Eve of the Festival is a study of Homeric myth-making in the first and longest dialogue between Penelope and Odysseus (Odyssey 19). The author makes a case for seeing virtuoso myth-making as an essential part of this conversation, a register of communication which provides the speakers with a coded way of exchanging their thoughts. At the core of the book is a detailed examination of several myths in the dialogue to understand what is being said and to what effect. The dialogue is interpreted as an exchange of performances which have for their occasion the eve of Apollo's festival and which amount to activating, and even enacting, the myth corresponding within the Odyssey to this ritual event. --Book Jacket.

In Northern Ireland, Halloween is such a major celebration that it is often called the Irish Christmas. A day of family reunions, meals, and fun, Halloween brings people of all ages together with rhyming, storytelling, family fireworks, and community bonfires. Perhaps most important, it has become a day that transcends the social conflict found in this often troubled nation. Through the extensive use of interviews, The Hallowed Eve offers a fascinating look at the various customs, both past and present, that mark the celebration of the holiday. Looking through the lenses of gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliation, Jack Santino examines how the traditions exist in a nonthreatening, celebratory way to provide a model of how life could be in Northern Ireland. Halloween, concludes Santino, is a marriage of death and life, a joining of cultural opposites: indoor and outdoor, domesticity and wildness, male and female, old and young. Although current folk and popular traditions can be divisive, Halloween in Northern Ireland is universally considered to belong to everyone, regardless of their background or political leanings. The holiday is a dramatic example of how a community comes together one day a year, and these Northern Irish traditions capture the fundamental and everyday dimensions of life in Ulster.

“Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools.” That’s how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing’s answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.

Electric Arches is an imaginative exploration of black girlhood and womanhood through poetry, visual art, and narrative prose. Blending stark realism with the fantastical, Ewing takes us from the streets of Chicago to an alien arrival in an unspecified future, deftly navigating boundaries of space, time, and reality with delight and flexibility.

From the bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues-a powerful, life-changing examination of abuse and atonement. “A triumph of artistry and empathy.” -Naomi Klein “A crucial step forward . . . This is an urgently needed book right now.” -Jane Fonda “Courageous, transformative, and yes-healing.” -Anne Lamott Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father's point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness, compassion, and an expansive vision for the future. Through The Apology Eve has set out to provide a new way for herself and a possible road for others, so that survivors of abuse may finally envision how to be free. She grapples with questions she has sought answers to since she first realized the impact of her father's abuse on her life: How do we offer a doorway rather than a locked cell? How do we move from humiliation to revelation, from curtailing behavior to changing it, from condemning perpetrators to calling them to reckoning? What will it take for abusers to genuinely apologize? Remarkable and original, The Apology is an acutely transformational look at how, from the wounds of sexual abuse, we can begin to re-emerge and heal. It is revolutionary, asking everything of each of us: courage, honesty, and forgiveness.

In Lantern Festival, early readers will learn about this Asian festival and the ways people celebrate it. Vibrant, full-color photos and carefully leveled text will engage emergent readers as they explore this unique celebration.A labeled diagram helps readers understand the symbols of the Lantern Festival, while a picture glossary reinforces new vocabulary. Children can learn more about the Lantern Festival online using our safe search engine that provides relevant, age-appropriate websites. Lantern Festival also features reading tips for teachers and parents, a table of contents, and an index.Lantern Festival is part of Jump!'s Festivals series.

FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'Dazzlingly inventive' Sunday Times 'Gripping and powerful' Cara Hunter ********** FOUR WOMEN. Orly, Lenny, Mel and Thea have been best friends since school. But now it is 20 years later and inevitably they have drifted apart. ONE WEEKEND. It is Lenny's 40th birthday, plus Orly and Mel need cheering up, so Thea suggests a weekend away at a festival in their hometown. It's a chance for them all to reconnect. NOT ALL OF THEM WILL SURVIVE. But their holiday soon takes a sinister turn, and not all of the friends will leave the festival alive...

This meticulously edited collection contains the essential books of the Jewish faith, the most sacred text of Judaism, history books, as well as philosophical and theological writings concerning Jewish faith._x000D_ Contents:_x000D_ Religious Texts:_x000D_ "Tanakh" – The Hebrew Bible_x000D_ "Talmud" – The Central Text of Rabbinic Judaism _x000D_ "Torah – Bilingual (English/Hebrew)" – Five Books of Moses_x000D_ "Tales and Maxims from the Midrash" – Biblical exegesis by ancient Judaic authorities_x000D_ "The Kabbalah Unveiled" – Translations and commentaries of the Books of Zohar_x000D_ "The Sepher Ha-Zohar" – Zohar, or Splendor is the most important text of Kabbalah._x000D_ "Siddur – The Standard Prayer Book" – The Authorized Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations_x000D_ "The Union Haggadah" – Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder._x000D_ History:_x000D_ The Jewish Wars (Flavius Josephus)_x000D_ Antiquities of the Jews (Flavius Josephus)_x000D_ History of the Jews (Heinrich Graetz)_x000D_ The Legends of the Jews (Louis Ginzberg)_x000D_ Philosophical Works:_x000D_ Kitab al Khazari (Kuzari) (Judah Halevi)_x000D_ The Guide for the Perplexed (Moses Maimonides)_x000D_ Ancient Jewish Proverbs (Abraham Cohen)

Shortly after the end of World War II, Laurence Whistler set out to write 'a guide to the festivals of England as they are and as they might be': the result is a captivatingly readable and enchanting narrative, the ancient holidays revealed as a microcosm of the wheel of life in England. Christmas, New Year, Twelfth night, Easter, May Day, Whitsun, Midsummer, Harvest (and sixteen others) - these are the most ancient of our traditions, more ancient than any present-day beliefs, and strong enough to have survived even the attacks of Puritans in the seventeenth century. Here, for example, is the radiant Kissing Bough, whose candles we lit before we had ever heard of a Christmas Tree. Here is the way to colour and engrave Easter Eggs. Here are fireworks in all their extravagant variety. Or here is the history of the Valentine and the Christmas Card. Laurence Whistler has written this scholarly book with the imaginative delight of a poet. This new edition features an introduction by art historian James Russell. "His book has been written in delight and passes on delight to the reader... it has a lovely benevolence; the author's knowledge, his sense of values, his breadth of outlook are in evidence on every page." John O'London's Weekly "There is scholarship here about the past, and delight in the festivals of today... a book that will be delightful to pick up again at any time of the year." Sunday Times "Possessing enchantment of matter, it has also enchantment of manner." Time and Tide "Its younger readers will find themselves educated, perhaps unconsciously, by publisher as well as author." Observer "A charming book." Country Life "A most charming and decorative volume." Sunday Chronicle "Learning and common sense have gone to the making of this attractive, well-illustrated book." Birmingham News "A delightful gift book for all the year round... altogether charming." Edinburgh Evening News "A book very much out of the ordinary." Sphere