“Wow! Could you imagine living in a house like this?” Kendall asked. “Could you imagine having to clean a house like this?” Jamie answered. Both Kendall and Jamie had inherited their love of old things from their parents. At that moment they were visiting a huge mansion that allowed tours. They had come with their friends Erica and Andrea and their father. Mr. Broderick was talking with one of the restorers in another part of the house. All four of the kids were in the front room of the house, looking around. The room had several pieces of furniture clustered around a huge, ornate fireplace. A woman was standing in front of the fireplace, sketching in a small pad of paper. The walls around the room were hung with a number of old pictures, most of the portraits. Jamie was about to say something when they were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a huge crash. It came from the room they were right next to. They each looked at each other for a second, and then quickly rushed into the room to see what had happened. They discover a statue that has been smashed, but who did it? See if you can solve this 15-minute mystery before the Brodericks do. Similar to the old Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, these short mysteries give kids all the clues they need to solve the mystery, before revealing the answer on the last page, helping kids learn common sense and attention to detail. Ages 8 and up. 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 also work well as hi-lo readers. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

“Wow! Could you imagine living in a house like this?” Kendall asked. “Could you imagine having to clean a house like this?” Jamie answered. Both Kendall and Jamie had inherited their love of old things from their parents. At that moment they were visiting a huge mansion that allowed tours. They had come with their friends Erica and Andrea and their father. Mr. Broderick was talking with one of the restorers in another part of the house. All four of the kids were in the front room of the house, looking around. The room had several pieces of furniture clustered around a huge, ornate fireplace. A woman was standing in front of the fireplace, sketching in a small pad of paper. The walls around the room were hung with a number of old pictures, most of the portraits. Jamie was about to say something when they were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a huge crash. It came from the room they were right next to. They each looked at each other for a second, and then quickly rushed into the room to see what had happened. They discover a statue that has been smashed, but who did it? See if you can solve this 15-minute mystery before the Brodericks do. Similar to the old Encyclopedia Brown series, kids get to test their wits and powers of observation against our detectives. These books help kids learn the vital skills of logic and attention to detail in a fun, easy way. Ages 8 and up. Educational Versions include exercises designed 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 also work well as hi-lo readers. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

A leading expert on the past, present, and future of public monuments in America. An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? Which ones should stay up and which should come down? Who should make these decisions, and how? Erin L. Thompson, the country’s leading expert in the tangled aesthetic, legal, political, and social issues involved in such battles, brings much-needed clarity in Smashing Statues. She lays bare the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies, from the enslaved man who helped make the statue of Freedom that tops the United States Capitol, to the fervent Klansman fired from sculpting the world’s largest Confederate monument—who went on to carve Mount Rushmore. And she explores the surprising motivations behind contemporary flashpoints, including the toppling of a statue of Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol, the question of who should be represented on the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, and the decision by a museum of African American culture to display a Confederate monument removed from a public park. Written with great verve and informed by a keen sense of American history, Smashing Statues gives readers the context they need to consider the fundamental questions for rebuilding not only our public landscape but our nation as a whole: Whose voices must be heard, and whose pain must remain private?

The Third-Grade Detectives investigate when a fifteenth-century statue is stolen from and art museum and destroyed.

Buried in the red soil of the Oklahoma prairie is a secret only Charlie McDonagh can fully reveal. Charlie is an ordinary man who is witness to extraordinary events and people. A stone statue of a striking young woman, broken into a hundred pieces is uncovered from the dirt of a remote location-a broken statue representing shattered lives and shattered dreams. The story of the statues is one of love, greed, betrayal, power, and crushed aspirations. The statue symbolizes what was and what could have been. A tale of a great oil empire betrayed, destroying the lives of the family who built it. An intriguing story based on the real-life legacy of the Marland Mansion and the statue still located within its walls.

An Economist Best Book of the Year In this timely and lively look at the act of toppling monuments, the popular historian and author of Blood and Sand explores the vital question of how a society remembers—and confronts—the past. In 2020, history came tumbling down. From the US and the UK to Belgium, New Zealand, and Bangladesh, Black Lives Matter protesters defaced, and in some cases, hauled down statues of Confederate icons, slaveholders, and imperialists. General Robert E. Lee, head of the Confederate Army, was covered in graffiti in Richmond, Virginia. Edward Colston, a member of Parliament and slave trader, was knocked off his plinth in Bristol, England, and hurled into the harbor. Statues of Christopher Columbus were toppled in Minnesota, burned and thrown into a lake in Virginia, and beheaded in Massachusetts. Belgian King Leopold II was set on fire in Antwerp and doused in red paint in Ghent. Winston Churchill’s monument in London was daubed with the word “racist.” As these iconic effigies fell, the backlash was swift and intense. But as the past three hundred years have shown, history is not erased when statues are removed. If anything, Alex von Tunzelmann reminds us, it is made. Exploring the rise and fall of twelve famous, yet now controversial statues, she takes us on a fascinating global historical tour around North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, filled with larger than life characters and dramatic stories. Von Tunzelmann reveals that statues are not historical records but political statements and distinguishes between statuary—the representation of “virtuous” individuals, usually “Great Men”—and other forms of sculpture, public art, and memorialization. Nobody wants to get rid of all memorials. But Fallen Idols asks: have statues had their day?

This book provides analyses of different recarving methods in Late Antiquity, and argues on the basis of 500 recarved portraits that the late antique portrait style, which was formerly considered an expression of a new era, was rather a technical consequence.