Books with author Barbara Nichol

Finalist in the Nautilus 2005 Book AwardsDetermined 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.

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.

Nannerl Mozart’s twelfth-birthday wish is to become a famous composer. She’s already considered a brilliant musician, touring eighteenth-century Europe with her little brother, Wolfgang, and playing for queens and kings in the great courts. But Papa doesn’t take her seriously as a composer because she is a girl, Mama usually has a list of chores for her to do, and Wolfi manages to steal everyone’s attention. But Nannerl is not ready to give up her dream. Can she defy expectations and take control of her musical destiny?

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.

Short-listed for the 1999 CLA Book of the Year for Children Award Award-winning poet and playwright Barbara Nickel returns to her Prairie roots in a beautiful collection of seasonal poems that chart, with a bird’s-eye view of the western landscape, nature’s glorious playground. Nickel’s experimental verses are perfectly complimented by Kathy Thiessen’s black-and-white etchings, making this ideal for any young Canadian – Prairie-dweller, would-be poet, or otherwise.