Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religious-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally goes abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist.

"This compelling novel takes the reader into the tumultuous period of the Renaissance and the origins of Leonardo da Vinci, the bastard child of a notary. Of da Vinci, the eminent art historian Kenneth Clark wrote, "no more complex and mysterious character ever existed than this Hamlet of art history." Clark noted that one had to be "familiar with all of Leonardo's writings in their chronological order (and) the state of learning in the Renaissance...

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade. As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds--and...

"American artist, poet, and novelist Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939), has had an unusually varied and highly successful career across genres and media. As a poet, her work was edited by Toni Morrison and she is a recipient of the Carl Sandburg Prize. As afiction writer, she was edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis, and her first historical novel, Sally Hemmings (1979) was a bestseller. But Chase-Riboud trained as a visual artist, primarily as a sculptor,...

Brought together by their mutual interest in art, Sasha, a widowed art gallery owner with grown children, and Liam, a successful artist nine years her junior, find new meaning in their lives through their relationship with each other.

"The traditional view of Leonardo da Vinci's career is that he enjoyed a promising start in Florence and then moved to Milan to become the celebrated court artist of Duke Ludovico Sforza. Young Leonardo proves all of this wrong. It reveals how the struggling painter was repeatedly snubbed by the prevailing trends of Florentine style before escaping to Milan empty-handed. But Milan offered little more; Sforza's patronage was lukewarm, to say the least,...

Fourteen-year-old Nikki Maxwell writes in her diary of her struggle to be popular at her exclusive new private school, then of finding her place after she gives up on being part of the elite group.

"A declaration of love to Peter Kuper's adoptive city in which he has lived since 1977, this diary is a vibrant survey of New York City's history. Through Kuper's illustrations, this book depicts a climb to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, the homeless living in Times Square, roller skaters in Central Park, the impact of September 11, the luxury of Wall Street, street musicians, and other scenes unique to the city. With comics, illustrations, and sketches,...

Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883 — 1931) was a Lebanese-American poet, writer, and artist best known as the author of "The Prophet" (1923), which is one of the best-selling books of all time. Gibran's work covers such themes as justice, religion, science, free will, love, happiness, the soul, the body, and death. He is widely considered to have been one of the most important figures in Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of the twentieth...