Fourteen-year-old Ace starts a band and learns a tough lesson about plagiarism.

"This book presents a historical overview of The Tempest in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with three leading directors - Peter Brook, Sam Mendes and Rupert Goold - so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after...

Lost in the Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and finds himself entwined in a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica--and decades later three children, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California find themselves caught up in the same thread of destiny in the darkest days of the twentieth century, struggling to keep their families intact, and tied together by the music of the same harmonica.

Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited. "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions...

While preparing for a role in the school play, twelve-year-old Leo finds an autobiography that his father wrote as a teenager and ponders the ways people change as they grow up. Includes the text for the play, "Rumpopo's Porch."

The Benton Bluff Junior High band is one of a number of bands that will compete to perform for a chance to play for the governor, and two of the band members are fighting over who gets to be the soloist--Baylor Meece (clarinet) is not one of them, so can she come up with a plan to bring the band back into harmony?

Seventh-grader Davis Beadle joins the Benton Bluff Junior High band, stubbornly determined to play the trumpet--but that section is full, so the band director instructs him to spend time with several of the other instruments, hoping Davis will find his true place in the band.

When her grandparents sign her up for the Benton Bluff Junior High band Tally Nguyen is horrified and worried about what the kids on her snowboarding team will think--but she comes to realize that she doesn't need to choose between the groups.

When one of the other members of Benton Bluff Junior High band shows up with a shiny new trombone, Kori Neal's school-loaner suddenly seems beat-up and old so she comes up with an idea to organize a fund-raiser to buy new instruments--until advice from a famous local jazz musician gives her a clearer perspective on the issue.

In this powerful holiday story, a man who lost everything has his whole life changed after a little girl’s letter reminds him of the true meaning of Christmas.

Ten years later Big Earl meets Gideon, a seven-year-old leukemia patient who believes with all her heart that "Christmas means never having to ask God how much he loves us." Gideon is determined to reach this lonely and hurting man who hates Christmas — and he...