Here are 98 books that The Ballad of a Broken Nose fans have personally recommended if you like
The Ballad of a Broken Nose.
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I’ve been obsessed with art since I was a kid. When I look at art, I see stories, not just about what I’m seeing, but about what it was like when the painting was created: was the artist tired, grumpy, frustrated? Why’d they paint it the way they did? Sadly, my artistic talent is limited, but fortunately, I can tell stories. After visiting William Orpen’s painting of Mona Dunn at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, I couldn’t help wondering why he made her look so pensive. The only way I could answer that question was by writing my own story about Mona and the other paintings in the gallery!
This book is a modern classic and no wonder – delightful characters, a twisty-turny mystery, and best of all: art. The way Balliett introduces kids to the world of art through puzzles, codes, wordplay, is clever and thrilling and had me completely entranced. The world of art theft is both thrilling and chilling, and this book takes us both places.
This bewitching first novel is a puzzle, wrapped in a mystery, disguised as an adventure and delivered as a work of art. When a book of inexplicable occurences bring Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay together, strange things start to happen- seemingly unrelated events connect, an eccentric old woman seeks their company, and an invaluable Vermeer painting disappears. Before they know it, the two find themselves at the centre of an international art scandal. As Petra and Calder are drawn clue by clue into a mysterious labyrinth they must draw on their powers of intuition, their skills at problem solving, and…
I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and I currently work as a High School Guidance Counselor for the past 25 years. I love kids and I love helping them to understand and love themselves and helping them to love and accept others as well. These books, even though the target audience is young (0-11 years old), older kids and adults can learn something from them as well. Sometimes a simple message is more powerful than a bunch of words.
This book is about a girl in a wheelchair who is cast in the middle school play. I love this book because it helps us understand the challenges of being in a wheelchair as well as all the challenges that go along with being a middle schooler. It addresses all those identity issues that occur during that age with the added challenge of being in a wheelchair.
A heartfelt middle-grade novel about a theater-loving girl who uses a
wheelchair for mobility and her quest to defy expectations-and
gravity-from Tony award-winning actress Ali Stroker and Stacy Davidowitz
Thirteen-year-old Nat Beacon loves a lot of things: her dog Warbucks,
her best friend Chloe, and competing on her wheelchair racing team, the
Zoomers, to name a few. But there's one thing she's absolutely OBSESSED
with: MUSICALS! From Hamilton to Les Mis, there's not a
cast album she hasn't memorized and belted along to. She's never
actually been in a musical though, or even seen an actor who uses a
wheelchair…
I’ve always been drawn to comics. I started out as a humorous card writer, and later I became a syndicated cartoonist and author. I collect graphic novels of all kinds and I appreciate the unique talent that goes into the collaborative marriage of writing and art. I especially love stories told with humor, and these types of books lend themselves so well to that. And, boy, do kids appreciate it, too (guess I’m still a kid at heart). As someone who’s read many, many middle grade graphic and illustrated novels—for blurbs, reference, as well as for pleasure—I feel like an expert by now. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
One of my favorites, Wink is so funny, moving, and deeply personal. The main character, Ross, is diagnosed with a rare eye cancer (based on the author’s own experiences) and deals with that as well as a myriad of other issues (bullying, a crush, a best friend that’s moving away). What I love most is the character development. I swear I’ve met the same quirky people you’ll find in this book. There’s so much feeling poured into the story. There are also funny comics and rock music. What could be better?
3
authors picked
Wink
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This book is for kids age
9,
10,
11, and
12.
What is this book about?
Ross Molloy just wants to be normal. He doesn't want to lose his hair, or wear a weird hat, or deal with the disappearing friends who don't know what to say to 'the cancer kid'. But with his recent diagnosis of a rare eye cancer, simply blending in is no longer an option. Ross - and his friends and his family - all need to work out how to deal with this devastating challenge that Life has thrown down. Maybe Batpig can come to the rescue?
Based on Rob Harrell's own real life experience of eye cancer, and including amazing…
Just like my Upstagedheroine, my first stage experience was playing Mr. Jacey Squires in The Music Man. Both of my parents were singers and really, there’s never been a time when music—and the friends I made through music—haven’t been an important part of my life. Love of the arts can bring kids together in surprising ways. The characters in these books face varied challenges, home lives, and predicaments. But for all of them, it’s the support of friends, a dose of courage, and inspiration from the arts that get them through. That’s why I’ve chosen these five wonderful, readable, un-put-downable books.
I don’t have words for how masterful this book is. (I know, I’m a writer, I’m supposed to have words). I’m constantly blown away by Schmidt’s writing. The novel, set in 1968, is the story of fourteen-year-old Doug Swieteck, whose abusive father moves the family to a new town. Doug’s first-person voice is so alive and original. He tells you a lot, but not everything. And what he’s hiding is revealed in scenes that will stay with me forever, among them one in PE class, and another when Doug’s brother returns from Vietnam. On every page, you sense Doug’s emotional armor, but also his vulnerability. His growth as a person and an artist makes it one of my favorite books of all time.
Beloved author Gary D. Schmidt expertly blends comedy and tragedy in the story of Doug Swieteck, an unhappy "teenage thug" first introduced in The Wednesday Wars, who finds consolation and a sense of possibility in friendship and art.
At once heartbreaking and hopeful, this absorbing novel centers on Doug, 14, who has an abusive father, a bully for a brother, a bad reputation, and shameful secrets to keep. Teachers and police and his relatives think he's worthless, and he believes them, holding others at arm's length. Newly arrived in town, he starts out on the same path—antagonizing other kids, mouthing…
The key to a great contemporary thriller—as opposed to older novels about say, Sherlock Holmes or James Bond—is that solving the mystery reveals something essential about the protagonist. In other words these are character investigations as well as whodunits, where the same action provides revelations in both arenas. It’s what I discovered I wanted to do, when I veered from “serious fiction” to the books I began to write, starting with Presumed Innocent.
Sheldon Horowitz, an aging widower suffering from dementia, has been removed from New York to Oslo, so he can live with his granddaughter, his only relative, and her new husband.
Confused but wily, Horowitz is soon on the run in a country he does not know, hiding the neighbor boy being pursued by the thug who murdered the boy’s mother. This book was a total surprise to me, and seemed an unlikely amalgam of elements that could never work together—but did.
He will not admit it to Rhea and Lars - never, of course not - but Sheldon can't help but wonder what it is he's doing here...Eighty-two years old, and recently widowed, Sheldon Horowitz has grudgingly moved to Oslo, with his grand-daughter and her Norwegian husband. An ex-Marine, he talks often to the ghosts of his past - the friends he lost in the Pacific and the son who followed him into the US Army, and to his death in Vietnam. When Sheldon witnesses the murder of a woman in his apartment complex, he rescues her six-year-old son and decides…
I’ve been fascinated by absurdist comedy and ideas for as long as I can remember. At sixteen, I wrote my first book, Mr A, which followed a man who would turn into a superhero after taking LSD and his talking dog. As an adult, I continue to revel in these types of stories. I brought this passion to my chart-topping debut non-fiction book, where I interviewed several people who believe McDonald’s has interdimensional properties. Now, I hold no bars in fiction writing, having authored a ‘genius of a book’ that follows a talking pencil.
I found this book mentioned in one of Charles Bukowski’s. If Bukowski liked it, I surely would, too, I thought. This is, without a doubt, a severely strange book. Hunger followers the narrator as he desperately tries to become a successful writer while battling the hardships of starvation and homelessness. He becomes delusional with grandiose ideas and attempts to humiliate a love interest of his. This book will leave you questioning your literary choices.
One of the most important and controversial writers of the 20th century, Knut Hamsun made literary history with the publication in 1890 of this powerful, autobiographical novel recounting the abject poverty, hunger and despair of a young writer struggling to achieve self-discovery and its ultimate artistic expression. The book brilliantly probes the psychodynamics of alienation and obsession, painting an unforgettable portrait of a man driven by forces beyond his control to the edge of self-destruction. Hamsun influenced many of the major 20th-century writers who followed him, including Kafka, Joyce and Henry Miller. Required reading in world literature courses, the highly…
When I began my doctorate many years ago I was somewhat disenchanted with the static nature of much economic analysis whereas it was apparent that the world is very much dynamic and continually changing. I thus committed myself then, and in a long career that followed, to exploring the ways in which Economics could be used to clarify and address the major issues that arise from innovation generation and diffusion. I present these choices as a way that other like-minded individuals may begin the exploration of innovation and discover the breadth and depth of the contribution that has been made by economists.
This manual provides an internationally agreed set of definitions of, and measurements for, different innovative activities and as such provides widely accepted guidelines by which internationally comparative data can be collected and government policies be targeted.
This may seem rather dry, but I think that it is crucial to the development of a subject area that all parties involved are using the same definitions of variables.
This has become of particular importance for many aspects of innovation have become the concerns of politicians and policymakers and past discussions have made me aware that parties more often than would wish are talking at cross purposes, using the same terms for different concepts.
What is innovation and how should it be measured? Understanding the scale of innovation activities, the characteristics of innovative firms and the internal and systemic factors that can influence innovation is a prerequisite for the pursuit and analysis of policies aimed at fostering innovation. First published in 1992, the Oslo Manual is the international reference guide for collecting and using data on innovation. In this fourth edition, the manual has been updated to take into account a broader range of innovation-related phenomena as well as the experience gained from recent rounds of innovation surveys in OECD countries and partner economies…
I have spent my working life as a journalist, author and storyteller, aiming to uncover complexity that sheds new light on stories we think we know. I got my training at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times—and from the wonderful editors of my twelve books. An Innocent Bystander, my book that deals with the Middle East, began as the story of a hijacking and a murder of an American citizen. But as my research widened, I came to see this story couldn’t be told without understanding many perspectives, including the Israeli and the Palestinian, nor could the political be disentangled from the personal.
Oslo is a theatrical rendering of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords in 1993.
This Tony-Award-winning play takes a perhaps unreasonably optimistic view of potential peace. Nor will reading (or better yet, seeing) this play satisfy a serious researcher’s desire for historic detail. But it lays out the emotional stakes with humanity and humor, not qualities one usually dares to associate with the conflict in the Middle East.
Winner of the 2017 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play
Winner of the 2017 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play
“Oslo is a wonderful and moving work that portrays how real diplomacy works. The play shows us what can happen when men and women on opposite sides of what is perceived as an intractable divide strive to create a shared humanity.” – Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations
“A disarmingly funny masterpiece.” – Huffington Post
“So human and so funny. Oslo is gripping, compelling, and compulsively…
I’ve been exploring Scandinavian authors for several years after working my way through the American masters of the genre (Chandler, McDonald, Parker, Burke, Stout, and others). For some reason, Scandinavians seem a lot more vicious in their writing, crafting murder scenes that are beyond gruesome. After reading the works of several Icelandic authors, I was inspired to go there and see firsthand what I was reading about, then to create my own mystery in that setting.
I wish I could write like Jo Nesbø. His detective, Harry Hole, faces the worst of the worst sadistic criminals and somehow succeeds, but not always without cost, both to himself and those near to him. In this first Hole story, the Oslo police detective is dispatched to Australia to investigate the murder of a Norwegian citizen. The case is complex, he falls in love, falls off the wagon, and finds suspects who later become victims. Nesbø has a way of keeping you guessing, with plenty of red herrings, a slew of suspects and many grisly deaths along the way. The prose is precise, inventive, compelling. In short, a master at the craft, even in his first story.
Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl taking a gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can.
HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO GET TOO INVOLVED.
When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The hunt for a serial killer is on, but the murderer will talk only to Harry.
I’ve been a full-time writer since 1994 and have so far published twenty-seven books, three of them with gay themes: My Father’s Scar, a gay coming-of-age novel and two about LGBTQ+ issues: Top 250 LGTBQ Books for Teens and The Heart Has Its Reasons, a history of queer literature. I’ve been interested in this literature since I was a gay teen myself, because there were no YA books with queer characters then. I missed seeing my face in the pages of a good book and so I promised myself that when I became an adult. I would make sure there was an ample assortment for today’s queer kids. And, guess what? I’ve kept my promise!
Weary of people asking him what his plans for the future are, eighteen-year-old Dutch teen Tycho decides to travel from his Holland home to America to work at a camp for international kids. Along the way, he meets Oliver, who’s from Norway, and is also going to work at the camp. The two quickly become fast friends and then something more. When their love relationship is discovered, they’re expelled from the camp, and the two fly back to Norway where Tycho will stay with Oliver while the boy’s mother is gone. No, there are no wild parties, just a lovely examination of an emerging relationship that is challenged by Oliver’s keeping a closely guarded secret. If this sounds dull, trust me, it isn’t! Find out why I’m so crazy about this book by reading it. Tell them Michael sent you...
Tycho Zeling is drifting through his life. Everything in it - school, friends, girls, plans for the future - just kind of ... happens. Like a movie he presses play on, but doesn't direct.
So Tycho decides to break away from everything. He flies to America to spend his summer as a counselor at a summer camp, for international kids. It is there that Oliver walks in, another counselor, from Norway.
And it is there that Tycho feels his life stop, and begin again, finally, as his. The Days of Bluegrass Love was originally published in the Netherlands in 1999.…
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