Newest Study Guides
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Pippi Longstocking is the eponymous nine-year-old heroine of this book and of the series of Pippi books written by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. Pippi was created by Lindgren as a get-well bedtime story for her own nine year old daughter when...
The Borrowers is one of the foremost books in the genre of children's fantasy literature although the book's author, Mary Norton, never intended it to be a book for children but "for people". The Borrowers takes the reader into the...
Code Talker is a historical fiction novel first published in 2005. It follows the story of a young Navajo boy, Kii Yazhi a.k.a. Ned Begay who is sent to a church school and bullied for his cultural background. During World War II, he is recruited...
Paperboy is the first novel written by Vince Vawter and was inspired by his own difficulty with and shame of his own stuttering, which he remembers manifesting itself at the age of five. Although like the book's main character Victor Vollmer,...
The novel Wringer is a novel written by the American writer Jerry Spinelli and published in 1997. Just like other previous books written by Spinelli, Wringer is a young adult novel that focuses on pre-adolescent characters and the struggles they...
Jerry Spinelli is the author of Crash, which was first published during 1995 and was later published during 2004 by Laurel Leaf. This fictional novel tells the story of John "Crash" Coogan, an egotistical seventh grader who values brawn over...
Since Adam Bede is the product of George Eliot's first serious attempt to write a novel, it is a good source for identifying some features of her development as a novelist and for seeing signs of themes in her later novels. Moreover, despite its...
The Kite Rider is a novel written by Geraldine McCaughrean in 2001. The novel's plot mainly revolves around a boy called Gou Haoyou and the story is set in 13th century China. Gou's father Gou Pei is a seaman and is forced to fly on a wind-testing...
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a unique novel in that the text includes an account of its own writing. Like his protagonist Raoul Duke, Thompson was working as a freelance journalist when Sports Illustrated hired him to help cover the Mint 400...
Kokoro (こゝろ), written by the famous Japanese author Natsume Soseki, was published in serial form by the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, for which he worked, in 1914. That year, two years had passed since the death of Emperor Meiji, under whose...
Edmund Spenser wrote the Amoretti (Italian for "Cupids") ostensibly to woo Elizabeth Boyle, a young lady whom he met during his tenure in Ireland. Spenser shared these poems with Elizabeth for over a year before she consented to marry him. The...
A huge sweeping novel, which has never been out of print since its publication, Atlas Shrugged has become a part of the national dialogue about personal freedom, economic policy, and political philosophy in America. There have been several...
Tender is the Night (1934) is F. Scott Fitzgerald's last completed novel. The story, primarily about human deterioration, the disintegration of love and marriage, and the mental illness that both causes and results from these troubles, was...
I Will Marry When I Want is one of the famed Kenyan playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s most revered plays. Set in post-independence Kenya, the play is a searing look at the legacies of colonialism and the myriad difficulties Kenyans faced in the...
Gennifer Albin's first novel, Crewel, explores one girl's experience navigating the dysfunctional social and political systems of a completely controlled dystopian society. Published in 2012, Crewel is the first book in the Crewel trilogy. It...
Published in 1993, Freak the Mighty is a YA novel written by American author Rodman Philbrick. The book is 160 pages in its original print, and follows the endeavors of a boy named Kevin who is nicknamed "Freak" by his classmates.
The protagonist,...
Aphra Behn’s 50-page novella The Fair Jilt details the rather bizarre incidents involved with an incredibly beautiful and seductively dangerous femme fatale named Miranda with a penchant for bringing about death and devastation upon her admirers....
Published in 1939, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was met with immediate critical and popular success when it first appeared. An American realist novel set during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck's work documents hard times...
What is the What is a 2006 novel written by Dave Eggers. While Eggars takes full authorship of the book, the story is the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. Deng is a Sudanese refugee and was a member of the Lost Boys of Sudan.
After...
No Longer at Ease is Chinua Achebe's second book and part of what is commonly referred to as the African Trilogy; this includes Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi. Some critics discern...
Many critics during Mikhail Lermontov's time felt that he created Pechorin, the main character of A Hero of Our Time, in his own likeness. Besides similarities in age and occupation, characters in Pechorin's life resemble individuals in...
Charles de Secondat was a French nobleman: the Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu. Historians and literary students simply refer to him as "Montesquieu".
Born in the southern part of France, Charles de Secondat lived from 1689 to 1755....
What We All Long For is a novel written by the Canadian writer Dionne Brad. While she is generally known for her lyrical work, her novel quickly became popular not only in Canada but also internationally. What we long for is the author’s first...
Touching Spirit Bear, published in 2001, is an account of a young boy's experience with violence, forgiveness, and nature as he is banished to a remote Alaskan island as punishment for a violent crime. During this time, he is confronted by a rare...