Burlington Public Library

Deborah Kenny discusses her life and career as an educator and businesswoman.

"I ain't knocked round the city streets all my life for nothin'," proclaims Ragged Dick, the fast-talking boy hero of Horatio Alger's classic rags-to-riches tale. Dick is a plucky street boy who smokes, gambles, and speaks ungrammatically--but he is also honest and hardworking, striving not for wealth and status, but for a steady job, a decent place to sleep, and respectability. A quintessential boy's novel of adventure, romance, and coming of age,...

Amazing Grace is a book about the hearts of children who grow up in the South Bronx - the poorest congressional district of our nation. Without rhetoric, but drawing extensively upon the words of children, parents, and priests, this book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDS, life-consuming fires,...

This is the true story of Hamilton, now eighteen years old, who ran away from his home in Salvador, Brazil when he was six and ended up living on the streets, begging for food and money and witnessing murder, death squad actions, and the effects of illegal drugs.

A story about a period in the childhood of Elvis Presley when his family was dirt poor and he was introduced to the soulful music of the Sanctified Church that travelled to his town.

"'Standing on the stage, I felt exposed and like an intruder. In these professional settings, my personal experiences with hunger, poverty, and episodic homelessness, often go undetected. I had worked hard to learn the rules and disguise my beginning in life...' So begins C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, a story of reconciliation, constrained choices and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was...

"Famed director M. Night Shyamalan tells how his passion for education reform led him to the five indispensable keys to educational success in America's high-performing schools in impoverished neighborhoods"--

Kozol returns to the scene of his prize-winning books Rachel and her children and Amazing Grace, and to the children he's portrayed there, to share their journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood.

"This heartfelt story tells the true but unlikely tale of a young woman working in the city and a young boy in desperate need of friendship and guidance. In the short time after they meet, Laura realizes Maurice has never celebrated Christmas, so she opens her heart and her home and sets out to show him how wondrous the holiday is. What she finds through his glowing eyes is that the meaning of the holiday is truly about giving, not getting, as they...