Religion & Spirituality

All The Lovely Bad Ones is a 2008 middle-grade fiction book written by Mary Downing Hahn, a prolific children’s author who has authored several award-winning novels. The book’s title is taken from the poem “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley, which the author inscribed to all children—including “all the lovely bad ones.” All The Lovely Bad Ones won an Oklahoma Sequoyah Award for Children and the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award.All The Lovely... Read All The Lovely Bad Ones Summary

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A Man for All Seasons is a 1960 play by English playwright Robert Bolt. Though it was published in its completed form in 1960, it was originally written for radio in 1954. It was then adapted for television in 1957 before finally being rewritten for the stage. The original runs of the show in London and later New York attained critical and commercial success. In 1966, the play was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film... Read A Man For All Seasons Summary

A Map of Home is a 2008 coming-of-age novel by Randa Jarrar. The novel follows the life of Nidali, a girl of Palestinian, Greek, and Egyptian descent who grows up between Kuwait, Egypt, and the United States. The novel contains three parts, each of which correspond to Nidali’s time in these three different countries. During her childhood, Nidali navigates extreme circumstances, grappling with violence, family conflict, and the backdrop of war, all while exploring her... Read A Map of Home Summary

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Ambiguous Adventure is a 1961 novel by author Cheikh Hamidou Kane. The plot of this novel mirrors much of Kane’s life, including his birth in Senegal and studies in Paris. The version used for this guide is the 2012 edition from Melville House Publishing.Ambiguous Adventure discusses the duality of man within the context of colonial and postcolonial societies. The novel splits the colonized and the colonizer into two distinct and opposing cultures: The former (the... Read Ambiguous Adventure Summary

In 2012, Ayad Akhtar wrote the novel American Dervish, a coming-of-age story about a Pakistani-American boy in 1980s Milwaukee. Akhtar, a Pakistani-American writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, explores love of God and love of others through the prisms of religion, family, and romantic love in this novel. This guide refers to the hardcover first edition. Plot SummaryThe Prologue introduces narrator Hayat Shah, a college student whose mother’s best friend Mina has just died of cancer. The... Read American Dervish Summary

Eleven-year-old Pakistani-American Amina Khokar lives in Milwaukee with her mother, father, and brother, Mustafa. At school, a Korean girl named Soojin Kim is her best friend. Amina is distressed when Soojin befriends Emily, a girl who has historically joined in on racially-motivated taunts against Soojin and Amina. The situation is complicated when Amina, Emily, and Soojin—along with the class oddball, Bradley—are assigned to the same group for an Oregon Trail project in their social studies... Read Amina's Voice Summary

“A Modell of Christian Charity” is a sermon written by John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer who served as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an English colonial settlement around present-day Boston, and the second settlement in New England. A sermon is a speech on a religious subject, usually used for those delivered by clergy in Christian church services. The sermon’s epigraph (a short, introductory quotation or informational text) tells us Winthrop wrote on... Read A Model of Christian Charity Summary

A Monster Calls (2011) was written by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay, and the original idea for the novel is credited to the late Siobhan Dowd. Ness wrote the novel in Dowd’s memory after she passed away in 2007 from breast cancer. Set in present-day England, A Monster Calls is a young adult fantasy novel that explores topics of terminal illness, grief, death, anger, and the grieving process through the eyes of a child;... Read A Monster Calls Summary

And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students is a 2000 nonfiction work by Miles Corwin, the Los Angeles Times reporter best known for The Killing Season. In this book, Corwin chronicles a school year spent with 12 senior students in the gifted program in a South-Central Los Angeles high school. The students face many difficulties and must display perseverance to remain in this magnet program. Corwin was... Read And Still We Rise Summary

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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke is a study of how humans think, learn, and retain knowledge. Scholars often focus first on Locke’s philosophical treatises, but his work on epistemology complements and shapes his political thought. Born in 1632, the English philosopher ushered in the Age of Enlightenment and is considered one of the greatest Western philosophers in history. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, explores the origin and nature... Read An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Summary

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A New Earth: Create a Better Life by Eckart Tolle was originally published in 2005 with the title A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. The book followed in the wake of Tolle’s seminal 1997 work The Power of Now, which discusses the potential inherent in the present moment and suggests that the destructive voice in our heads, which causes us to be constantly dissatisfied and compare ourselves to others, is the ego and... Read A New Earth Summary

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April Morning is a historical fiction work by Howard Fast, a prolific author whose writings spanned the bulk of the 20th century. Published in 1961, midway through Fast’s career, the novel is one of many he wrote on the Revolutionary War and the birth of America. Originally intended for a general audience, it came to be regarded as a young adult novel as many middle and high school English programs included it in their curriculum... Read April Morning Summary

A River Sutra, a novel by Indian American author Gita Mehta, was first published in 1993. The novel is set on the banks of the Narmada River in India, and it is comprised of interconnected stories about characters who are drawn to the river. The narrator seeks to retreat from the world after his wife’s death, but he gains an appreciation for the lived experiences of humanity through the stories he hears. The novel discusses... Read A River Sutra Summary

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