Witness (Karen Hesse Novel)
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Witness (Karen Hesse Novel)
''Witness'' is a free poetry book of historical fiction written by Karen Hesse in 2001, concentrating on racism in a rural Vermont town in 1924. Voices include those of Leanora Sutter, a 12-year-old African American girl; Esther Hirsh, a 6-year-old Jewish girl from New York; Sara Chickering, a quiet spinster farmer; Iris Weaver, a young restaurant owner, bootlegger and illegal booze runner; Reynard Alexander, the town newspaper editor; Merlin van Tornhout, an arrogant teen 18-year-old; Johnny Reeves, the town preacher, Percelle Johnson, the town constable, Viola Pettibone, a store owner, along with her husband, Harvey Pettibone —some of whom joined the newly arrived Ku Klux Klan including: Johnny Reeves, Merlin Van Tornhout, and shopkeeper Harvey Pettibone. In ''Witness'', Hesse continues the distinctive poetic style she pioneered in ''Out of the Dust'' (1998). The two books are part of a notable recent cluster of verse novels for children and young adults. It is in first-p ...
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Karen Hesse
Karen S. Hesse (born August 29, 1952) is an American author of children's literature and literature for young adults, often with historical settings. She won the Newbery Medal for ''Out of the Dust'' (1997). Early years and education Karen Hesse was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She studied math at nearby Towson State College and married Randy Hesse in 1971 before completing her studies. She attended college at Towson University, the University of Maryland, and College Park. She earned a B.A. in English with double minors in psychology, and anthropology, during which she began writing poetry. Career After graduating, she moved with her husband to Brattleboro, Vermont, had two children, Rachel and Kate, took jobs in publishing, and started writing children's books. Her first novel was a rejected story about meeting Bigfoot, but her next proposal was published by Henry Holt in 1991 as ''Wish on a Unicorn''. ''Out of the Dust'' is a story of a girl living through the dust bowl ...
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Historical Fiction
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other types of narrative, including theatre, opera, cinema, and television, as well as video games and graphic novels. An essential element of historical fiction is that it is set in the past and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the depicted period. Authors also frequently choose to explore notable historical figures in these settings, allowing readers to better understand how these individuals might have responded to their environments. The historical romance usually seeks to romanticize eras of the past. Some subgenres such as alternate history and historical fantasy insert intentionally ahistorical or speculative elements into a novel. Works of historical fiction are sometimes criticized for lack of authe ...
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Scholastic Press
Scholastic Corporation () is an American multinational publishing, education, and media company that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for schools, parents, and children. Products are distributed via retail and online sales and through schools via reading clubs and book fairs. Clifford the Big Red Dog, a character created by Norman Bridwell in 1963, serves as the company's official mascot. History Scholastic was founded in 1920 by Maurice R. Robinson near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to be a publisher of youth magazines. The first publication was ''The Western Pennsylvania Scholastic''. It covered high school sports and social activities; the four-page magazine debuted on October 22, 1920, and was distributed in 50 high schools. In the 1940s, Scholastic entered the book club business. In the 1960s, international publishing locations were added in England (1964), New Zealand (1964), and Sydney (1968). Also in the 1960s, Scholastic entered the book p ...
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Free Poetry
Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procure political rights, as for a disenfranchised group * Free will, control exercised by rational agents over their actions and decisions * Free of charge, also known as gratis. See Gratis vs libre. Computing * Free (programming), a function that releases dynamically allocated memory for reuse * Free format, a file format which can be used without restrictions * Free software, software usable and distributable with few restrictions and no payment * Freeware, a broader class of software available at no cost Mathematics * Free object ** Free abelian group ** Free algebra ** Free group ** Free module ** Free semigroup * Free variable People * Free (surname) * Free (rapper) (born 1968), or Free Marie, American rapper and media person ...
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Vermont
Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Admitted to the union in 1791 as the 14th state, it is the only state in New England not bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the state has a population of 643,503, ranking it the second least-populated in the U.S. after Wyoming. It is also the nation's sixth-smallest state in area. The state's capital Montpelier is the least-populous state capital in the U.S., while its most-populous city, Burlington, is the least-populous to be a state's largest. For some 12,000 years, indigenous peoples have inhabited this area. The competitive tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Abenaki and Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk were active in the area at the time of European encounter. During the 17th century, Fr ...
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Rum-running
Rum-running or bootlegging is the illegal business of smuggling alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling usually takes place to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. The term ''rum-running'' is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; ''bootlegging'' is applied to smuggling over land. It is believed that the term ''bootlegging'' originated during the American Civil War, when soldiers would sneak liquor into army camps by concealing pint bottles within their boots or beneath their trouser legs. Also, according to the PBS documentary ''Prohibition'', the term ''bootlegging'' was popularized when thousands of city dwellers sold liquor from flasks they kept in their boot legs all across major cities and rural areas. The term ''rum-running'' was current by 1916, and was used during the Prohibition era in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbea ...
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Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims,and abortion providers The Klan has existed in three distinct eras. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, Prohibition, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-progressivism. The first Klan used terrorism—both physical assault and murder—against politically active Black people and their allies in the Southern United States in the late 1860s. The third Klan used murders and bombings from the late 1940s to the early 1960s to achieve its aims. All three movements have called for the "purification" of Ame ...
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Out Of The Dust
''Out of the Dust'' is a children's verse novel by Karen Hesse, first published on January 1, 1997. Summary Billie Jo begins with how her father wanted to have a son instead of a daughter. He still loves her but treats her like the son he never had, rough and tough. The opening of the book also describes the dust storms causing trouble on farms, a vital part of the rural farming community, for it is a homestead area. As dust storms swoop in and steal any hope of profit from wheat, the US government makes moves to try to help the area. FDR's ''New Deal'' is a series of programs to assist farmers (along with the rest of the country). Daddy thinks about taking a loan to plant some wheat, which Ma advises against, but the dust carries it away and makes more dust. One day while Billie Jo's pregnant mother is making breakfast, her father leaves a pail of kerosene next to the stove and then goes out into the fields. Mistaking it for water, her mother sets it on fire while trying to m ...
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First-person Narration
A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from their own point of view using the first person It may be narrated by a first-person protagonist (or other focal character), first-person re-teller, first-person witness, or first-person peripheral. A classic example of a first-person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's ''Jane Eyre'' (1847), in which the title character is also the narrator telling her own story, "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me". This device allows the audience to see the narrator's mind's eye view of the fictional universe, but it is limited to the narrator's experiences and awareness of the true state of affairs. In some stories, first-person narrators may relay dialogue with other characters or refer to information they heard from the other characters, in order to try to deliver a larger point of view. Other stories may switch the narrator to different cha ...
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Verse Novels
Verse may refer to: Poetry * Verse, an occasional synonym for poetry * Verse, a metrical structure, a stanza * Blank verse, a type of poetry having regular meter but no rhyme * Free verse, a type of poetry written without the use of strict meter or rhyme, but still recognized as poetry * ''Versed'', 2009 collection of poetry by Rae Armantrout * ''Verse'', an international poetry journal with Henry Hart (author) as founding editor Religion * Chapters and verses of the Bible * Ayah, one of the 6,236 verses found in the Qur'an Music * Verse (band), a hardcore punk band * Verse (rapper) (b. 1986), British hip hop artist * Verse (popular music), roughly corresponds to a poetic stanza * Verse-chorus form, a musical form common in popular music where the chorus is highlighted * ''Verses'' (album), a 1987 album by jazz trumpeter Wallace Roney * ''Verses (Apallut)'', a 2001 album by the Alaskan group Pamyua * ''Verse'', a 2002 album by Patricia Barber * Ben Mount (born 1977 ...
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2001 American Novels
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. In conventions of sign where zero is considered neither positive nor negative, 1 is the first and smallest positive integer. It is also sometimes considered the first of the infinite sequence of natural numbers, followed by  2, although by other definitions 1 is the second natural number, following  0. The fundamental mathematical property of 1 is to be a multiplicative identity, meaning that any number multiplied by 1 equals the same number. Most if not all properties of 1 can be deduced from this. In advanced mathematics, a multiplicative identity is often denoted 1, even if it is not a number. 1 is by convention not considered a prime number; this was not universally accepted until the mid-20th century. Additionally, 1 is ...
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Jews And Judaism In Vermont
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The people of the Kingdom of Israel and the ethnic and religious group known as the Jewish people that descended from them have been subjected to a number of forced migrations in their history" and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, "Historically, the religious and ethnic dimensions of Jewish identity have been closely interwoven. In fact, so closely bound are they, that the traditional Jewish lexicon hardly distinguishes between the two concepts. Jewish religious practice, by definition, was observed exclusively by the Jewish people, and notions of Jewish peoplehood, nation, and community were suffused with faith in the Jewish God, the practice of Jewish (religious) la ...
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