Should cell phones be allowed in classrooms? Are students given too much homework? Do kids need recess? These questions can all be answered in different ways depending on a person's point of view. As readers explore challenging questions about hot-button issues, from voting to animal rights, they learn the importance of developing an informed opinion and respecting the opinions of others. Each balanced, unbiased text is supplemented with helpful fact boxes, detailed graphic organizers, and colorful photographs. These elements come together to create an engaging reading experience that builds crucial critical thinking skills. Features include: Basic, relevant statistics are provided on each topic to help readers learn to back up their opinions with facts. Opposing points of view are presented in an alternating format to help readers understand how respectful debates work. Objective, age-appropriate tone allows young readers to develop independent thinking skills and encourages them to look at every side of an argument.

The volume focuses on a wide range of thinkers, including Iris Murdoch on truth and art, Stanley Cavell on tragedy, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on "the death of the author," and Kendall Walton on fearing fictions. Also included is a consideration of the fifteenth-century Japanese playwright and drama teacher Zeami Motokiyo, the founding father of Noh theather.

Author and former literary agent Nathan Bransford shares his secrets for creating killer plots, fleshing out your first ideas, crafting compelling characters, and staying sane in the process. Read the guide that New York Times bestselling author Ransom Riggs called "The best how-to-write-a-novel book I've read."

Every Character Has a Voice Point of view isn't just an element of storytelling–when chosen carefully and employed consistently in a work of fiction, it is the foundation of a captivating story. It's the character voice you can hear as clearly as your own. It's the unique worldview that intrigues readers–persuading them to empathize with your characters and invest in their tale. It's the masterful concealing and revealing of detail that keeps pages turning and plots fresh. It's the hidden agenda that makes narrators complicated and compelling. It's also something most writers struggle to understand. In The Power of Point of View, RITA Award-winning author Alicia Rasley first teaches you the fundamentals of point of view (POV)–who is speaking, why, and what options work best within the conventions of your chosen genre. Then, she takes you deeper to explain how POV functions as a crucial piece of your story–something that ultimately shapes and drives character, plot, and every other component of your fiction. Through comprehensive instruction and engaging exercises, you'll learn how to: • choose a point of view that enhances your characters and plots and encourages reader involvement • navigate the levels of a character's point of view, from objective viewing to action to emotion • craft unusual perspectives, including children, animal narrators, and villains A story changes depending on who's telling it, and The Power of Point of View will help you determine which of your characters can make your story come to life.

From the Preface to the first edition (1906): "A few of the most modern books on the Theory of Functions devote some pages to the establishment of certain results belonging to our subject, and required for the special purposes in hand... But we may fairly claim that the present work is the first attempt at a systematic exposition of the subject as a whole."

A thorough, illuminating, and entertaining guide to crafting point of view, a fiction writer’s most essential choice. Who is telling the story to whom is the single most important question about any work of fiction; the answer is central to everything from style and tone to plot and pacing. Using hundreds of examples from Jane Austen to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Leo Tolstoy to Stephen King, novelist and longtime MFA professor Lisa Zeidner dives deep into the points of view we are most familiar with—first and third person—and moves beyond to second-person narration, frame tales, and even animal points of view. Engaging and accessible, Who Says? presents any practicing writer with a new system for choosing a point of view, experimenting with how it determines the narrative, and applying these ideas to revision.

From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune), Saul and Patsy is "stunning, never predictable, glimmering fiction, full of mischief and insight" (The Los Angeles Times). Five Oaks, Michigan is not exactly where Saul and Patsy meant to end up. Both from the East Coast, they met in college, fell in love, and settled down to married life in the Midwest. Saul is Jewish and a compulsively inventive worrier; Patsy is gentile and cheerfully pragmatic. On Saul’s initiative (and to his continual dismay) they have moved to this small town–a place so devoid of irony as to be virtually “a museum of earlier American feelings”–where he has taken a job teaching high school. Soon this brainy and guiltily happy couple will find children have become a part of their lives, first their own baby daughter and then an unloved, unlovable boy named Gordy Himmelman. It is Gordy who will throw Saul and Patsy’s lives into disarray with an inscrutable act of violence. As timely as a news flash yet informed by an immemorial understanding of human character, Saul and Patsy is a genuine miracle.

Out-of-this-world antics in this hysterical middle-grade adventure! Sixth-grader Jacob Wonderbar is a master when it comes to disarming and annihilating substitute teachers. But when he and his best friends, Sarah and Dexter, swap a spaceship for a corn dog, they embark on an outer space adventure. And between breaking the universe with an epic explosion, being kidnapped by a space pirate, and surviving a planet that reeks of burp breath, Jacob and his friends are in way over their heads. Action packed with an added dose of heart, Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow is sure to captivate middlegrade readers all over the universe.

The first novel-writing guide from the best-selling Save the Cat! story-structure series, which reveals the 15 essential plot points needed to make any novel a success. Novelist Jessica Brody presents a comprehensive story-structure guide for novelists that applies the famed Save the Cat! screenwriting methodology to the world of novel writing. Revealing the 15 "beats" (plot points) that comprise a successful story--from the opening image to the finale--this book lays out the Ten Story Genres (Monster in the House; Whydunit; Dude with a Problem) alongside quirky, original insights (Save the Cat; Shard of Glass) to help novelists craft a plot that will captivate--and a novel that will sell.

Luisa is repeatedly teased and called "weird" by her classmate Sam, even though she is simply being herself—laughing with her friends, answering questions in class, greeting her father in Spanish, and wearing her favorite polka-dot boots. Luisa initially reacts to the bullying by withdrawing and hiding her colorful nature. But with the support of her teachers, parents, classmates, and one special friend named Jayla, she is able to reclaim her color and resist Sam’s put-downs. The Weird! Series These three books tell the story of an ongoing case of bullying from three third graders’ perspectives. Luisa describes being targeted by bullying in Weird! Jayla shares her experience as a bystander to bullying in Dare! And in Tough!, Sam speaks from the point of view of someone initiating bullying. Kids will easily relate to Luisa, Jayla, and Sam, as each girl has her own unique experience, eventually learning how to face her challenges with the help of friends, peers, and caring adults. Part of the Bully Free Kids™ line