Best Selling Books by Miriam Cohen

Second-grader Jim isn''t sure what he wants to be for Halloween but he knows he wants to be scary.

Jim''s anxieties on his first day of school are happily forgotten when he makes a new friend.

When the lady from the principal''s office brings a test for the first grade class, the children have trouble with the test and feel bad. Fortunately, their teacher explains that a test doesn''t reflect important things like creativity, kindness, and friendship.

When the light in the classroom incubator burns out, two friends are brought together again as they act to save the lives of the unhatched chickens.

At an end-of-the-year beach picnic, Anna Maria, Jim, and the other children realize they will miss First Grade and their teacher, but decide they are ready for Second Grade after all.

Provides an original approach to the emerging practice of reparations for international crimes and a fresh analysis of the recent jurisprudence at the International Criminal Court.

Cohen examines shifting patterns in the family roles, work lives, and schooling of two generations of Italian-American women, paying particular attention to the importance of these women''s pragmatic daily choices.

The narrator of this story idolizes his older brother. But when big brother leaves for the army, the narrator tries his best to fill big brother''s shoes for his younger brother.

It''s Valentine''s Day and the first graders are excited about the cards they will receive. Their teacher requests everybody in class to send a Valentine''s card to everybody else so that nobody feels left out. However, in their eagerness to create the best cards the first graders remember to make cards only for their best friends! This upsets George who does not get as many Valentines as everybody else. Luckily, his friends know just how to cheer him up and as they play music and dance around him, it is one happy Valentine''s Day party for everybody after all!

Jacob no longer rides on his father’s back. He is now a big brother. He is helping his daddy today, pushing his little sister in a stroller to the park. His little sister is as cute as a button, but my, she is a wild thing! She runs everywhere in the park. Jacob can’t take his eyes off her for a minute, running fast to catch her.

Jim is upset because he can''t hang upside down on the jungle gym without holding on. Everyone else can. He is also shorter than his classmates and no one wants to join his club. Elinor Woodman, the new girl from Chicago, says, "So what?" Jim is mad at Elinor and wishes he were more like everyone else. Will he find that Elinor was right after all?

An account of the Holocaust experiences of Chanah Kaufman (née Zucker), born in 1929 to an Orthodox Jewish family, related from the viewpoint of the young girl that she was at the time. In Brussels, her parents paid a non-Jew to hide Chanah in her basement. Subsequently she was taken to the Misericorde convent in Leuven, where she and other Jewish girls were hidden throughout the war. The nuns pressured her to convert, convincing her that otherwise the Nazis might kill her along with those who gave her shelter. However, inwardly she always remained Jewish. When the war ended, the nuns did not inform their wards, hoping that the Jewish children they saved would remain Catholics. Chanah was eventually taken to a Jewish orphanage, the Tiefenbrunner Home. Her parents and brother did not survive. She immigrated to Israel after the war. An appendix on pp. 322-344 discusses the role of the general and Jewish undergrounds in Belgium in hiding Jewish children and returning them to their people after the war.

Impatient to begin reading, a first-grader doesn''t realize that there is more to reading than books.

The first grade is going on a trip to the museum. It''s an exciting day for everybody. The teacher says the most important thing is to stick together. So when Danny says he knows where the dinosaur is, Jim and his friends follow. The only problem is, the friends have stayed together, but somehow the teacher and the rest of the class got lost!

When Jim was in kindergarten the art teacher said, "Dear, your man has no neck." And she showed him the right way to draw -- right on his picture. Jim knew then and there that he was no good at art. But next year the first grade got a new art teacher. And Jim found out that he wasn''t so bad after all.Once again Miriam Cohen and Lillian Hoban share their insight and empathy in a book young readers (and young artists) will respond to with unqualified enthusiasm.

Julia Lathrop was a social servant, government activist, and social scientist who expanded notions of women''s proper roles in public life during the early 1900s. Appointed as chief of the U.S. Children''s Bureau, created in 1912 to promote child welfare, she was the first woman to head a United States federal agency. Throughout her life, Lathrop challenged the social norms of the time and became instrumental in shaping Progressive reform. She began her career at Hull House in Chicago, the nation''s most famous social settlement, where she worked to improve public and private welfare for poor people, helped establish America''s first juvenile court, and pushed for immigrant rights. Lathrop was also co-founder of one of America''s first schools of social work. Later in life she became a leader in the League of Women Voters and an advisor on child welfare to the League of Nations. Following Lathrop''s life from her childhood and college education through her social service and government work, this book gives an overview of her enduring contribution to progressive politics, women''s employment, and women''s education. It also offers a look at how one influential woman worked within the bounds of traditional conventions about gender, race, and class, and also pushed against them.

When Jim''s dog is killed, the other first graders experience with him his natural reactions to death.

Presents the latest information on the physical and psychological effects of smoking, the reasons people smoke, and the treatment for quitting this drug addiction.

When first grade plans a costume party, Anna Maria dresses as a princess, Willy is a clown, and Jim is "the Strongest Man in the World." But when the third-grade bully arrives and tries to ruin the fun, Jim saves the day when he accidentally takes on the bully, proving that he really is a strong man!