Common Ground

A vacant lot, rat-infested and filled with garbage, looked like no place for a garden. Especially to a neighborhood of strangers where no one seems to care. Until one day, a young girl clears a small space and digs into the hard-packed soil to plant her precious bean seeds. Suddenly, the soil holds promise: To Curtis, who believes he can win back Lateesha's heart with a harvest of tomatoes; to Virgil's dad, who seems a fortune to be made from growing lettuce; and even to Mariclea, sixteen and pregnant, wishing she were dead.

Thirteen very different voices--old, young, Haitian, Hispanic, tough, haunted, and hopeful tell one amazing story about a garden that transforms a neighborhood.

An old man seeking renewal, a young girl connecting to a father she never knew, a pregnant teenager dreading motherhood. Thirteen voices tell one story of the flowering of a vacant city lot into a neighborhood garden. Old, young, Jamaican, Korean, Hispanic, tough, haunted, hopeful'Newbery Medal winner Paul Fleischman weaves characters as diverse as the plants they grow into a rich, multi-layered exploration of how a community is born and nurtured in an urban environment.

00-01 Utah Book Award (Gr. 7-12)

At first light the finches
are flitting about the trees

Flittering
fluttering
flit
purple finches
flit
Fluttering
flittering
fly
painted finches
fly.

In this companion volume to JOYFUL NOISE: POEMS FOR TWO VOICES, the winner of the 1989 Newbery Medal, Paul Fleischman celebrates the sound, the sense, the essence of birds. Written to be spoken aloud by two voices, sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneous, these poems perfectly capture the beauty of birds in their singing, soaring, and rejoicing.

A gloriously illustrated celebration of individualism from an award-winning author. Wesley's an outcast from the civilization around him - he's not into pizza or football or haircuts. But during the summer holidays, he has a brilliant idea: he'll found a civilization of his own - in the back garden! From this seed a whole world grows and blooms - the extraordinary, imaginative world of Weslandia! Wesley creates his own food, clothing, shelter, games, language even, and gradually wins over the other children.

We're living in an Ah-Ha moment. Take 250 years of human ingenuity. Add abundant fossil fuels. The result: a population and lifestyle never before seen. The downsides weren't visible for centuries, but now they are. Suddenly everything needs rethinking - suburbs, cars, fast food, cheap prices. It's a changed world.
This book explains it. Not with isolated facts, but the principles driving attitudes and events, from vested interests to denial to big-country syndrome. Because money is as important as molecules in the environment, science is joined with politics, history, and psychology to provide the briefing needed to comprehend the 21st century.
Extensive back matter, including a glossary, bibliography, and index, as well as numerous references to websites, provides further resources.

Written to be read aloud by two voices--sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneous--here is a collection of irresistible poems that celebrate the insect world, from the short life of the mayfly to the love song of the book louse. Funny, sad, loud, and quiet, each of these poems resounds with a booming, boisterous, joyful noise.

In this remarkable volume of poetry for two voices, a companion to I Am Phoenix,Paul Fleischman verbally re-creates the "Booming/boisterios/joyful noise" of insects. The poems resound with the pulse of the cicada and the drone of the honeybee. Eric Beddows's vibrant drawings send each insect soaring, spinning, or creeping off the page in its own unique way.

Paul Fleischman has created not only a clear and fascinating guide to the insect world--from chrysalid butterflies to whirligig beetles--but an exultant celebration of life.

Winner, 1989 Newbery Medal
Notable Children's Books of 1988 (ALA)
1988 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1988 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Honor Book for Fiction/Poetry
1989 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)
1988 Notable Trade Books in the Language Arts (NCTE)
Children's Books of 1988 (Library of Congress)
1988 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
100 Books for Reading and Sharing (NY Public Library)

Comedy Thriller set in American High School. When things don't go their own way for three rich, spoilt, girl students, they decide to take action. Ignored by head hunk Drew Jonathon Brandis), Danielle (Julie Benz), plans to get rid of the competition, Katarina ( Suzanna Urszuly). Strangely, all three suddenly start to age rapidly, and faced with a crisis, they'll pay any price to get their looks back.

Newbery Medalist Paul Fleischman reflects on his childhood with his award-winning father, Sid Fleischman, and details his own path to becoming a writer in this memorable book that is part memoir, part travelogue, and part reflection on craft and creativity. No Map, Great Trip is an excellent choice for aspiring authors, language arts classrooms, and fans of Gail Carson Levine's Writing Magic. Acclaimed author Paul Fleischman considers how growing up with a father who was an award-winning author helped to shape and inspire his own career. Paul and Sid Fleischman are the only father-son Newbery Medalists in history, and life in the Fleischman home was extraordinary. Readers will feel like part of the family in this humorous and aspirational chronicle. Paul Fleischman is the author of the Newbery Award-winning Joyful Noise and the classroom classic Seedfolks, as well as many other acclaimed and beloved titles. His books are taught and performed in classrooms across the country. Part memoir, part travelogue (young Paul travels from California to New Hampshire by himself), part writing book, and part reflection on art and creativity, this inspirational book includes black-and-white photographs, as well as writing tips and prompts just right for budding authors. No Map, Great Trip is a great gift for young writers, language arts teachers, and fans of Jack Prelutsky's Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry and Ralph Fletcher's A Writer's Notebook.

In this remarkable volume of poetry for two voices, a companion to "I Am Pheonix," Paul Fleischman verbally re-creates the "Booming / boisterous / joyful noise" of insects. The poems resound with the pulse of the cicada and the drone of the honeybee. Eric Beddow's vibrant drawings send each insect soaring, spinning, or creeping off the page in its own unique way.Paul Fleischman has created not only a clear and fascinating guide to the insect world - from chrysalid butterflies to whirligig beetles - but and exultant celebration of life.

Dunderheads, unite! A tyrannical teacher gets her just due in a delightfully
subversive, outrageously funny tale by Newbery Medal winner Paul Fleischman.
Miss Breakbone hates kids. Especially the time-squandering, mindwandering, doodling, dozing dunderheads in her class. But when she confiscates Junkyard's crucial fi nd, she fi nally goes too far. Enter Wheels (and his souped-up bike with forty-eight extra gears), Pencil (who can draw anything from memory), Spider (look up and you'll fi nd him), and their fellow misfi ts in a spectacular display of teamwork aimed at teaching Miss Breakbone a lesson she won't soon forget. From the incomparable Paul Fleischman comes a winning cast of underdogs -- and one of the most terrifying teachers you'll ever meet -- brought to vivid life in David Roberts's quirky, hilarious illustrations.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Aimed at a generation of short attention spans and a taste for razor-sharp comedy, the rapid-fire ZAP is a smart, farcical new play for high-school students that's ready to bring the house down.
When they're not dusting off the old classics -- over and over -- high-school drama departments are constantly in search of new material. But what play could possibly suit the point-and-click attention spans of kids born with remote controls in their cribs? Cue the lights for ZAP, a nonstop farce that juxtaposes seven different plays -- performed simultaneously -- with a comic genius reminiscent of masters from Monty Python to the Marx Brothers. Combining spot-on parodies of Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Neil Simon and performance art and throwing in scenes from RICHARD III for good measure, ZAP flicks rapidly back and forth from play to play, with hilarious results. As characters from one play end up on the set of another, their befuddlement, exasperation, and brave attempts at improvisation are truly priceless. A hoot to read, ZAP is a dream to perform -- as high schools in California, New York, and Florida have already discovered.

The country has been swallowed by the Great Depression 2.0, complete with apple-sellers and Bruce Springsteen singing Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime on the radio. The Republican incumbent-battling his high-living wife, a populist opponent, and the accurate perception that he's rich and removed-has no choice but to follow his handlers' advice: cross the country incognito, living and working among his people for twelve days in a desperate bid to seem attuned to their plight. With secret cameras rolling and his bickering speechwriters composing his diary, he sets off on a trip that will defy the best-laid plans of K Street's finest. Repackaging a candidate and his family has never been so challenging-or painfully funny. From hobo jungles filled with middle management to sidewalks crowded with panhandling schtik-savants, He Walked Among Us is a wickedly gleeful romp across the country and its political landscape.

WESLANDIA honors the misfits--and the creators--among us.
Enter the witty, intriguing world of Weslandia Now that school is over, Wesley needs a summer project. He's learned that each civilization needs a staple food crop, so he decides to sow a garden and start his own - civilization, that is. He turns over a plot of earth, and plants begin to grow. They soon tower above him and bear a curious-looking fruit. As Wesley experiments, he finds that the plant will provide food, clothing, shelter, and even recreation. It isn't long before his neighbors and classmates develop more than an idle curiosity about Wesley - and exactly how he is spending his summer vacation.

Eighty-eight-year old Elva and Courtney, an attractive sixteen-year-old with a severed spinal chord, lie in adjacent beds in a grim Bismarck, North Dakota convalescent home. Ignored by the world, the only resource they have left is their imagination.
As Elva and Courtney go on a fantasy trip to Italy (accompanied by Elva's long dead husband and guided by a 1910 travel book), Elva shows Courtney a new way to envision love. But to accept it, and the gift of the imagination, Courtney must make the trip her own--even if she destroys the art Elva holds most dear.
Written entirely in dialogue, "Mind's Eye "can be performed as reader's theater, but it is a fully satisfying novel. In this extraordinarily innovative, profound, and yet readable book Paul Fleischman makes us all feel what a powerful--and dangerous--tool the imagination can be.

A twelve-year-old mute boy sets off to find his mother in a blizzard, and becomes the captive of an evil woman in the Half-a-Moon Inn. ‘A suspenseful tale with archetypal characters and a haunting atmosphere. . . . The brisk pace and steady accumulation of events build tension, while Fleischman's fine writing begs to be read aloud." —BL.

1980 Children's Reviewers' Choices (BL)
Notable Books of the Year 1980 (NYT)
1980 Golden Kite Award Honor Book for Fiction (SCBW)
Children's Books of 1980 (Library of Congress)
1980 Silver Medal for Literature (Commonwealth Club of California)