When Jeremiah Birnbaum becomes obsessed with the banjo, his best friend, Luella, convinces him to learn how to play despite his parent forbidding him from it.

Nominee for the 2012 Silver Birch Express Award in the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading Program. Jeremiah Birnbaum is stinking rich. He lives in a house with nine bathrooms, a games room, an exercise room, an indoor pool, a hot tub, a movie theater, a bowling alley and a tennis court. His parents, a former hotdog vendor and window cleaner who made it big in dental floss, make sure Jeremiah goes to the very best private school, and that he takes lessons in all the things he will need to know how to do as an accomplished and impressive young man: etiquette lessons, ballroom dancing, watercolor painting. And, of course, classical piano. Jeremiah complies, because he wants to please his parents. But one day, by chance, he hears the captivating strains of a different kind of music -- the strums, plucks and rhythms of a banjo. It is music that stirs something in Jeremiah's dutiful little soul, and he is suddenly obsessed. And when his parents forbid him to play one, he decides to learn anyway -- even if he has to make the instrument himself.

In this first biography of legendary banjoist J. D. Crowe, Marty Godbey charts the life and career of one of bluegrass's most important innovators. Born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, Crowe picked up the banjo when he was thirteen years old, inspired by a Flatt & Scruggs performance at the Kentucky Barn Dance. Godbey relates the long, distinguished career that followed, as Crowe performed and recorded both solo and as part of such varied ensembles as Jimmy Martin's Sunny Mountain Boys, the all-acoustic Kentucky Mountain Boys, and the revolutionary New South, who created an adventurously eclectic brand of bluegrass by merging rock and country music influences with traditional forms. Over the decades, this highly influential group launched the careers of many other fresh talents such as Keith Whitley, Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, and Doyle Lawson. With a selective discography and drawing from more than twenty interviews with Crowe and dozens more with the players who know him best, Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J. D. Crowe is the definitive music biography of a true bluegrass original.

Summer is here, and Zac Wiles and the Benton Bluff Junior High band are headed to band camp. But as soon as they arrive, things start disappearing. First it's music, then it's Zac's saxophone. As the band's resident class clown, Zac's antics always earn a few eye rolls. But now, he's being called a thief! Can Zac find the culprit and prove he'd never take his jokes that far? Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Calico is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO.

Fourteen-year-old Paisley loves to sing. She dreams of being a pop star just like her idol, Denzi, who also grew up in the small town of Stonehill. The problem is, Paisley suffers from severe stage fright. She can only sing in private. When word gets out that a famous Stratford actor who has worked with Denzi is staying at a local B&B, Paisley decides it's time to face her fears. She convinces the actor to tutor her and signs up to sing in a high-profile fundraiser.

It's a strange kind of robbery: nothing is missing and the only damage done is to the criminals. David Braun, star investigator for an exclusive insurance firm, discovers the truth that the crime was intended to conceal. Behind it all, a ruthless thief, who is intent on acquiring a priceless antique, an antique with a bloody history its owners would prefer to keep hidden.

A NEW AGE emerges in Yorubaland as the nineteenth century comes to an end. It is a time for new heroes—pioneers in various fields of endeavor like Herbert Macaulay, Israel Ransome-Kuti, Obafemi Awolowo, and Tai Solarin. New frontiers are blazed in art, music, and education as told in stories about Candido Da Rocha, D. O. Fagunwa, Col. Victor Banjo, Susanne Wenger—Austrian artist turned priestess of the goddess Osun—and the trail-blazing musicians, Bobby Benson, Roy Chicago, and Fela. These modern heroes of the new age, as well as the author’s grandmother and parents, devise new ways of philosophy, religion, and thought to claim their future in a new country tested by disparate forces and competing interests.