Culture Trip launched in 2011 with a simple yet passionate mission: to inspire people to go beyond their boundaries and experience what makes a place, its people and its culture special and meaningful — and this is still in our DNA today. We are proud that, for more than a decade, millions like you have trusted our award-winning recommendations by people who deeply understand what makes certain places and communities so special. Do you think the coming-of-age moments are different today than they were fifty years ago, or even during Oliver Twist’s time? What can we do to help boys through this process of growing up, today? I also wanted to work on how I think children sometimes see the world—at least how I did when I was growing up—by associations. So Benjamin would see a bully at school as a lion. When I was a child, I’d tell my Mum, “This guy who beat me up was as ferocious as a tiger.” Or you see some teacher and you think, “This guy is a Super Man, this guy is a Robocop, or Batman.” That’s where the metaphors come from. I wanted Ben to be able to understand the world and rationalise things through the bodies of these creatures he’s fascinated about. ENGL 1.4 The student will read, comprehend, and analyze relationships among American literature, history, and culture.

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.” The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison In this list, we've collected the best children's books about growing up. These books explore both fun and serious aspects of growing up. Some provide a perfect opportunity to encourage a child's dreams or help a child explore the question "What do I want to be when I grow up?" Others are about things like becoming an older sibling, trying new things, and even potty training. Episodes I read with particular relish included the author's flight-training during WWII and the story of his relationship with the "dangerous and unsuitable" Mimi. Authority: Russell Baker is an award winning journalist and published author. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, one of which is for this book. In this novel, he wrote first-hand about day-to-day events he experienced. I was expecting a lot of humour and there is some (for instance in his portraits of his uncles and in his relation of his own unsuccessful attempts at seduction) but also a good deal that is sad and moving, though unsentimental and clear-eyed.Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose.” The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own—populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.” The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.” The Girl Who Fell from the Sky byHeidi W. Durrow

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an ‘accident,’ he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.” The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America—to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood ‘just like Ireland’—she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.” Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe byBenjamin Alire Sáenz Trying to find your place in the world is hard. Add hormones, first loves, and family drama into the mix, and growing up can feel like an impossible task — it’s no wonder so many of us try to put it off! But like it or not, we all have to grow up at some point, and as the best coming-of-age books prove — despite the challenges of this transitional period — we all emerge in one piece. It’s as though he’s discovered his voice. I think Ben, the narrator in your book, has a similar journey: maybe it’s by putting his own frame of reference on the story—by using his own animal metaphors at the start of each chapter—that Ben also discovers himself. Why did you give Ben these metaphors, and why did you use them so emphatically? Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima enters his life. She is a curandera, one who heals with herbs and magic. ‘We cannot let her live her last days in loneliness,’ says Antonio’s mother. ‘It is not the way of our people,’ agrees his father. And so Ultima comes to live with Antonio’s family in New Mexico. Soon Tony will journey to the threshold of manhood. Always, Ultima watches over him. She graces him with the courage to face childhood bigotry, diabolical possession, the moral collapse of his brother, and too many violent deaths.” A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara BarnardThe first part of this trilogy, “Growing up in the Gorbals” is set in the 1920s and 30s and is an extraordinary piece. The author’s personal recollections and his gift for storytelling paint a vivid picture of time and place. The chapter entitled “Priestess of the Night”, manages to be both touching and horrifying at the same time. The opening chapter, and a later one entitled “The Frighteners”, left me with mixed feelings of sadness and anger. The reader is left in no doubt that the old Gorbals more than deserved its reputation for poverty and violence. In All Souls,MacDonald takes us deep into the secret heart of Southie. With radiant insight, he opens up a contradictory world, where residents are besieged by gangs and crime but refuse to admit any problems, remaining fiercely loyal to their community. MacDonald also introduces us to the unforgettable people who inhabit this proud neighborhood.” Heart Berries: A Memoir byTerese Marie Mailhot I was also quite taken by the detailed engagement (particularly in the first two books) with figures and institutions of the British left, in part via dialogue with the author's lifelong best friend, who in their youth was a Communist firebrand and later a dedicated trade unionist, and in part via his own engagement with various social democratic, independent socialist, and even anarchist luminaries. I wouldn't necessarily take his portrayal of them or of the various left traditions they espoused as gospel, but I wouldn't dismiss it either, as it is complex and thoughtful and richly done, and a window into not just facts but feeling. And I also really appreciated the complexity with which the books deal with identity, through the interweaving of his class origins (and the torturous class journey represented by his extremely unusual opportunity to pass through that bastion of the "boss class," Oxford, to become a respected scholar) and his Jewishness -- it doesn't have the feel and polish that latter-day intersectional approaches might have, and certainly not the attention that such an approach would demand to aspects of self beyond just those that are at the sharp end of marginalization, but there is also a real richness to his exploration of them, to the texture of *how* these relations structure life and self, that the shallower end of the range of ways of taking up identity today sometimes fail to engage with. Though of course the omissions matter: For instance, his repeated and detailed explorations of his very poor relationships with his father and his much-older sisters (his mother died when he was a child) were compassionate and nuanced, but it felt like he treated his father's hurtful choices with more compassion and willingness to forgive than those of his sisters, and there may be some sexism in that. And the most basic of post-colonial observations about literature from the UK is true here: despite colonialism providing elemental conditions of possibility for the society so compellingly explored in the text, it is mostly ignored, other than a few passing mentions of the end of empire.