Books with author Paula Sullivan

6x9 | Wide Ruled | 100 pagesWide Ruled Mermaid Notebook for GirlsThis little mermaid journal is the perfect gift for a girl who loves all things sparkle! It's the perfect size to carry in a school backpack or to hide away in a desk to be used as a secret diary. Inside the pages are wide ruled and there is a mermaid on every page. Perhaps she will inspire the composition of some magical under the sea stories.

This gripping adventure story is set in an unexplored and intact Maya site in Guatemala. For the team of archaeologists it is a rich lode of treasures -- but there are the rebels and the army to contend with. Between the thieves and spies for both sides, it is impossible to know if anyone can be trusted. If they abandon the site, they know the looters certainly will take everything. If they stay in the face of civil war, the army or the rebels might well take their lives. It is up to archaeologist Walker Davis to decide to stay or go, to judge when the need to know what lay buried there was worth the risk. Author, Paul Sullivan says his novel "simply shows how foolish war is. The small valley in Guatemala, where the story is set, suffered the same kind of conflict nine hundred years ago as it did in the 1980s" Paul Sullivan is a master storyteller and appeals to older readers and adults alike.

Paul Sullivan's latest novel is set in the early 1900s, at Earth's frozen edge: the Arctic Circle. Canada's First People depend on their traditional skills in hunting seal and caribou for food, clothing, and trade. Always aware of the fragility of their existence, the Inuits are mindful to thank the animals after the kill and to acknowledge the spirits that rule the universe. This way of life and respect for nature could not be more different from that of the European commercial seal hunters. The story's main characters are an Inuit father, Eetuk, and his son, Inuluk. They are on a hunting expedition when young Inuluk sees a steam and sail ship, the Grendel, in the bay. He gets closer than he should and is chased by the men who appear on the ice. He is clubbed by a hot-headed crewman, but rather than leave him there injured, the hunters take him on board. Captive on the ship, Inuluk learns the crew has no respect for the spirits, or for the animals they hunt so mercilessly. His arduous adventure takes him to so-called civilization in the trading ports before, eventually, with the help of a crew member who speaks his language, he can return home to his family. We learn that the hunting of the seals and caribou was essential for the survival of the nomadic Inuits, and that this way of life was to change forever with the coming of the commercial ships.

This is a novel of the American coal industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is told from the point of view of Paddy O'Grady, a 12-year-old working in a Pennsylvania mine in the breaker where boys below the age of 14 sorted through rapidly-moving streams of coal picking out rocks and shale from the anthracite on the way to the rail siding. Miners and their families came from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and Italy. The mine owners allowed the differences of national origin and ethnic rivalries to keep the workers separate and relatively powerless, and the mining towns were divided by ethnicity. Mining families were always poor, and Paddy O'Grady was not unusual in going to work in the breaker at the age of eight. The law said that children under the age of 12 were not allowed to work, but the O'Grady family desperately needed the income Paddy could bring in and documents could be manufactured as needed. The boys who survived the 12-hour days in the breaker could go down into the mines and earn more money when they became 14. But the work was dangerous, the overseer harsh, and Paddy had years to go before he could become a miner-an occupation that was killing his father. Paul Sullivan is a master storyteller, and this is a gripping novel for young people.