Showing results by narrator "Megan Gage" in All Categories

Neurodivergent people have unique brains. They defy norms in the way they think, learn, process information, and engage with others and the world around them. These differences may help them not only to see the world in uncommon ways, but to forge one-of-a-kind paths. Get to know neurodivergent people making their mark in all kinds of careers: a record-breaking Olympic gymnast, a visionary science fiction writer, a resolute climate activist, an innovative trading card game creator, and many others.

From the storied ache of mbube harmonies of the ‘40s to the electronic boom of kwaito and the amapiano and house explosion of the ‘00s, this book explores vignettes taken from across South Africa’s popular music history. There are moments in time where music can be a mighty weapon in the fight for freedom. Disguised in a danceable hook or shouted for the world to hear, artists have used songs to deliver important truths and bring listeners together in the face of a segregated reality.

This book explores the historical and cultural conditions of the genre as it appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s and then again in the early 2000s, and illuminates what is at stake in delineating dance-punk as a genre. Looking at bands such as Gang of Four, ESG, Public Image Ltd., LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, and Le Tigre, this book examines the tensions between and blurring of the rhetoric and emotion in dance music and the cynical and ironic intellectualizing associated with post-punk.

Folk music of the 1960s and 1970s was a genre that was always shifting and expanding, yet somehow never found room for so many. In the sounds of soul-folk, Black artists like Terry Callier and Linda Lewis began to reclaim their space in the genre, and use it to bring their own traditions to light— the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals— and creating something wholly new, wholly theirs, wholly ours.

Teen pop is a sub-genre of popular music marketed to tweens and teens. Its melodic yearning and veneer of sincerity appeal to an emerging romantic eroticism and autonomy. But tweens and teens buy music that isn’t primarily marketed to them, too. Teen pop encompasses several kinds of musical styles, not limiting itself to just one—teen pop wants to play. Although it’s very difficult to attain and maintain social progress and play it forward—there are so many tragedies—'70s Teen Pop examines how liberation and a true counterculture can be possible through music.

Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), or “German New Wave,” was made extraordinarily popular in the 1970s and 1980s by the likes of Nena's "99 Luftballons" and Trio's "Da Da Da"—and then left as quickly as it came. Conventional wisdom among artists dictates that it’s better to burn out than fade away, but this doesn’t tell the full story of NDW—the reason for its rapid rise and fall, the historical context that necessitated the genre, and where the energy of the NDW movement went after its end.

Can you feel it? That FANTASTICAL FIZZ of CURIOSITY? Lizzy Sparks has the spark, the spark of INVENTION, and she’s going to need it because her pet hamster Gizmo is MISSING! That's where Ruby, Lizzy's super-smart babysitter, comes in. She's going to show Lizzy how inventors NEVER give up … because there's an inventor in ALL of us. And maybe Lizzy can invent the perfect solution to find Gizmo.

The many journals which reported Browning’s untimely death all spoke of her as the greatest woman poet in English literature. The highly respected Edinburgh Review expressed the prevailing view when it said that she had no equal in the literary history of any country: “Such a combination of the finest genius and the choicest results of cultivation and wide-ranging studies has never been seen before in any woman", and the esteem in which she is held has never dimmed with her poetry still widely studied and admired today. Collected here are 16 of her most beautiful, haunting, and renowned poems.

In this intimate and inspiring novel about the power of art and the value of community, award-winning author and former New Yorker Colleen Nelson brings life and liveliness to an eccentric cast of New York City neighbors. Middle-schooler and New Yorker Roxy Markowski wants to tell the truth fearlessly and powerfully, just like her idols at Veracity News.