Oliver Twist (New Century Readers)

What's the hook? This powerful social commentary on nineteenth century life gives a realistic and grisly portrait of this period. What are the themes? Friendship and individual vs society. Teaching points? Provides numerous opportunities for drama activities creative writing and shared and guided reading.[]

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Her name was Henrietta Lacks but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture they are still alive today though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer viruses and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization cloning and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small dying hometown of Clover Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters faith healings and voodoo—to East Baltimore today where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans the birth of bioethics and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister Elsie who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? 
          
Intimate in feeling astonishing in scope and impossible to put down The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery as well as its human consequences.[]

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Persuasion (Penguin Longman Reader Bk/Tape)

In this witty story of love and marriage Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth meet again after many years. They are in love but will they marry? "Penguin Readers" is a series of simplified novels film novelizations and original titles that introduce students at all levels to the pleasures of reading in English. Originally designed for teaching English as a foreign language the series' combination of high interest level and low reading age makes it suitable for both English-speaking teenagers with limited reading skills and students of English as a second language. Many titles in the series also provide access to the pre-20th century literature strands of the National Curriculum English Orders. "Penguin Readers" are graded at seven levels of difficulty from "Easystarts" with a 200-word vocabulary to Level 6 (Advanced) with a 3000-word vocabulary. In addition titles fall into one of three sub-categories: "Contemporary" "Classics" or "Originals". At the end of each book there is a section of enjoyable exercises focusing on vocabulary building comprehension discussion and writing. Some titles in the series are available with an accompanying audio cassette or in a book and cassette pack. Additionally selected titles have free accompanying "Penguin Readers Factsheets" which provide stimulating exercise material for students as well as suggestions for teachers on how to exploit the Readers in class.[]

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More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement

What if you could be smarter stronger and have a better memory just by taking a pill?
What if we could alter our genes to cure Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s?
What if we could halt or even reverse the human aging process?
What if we could communicate with each other simply by thinking about it?

These questions were once the stuff of science fiction. Today advances in biotechnology have shown that they’re plausible even likely to be accomplished in the near future. In labs around the world researchers looking for ways to help the sick and injured have stumbled onto techniques that enhance healthy animals—making them stronger faster smarter and longer-lived—in some cases even connecting their minds to robots and computers across the Internet. Now science is on the verge of applying this knowledge to healthy men and women allowing us to alter humanity in ways we’d previously only dreamed possible. The same research that could cure Alzheimer’s is leading to drugs and genetic techniques that could boost human intelligence. The techniques being developed to stave off heart disease and cancer have the potential to slow or even reverse human aging. And brain implants that restore motion to the paralyzed and sight to the blind are already allowing a small set of patients to control robots and computers simply by thinking about it.


Not everyone welcomes this scientific progress. Cries of “against nature” arise from skeptics even as scientists break new ground at an astounding pace. Across the political spectrum the debate roils: Should we embrace the power to alter our minds and bodies or should we restrict it?

Distilling the most radical accomplishments being made in labs worldwide including gene therapy genetic engineering stem cell research life extension brain-computer interfaces and cloning More Than Human offers an exciting tour of the impact biotechnology will have on our lives. Throughout this remarkable trip author Ramez Naam shares an impassioned vision for the future with revealing insight into the ethical dilemmas posed by twenty-first-century science.

Encouraging us to celebrate rather than fear these innovations Naam incisively separates fact from myth arguing that these much-maligned technologies have the power to transform the human race for the better so long as individuals and families are left free to decide how and if to use them.

If you’ve ever wondered about the boundaries of humanity More Than Human offers a vision of a world where we use our knowledge to improve ourselves unhindered by the fear of change.[]

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The Jungle Book

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The Picture of Dorian Gray ("Read Along")

The wish spoken by Dorian Gray as he looks at his portrait forms the basis of the plot of this story of a gilded and spoilt hedonist who is willing to sell his soul for his beauty.[]

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Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

As Pogo once said "We have met the enemy and he is us."

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge.

Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piñata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

Michael Lewis's investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington DC we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.[]

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The Time Machine ("Read Along")

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.[]

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Then Again

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
Janet Maslin The New York Times • People • Vogue
 
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
—Financial Times • Chicago Sun-Times
The Independent • Bookreporter
The Sunday Business Post

Mom loved adages quotes slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK.
 
So begins Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall but you will also meet and fall in love with her mother the loving complicated always-thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself Diane realized she had to write about her mother too and how their bond came to define both their lives. In a remarkable act of creation Diane not only reveals herself to us she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Over the course of her life Dorothy kept eighty-five journals—literally thousands of pages—in which she wrote about her marriage her children and most probingly herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane’s grandparents. Diane has sorted through these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother—a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy struggling to find an outlet for her talents—as well as her entire family recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years.
 
More than the autobiography of a legendary actress Then Again is a book about a very American family with very American dreams. Diane will remind you of yourself and her bonds with her family will remind you of your own relationships with those you love the most.

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