Search

Wat, a Son of the Civil War, is a coming-of-age story about a real, curious, wise-beyond-his-years boy and his family-owned black pal in a North Carolina railroad village prior to and during the Civil War (1861?1865). Known as Page's Station at the time, that railroad crossing 150 years later is known as Cary, North Carolina'a sprawling, bustling hub of twenty-first-century computer technology'quite an evolution! Allison Francis Page, Wat's father, was Cary's founder, and the story of how he established Cary is part of Wat's personal story'how his Civil War childhood days influenced the highway history-marker citizen he became. Five years old when the Civil War began in 1861, Wat'the nickname Walter Hines Page was called by his family'was fortunate to live distant from the iconic bloody battlefields of the war. Instead, Wat experienced the bloody conflicts of the war as a reader of weekly newspapers and magazines; eavesdropping on adult conversations; watching with Tance-Sam the sad, disturbing return of ?boxed remains? of local, young, dead soldiers as the trains stopped at the single-room train station in view from his front porch; and touching, tender conversations with his parents and dearly beloved grandfather. It is North Carolina's war-ending encounter with the long-awaited ?devil incarnate? Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's troops that baptize Wat as a ?son of the Civil War'. Face-to-face experiences with young Union bandsmen encamped in his front yard as President Lincoln is murdered in Washington pierce the budding minds and souls of young Wat and Tance-Sam in life-awakening ways, ways that deepen his sense of self and his future place in the world. Filled with humor and Tom Sawyer-like anecdotes, Wat, a Son of the Civil War offers readers a unique, history-based experience of the war, through the eyes of its children. The experiences of young Walter Hines Page help the reader understand how his war-shadowed childhood experiences became the bedrock of his adult careers, and the good works that flowed from them for North Carolina, the South, and the United States.

During one of the darkest times in history, at the height of the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1943, members of the Dutch resistance began a mission to rescue Jewish children from the deportation center in Amsterdam. Heading the mission were Walter Süskind, a German Jew living in the Netherlands, Henriëtte Pimentel, a Sephardic Jew, and Johan van Hulst, principal of a Christian college. As Nazis rounded up Jewish families at gunpoint, the three discreetly moved children from the deportation center to the daycare across the street and over the backyard hedge to the college next door. From the college, the children were transported to live with Dutch families. Working against irate orders from Hitler to rid the Netherlands of all Jews and increasing Nazi hostilities on the Resistance, the trio worked tirelessly to overcome barriers. Ingenious plans were implemented to remove children’s names from the registry of captured Jews. To sneak them out of the college undetected past guards patrolling the deportation center. To meld them in with their new families to avoid detection. Based on actual events, Over the Hedge is the story of how against escalating Nazi brutality when millions of Jews were disposed of in camps, Walter Süskind, Henriëtte Pimentel, and Johan van Hulst worked heroically with the Dutch resistance to save Jewish children. But it is not just a story of their courageous endeavors. It is a story of the resilience of the human spirit. Of friendship and selfless love. The love that continues on in the hearts of over six hundred Dutch Jewish children.

Jack and his amazing friend Walter, a spud with special superpowers help GP make a very sad day alright again. It's OK to feel sad, but it's also OK to be happy again, and sometimes it even involves chips!