Books about Fletcher from Amazon.com

Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe.
Price: $14.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Congratulations--just by looking at this webpage, you became 25% more patriotic

From Stephen Colbert, the host of television's highest-rated punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23¿ hours of your day. I Am America (And So Can You!) contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast.

Dictated directly into a microcassette recorder over a three-day weekend, this book contains Stephen's most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form.

Always controversial and outspoken, Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones.

You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong.

I Am America (And So Can You!) showcases Stephen Colbert at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

Please buy this book before you leave the store.
Price: $12.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Ages 8-12. Fans of Harriet the Spy who want to try keeping their own writer's notebook will appreciate this inspiring handbook. Written in a direct, non-condescending style, writer-to-writer, it offers realistic, experienced advice on how to keep notes and use them to create stories and poems. Fletcher, author of the ALA Notable children's book Fig Pudding, fleshes the book out with numerous examples from his own notebooks and from those of other writers, child and adult..
Price: $2.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"God, he was a smart kid..." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. While it doesn't—cannot—answer the question with certainty, Into the Wild does shed considerable light along the way. Not only about McCandless's "Alaskan odyssey," but also the forces that drive people to drop out of society and test themselves in other ways. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's writing on a young man who similarly disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s: "At 18, in a dream, he saw himself ... wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams." Into the Wild shows that McCandless, while extreme, was hardly unique; the author makes the hermit into one of us, something McCandless himself could never pull off. By book's end, McCandless isn't merely a newspaper clipping, but a sympathetic, oddly magnetic personality. Whether he was "a courageous idealist, or a reckless idiot," you won't soon forget Christopher McCandless. .
Price: $3.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Is the writing workshop the only way to teach writing? No. There are a variety of approaches or programs, but none of them matches the writing workshop when it comes to growing strong writers. That's why, despite the pressures of testing, the writing workshop has endured and even flourished in thousands of schools across the country.

Today we face a time when as many as ten million new teachers are entering the profession. It is for these teachers, and others who are unfamiliar with writing workshop, that Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi wrote this book - as a way to introduce and explain the writing workshop . . . to reveal what a potent tool the writing workshop can be for empowering young writers.

Above all Writing Workshop is a practical book, providing everything a teacher needs to get the writing workshop up and running. In clear language, Fletcher and Portalupi explain the simple principles that underlie the writing workshop and explore the major components that make it work. Each chapter addresses an essential element, then suggests five or six specific things a teacher can do to implement the idea under discussion. There's also a separate chapter entitled "What About Skills," which shows how to effectively teach skills in the context of writing. The book closes with practical forms in the appendixes to ensure that the workshop runs smoothly.

Fletcher and Portalupi's twenty-plus years working with teachers have convinced them that there is no better way to teach writing. This important book is the culmination of all their years of effort, a synthesis of their best thinking on the subject.

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Price: $12.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

On the longest night of the year, Jenny Majesky loses everything in a devastating house fire. But among the ashes she finds an unusual treasure hidden amid her grandfather's belongings, one that starts her on a search for the truth, and on a path toward a life that she never imagined The Winter Lodge, a remote cabin owned by her half sister on the shores of Willow Lake, becomes a safe refuge for Jenny, where she and local police chief Rourke McKnight try to sort out the mysteries revealed by the fire.

But when a blizzard traps them together, Jenny, accustomed to the safe predictability of running the family bakery, suddenly doesn't feel so secure. For even as Rourke shelters her from the storm outside, she knows her heart is at risk. Now, following her dreams might mean walking away from her one chance at love.

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Price: $2.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Since its publication in 1998 Craft Lessons has become a mainstay of writing teachers, both new and experienced Readers value the pithy, practical lessons each printed on one page and appreciate the instructional language geared to three grade-level groupings: K 2, 3 4, and 5 8.
In the decade since Craft Lessons' publication the world has changed in many ways, yet one thing has remained constant: teachers continue to feel starved for time. With new curriculum mandates, daily specials, pull-outs, and precious time devoted to test preparation, the situation has never been worse, and the need for a succinct resource like Craft Lessons has never been greater.
The features that made Craft Lessons so valuable have been augmented. This edition includes:
* Seventeen brand new craft lessons; many based on veteran teachers' observations about typical student writing.
* Revisions to other craft lessons: model texts that have gone out of print have been replaced with current titles, and the resource materials sections have been expanded.
* New thinking about teaching elements of craft and the reading-writing connection.
*Two new indexes: a handy subject index to make it easier to find specific craft lessons, and an index that shows how these craft lessons can be integrated into Ralph and JoAnn's curriculum resource on the qualities of writing Ideas, Design, Language, and Presentation.
The 95 lessons in this book provide a wealth of information for teaching leads, character, endings, stronger verbs, and much more. This new edition reestablishes Craft Lessons as the crucial desert island book for harried writing teachers everywhere..
Price: $18.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]