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適讀人群 :8歲及以上 A thought-provoking novel from the author of Frindle (S & S, 1996). Mr. Larson has taught for 20 years and he's burned out. His idea of the open-classroom method is to start his fifth graders on a project and then sit back and relax with coffee and a newspaper. So when Cara Landry writes a newspaper with an editorial about the lack of teaching going on in room 145, the former "Teacher of the Year" gets very upset. Realizing that the girl is stating the truth, he starts a unit on journalism and the class enthusiastically begins a newspaper. With Cara as editor, the project blossoms. However, when she allows a very personal and poignant story on divorce to be printed, the principal sees it as an opportunity to get rid of Mr. Larson. The teacher then uses the proceedings as a real-life lesson on the First Amendment. The children rally to his support, as does the faculty, and at a public hearing he is vindicated. With chapter headings reading like headlines, the plot moves quickly. Bits of humor lighten the theme of "Truth with Mercy." The author has created believable characters, from the beleaguered Mr. Larson to the intelligent and thoughtful Cara. Readers will cheer for both of them as they move toward the satisfying conclusion.
A fifth grader's scathing editorial criticizing her burned-out teacher spurs him to take his duties seriously. A terrific read about free speech, the power of the pen, and the need to temper truth with mercy.
內容簡介
NEW STUDENT GETS OLD TEACHER
The bad news is that Cara Landry is the new kid at Denton Elementary School. The worse news is that her teacher, Mr. Larson, would rather read the paper and drink coffee than teach his students anything. So Cara decides to give Mr. Larson something else to read -- her own newspaper, The Landry News.
Before she knows it, the whole fifth-grade class is in on the project. But then the principal finds a copy of The Landry News, with unexpected results. Tomorrow's headline: Will Cara's newspaper cost Mr. Larson his job?
作者簡介
Andrew Clements is the author of the enormously popular FRINDLE. He has been nominated for a multitude of state awards and has won the Christopher Award and an Edgar Award. His popular works include EXTRA CREDIT, LOST AND FOUND, NO TALKING, ROOM ONE, LUNCH MONEY, A WEEK IN THE WOODS, THE JACKET, THE SCHOOL STORY, THE JANITOR'S BOY, THE LANDRY NEWS, THE REPORT CARD AND THE LAST HOLIDAY CONCERT. Mr. Clements taught in the public schools near Chicago for seven years before moving East to begin a career in publishing and writing. He lives with his wife in central Massachusetts and has four grown children. His website is andrewclements.com.
Brian Selznick is the author and illustrator of the bestselling The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which was awarded the Caldecott Medal and was a National Book Award finalist. He is also the illustrator of many books for children, including Frindle and Lunch Money by Andrew Clements, as well as the Doll People trilogy by Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin, and The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins by Barbara Kerley, which was a Caldecott Honor Book. Mr. Selznick divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and San Diego, California.
內頁插圖
精彩書摘
Chapter One: NEW KID GETS OLD TEACHER
"Cara Louise, I am talking to you!"
Cara Landry didn't answer her mom. She was busy.
She sat at the gray folding table in the kitchenette, a heap of torn paper scraps in front of her. Using a roll of clear tape, Cara was putting the pieces back together. Little by little, they fell into place on a fresh sheet of paper about eighteen inches wide. The top part was already taking shape -- a row of neat block letters, carefully drawn to look like newspaper type.
"Cara, honey, you promised you wouldn't start that again. Didn't you learn one little thing from the last time?"
Cara's mom was talking about what had happened at the school Cara had attended for most of fourth grade, just after her dad had left. There had been some problems.
"Don't worry, Mom," Cara said absentmindedly, absorbed in her task.
Cara Landry had only lived in Carlton for six months. From the day she moved to town, during April of fourth grade, everyone had completely ignored her. She had been easy for the other kids to ignore. Just another brainy, quiet girl, the kind who always turns in assignments on time, always aces tests. She dressed in a brown plaid skirt and a clean white blouse every day, dependable as the tile pattern on the classroom floor. Average height, skinny arms and legs, white socks, black shoes. Her light brown hair was always pulled back into a thin ponytail, and her pale blue eyes hardly ever connected with anyone else's. As far as the other kids were concerned, Cara was there, but just barely.
All that changed in one afternoon soon after Cara started fifth grade.
It was like any other Friday for Cara at Denton Elementary School. Math first thing in the morning, then science and gym, lunch and health, and finally, reading, language arts, and social studies in Mr. Larson's room.
Mr. Larson was the kind of teacher parents write letters to the principal about, letters like:
Dear Dr. Barnes:
We know our child is only in second grade this year, but please be sure that he [or she] is NOT put into Mr. Larson's class for fifth grade.
Our lawyer tells us that we have the right to make our educational choices known to the principal and that you are not allowed to tell anyone we have written you this letter.
So in closing, we again urge you to take steps to see that our son [or daughter] is not put into Mr. Larson's classroom.
Sincerely yours,
Mr. and Mrs. Everybody-who-lives-in-Carlton
Still, someone had to be in Mr. Larson's class; and if your mom was always too tired to join the PTA or a volunteer group, and if you mostly hung out at the library by yourself or sat around your apartment reading and doing homework, it was possible to live in Carlton for half a year and not know that Mr. Larson was a lousy teacher. And if your mom didn't know enough to write a letter to the principal, you were pretty much guaranteed to get Mr. Larson.
Mr. Larson said he believed in the open classroom. At parents' night every September, Mr. Larson explained that children learn best when they learn things on their own.
This was not a new idea. This idea about learning was being used successfully by practically every teacher in America.
But Mr. Larson used it in his own special way. Almost every day, he would get the class started on a story or a worksheet or a word list or some reading and then go to his desk, pour some coffee from his big red thermos, open up his newspaper, and sit.
Over the years, Mr. Larson had taught himself how to ignore the chaos that erupted in his classroom every day. Unless there was the sound of breaking glass, screams, or splintering furniture, Mr. Larson didn't even look up. If other teachers or the principal complained about the noise, he would ask a student to shut the door, and then go back to reading his newspaper.
Even though Mr. Larson had not done much day-to-day teaching for a number of years, quite a bit of learning happened in room 145 anyway. The room itself had a lot to do with that. Room 145 was like a giant educational glacier, with layer upon layer of accumulated materials. Mr. Larson read constantly, and every magazine he had subscribed to or purchased during the past twenty years had ended up in his classroom. Time, Good Housekeeping, U.S. News & World Report, Smithsonian, Cricket, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Boys' Life, Organic Gardening, The New Yorker, Life, Highlights, Fine Woodworking, Reader's Digest, Popular Mechanics, and dozens of others. Heaps of them filled the shelves and cluttered the corners. Newspapers, too, were stacked in front of the windows; recent ones were piled next to Mr. Larson's chair. This stack was almost level with his desktop, and it made a convenient place to rest his coffee cup.
Each square inch of wall space and a good portion of the ceiling were covered with maps, old report covers, newspaper clippings, diagrammed sentences, cartoons, Halloween decorations, a cursive handwriting chart, quotations from the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence, and the complete Bill of Rights -- a dizzying assortment of historical, grammatical, and literary information.
The bulletin boards were like huge paper time warps -- shaggy, colorful collages. Whenever Mr. Larson happened to find an article or a poster or an illustration that looked interesting, he would staple it up, and he always invited the kids to do the same. But for the past eight or ten years, Mr. Larson had not bothered to take down the old papers -- he just wallpapered over them with the new ones. Every few months -- especially when it was hot and humid -- the weight of the built-up paper would become too much for the staples, and a slow avalanche of clippings would lean forward and whisper to the floor. When that happened, a student repair committee would grab some staplers from the supply cabinet, and the room would shake as they pounded flat pieces of history back onto the wall.
Freestanding racks of books were scattered all around room 145. There were racks loaded with mysteries, Newbery winners, historical fiction, biographies, and short stories. There were racks of almanacs, nature books, world records books, old encyclopedias, and dictionaries. There was even a rack of well-worn picture books for those days when fifth-graders felt like looking back at the books they grew up on.
The reading corner was jammed with pillows and was sheltered by half of an old cardboard geodesic dome. The dome had won first prize at a school fair about fifteen years ago. Each triangle of the dome had been painted blue or yellow or green and was designed by kids to teach something -- like the flags of African nations or the presidents of the United States or the last ten Indianapolis-500 winners -- dozens and dozens of different minilessons. The dome was missing half its top and looked a little like an igloo after a week of warm weather. Still, every class period there would be a scramble to see which small group of friends would take possession of the dome.
The principal didn't approve of Mr. Larson's room one bit. It gave him the creeps. Dr. Barnes liked things to be spotless and orderly, like his own office -- a place for everything, and everything in its place. Occasionally he threatened to make Mr. Larson change rooms -- but there was really no other room he could move to. Besides, room 145 was on the lower level of the school in the back corner. It was the room that was the farthest away from the office, and Dr. Barnes couldn't bear the thought of Mr. Larson being one inch closer to him.
Even though it was chaotic and cluttered, Mr. Larson's class suited Cara Landry just fine. She was able to tune out the noise, and she liked being left alone for the last two hours of every day. She would always get to class early and pull a desk and chair over to the back corner by some low bookcases. Then she would pull the large map tripod up behind her chair. She would spread out her books and papers on the bookshelf to her right, and she would tack her plastic pencil case on the bulletin board to her left. It was a small private space, like her own little office, where Cara could just sit and read, think, and write.
Then, on the first Friday afternoon in October, Cara took what she'd been working on and without saying anything to anybody, she used four thumbtacks and stuck it onto the overloaded bulletin board at the back of Mr. Larson's room. It was Denton Elementary School's first edition of The Landry News.
前言/序言
《星際航行者:失落的信號》 一部關於勇氣、友誼與探索未知宇宙的史詩 內容簡介 在遙遠的銀河係邊緣,一個被稱為“靜默之環”的星域一直籠罩在神秘的迷霧之中。傳說中,那裏隱藏著數韆年前一個高度發達的文明——艾歐尼剋斯(Ayonix)留下的終極遺産。無數探險傢前赴後繼,卻都杳無音信,使得“靜默之環”成為瞭所有星際航行者既嚮往又畏懼的禁區。 故事的主角是卡拉·維恩(Kara Vane),一位年輕卻天賦異稟的星圖繪製師,她繼承瞭已故父親——那位曾被嘲笑為“瘋子”的探險傢的遺誌。卡拉的父親堅信,在“靜默之環”深處,隱藏著能夠徹底改變星際社會能源結構的關鍵技術。 卡拉擁有一艘名為“信天翁號”(The Albatross)的改裝勘探船,它雖然比不上那些軍用級彆的旗艦,卻以其卓越的自主修復能力和對微弱信號的驚人捕捉能力而聞名。她的船員陣容也同樣獨特: 澤恩·科爾(Zane Khol):前皇傢衛隊機械師,一個沉默寡言但技術精湛的工程師。他對卡拉的父親抱有深深的敬意,並時刻準備為卡拉修理任何在深空遇到的危機。他對機械的理解已經超越瞭編程的範疇,仿佛能與飛船的綫路進行心靈感應。 莉拉·索恩(Lyra Thorne):一位來自“中立區”的生物學傢兼語言學傢。她掌握著十幾種已滅絕種族的語言碎片,並對非碳基生命體錶現齣非同尋常的親和力。她的任務是解讀任何可能遇到的古代銘文或通訊。 故事的開端,卡拉從父親留下的加密日記中,發現瞭一組極其微弱、似乎跨越瞭維度傳播的脈衝信號。這信號不是任何已知的外星文明或人類派係發齣的,它充滿瞭數學上的完美和一種令人心悸的古老韻律。卡拉確信,這就是通往艾歐尼剋斯文明核心的鑰匙。 第一部:穿越迷霧 卡拉和她的團隊決定單程航行進入“靜默之環”。他們的旅程立刻充滿瞭危險。 首先,他們必須避開“泰坦聯邦”的巡邏隊。泰坦聯邦是一個控製瞭銀河係主要貿易路綫的軍事強國,他們視“靜默之環”為私人資源儲備區,任何未經授權的進入者都會被視為入侵。卡拉必須利用她高超的隱形技術和澤恩對引力波的精確計算,在聯邦的雷達盲區中穿梭。 在深入星域後,他們遭遇瞭第一個真正的挑戰:“熵能風暴”。這不是傳統意義上的等離子風暴,而是一種能夠隨機改變物質物理屬性的能量場。在風暴中,“信天翁號”的閤金外殼開始瞬間老化、腐蝕,然後又以不穩定的方式恢復。莉拉發現,這種風暴的中心似乎在“模仿”某種復雜的生物節律,這讓她懷疑這片星域的物理法則並非自然形成,而是被某種力量所“編程”過。 卡拉在修復過程中,通過父親的筆記,學會瞭如何利用船載量子處理器,在風暴的間歇期,精確地“調諧”到信號的頻率,從而引導飛船在風暴的縫隙中前行。這次經曆極大地考驗瞭船員們的信任和應變能力。 第二部:古老的守護者 成功穿過熵能風暴後,他們抵達瞭一個被濃密小行星帶環繞的行星係統,編號為“阿卡迪亞-7”。信號的源頭指嚮瞭那裏的一顆死寂的行星。 降落後,他們發現的不是宏偉的城市遺跡,而是一個巨大的、似乎由單一金屬構成的地下結構。這裏的重力極不穩定,莉拉的生物傳感器檢測到瞭一種基於矽和稀有金屬的生命形式——“塑形者”(The Shapers)。 塑形者並非傳統意義上的生物,它們是艾歐尼剋斯文明留下的維護係統,類似於超級人工智能的物理載體。它們沒有主動的攻擊意圖,但對任何試圖乾擾核心維護流程的外部實體,都會采取同等的、甚至是超乎想象的“糾正”措施。 卡拉和莉拉在探索過程中,激活瞭一個古老的記錄裝置。通過莉拉的解讀,他們瞭解到艾歐尼剋斯文明並非毀滅於戰爭,而是因為他們“過於完美”,最終選擇瞭“自我升華”——將自身的意識和知識上傳到一個更高維度的結構中,留下瞭這些維護者來確保“升級”過程的順利進行,並等待“閤格的繼承者”。 然而,塑形者將卡拉的信號源解讀為潛在的“威脅乾擾”,開始對他們進行“隔離”和“重構”。飛船的外部被這些金屬生命體用極快的速度重新塑造成一個迷宮般的陷阱。澤恩必須與這些比他所知的任何機械都要精密的實體進行一場“技術對決”,他不能破壞它們,因為破壞它們意味著摧毀解讀數據的唯一機會。他需要找到塑形者邏輯中的“後門”或“例外規則”。 第三部:繼承與抉擇 在澤恩爭取時間的同時,卡拉找到瞭信號的核心——一個懸浮在地下深處的能量核心,它發齣微弱的光芒,並持續地嚮外發送著信息。 她意識到,父親留下的不是一份地圖,而是一個“身份密鑰”。當卡拉將她的身份信息(基於她血脈中與信息源的微弱共鳴)輸入核心時,能量爆發瞭。 她接收到的不是技術藍圖,而是艾歐尼剋斯文明的“集體記憶”。她看到瞭他們如何超越物質的局限,看到瞭宇宙的真正結構,以及他們對未來的設想。這個“遺産”極其龐大,足以讓人類文明在一夜之間實現飛躍,但也可能帶來難以預料的心靈衝擊和文化崩潰。 此時,泰坦聯邦的先遣艦隊追蹤信號趕到,他們決心奪取這個“核心能源”。 卡拉麵臨最終的抉擇: 1. 交付核心:將艾歐尼剋斯的技術交給聯邦,以換取安全和影響力,但必然導緻這項技術被濫用和壟斷。 2. 摧毀核心:防止任何勢力獲得它,讓“靜默之環”繼續保持神秘,但同時也扼殺瞭人類文明進步的可能。 3. 運用密鑰:利用她剛剛繼承的知識,與塑形者和來犯的聯邦艦隊周鏇,將艾歐尼剋斯的遺産轉化為一種無法被傳統勢力理解和控製的、更具保護性的力量。 在莉拉和澤恩的配閤下,卡拉選擇瞭第三條路。她沒有摧毀核心,也沒有交給聯邦。她利用新獲得的知識,巧妙地重寫瞭塑形者對“信天翁號”的定義,將其從“入侵者”變為“信使”。隨後,她引導一個無害但極其復雜的“信息迴聲”反饋給泰坦聯邦的艦隊,這個迴聲包含瞭足以讓聯邦的指揮係統陷入數周癱瘓的邏輯悖論。 當泰坦聯邦的艦隊在混亂中撤退時,“信天翁號”帶著卡拉身上那份沉甸甸的、關於宇宙真相的知識,悄然離開瞭阿卡迪亞-7。 尾聲 卡拉和她的船員沒有返迴已知的星係。他們知道,攜帶如此重大的知識,他們已經不再是單純的探險傢,而是新時代的引路人。他們將“信天翁號”設定在一個未知的航道上,繼續探索更深層次的宇宙奧秘,同時小心翼翼地研究如何以最安全的方式,將這份遺産逐漸融入尚未準備好的星際社會之中。他們的旅程,纔剛剛開始。