We swim in turquoise water and build castles on the beach. We climb up rocks or watch from docks, To see the gray whales breach.

Titled after the US Air Force song, this engaging debut explores the legacy of the Greatest Generation from the perspective of Generation Y, the fallout of war through the eyes of a pacifist, and the enduring human desire for love, adventure, truth, and understanding. Pensive in the wake of 9/11, a young man—our “correspondent between the past and the present”—launches a mission to reunite his beloved grandfather, an American bombardier, with Luddie, the woman who saved him during WWII. Armed only with the address on the back of an old photograph and his grandfather’s memories, the young man begins writing letters to Luddie. Undaunted by her lack of response, the narrator travels to Poland with his girlfriend and grandfather. As they come closer to finding the site where the bombardier was shot down, the letters to Luddie become more personal and the saga of a family with a long and storied history emerges. Beautifully orchestrated and eloquently original, each sentence slowly builds upon the next in a charming style both poetic and engrossing. A tale of soldiers and saviors, of burning and bombing, of fathers and sons and brothers and lovers, this is also the story of what we find when we dare to revisit the past. Born in Iowa in 1979, Travis Nichols now lives in Chicago. An editor at the Poetry Foundation, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Believer, Details, Paste, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and The Stranger. Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is his first novel.

Sing, Spell, Read & Write uses carefully sequenced, systematic, explicit phonics instruction to build fluent independent readers. It is effective because it engages students in playing games; singing songs; and look, listen, point, sing-along, and echo routines that stimulate the senses and appeal to all learning styles. Its approach requires total participation on the part of the learner and is strongly supported by current research on brain function, language acquisition, and reading.

And Off We Go is a collection of stories lending wings to our curiosity and taking us through space and time! The first one introduces us to the Vikings, who taught their children how to coexist with the frozen seas and respect the animals. In the second tale we visit the African Bushmen and get to know their very special way of learning how to hunt. The third one takes place in Japan and describes how a samurai preserves the honour of a persecuted princess, while in the fourth we learn about understanding dreams with the Navajo, a native American tribe. The stars in the fifth story bring together two girls – a Masai and an Australian – marked by fate in the same manner. Through these tales we learn how to listen to the wind and how to understand people different from ourselves. The goal of these stories is for the readers to become fascinated by fantasy journeys. The young readers will take their own knowledge of the world and their family with them on these journeys, and learn about different ways of life full of similar mutual relations and identical fears and joys. They will learn that many different peoples or groups of people live or have lived in the world, that every group has certain peculiarities we can look up to and make use of living in the today's world, or simply discover what people can find their own little shares of happiness in. However, the most important message is the realisation that we are all very much alike despite all the differences. We love our nearest and dearest, we laugh at a funny story, and we are upset by injustice, regardless of when, where in the world, and what family we were born into. The collection of stories And Off We Go will help you discover at least some of your secret wishes and chase away prejudice and fears. These five stories will change your outlook at the world. For the better.

This booklet provides exercise leaders and teachers with a range of information which should help them plan individual lessons for children. It offers ideas on movement, plans for setting up apparatus, and more, with patterns you can copy, ideas for making things, and children's songs set to music. The various pedagogical aspects of working with children are also addressed, along with how children's gymnastic groups can be organized and methods for encouraging children to move about.