Ever wonder what happens to the zoo and circus elephants after the all the people go home for the day? Ernest knows... Ernest is a captive born elephant with no connection to his wild relatives. He has had no chance to experience the wild, and this is, perhaps, his greatest tragedy. He doesn’t know what he is missing, but he’s about to find out. Ernest is one of thousands of elephants kept in zoos and circuses for the amusement of humans. Throughout the day, humans stare at him and make silly faces. At night, he’s confined to a tiny paddock. He has no idea about life in the wild, where close-knit families of elephants live as long as humans—presuming humans let them. His first elephant friend, wild born Frankie, tells Ernest all about the pleasures of living wild, and the family he misses so much. When humans send Ernest to the circus to perform, he meets other wild-born elephants, including wise old Mary and majestic, motherly Eve. Ernest learns more about what he’s been denied even as he discovers the rigorous, sometimes brutal world of circus training. A somber but ultimately hopeful tale told from an elephant’s point of view, Through the Eyes of Ernest: A Memoir to Honor Elephants asks us to consider why we keep such intelligent, social animals in captivity.

Ernest is a twelve-year-old boy growing up on Earth in the Twenty-Second Century, an Earth that exists free of poverty, bigotry, famine, or war. The citizens of Earth live in peace, traveling the cosmos as readily as they once navigated country highways; but Ernest is separated from his family on one such trip and finds himself on a planet eerily similar to Earth's past, with the exception of its red- and blue-skinned inhabitants. Ernest befriends a red boy named Dat, and he is forced to live in a world of racial tension and division the likes of which he has never known. Ernest operates as both an observer and a participant in the struggles around him, all while facing the challenges of growing up. Ernest and his friend Dat face bullies and a sense of isolation. They learn of tragedy and friendship, and they are thrown into a powerful legal battle that continues to shape their understanding of existence and their places in it. Ernest's experiences leave him torn between his desire to return to his family and his idyllic life and the kinship he has formed with his adopted family, especially as they struggle through a glaringly unjust world. Ultimately, Ernest begins to question what is really right, and if his own world is as perfect as it seems.

Through Mama's Eyes: Unique Perspectives in Southern Matriarchy looks at the concept of Southern matriarchy and how it has influenced American society. In 2016, the Ernest J. Gaines Center hosted a public program that explored the way women use physical space in literature. That program created many discussions of how the term matriarch is understood and applied, especially in the southern regions of the United States. Southern matriarchy is something that has been idolized and parodied in popular formats, such as movies and film, and the purpose of this book is to explore all of the faceted interpretations of southern matriarchy and its impact on our society. This book contains 17 interdisciplinary essays that each look at the way standard tropes of southern matriarchy are interpreted and challenged through literature, history, and the sciences. Like the program that inspired the book, each essay can be used as an invitation to engage in deeper conversations and research about southern matriarchy and its perceptions as a whole. This book is a compilation of curiosity and intrigue surrounding a societal structure that has influenced so many aspects of so many cultures across America--the Southern Matriarch.

An emotionally charged story of courage and love on the home front during WWII, by the acclaimed author of Winterchill. The small town of San Bruno, California, is transformed, when it becomes the site of an assembly camp for Japanese-Americans--and a liberty town for 25,000 sailors.

"A must-purchase picture book biography of a figure sure to inspire awe and admiration among readers."—School Library Journal (starred review) Extraordinary illustrations and lyrical text present pioneering African American scientist Ernest Everett Just. Ernest Everett Just was not like other scientists of his time. He saw the whole, where others saw only parts. He noticed details others failed to see. He persisted in his research despite the discrimination and limitations imposed on him as an African American. His keen observations of sea creatures revealed new insights about egg cells and the origins of life. Through stunning illustrations and lyrical prose, this picture book presents the life and accomplishments of this long overlooked scientific pioneer.

Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge-accomplished sociologist and published novelist-explore the fascinating interplay between literary and ethnographic writing. The exciting result is an intriguing experimental text that simultaneously delves into, reveals, simplifies, and complicates methodologies of writing and conveying experience. This boundary-crossing text will provide an ideal platform for students and professors interested in understanding and exploring the absorbing complexities and possibilities of ethnographic writing and creative nonfiction.

"You stay in your hometown, you end up more of a stranger than if you'd started new someplace else." The struggle between the indigenous rural working class and the upper crust intensifies in this turning-point novel of the Darby Chronicles as Freddy Elman, son of the town trash collector, and Lilith Salmon, daughter of a prestigious family, embark on their ill-fated love affair. Seeing Darby through new eyes, Freddy comes to realize that "the kind of people who hunkered down among these tree-infested, rock-strewn hills" is "dying out, replaced by people with money, education, culture, people 'wise in the ways of the world.'" As that world increasingly intervenes, the lovers' attempt to bridge the chasm that divides their class-alienated families inevitably collapses. This is a book for anyone interested in local politics, privilege, and poverty, all embedded in a story of love and death in the woods and on the ledges of the Granite State.