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Books with author Jonathan Banks

  • Building Our House

    Jonathan Bean

    Hardcover (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Jan. 8, 2013)
    A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceWinner of the 2013 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Best Picture BookA Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2013In this unique construction book for kids who love tools and trucks, readers join a girl and her family as they pack up their old house in town and set out to build a new one in the country. Mom and Dad are going to make the new house themselves, from the ground up. From empty lot to finished home, every stage of their year-and-a-half-long building project is here. And at every step their lucky kids are watching and getting their hands dirty, in page after page brimming with machines, vehicles, and all kinds of house-making activities! As he imagines it through the eyes of his older sister, Building Our House is Jonathan Bean's retelling of his own family's true experience, and includes an afterword with photographs from the author's collection.
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  • Raise Your GPA: God's Way to Win @ School & Life

    Jonathan Banks

    Paperback (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, June 20, 2017)
    The pressure on teenagers and young adults to excel academically has never been greater. What does it take to succeed in college? What does it take to get ahead in life? What does it take to get on the right track and achieve success? Jonathan Banks believes that, too often, the most important factor in success is overlooked—God.In his book, Raise Your GPA: God's Way to Win @ School & Life, Banks uses biblical principles to demonstrate that God has designed each of us for success. However, in order to gain access to His divine promises, we must live according to God’s plan. This book provides relevant Bible-based guidance in an easy-to-read format. Each chapter concludes with a focused prayer, flash cards, and thoughtful questions for individual reflection or group discussion. Now is the time to raise your expectations of yourself and who you want to become. By putting God first, you will live a life of success and significance—a life that matters.
  • Dungeon Player: A LitRPG Dungeon Core Adventure

    Jonathan Brooks

    eBook
    Even after pre-ordering the pod that would allow them to play "Glendaria Awakens", Krista and Devin still had to wait months before they were able to experience the newest in VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) technology. The wait was definitely worth it as they entered into a game world that was virtually indistinguishable from real life -- apart from the obvious game elements of course.After starting in a typical starting town, they learned everything they needed to survive in this new world. Journeying through the wilderness outside of town, the duo progressed at a good pace until they arrived at the starting dungeon. Their lives were drastically changed by this place with the unassuming name of, "Goblin Cave".After finding themselves in charge of their very own dungeon, Devin and Krista must figure out how to survive and thrive -- all while fending off invading players.(This first book is a stat and table-heavy LitRPG -- perfect for those who love stats and tables!)(Newly edited and revised for release of audiobook 8/19)
  • Raise Your GPA: God's Way to Win @ School & Life

    Jonathan Banks

    eBook (, July 12, 2017)
    In this day and age, the pressure on teenagers and young adults to excel has never been greater. What does it take to succeed in college? What does it take to get ahead in life? What does it take to get on the right track and achieve success? Jonathan Banks believes that, too often, the most important factor in success is overlooked—God.In his book, Raise Your GPA: God's Way to Win @ School & Life, Banks uses biblical principles to demonstrate that God has designed each of us for success. However, in order to gain access to His divine promises, we must live according to God’s plan. This book provides relevant Bible-based guidance in an easy-to-read format. Each chapter concludes with a focused prayer, flash cards, and thoughtful questions for individual reflection or group discussion. Now is the time to raise your expectations of yourself and who you want to become. By putting God first, you will live a life of success and significance—a life that matters.
  • The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel

    Jonathan Brooks

    Paperback (Independently published, June 6, 2020)
    A time of great darkness is approaching, but will Sandra and her dungeon survive?After being responsible for destroying multiple Dungeon Cores, the consequences of which she has yet to see but knows will be coming, Sandra and her friends must obtain help from the leadership of the nearby lands. The problem will soon become bigger than she can contain, and only by them all working together will everyone survive the dangers represented by the nearby dungeons.On top of that, Sandra also has to develop a plan to combat the ever-expanding territories of the local dungeons and protect the people still living in her Area of Influence. It is a difficult and complicated problem to solve, but with the aid of some new friends she begins to get a handle on the situation.Unknown to Sandra and everyone else, however, someone wronged by the craft-loving Dungeon Core has designs of their own that will throw the wastelands into chaos. Those dangers, coupled with some personal issues of Sandra’s own, could usher in a period of darkness that the world hasn’t seen in centuries…This Dungeon Core story contains LitRPG/GameLit elements such as statistics and leveling and a heavy crafting emphasis. No profanity and no harems.
  • Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

    S. Jonathan Bass

    Paperback (LSU Press, Dec. 1, 2001)
    Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is arguably the most important written document of the civil rights protest era and a widely read modern literary classic. Personally addressed to eight white Birmingham clergymen who sought to avoid violence by publicly discouraging King's civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, the nationally published "Letter" captured the essence of the struggle for racial equality and provided a blistering critique of the gradualist approach to racial justice. It soon became part of American folklore, and the image of King penning his epistle from a prison cell remains among the most moving of the era. Yet as S. Jonathan Bass explains in the first comprehensive history of King's "Letter," this image and the piece's literary appeal conceal a much more complex tale.
  • He Calls Me By Lightning: The Life of Caliph Washington and the forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty

    S Jonathan Bass

    Hardcover (Liveright, May 16, 2017)
    A heroic reconstruction of the forgotten life of a wrongfully convicted man whose story becomes an historic portrait of racial injustice in the civil rights era.Caliph Washington didn’t pull the trigger but, as Officer James "Cowboy" Clark lay dying, he had no choice but to turn on his heel and run. The year was 1957; Cowboy Clark was white, Caliph Washington was black, and this was the Jim Crow South.As He Calls Me by Lightning painstakingly chronicles, Washington, then a seventeen-year-old simply returning home after a double date, was swiftly arrested, put on trial, and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. The young man endured the horrors of a hellish prison system for thirteen years, a term that included various stints on death row fearing the "lightning" of the electric chair. Twentieth-century legal history is tragically littered with thousands of stories of such judicial cruelty, but S. Jonathan Bass’s account is remarkable in that he has been able to meticulously re-create Washington’s saga, animating a life that was not supposed to matter.Given the familiar paradigm of an African American man being falsely accused of killing a white policeman, it would be all too easy to apply a reductionist view to the story. What makes He Calls Me by Lightning so unusual are a spate of unknown variables―most prominently the fact that Governor George Wallace, nationally infamous for his active advocacy of segregation, did, in fact, save this death row inmate’s life. As we discover, Wallace stayed Washington’s execution not once but more than a dozen times, reflecting a philosophy about the death penalty that has not been perpetuated by his successors.Other details make Washington’s story significant to legal history, not the least of which is that the defendant endured three separate trials and then was held in a county jail for five more years before being convicted of second-degree murder in 1970; this decision was overturned as well, although the charges were never dismissed. Bass’s account is also particularly noteworthy for his evocation of Washington’s native Bessemer, a gritty, industrial city lying only thirteen miles to the east of Birmingham, Alabama, whose singularly fascinating story is frequently overlooked by historians.By rescuing Washington’s unknown life trajectory―along with the stories of his intrepid lawyers, David Hood Jr. and Orzell Billingsley, and Christine Luna, an Italian-American teacher and activist who would become Washington’s bride upon his release―Bass brings to multidimensional life many different strands of the civil rights movement. Devastating and essential, He Calls Me by Lightning demands that we take into account the thousands of lives cast away by systemic racism, and powerfully demonstrates just how much we still do not know. 25 illustrations
  • Big Snow

    Jonathan Bean

    Hardcover (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Sept. 24, 2013)
    An excited and frustrated boy watches hopefully as wintry weather develops slowly into a "big snow."While "helping" his mother with holiday housecleaning, a boy keeps a watchful eye on the progress of a winter storm. He's hoping for a big snow. A really big snow. Inside, he is underfoot, turning sheet-changing and tub-scrubbing into imaginary whiteouts. Outside, flakes are flying. But over the course of a long day (for Mom) the clouds seem slow on delivering a serious snowfall. Then comes a dreamy naptime adventure, marking just the beginning of high hopes coming true in this irresistible seasonal story.
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  • Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare

    Jonathan Bate

    Paperback (Random House Trade Paperbacks, Oct. 12, 2010)
    “One man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.”In this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bard’s own immortal list of a man’s seven ages in As You Like It, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeare’s life and connects them to his world and work as never before.Here is the author as an infant, born into a world of plague and syphillis, diseases with which he became closely familiar; as a schoolboy, a position he portrayed in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which a clever, cheeky lad named William learns Latin grammar; as a lover, married at eighteen to an older woman already pregnant, perhaps presaging Bassanio, who in The Merchant of Venice won a wife who could save him from financial ruin. Here, too, is Shakespeare as a soldier, writing Henry the Fifth’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, with a nod to his own monarch Elizabeth I’s passionate addresses; as a justice, revealing his possible legal training in his precise use of the law in plays from Hamlet to Macbeth; and as a pantaloon, an early retiree because of, Bate postulates, either illness or a scandal. Finally, Shakespeare enters oblivion, with sonnets that suggest he actively sought immortality through his art and secretly helped shape his posthumous image more than anyone ever knew.Equal parts masterly detective story, brilliant literary analysis, and insightful world history, Soul of the Age is more than a superb new recounting of Shakespeare’s experiences; it is a bold and entertaining work of scholarship and speculation, one that shifts from past to present, reality to the imagination, to reveal how this unsurpassed artist came to be.
  • Jonathan Letter Tracing for Kids Trace my Name Workbook: Tracing Books for Kids ages 3 - 5 Pre-K & Kindergarten Practice Workbook

    Jonathan Books

    Paperback (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Dec. 19, 2017)
    JONATHAN Name Tracing Workbook – Preschoolers Kindergarten Practice Workbook - Toddlers Writing Notebook - Learn How to Write JONATHAN - Preschoolers Activities Teaching your child the basics of writing is a difficult task especially if he or she is full of energy and finds it more difficult to focus. In order to give him a push in the first years of school or kindergartner, we are presenting a revolutionary way of teaching your baby the basics of the alphabet: the name tracing workbook for children. Why our workbook? The name tracing workbook has been designed specifically to teach children the basic of spelling and writing. By learning to write his own name, your child will develop the abilities and skills needed in the first years of schools while having fun. The 100 pages activity book is the perfect choice if you are searching to invest in your child’s education from the beginning so don’t hesitate and get him the only workbook he needs! LEARNING THE FIRST LETTERS: teaching your toddler the first letters and how to spell his or her name is difficult, which is why we have designed a special workbook that will make the learning process easier and a lot more fun, adding to the baby’s educational fund. PERSONALIZED WORKING: the name is the first word any child should learn how to spell, but it is almost impossible to find special help for that task. JONATHAN Name Tracing Workbook is divided in 12 themed chapters that will teach your toddler how to spell his or her name in a fun and interactive way. WHAT IT CONTAINS: JONATHAN Name Tracing Workbook counts no less than 100 pages divided in 12 themed sheets that propose recognition activities, letter tracing practice and letter games, that are sure to teach your child the basics of writing and spelling. FOR TODDLERS: JONATHAN Name Tracing Workbook is made especially for children aged 3 to 6 so your son or daughter will be well prepared for both kindergarten and first grade! Learning the alphabet will be a piece of cake if your kid will already have the foundation letter tracing so why not give him a head start in school. THE PERFECT GIFT: offering a present to a toddler that is both fun and parents-approved is an almost impossible task, but the name tracing workbook has it all: it is educational, personalized and made especially for youngsters ages 3 to 6 so, if you’re trying to bring a smile on a kid’s face, this is it!
  • This Is My Home, This Is My School

    Jonathan Bean

    eBook (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Oct. 27, 2015)
    Drawing from his own childhood experiences, Jonathan Bean takes the autobiographically inspired family he introduced in Building Our House through the special rhythms and routines of a homeschooling day. For young Jonathan and his sisters, Mom is the teacher and a whole lot more, and Dad is the best substitute any kid could want. From math, science, and field trips to recess, show-and-tell, and art, a school day with this intrepid, inventive family will seem both completely familiar and totally unique. Includes a selection of family snapshots and a note from the author.
  • Dungeon World 5: A Dungeon Core Experience

    Jonathan Brooks

    (Independently published, March 31, 2020)
    Get ready for the exciting conclusion to the Dungeon World series!With the help of an unlikely ally, Fred has secretly obtained access to all seven elements for his Core without the Supreme Council of Dungeon Cores’ knowledge; Fire, Water, Nature, Earth, Dark, Light, and Air are now technically at his disposal. However, despite having access to them all, he finds himself behind enemy lines without the use of any but Light and Air due to his temporary Core he had created back in his dungeon. Now, with the assistance of Roady, Ravenne, and Agelstein – three members of the Allroads Government, and Fred’s “bodyguards” – he has to safely make it back to the city before the inevitable deadly response from the local Dungeon Cores at his theft of the Light element kills him.Trouble is brewing behind the scenes, though, and the Supreme Council is ready to step up their attacks on Fred’s dungeon underneath the city of Allroads. With additional complications preventing Fred from fully utilizing his newly acquired elements, he has to scramble to find a way to not be useless and assist in the defense of his dungeon, his Shards, and all the people in the city above relying on him.Oh, and on top of that, Fred still needs to figure out a way to save the world…Contains LitRPG/GameLit elements such as statistics and leveling. No harems and no profanity.