CONTEST CLOSED

Thanks to everyone who entered for your enthusiastic response!  Our three winners are:

Susan Smoaks

jkeller

and Renee G.

I’ll be emailing you shortly!  Please send me your mailing address within 72 hours – thanks!

The 2009 Nobel Prize announcements are still fresh in our memories. With this year’s surprising choice of President Obama as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the time is ripe to share the history of the Peace Prize with our children. Whether taught in a social studies/current events setting or around the kitchen table at dinner, Alfred Nobel’s name is now much more closely associated with his prizes than it is with the invention of dynamite.

In January of this year, Sleeping Bear Press released Alfred Nobel: The Man Behind the Peace Prize to familiarize young readers with Nobel’s life: his love for literature, poetry, the sciences, and mankind, and the bequeathal that continues to finance the prizes to this day — over 100 years later.

Multi-genre children’s author Kathy-Jo Wargin turns her accomplished pen (over 30 children’s titles) to the task of relating Nobel’s life and accomplishments to primary-aged readers. Using vivid, action filled prose; Wargin deftly sculpts the emotional contours of Nobel’s life, clearly displaying his idealism, work-ethic, and loneliness despite his great wealth.

Following Nobel through his early experiments with nitroglycerin, his blasting-cap explosive model, the loss of his brother Emil and four workers in a workshop accident, the search for a safer form of explosive, the invention of dynamite, his fame, and death, children will be equipped with a solid peg upon which to hang further knowledge about Nobel’s life and the prizes as they grow.

Zachary Pullen’s rich, detailed oil paintings straddle the divide between portrait and caricature, as Nobel’s larger-than-life facial expressions dominate many of the pages. Wide-eyed-wonder, intense concentration, studious, and reflective; Nobel fills the carefully arranged pages to bursting. Pullen’s supplementary “scientific notes” illustrate the simple operation of Nobel’s nitroglycerin explosive with blasting cap, and his safer compound — dynamite.

Intended for peaceful use in the construction industry but appropriated as weaponry, the invention he hoped would prevent wars by displaying the mighty destructive power in explosives only spurred further violence. His consequent public portrayal as a man who benefited financially from war and death grieved him, and no doubt gave rise to the establishment of the Peace Prize.

After reading Alfred Nobel through with my children, my six-year-old instantly asked for a repeat reading. She also pestered me to read the complete list of Nobel Peace Prize recipients from 1901 — 2008 aloud to her. Simply presented as a list, I was surprised that those who’d received the prize so captivated her, but she insisted, swept into Nobel’s vision of a better world.

Sleeping Bear Press’ free downloadable teaching guide for this title includes activities in geography, science, math, language arts, social studies, and more, making Alfred Nobel the base for a comprehensive unit study revolving around the Peace Prizes, and issues of social responsibility.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM OR AMAZON.CA!

CONTEST DETAILS:

Thanks to Sleeping Bear Press I have three (3) copies of Alfred Nobel: The Man Behind the Peace Prize to give away to 3 winners in the US/Canada!  To enter, visit Sleeping Bear Press and let me know the name of an additional title that you’d like to read!

For additional entries:

1. Subscribe to this blog for updates – see the left hand sidebar. Leave an additional comment letting me know you’ve subscribed (or if you already subscribe).

2. Write a post on your blog promoting and linking to this contest. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

3. Add the Quiverfull Family button (see the code box in the right hand sidebar under BUTTON UP!) to your blog’s sidebar, or let me know if you already have the button displayed. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

4. Digg, Stumble, Tweet, Facebook or otherwise share this post on a social networking site. Leave an additional comment indicating how you shared this post.

5. Follow me on Twitter or let me know if you are an existing follower.

Each additional step taken counts for 1 additional entry. A total of 6 entries are available if you complete all of these steps. Please leave a separate comment for each entry!

The contest will close at 12 a.m. MST on Monday, November 02nd, 2009. Three (3) winners will be randomly drawn for Alfred Nobel: The Man Behind the Peace Prize on Tuesday, November 03rd, 2009 and notified by email. Please fill your email address in the comment form when you are completing your comment so that I can contact you. The winners must respond with a mailing address within 72 hours of my email, or new winners will be chosen. This contest is open to those living in the US/Canada.

I look forward to seeing God bless 3 readers with these lovely books to enjoy with their children! Thanks for entering.