Best of
School

1948

A Perfect Day for Bananafish


J.D. Salinger - 1948
    D. Salinger, originally published in the January 31, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It was anthologized in 1949's 55 Short Stories from The New Yorker, as well as in Salinger's 1953 collection, Nine Stories.

The Lottery


Shirley Jackson - 1948
    Everything has been prepared for the town’s annual tradition—a lottery in which every family must participate, and no one wants to win. “The Lottery” stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery” has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.

Light from Heaven


Christmas Carol Kauffman - 1948
    Work was first, Mishaps were dealt with harshly. Praise was a foreign language. The family suffered cruel scorn, rejection, and deprivation. All the while, Bennet Armstrong hypocritically portrayed himself to others as flawlessly pious.Thankfully, a devout mother bridged the gap, loving her children, telling them Bible stories, teaching them to respect their father, and praying fervently for their safety and salvation.Annie Armstrong's prayers were heard.Joseph came to trust his kind heavenly Father who helped him love and forgive and rise above his circumstances to a life of purpose and peace.This story, sometimes heartrending, sometimes heartening, points to the one true hope for all man's miseries -- Jesus Christ, the true...

The Ark


Margot Benary-Isbert - 1948
    Verduz’ house on Parsley Street were an unbelievable stroke of luck. No matter that every stick of furniture and even the cracked dishes were borrowed from a grudging but kind landlady, that food was so scarce they were nearly always hungry, that Matthias, loving the stars and growing things, was assigned to construction work by the Labor Office. Now that there was a roof over their heads, Joey and Andrea could attend school, and perhaps Father, if he was still alive, would find his way to them from the prison camp in Russia.It was a makeshift arrangement at best, but somehow Mother made the cheerless rooms homelike, and soon there were good friends⁠—lovable, half wild Hans Ulrich who treasure hunted with Joey in the ruins of bombed out houses; musical Dieter; and plump, cheerful Lenchen⁠—to share their meager but merry Christmas celebration. Only shy, lonely Margaret, who felt that half herself had died with her twin brother Christian in East Germany, made no special friend, unless one counted Caliph, Mrs. Verduz’ cat. But eventually it was Margaret’s love of animals that led her to sprightly Mrs. Almut and Rowan Farm and, before the next Christmas, Matthias had exchanged his hated job for the hard but satisfying work of the farm. Margaret, too, happily caring for Mrs. Almut’s Great Danes, was beginning to understand the inexorable cycle of life and death, and the Ark, an old railroad car on the farm converted into a home, was ready to receive a reunited family.The Ark paints an honest, realistic picture of the terrible aftermath of war in a defeated country. Most of all, it is the story of courage⁠—the courage of real people who, caught up in the adversity that shattered their lives, can still look at the future with hope and at the past without bitterness.

Autumn Term


Antonia Forest - 1948
    Twins Nicola and Lawrie arrive at their new school determined to do even better than their distinguished elder sisters, but things don't turn out quite as planned.

On Both Sides of the Wall


Vladka Meed - 1948
    The author tells of her narrow escapes in Warsaw as an underground courier working for the Aryan side of the resistance movement.

The Didache: The Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistles and the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, the Fragments of Papias, the Epistle to Diognetus


Anonymous - 1948
    The Epistle of Barnabas is a homily on the mistaken Judaistic conception of the Old Testament.The Epistles consist of a covering note and a letter, which is an exhortation to the Philippians on Christian life in general. The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp is the story of this bishop of Smyrna's death at the hand of the Roman authorities in Asia for the defense of the Christian faith.The Fragments of Papias. Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, was the author of five books, entitled Exegesis of the Lord's Gospel.The Epistle to Diognetus is an apology for Christianity, presented by an unknown writer to a pagan of high social or political rank.

The End: Hamburg 1943


Hans Erich Nossack - 1948
    It was the sound of eighteen hundred airplanes approaching Hamburg from the south at an unimaginable height. We had already experienced two hundred or even more air raids, among them some very heavy ones, but this was something completely new. And yet there was an immediate recognition: this was what everyone had been waiting for, what had hung for months like a shadow over everything we did, making us weary. It was the end.Novelist Hans Erich Nossack was forty-two when the Allied bombardments of German cities began, and he watched the destruction of Hamburg—the city where he was born and where he would later die—from across its Elbe River. He heard the whistle of the bombs and the singing of shrapnel; he watched his neighbors flee; he wondered if his home—and his manuscripts—would survive the devastation. The End is his terse, remarkable and moving memoir of the annihilation of the city, written only three months after the bombing. A searing firsthand account of one of the most notorious events of World War II, The End is also a meditation on war and hope, history and its devastation. And it is the rare book, as W. G. Sebald noted, that describes the Allied bombing campaign from the German perspective.In the first English-language edition of The End, Nossack's text has been crisply translated by Joel Agee and is accompanied by the photographs of Erich Andres. Poetic, evocative, and yet highly descriptive, The End will prove to be, as Sebald claimed, one of the most important German books on the firebombing of that country. "A small but critical book, something to read in those quiet moments when we wonder what will happen next."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

Too Loud Lily


Sofie Laguna - 1948
    She sings too loudly, she laughs too loudly, and everyone knows when she is around. At home she disturbs the peace and wakes the baby. At school she gets her friends into trouble. She can't help it. But one day a new teacher, Miss Loopiola, comes to school to teach music and drama, and Lily discovers that she is doing exactly the right thing at last. When the school play comes around, Lily finds she is loud in just the right way.

America Day by Day


Simone de Beauvoir - 1948
    In January 1947 Simone de Beauvoir landed at La Guardia airport and began a four-month journey that took her from one coast of the United States to the other, and back again. Embraced by the Condé Nast set in a swirl of cocktail parties in New York, where she was hailed as the "prettiest existentialist" by Janet Flanner in The New Yorker, de Beauvoir traveled west by car, train, and Greyhound, immersing herself in the nation's culture, customs, people, and landscape. The detailed diary she kept of her trip became America Day by Day, published in France in 1948 and offered here in a completely new translation. It is one of the most intimate, warm, and compulsively readable texts from the great writer's pen.Fascinating passages are devoted to Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and San Antonio. We see de Beauvoir gambling in a Reno casino, smoking her first marijuana cigarette in the Plaza Hotel, donning raingear to view Niagara Falls, lecturing at Vassar College, and learning firsthand about the Chicago underworld of morphine addicts and petty thieves with her lover Nelson Algren as her guide. This fresh, faithful translation superbly captures the essence of Simone de Beauvoir's distinctive voice. It demonstrates once again why she is one of the most profound, original, and influential writers and thinkers of the twentieth century.On New York:"I walk between the steep cliffs at the bottom of a canyon where no sun penetrates: it's permeated by a salt smell. Human history is not inscribed on these carefully calibrated buildings: They are closer to prehistoric caves than to the houses of Paris or Rome."On Los Angeles:"I watch the Mexican dances and eat chili con carne, which takes the roof off my mouth, I drink the tequila and I'm utterly dazed with pleasure."

The Age of the Great Depression 1929-1941


Dixon Wecter - 1948
    

Seabird


Holling Clancy Holling - 1948
    A 1949 Newbery Honor Book The history of America at sea is presented through the travels of Seabird, a carved ivory gull.

Todd's Odd Day (Phonics Tales!)


Maria Fleming - 1948
    Each engaging story features a phonics riddle and a motivating phonics cheer to reinforce learning.

The Princess and the Pretzel (Phonics Tales: pr)


Violet Findley - 1948
    Each engaging story features a phonics riddle and a motivating phonics cheer to reinforce learning.

Clem's Chances


Sonia Levitin - 1948
    His mother and baby sister have just died. His father, absent from the family's Missouri farm for more than a year, is seeking his fortune in California's gold fields. So that's where Clem is headed, with no money and only the slimmest chance of success.Historical fiction at its very best, this is the story of an extraordinary westward journey that begins in Missouri, travels across the Great Plains and along the Pony Express route, through Mormon territory and into squalid mining camps, and ends on the teeming streets of San Francisco. It is also a poignantly told human drama of survival and self-discovery.

Chimp and Chick's Lunch (Phonics Tales: ch)


Liza Charlesworth - 1948
    Each engaging story features a phonics riddle and a motivating phonics cheer to reinforce learning.

Porcupine Pete (Phonics Tales: Silent e)


Maria Fleming - 1948
    But her very best pal is Porcupine Pete.A full-color read-aloud storybook tale, specifically designed to teach phonics in a fun and focused way. This story features silent e!

Clark and Cleo's Clouds (Phonics Tales!)


Elizabeth Bennett - 1948