As a young girl, Ani Choying escaped her violent home for a monastery in Nepal. One day, an American jazz guitarist heard the young nun sing and was so enthralled by her voice that he recorded an album with her. The pay cheque enabled Ani Choying to open Arya Tara School, just outside Kathmandu, offering shelter and education to sixty disadvantaged girls. Ani Choying now tours the world giving concerts, driven by her desire to help her young Nepalese charges. In 'Singing For Freedom' she tells her shocking and inspiring story.

divdivIn the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Hutchinson Family Singers of New Hampshire became America’s most popular musical act. Out of a Baptist revival upbringing, John, Asa, Judson, and Abby Hutchinson transformed themselves in the 1840s into national icons, taking up the reform issues of their age and singing out especially for temperance and antislavery reform. This engaging book is the first to tell the full story of the Hutchinsons, how they contributed to the transformation of American culture, and how they originated the marketable American protest song. /DIVdivThrough concerts, writings, sheet music publications, and books of lyrics, the Hutchinson Family Singers established a new space for civic action, a place at the intersection of culture, reform, religion, and politics. The book documents the Hutchinsons’ impact on abolition and other reform projects and offers an original conception of the rising importance of popular culture in antebellum America./DIV/DIV

"I wonder, then, what freedom is. Is it a place? Is it a thought? Can it be stolen? Can it be bought?" As powerful as it is beautiful, Freedom, We Sing is a lyrical picture book designed to inspire and give hope to readers around the world. Molly Mendoza's immersive, lush illustrations invite kids to ponder singer/songwriter Amyra León's poem about what it means to be free. It's the perfect book for parents who want a way to gently start the conversation with their kids about finding hope in these very tense times we are living in.

In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for black folk that followed. In her lifetime, Betty has watched the nation begin to confront its race and gender biases when forced to come together in the World War II era; seen our differences nearly break us apart again in the upheavals of the civil rights and Black Power eras; and, finally, lived long enough to witness both the election of an African-American president and the re-emergence of a militant, racist far right. The child of proud Louisiana Creole parents who refused to bow down to Southern discrimination, Betty was raised in the Bay Area black community before the great westward migration of World War II. After working in the civilian home front effort in the war years, she and her husband, Mel Reid, helped break down racial boundaries by moving into a previously all-white community east of the Oakland hills, where they raised four children while resisting the prejudices against the family that many of her neighbors held. With Mel, she opened up one of the first Bay Area record stores in Berkeley both owned by African-Americans and dedicated to the distribution of African-American music. Her volunteer work in rehabilitating the community where the record shop began eventually led her to a paid position as a state legislative aide, helping to plan the innovative Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, then to a “second” career as the oldest park ranger in the history of the National Park Service. In between, she used her talents as a singer and songwriter to interpret and chronicle the great American social upheavals that marked the 1960s. In 2003, Betty displayed a new talent when she created the popular blog CBreaux Speaks, sharing the sometimes fierce, sometimes gently persuasive, but always brightly honest story of her long journey through an American and African-American life. Blending together selections from many of Betty’s hundreds of blog entries with interviews, letters, and speeches, Sign My Name to Freedom invites you along on that journey, through the words and thoughts of a national treasure who has never stopped looking at herself, the nation, or the world with fresh eyes.

On benches just for 'colored, ' black folks obeyed the rules. Rosa Parks at the front of the bus, she let her light shine. In the 1950's and 1960's, the struggle for civil rights forever changed the landscape of America. In her debut Blue Apple book, Vanessa Newton candid images illuminate anew the inequality that affected Americans, young and old. With an introduction by Ruby Bridges and text to the tune of "This Little Light of Mine," Newton's rich, mixed-media illustrations create a vivid message of hope.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, such songs as "We Shall Overcome," "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," and "Do What the Spirit Says Do" were sung at virtually every mass meeting, demonstration, and planning session of Civil Rights activists. They were sung on the Freedom Rides, during the marches, and in jail cells of the South. Movement activists have commented frequently and eloquently on the ways that singing and songs gave them strength and a sense of self. This study offers a close analysis of the lyrics of the songs most central to the Civil Rights Movement, with an eye to understanding the songs as self-persuasion. In the songs, the activists defined themselves and their world, and reinforced a plan of action for their participation in the Movement. This analysis of the freedom songs is set in the context of Movement history and supported with commentary from activists and background information on Movement activities. In addition, this study offers readers insights into the moving and inspiring power of the freedom songs.

“The remarkable women celebrated in [this] vibrantly illustrated collection . . . offer stirring words of encouragement to any woman, of any age” (Booklist). The glory of growing older is the freedom to be more truly ourselves. With age we gain the confidence to pursue bold new endeavors and worry less about what other people think. In this richly illustrated volume, bestselling author and artist Lisa Congdon explores the power of women over the age of forty who are thriving and living life on their own terms. A Glorious Freedom includes profiles, interviews, and essays from women such as Vera Wang, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Julia Child, Cheryl Strayed, and many others who have found creative fulfillment and accomplished great things in the second half of their lives. Each section is lavishly illustrated and hand-lettered in Congdon's signature style.

A radical educator's paradigm-shifting inquiry into the accepted, normal demands of school, as illuminated by moving portraits of four young "problem children" In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers," challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small. Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable children—Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus—Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem. From Zora's proud individuality to Marcus's open willfulness, from Sean's struggle with authority to Lucas's tenacious imagination, comes profound insight—for educators and parents alike—into how schools engender, exclude, and then try to erase trouble, right along with the young people accused of making it. And although the harsh disciplining of adolescent behavior has been called out as part of a school-to-prison pipeline, the children we meet in these pages demonstrate how a child's path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age. Shalaby's empathetic, discerning, and elegant prose gives us a deeply textured look at what noncompliance signals about the environments we require students to adapt to in our schools. Both urgent and timely, this paradigm-shifting book challenges our typical expectations for young children and with principled affection reveals how these demands—despite good intentions—work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.

Traces the folk singer's career, influence, and political development through sheet music, quotations, reflections, and anecdotes, andincludes one CD-ROM with MP3s excerpts from over two hundred songs.

Esther Salaman's singing career started in 1940 with regular concerts and broadcasts. For the last 30 years she has been teaching and during this period has evolved a distinctive method which many singers - some now famous - have found invaluable in developing their voices. This book covers every aspect of voice production. Ester Salaman discusses her experience of personality behind the voice and comments on the drive and courage needed for a singing career as well as the fears and inhibitions that assail both professionals and amateurs. She has worked with boys' unbroken voices as well as those of adults and her ideas therefore appeal as much to singers in school choirs as to the operatic stage. She gives a detailed plan for vocal health and technical exercises in the form of musical examples. It should be of use to singers of all ages, their teachers and choir trainers.