Books with title The Moonflower Dance

A lingering curse. A man with a secret. A princess with a plan.Fed up with meddling sorcerers, Princess Neylan journeys to a distant kingdom to break a beastly curse. Master Healer Keir, who captured her heart through his letters, is relying on her to end his nightly shift into the form of a giant dragon. Armed with a bold plan, Neylan vows that sorcery will never again touch his life, or the lives of her eleven sisters.But true love's kiss fails, leaving Keir trapped in a cycle of agonizing transformations.When an unexpected ally reveals himself and offers a risky solution, Neylan must make an irreversible choice that will either give her the knowledge she seeks, or else trap her in the same type of snare she's trying to destroy.Fantasy, romance, and adventure combine in the fairytale-inspired Firethorn Chronicles, an interconnected series of stand-alone novels drawn from The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Follow the sisters on their journeys in a land where sorcery is feared and dragons fly.

When the sun sets, the night comes alive.As the moon shimmers down, bats swoop, hawkmoths flit, owls hunt, and the moonflower unfurls for its one night in the moonlight. In this lyrical yet accurate account of nature at night, readers will learn how moths drink, how bats “see,” how bumblebees sleep, how vines climb, and even how to plant your own moonflower.Husband and wife Peter and Jean Loewer are writers and illustrators who deal with the natural world. The Loewers have collaborated on two other children’s books: Pond Water Zoo and The Inside-Out Stomach.

A lingering curse. A man with a secret. A princess with a plan.Fed up with meddling sorcerers, Princess Neylan journeys to a distant kingdom to break a beastly curse. Master Healer Keir, who captured her heart through his letters, is relying on her to end his nightly shift into the form of a giant dragon. Armed with a bold plan, Neylan vows that sorcery will never again touch his life, or the lives of her eleven sisters.But true love's kiss fails, leaving Keir trapped in a cycle of agonizing transformations.When an unexpected ally reveals himself and offers a risky solution, Neylan must make an irreversible choice that will either give her the knowledge she seeks, or else trap her in the same type of snare she's trying to destroy.Fantasy, romance, and adventure combine in the fairytale-inspired Firethorn Chronicles, an interconnected series of stand-alone novels drawn from The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Follow the sisters on their journeys in a land where sorcery is feared and dragons fly.

When the sun sets, the night comes alive.As the moon shimmers down, bats swoop, hawkmoths flit, owls hunt, and the moonflower unfurls for its one night in the moonlight. In this lyrical yet accurate account of nature at night, readers will learn how moths drink, how bats “see,” how bumblebees sleep, how vines climb, and even how to plant your own moonflower.Husband and wife Peter and Jean Loewer are writers and illustrators who deal with the natural world. The Loewers have collaborated on two other children’s books: Pond Water Zoo and The Inside-Out Stomach.

When the sun sets, the night comes alive.As the moon shimmers down, bats swoop, hawkmoths flit, owls hunt, and the moonflower unfurls for its one night in the moonlight. In this lyrical yet accurate account of nature at night, readers will learn how moths drink, how bats “see,” how bumblebees sleep, how vines climb, and even how to plant your own moonflower.Husband and wife Peter and Jean Loewer are writers and illustrators who deal with the natural world. The Loewers have collaborated on two other children’s books: Pond Water Zoo and The Inside-Out Stomach.

Moonflower and the Solstice Dance is an illustrated children’s book that takes readers on a journey to the steppes of Central Asia, where Moonflower, a young girl from a Turkic tribe, witnesses the changing of the seasons and wonders why warm, long, bright summer days fade away and nearly disappear into a cold, dark winter. The people of her village come together on the Winter Solstice to give the sun the courage it needs to beat back the darkness and rule the sky again. The story is told in rhyming verse, which creates a chant-like rhythm, and flows through the cycle of seasons, with their waves of changing sights, sounds, and feelings. Expertly and accurately illustrated by Mongolian artist Solongo Drini, the book will transport you to a time and place where nature’s power and beauty rule. The illustrations have a magical feel, and have the feel of traditional Central Asian artwork. As a profound annual natural phenomena, the solstices have been revered and celebrated for thousands of years by cultures worldwide. Chidren and adults alike will enjoy the calming rhythm of the text and the transporting beauty of the illustrations. The story will surely become a favorite bedtime story on long winter nights.

I have re-read this book probably more often than any other book in my adult life. The story unfolds in rural Missouri over the first two-thirds of the 20th century, but its themes and its allure are timeless: family, faith, rebellion, secrets, love, independence, and time. Matthew and Callie Soames raise four daughters: Jessica, Leonie, Mary Jo, and Mathy. The book tells their stories one lifetime at a time, starting with the oldest daughter, Jessica, who introduces us to her parents and siblings and their life growing up in the Ozarks. Then we meet Matthew, the father, whose inner life and story -- and whose foolish heart -- are a far cry from the stern schoolmaster who rules his home and his daughters' lives with an austere and lonely love. ("To his daughters as they grew up, Matthew Soames was God and the weather." His character has often reminded me of the father in Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays.") Mathy, the youngest daughter, is the family's most vivid and most tragic character, a free spirit who flies a little too close to the sun. Leonie is her father's daughter, but also a child of her era, and through her Matthew is ultimately reconciled to Mathy. But each lifetime is only a piece in the puzzle of the Soames family until Callie, the strong, understated matriarch, who keeps the hardest secret of all; not until her story is told do all the others finally come together into a whole portrait, even though each story before hers seemed whole enough on its own. The book's title comes from the flowers that bloom for one night a year in the Ozarks, when the family reunites to watch them bloom for such a short season. The last chapter of Callie's story, when she suddenly finds herself an old woman and the reader suddenly discovers that half a century has passed with the Soameses, is one of the most penetrating insights into aging that I have ever read.( amazon customer)

From the dust jacket: [the book] is about a family whose members love and respect one another,who have loyalty in their bones and a gift from the gods--a peaceful time and place to live in (the novel is set in Missouri over the past fifty years) and the ability to love life with passion and delight. There are the parents, Matthew and Callie Soames, who come newly married to a Missouri farm, who leave it for a town nearby (Matthew is a schoolteacher), return to it, raise their children, live a marriage, deceive each other, comfort each other, and even, in the end, understand each other. There are the daughters--Jessica, Leonie, Mary Jo--who grow up loving their parents and wanting to escape fromthem,and who find escape, each in her own way. and there is the fourth daughter, Mathy, whose fate is the central family tragedy and whole life is the secret center of the novel.

On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy’s fate will be the family’s greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive—and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.“A rare find—a book you can truly enjoy and recall, long after reading it, with sharp pleasure.” — Rita Mae Brown“Better than good. This is tremendous.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch“The flavor . . . is much the same as that of To Kill a Mockingbird. . . . The Moonflower Vine is a delightful book.” — Denver Post“A distinguished achievement.” — Chicago Tribune