Bøker av Wendell a Duffield

On the universal quest for personal independence and for fulfillment of growing-up dreams, a small-town Minnesota boy turns to raising runt piglets as a way to earn spending money of his own. Then a series of mysterious and unexpected postcards from a school called Phillips Exeter Academy begins to arrive, flooding his plans with uncertainty and confusing his inexperienced parents as to what is best for their son. From Piglets To Prep School: Crossing A Chasm describes the unanticipated and fundamentally unwanted struggle that this young boy faces as the postcards, eventually inviting him to attend the school on scholarship, continue to interrupt a comfortably familiar existence in his home town . a life of growing up in a virtual clone of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon of Prairie Home Companion.Though satisfied at home, an inner voice seduces him to abandon his youthful dreams and join the cadre of elite preppies in New England. Overnight, names of his schoolmates change from Gary Gardner and Duane Labs to David Rockefeller and Peter Benchley. The social, economic, cultural, and academic shocks of such change are immediate and stunning . yet mostly manageable. This entertainingly illustrated book is a poignant and humorous memoir that will resonate with anyone who remembers his or her growing-up years. Share the fun, sadness, discoveries, disappointments, and pranks of a young hayseed kid uprooted from bucolic rural life and transplanted into the rocky New England garden of stuffy and highly competitive preppies. You'll be challenged to read the book without alternately laughing and crying as memories of your own early years are rekindled!

Follow scientists and technicians of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory as they scramble to take the pulse of Big Island volcanoes in attempts to forewarn the public of impending eruption; progress is made, but complete understanding of these powerful forces of nature remains frustratingly elusive. Watch bad guys and harmless hippies as they cultivate illegal gardens of marijuana on the slopes of Kilauea Volcano, directly in the path of searing lava flows; some growers pay the ultimate price for their addiction to pot and its ill-gotten financial rewards. But above all, listen to Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, as she manipulates success and failure, even life and death, of human intruders on her volcano home. When Pele Stirs paints a realistic picture of life on the Big Island, and will help the reader understand why Christian missionaries have failed to eliminate the worship of Pele, in spite of their efforts to do so for nearly two centuries.