Böcker av Beth Kephart

"Highly personal and idiosyncratically historical, this book is a memoirist's guide to more than fifty paper objects, including report cards, maps, menus, spreadsheets, broadsides, library cards, prescriptions, tickets, books, dictionaries, file folder, and legal tender-and an invitation to readers whose stories might be a single box or shelf away"--

Kids today seem to be under more competitive pressure than ever, while studies show that reading, writing, and the arts in schools are suffering. Is there any place for imagination in kids' lives anymore? In a dog-eat-dog world, why dream things that aren't there?In gorgeous prose and through personal stories, Beth Kephart resoundingly affirms the imagination as the heart of our ability to empathize with others, to appreciate the world, and to envision possibilities for the future. The star of her story is once again her son, Jeremy (as in her National Book Award-nominated A Slant of Sun), now fourteen years old-a child who at first resists storytelling, preferring more objective and orderly pursuits, but later leads a neighborhood book club/writing group and aspires to follow Steven Spielberg into moviemaking.Embedded in the text and appendices are examples of how to inspire children to read, write, and dream.

For Beth Kephart's son, the diagnosis was "pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified"-a broad spectrum of difficulties, including autistic features. As the author and her husband discover, all that label really means is that their son Jeremy is "different in a million wonderful ways, and also different in ways that need our help."In intimate, incandescent prose, Kephart shares the painful and inspiring experience of loving a child whose "special needs" bring tremendous frustration and incalculable rewards. "What, in the end, are you fighting for: Normal?" Kephart asks. "Is normal possible? Can it be defined? . . . And is normal superior to what the child inherently is, to what he aspires to, fights to become, every second of his day?"With the help of passionate parental involvement and the kindness of a few open hearts, Jeremy slowly emerges from a world of obsessive play rituals, atypical language constructions, endless pacing, and lonely frustrations. Triumphantly, he begins to engage others, describe his thoughts and passions, build essential friendships. Ultimately this is a story of the shallowness of medical labels compared to a child's courage and a mother's love, of which Kephart writes, "Nothing erodes it. It is not sand on a beach. It is the nuclear heart of things-hard as the rock of this earth."

A picture book about the places we go to create, inspired by Virginia Woolf and her noted essaySometimes Virginia Woolf wrote her stories in a garden shed. Sometimes she wrote them among stacks of books in a cool basement. And you? Where do you go to think, to dream, to be? The shade beneath a tall tree? The brick step on a city stoop? The cozy spot beneath the kitchen table? Or inside the nightΓÇÖs deep dark? Not all rooms require four walls and a roof. Inspired by the writer Virginia Woolf and her celebrated essay, ΓÇ£A Room of OneΓÇÖs Own,ΓÇ¥ A Room of Your Own is about the importance of claiming a space for oneself.

A poetic picture-book biography about artist N.C. Wyeth¿s daughter, Henriette, a talented painter in her own rightAnd I think of the girl I am and the girl I¿ll be:A painter, like Pa.An actress (maybe).A fairy with wings. A father and daughter sneak away from their big, busy family to paint in the wild landscape. Together, they paint a lily, bright and white as a star; the green growing into the cap of a strawberry; the blue in the sky running pink. Henriette¿s father is N.C. Wyeth, the famous artist, who encourages her to paint what she sees, to awaken into her dreams, and she does, in this poetic picture book inspired by a famous American family of artists.

From acclaimed writer Beth Kephart, author of A Slant of Sun, comes a short, imaginative telling of the life of the Schuylkill River, which has served as the source of Philadelphia's water, power, industry, and beauty for the city's entire life. Before that, it fed the indigenous people who preceded William Penn, and has since time immemorial shape our region.

Like a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac, Elisa ghostwrites love notes for the boys in her school. But when Elisa falls for Theo Moses, things change fast. Theo asks for verses to court the lovely Lila?a girl known for her beauty, her popularity, and a cutting ability to remind Elisa that she has none of these. At home, Elisa's father, the one person she feels understands her, has left on an extended business trip. As the days grow shorter, Elisa worries that the increasingly urgent letters she sends her father won't bring him home. Like the undercover agent she feels she has become, Elisa retreats to a pond in the woods, where her talent for ice-skating gives her the confidence to come out from under cover and take center stage. But when Lila becomes jealous of Theo's friendship with Elisa, her revenge nearly destroys Elisa's ice-skating dreams and her plan to reunite her family.National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart's first young adult novel is a stunning debut.

A love story and a journey across the continents of marriage.

Captures the rhythms and smells of an extraordinary era