positions of power and influence, read children’s books as children, and it is inconceivable that the ideologies permeating those books had no influence on their development.” If there were a question about the central position literature for children and young adults has in political contests, one needs to look no further than the myriad struggles surrounding censorship. Mark I. West observes, for instance, “Throughout the history of children’s literature, the people who have tried to censor children’s books, for all their ideological differences, share a rather romantic view about the power of books. They believe, or at least they profess to believe, that books are such a major influence in the formation of children’s values and attitudes that adults need to monitor every word that children read.” Because childhood and young-adulthood are the sites of political debate for issues ranging from civil rights and racism to the construction and definition of the family, indoctrinating children into or subverting national and religious ideologies, the literature of childhood bears consciously political analysis, asking how socialization works, how children and young adults learn of social, cultural and political expectations, as well as how literature can propose means of fighting those structures. To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood intends to offer analysis of the political content and context of literature written for and about children and young adults. The essays included in To See the Wizard analyze nineteenth and twentieth century literature from America, Britain, Australia, the Caribbean, and Sri Lanka that is for and about children and adolescents. The essays address issues of racial and national identity and representation, poverty and class mobility, gender, sexuality and power, and the uses of literature in the healing of trauma and the construction of an authentic self.

Marcus Bullock was sixteen years old when he was sentenced to eight years in an adult maximum security prison. Today, he's the founder and CEO of Flikshop, the mobile application keeping families connected to incarcerated loved ones. The most incredible stories are often the ones that don't make the biggest headlines. The Underdog Paradox: Secrets to Battling Adversity and Stories of Real Life Superheroes chronicles the journeys of five entrepreneurs who defy the odds en route to building a brighter future. This book shows that anyone can go from ordinary to extraordinary by channeling an underdog mindset. No matter who you are, where you're from, or what you want to be, you have the power to make a difference.

The story of the arcane table-top game that became a pop culture phenomenon and the long-running legal battle waged by its cocreators. When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success--and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game's fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson--a noted authority on role-playing games--explains how D&D and its creators navigated their successes, setbacks, and controversies. Peterson describes Gygax and Arneson's first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release of the game; the founding of TSR and its growth as a company; and Arneson's acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR. He recounts the "Satanic Panic" accusations that D&D was sacrilegious and dangerous, and how they made the game famous. And he chronicles TSR's reckless expansion and near-fatal corporate infighting, which culminated with the company in debt and overextended and the end of Gygax's losing battle to retain control over TSR and D&D. With Game Wizards, Peterson restores historical particulars long obscured by competing narratives spun by the one-time partners. That record amply demonstrates how the turbulent experience of creating something as momentous as Dungeons & Dragons can make people remember things a bit differently from the way they actually happened.

Two vessels are born into the world every millennia: one unto honor and dishonor. The vessel of honor is the light, joy, justice, and the preservation of life. The vessel of dishonor is darkness; destruction follows in her wake, and sometimes death. She is a dark prophetess who is no less justice than her counterpart. The world is soon to be at war, the prize being dominion of the entire Earth. Only they can prevent the unthinkable, two opposite sides to a coin, light and darkness, yin and yang, who alone have the ability to understand one another in perfect harmony.

What exactly are comics? Can they be art, literature, or even pornography? How should we understand the characters, stories, and genres that shape them? Thinking about comics raises a bewildering range of questions about representation, narrative, and value. Philosophy of Comics is an introduction to these philosophical questions. In exploring the history and variety of the comics medium, Sam Cowling and Wesley D. Cray chart a path through the emerging field of the philosophy of comics. Drawing from a diverse range of forms and genres and informed by case studies of classic comics such as Watchmen, Tales from the Crypt, and Fun Home, Cowling and Cray explore ethical, aesthetic, and ontological puzzles, including: - What does it take to create-or destroy-a fictional character like Superman? - Can all comics be adapted into films, or are some comics impossible to adapt? - Is there really a genre of “superhero comics”? - When are comics obscene, pornographic, and why does it matter? At a time of rapidly growing interest in graphic storytelling, this is an ideal introduction to the philosophy of comics and some of its most central and puzzling questions.

This is the fifth year we have been able to capture the research and development efforts related to the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) community which at the writing of these proceedings has well over 1000 users in over 65 countries. We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish with the help of our user community. These proceedings are intended to document the evolutions of GIFT as a tool for the authoring of intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) and the evaluation of adaptive instructional tools and methods.