Books with author R. H. Charles

CHAPTER ITHE STORY OF THE NATIONIN 1492 the Catholic Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, entered Granada in triumph. The last stronghold of Moorish dominion, undermined by the dissensions of Islam, fell before the united Christian kingdoms of Leon, Castile and Aragon. Spain became a united country and, in virtue of her protracted struggle of nearly eight hundred years against the infidel, stood forth as the acknowledged and self-conscious Champion of Catholicism. In the same year Columbus, under the patronage of the Catholic Sovereigns discovered the New World. This date, therefore, presents an epoch that completes the past and forms the starting point of a new era. Intimately associated with the subsequent national development and decline is the story of Spanish painting, but it owes most of its peculiar characteristics to the conditions that preceded the country's complete union.It is always interesting and usually illuminating topicture the historical background out of which the arts of a country have been gradually evolved. But in the case of Spanish painting it is essential. For the art of Spain was, bone and spirit, a part of the Spanish character, shaped and inspired as the latter had been by the racial, historical and geographical conditions out of which it was moulded. Without taking all this into account one cannot understand, much less appreciate sympathetically, the consistently individual character of this school of painting.• • •••••••In the first place one must realise the meaning of the fact that Spain is a mountainous country; not only separated from the rest of Europe, but divided against itself by precipitous barriers. They run in a general way from West to East: abrupt colossal walls of volcanic origin, with a grand sweep of bulk, jagged in sky-line and frequently piled with the chaotic debris of glacial moraines. These are the watersheds of rivers that refuse services to navigation; foaming to flood in the rainy season, shrinking in the drought to sluggish pools amid the rocky bed. They intersect tracts of country that vary from narrow valleys, where cultivation huddles in cherished pockets of soil, to broadly stretching vegas, tablelands and plains, from which by unremitting toil generous harvests may be obtained. Here the vistas are of magnificent extent, circling round one in far reaching sweeps of boldly undulating country, rimmed by nobly designed stretches of smoothly beveled foothills that form advance-posts of the ultimate barrier of the sierras.It is a little country, only three times the size of England, contracted within itself by natural restrictions, yet planned by nature on a big scale; one that affects the imagination, prompting even more than mountainous countries usually have done to independence, individualism and hardihood. It is a country that seems made for fighting; where a handful of resolute men could maintain themselves tenaciously against enormous odds. In the past they did it in actual warfare; to-day in the pacific fight which this hardy population perpetually keeps up against the extremes of climatic conditions. Though for the most part they still use the agricultural implements that Tubal Cain devised, they have inherited from the Roman and Moorish occupation a system of irrigation and of terracing that puts to shame the happy go lucky methods of farming in many countries which consider themselves superiorly enlightened. The necessary preoccupation with their immediate surroundings and the exclusion from outside influence, early made of this people a nation of individualists, realists and conservatives. So inbred did these qualities become that when the Spaniard mixed with the outer world, as he did particularly in his conquest of the Spanish Main and in his wars with Europe, it was but to become more fixed in his conservatism at home. When he borrowed from abroad, as in his art, it was but to shape and color the acquired impression to his...

CHARLIE MAJORS PUT HIMSELF IN A BIND when he blurted out in class that there was a ghost in Fowler’s Woods. Now half of the class is agreeing with bully Delmar Weeks that the voice Charlie is hearing is in his head.Johnny Moss is the only other person that has heard the noise that sounds like a young girl screaming for help, and he is beginning to wonder if he really heard it. Kimberlee North, one of Charlie’s best friends, and a classmate, tutors Charlie every afternoon after school. She knows and Charlie knows that without her help he is never going to learn math. She also knows it is going to be a long school year for Charlie if they can’t find a way to stop Delmar Weeks from his tormenting teasing. Since Charlie doesn’t seem to have any ideas how to stop the harassment, Kimberlee decides she is going to have to solve this problem on her own.Can Kimberlee find the mystery to the haunting voice, and restore some peace in Charlie’s life, and calm his and Johnny’s fears about the ghost in Fowler’s Woods.

Christmas Eve is here again and the weather in the Northern Hemisphere looks to be the worst in years! Santa has been feeling ill, but that's never stopped him before on "The Big Night" as he calls it. As he begins gearing up for the long night's journey, he gets the terrible news...Blitzen has a bad case of Reindeer Flu and there's no way he'll be able to make the trip. It's one thing for Santa to pull himself together when he's not feeling well, but his reindeer have to pull the sleigh, loaded with presents for all the children in the world...and circle the globe several times. He knows that he needs a full team of eight reindeer to make the journey. What will Santa do? Mrs. Claus knows...and so does MacDuffy, Santa's head Elf in Charge of Reindeer. Soon you'll know too as you read this delightful holiday tale about the reindeer behind the reindeer...Santa's Second String!

"Kids will grab this for the immediacy in the scenes, the brutal standoffs, the fast talk at the ball court, and the elemental conflicts of coming-of-age." - BooklistShooting the breeze with his boys. Tightening his D on the court. Doing a color check -- making sure nobody's wearing blue or red, which some Crip or Piru carrying a cut-down golf club would see as disrespect. Then back to Auntie's, hoping she isn't passed out from whiskey at the end of the day. Now that Shawn is headed for high school, he wonders if he'd be better off at the school in Mama's neighborhood, where he'd be free of Compton's hassles. But then he wouldn't be with his fellas -- cracking jokes, covering each other's backs -- or the fine Marisol, who's been making star appearances in his dreams. Dad says he needs to make his own decision, but what does Shawn want, freedom or friendship? With teasing, spot-on dialogue and an eye to the realities of inner-city life, Chameleon takes on the shifting moods of a teenager coming of age.

Thirteen-year-old Johnny Anders is something of a misfit, with no friends and a poor school record, but all this begins to change when he is awakened one night to find a soldier-ghost in his bedroom. Johnny is taken back to meet a series of unusual heroes in Canada's war history. These include Joan Bamford Fletcher, who commandeered Japanese soldiers to take hundreds of wounded civilians to safety through the jungles of Indonesia, and the much-decorated Raymond Collishaw, through whom Johnny learns that Canada played a role in the Russian Revolution. Even as he is making his discoveries, Johnny becomes close friends with Casey Collishaw, the great-granddaughter of Raymond Collishaw. Together the pair set about uncovering why it is that Johnny has been chosen to be a witness to Canadians at war.