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Beethoven Lives Upstairs (Orchard Paperbacks)

Barbara Nichol

Relive the musical sensation the Venetian musician experienced when he composed the Ninth Symphony near the end of his life. In the form of letters, the book tells a fictional story of Beethoven's life.
Tales of Don Quixote, Book II

Four hundred years ago, Miguel de Cervantes wrote The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha — the story of a Spanish gentleman who thought he was a knight. Spurred by the books of chivalry he read, Don Quixote set out with his neighbor, the fat and friendly Sancho Panza, to live a knightly life of high adventure. As Book One ends, Don Quixote’s worried friends return him to La Mancha, ill and tired, in a cage upon an oxcart. In defeat.

Cervantes’ book was wildly successful and he became renowned — so celebrated that another author stole his characters and took it upon himself to publish further stories of Quixote. Cervantes was enraged, and when he wrote his sequel, in which Quixote takes the road again, he made his anger at the interloping author all too clear. It was a neat postmodern touch in a work devised four centuries ago. Like Book One, Book Two broke new ground in spectacular and entertaining fashion.

Books One and Two of Don Quixote — what many call the world’s first proper novel — is a work of genius. Barbara Nichol makes accessible the most important story of all time without losing its comedy, its heartbreak, and its power.
Dippers

Barbara Nichol

Fragments of a handwritten letter have been discovered. Their author’s name is Margaret, and in the letter she describes her memories of a summer of her girlhood long ago when the dippers came up from the Don River.

It was 1912, and a summer full of odd happenings. The letter tells of Margaret’s first encounter with her father, of her mother’s worry that she might lose her job as a maid, and of her little sister’s being overtaken by paralysis and disease.

And, of course, there were the dippers moving up from the river to inhabit the neighbourhood – furry, ungainly, dog-like creatures with leathery wings – creatures unnerving but not dangerous, yet another fact of life to become adjusted to.
Tales of Don Quixote

Finalist in the Nautilus 2005 Book Awards

Determined to right wrongs and win fame, Don Quixote of La Mancha embarks on what he sees as the proper exploits of a knight errant. On his faithful steed, Rocinante, and with his squire, Sancho Panza, he travels the Spanish countryside in search of adventure.

But Don Quixote does not live in the chivalric world of the books he so loves to read. The adventures he embarks on are misadventures.

Four centuries ago Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra published his great work The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de La Mancha. It is recognized as the first novel and a work that anticipated the many things the novel would become. It is a work of genius that was recently voted the most important novel of all time in a poll of authors conducted by the Nobel Institute.

Barbara Nichol produced a three part CBC Radio Ideas program, Don Quixote: Four Hundred Years On the Road. In her retelling, she takes the young reader along on the merry, scary, ribald, funny, and heartbreaking travels of the Don Quixote of the original text.
Beethoven Vive Arriba (Art, Music and Theater) (Art, Music and Theater)

Barbara Nichol

The letters that 10-year-old Christoph and his uncle exchange show how Christoph's feelings for Mr. Beethoven, the eccentric boarder that shares his house, change from anger and embarrassment to compassion and admiration.
Beethoven Lives Upstairs (Classical Kids)

Barbara Nichol

Over 30 pieces of Beethoven's music are featured, including excerpts from "Moonlight Sonata," Symphonies #5, 6, 7, 8, 9, "Pathetique Sonata," and others.
One Small Garden

Barbara Nichol

In One Small Garden, Barbara Nichol brings together stories, memories, and botany to create a book that is as unique and lush as a summer garden. Here, plants from all over the world live and eventually die. Ants, raccoons, and a stray cat cross paths with a lost cockatoo who originated thousands of miles away. Stories and memories of people share space in the garden too.

This is the perfect book for those who understand the enchantment and the wild-at-heart nature of the primmest garden. This is a book to treasure for the whole family.

From the Hardcover edition.
Biscuits In The Cupboard

Stoddart

Biscuits In The Cupboard is published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside.
Beethoven Lives Upstairs/Mr. Bach Comes to Call: Teacher's Notes (Classical Kids Teacher's Notes)

Classical Kids, Susan Hammond, Barbara Nichol, Martin Lavut, Karen Lavut
Safe and Sound

Barbara Nichol

Safe and Sound are two small dogs with big ideas: they want to see the world. But the world is not what they expect. First of all, who knew that planes fly so high? that the English Channel includes waves? that in Australia it is autumn when everyone knows it should be spring?

Poor little Safe and Sound record their trials in journals, and it is those journals that form Barbara Nichol’s hilarious long poem.

And so was born their manuscript, and so was born their book,
And if you’d like to read it I will tell you where to look.
You’ll find it in the bookstore under Canine stories, true.
In the section labeled “Biting Off Much More than You Can Chew.”
Trunks All Aboard: An Elephant ABC

Barbara Nichol

When Grandpa goes traveling, he sends home postcards. But these are no ordinary postcards, and Grandpa is no ordinary man. At the turn of the century, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne was one of the most influential businessmen in North America. While in Europe in 1909, retired railroad president William Cornelius Van Horne sent hand-drawn postcards to his grandson in Montreal. He loved to draw elephants: elephants standing at the rail of an ocean liner, elephants smoking cigars on trains, and of course, elephants with their “trunks all aboard.”

Author Barbara Nichol was inspired by this collection of elephantine epistles and has written the whimsical and fanciful verse that captures the turn-of-century spirit of Van Horne’s creations.