David Homel

Alan Turing, subject of the Oscar-winning 2014 film The Imitation Game, was the brilliant mathematician solicited by the British government to help decipher messages sent by Germany's Enigma machines during World War II. The work of Turing and his colleagues at Hut 8 created what became known as the "bombe" which descrambled the German navy's messages and saved countless lives and millions in British goods and merchandise.Despite his heroics, however, Turing led a secret life as a homosexual. After a young man with whom he was involved stole money from him, he went to the police, where he confessed his homosexuality; he was charged with gross indecency, and only avoided prison after agreeing to undergo chemical castration. Tragically, he committed suicide two years later.Authors Liberge and Delalande used once-classified information only available in 2012 to create a biography that is scientifically rigorous yet understandable for the lay reader. It's also a meticulous depiction of World War II, and an intimate portrayal of a gay man living in an intolerant world.Delving deeper into Turing's life than The Imitation Game, this graphic novel is a fascinating portrait of this brilliant, complicated, and troubled man.Eric Liberge has authored or co-authored over thirty graphic novels in his native France, including books on Versailles and World War II.Arnaud Delalande is the author of nine novels as well as numerous graphic novels in France, including Le Piege de Dante (Dante's Trap), translated into twenty languages.

Husband-and-wife team Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel create a sequel to the enormously popular Travels with My Family and On the Road Again! — but with a twist. This time Charlie and his family stay home, and find adventure in their own Montreal neighborhood. Charlie can’t wait for school to be over. But he’s wondering what particular vacation ordeal his parents have lined up for the family this summer. Canoeing with alligators in Okefenokee? Getting caught in the middle of a revolutionary shootout in Mexico? Or perhaps another trip abroad? Turns out, this summer the family is staying put, in their hometown. Montreal, Canada. A “staycation,” his parents call it. Charlie is doubtful at first but, ever resourceful, decides that there may be adventures and profit to be had in his own neighborhood. And there are. A campout in the backyard brings him in contact with more than one kind of wildlife, a sudden summer storm floods the expressway, various pet-sitting gigs turn almost-disastrous, and a baseball game goes awry when various intruders storm the infield — from would-be medieval knights and an over-eager ice-cream vendor to a fly-ball-catching Doberman. Then of course there’s looking after his little brother, Max, who is always a catastrophe-in-the-making. Key Text Features illustrations key text features Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.9 Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series).

Even for an experienced traveler like Charlie, Cuba is a place unlike any he has visited before — an island full of surprises, secrets and puzzling contradictions. When Charlie’s artist mother is invited to visit a school in Cuba, the whole family goes along on the trip. But the island they discover is a far cry from the all-inclusive resorts that Charlie has heard his friends talk about. Charlie has never visited a country as strange and puzzling as Cuba — a country where he often feels like a time traveler. Where Havana’s grand Hotel Nacional sits next to buildings that seem to be crumbling before his very eyes. Where the streets are filled with empty storefronts and packs of wild dogs, but where flowers and sherbet-colored houses may lie around the next corner, and music is everywhere. Where there are many different kinds of walls — from Havana’s famous sea wall to the invisible ones that seem aimed at keeping tourists and locals apart. Then the family heads “off the beaten track,” traveling by hot, dusty bus to Viñales, where Charlie makes friends with Lázaro, who often flies from Miami to visit his Cuban relatives. The boys ride a horse bareback, find a secret cache of rifles inside a little green mountain and go swimming with small albino fish in an underground cave. A rent-a-wreck takes the family into the countryside, where they find an abandoned hotel inhabited by goats, and a modern resort filled with tourists. And as he goes from one strange and marvelous escapade to another, Charlie finds that his expectations about a place and its people are overturned again and again. Key Text Features illustrations Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6 Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.

This riveting, beautifully produced graphic memoir tells the story of the early years of the Vietnam war as seen through the eyes of a young boy named Marco, the son of a Vietnamese diplomat and his French wife. The book opens in America, where the boy's father works for the South Vietnam embassy; there the boy is made to feel self-conscious about his otherness thanks to schoolmates who play war games against the so-called "Commies." The family is called back to Saigon in 1961, where the father becomes Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem's personal interpreter; as the growing conflict between North and South intensifies, so does turmoil within Marco's family, as his mother struggles to grapple with bipolar disorder.Visually powerful and emotionally potent, Such a Lovely Little War is both a large-scale and intimate study of the Vietnam war as seen through the eyes of the Vietnamese: a turbulent national history interwined with an equally traumatic familial one.Marcelino Truong is an illustrator, painter, and author. Born the son of a Vietnamese diplomat in 1957 in the Philippines, he and his family moved to America (where his father worked for the embassy) and then to Vietnam at the outset of the war. He earned degrees in law at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and English literature at the Sorbonne. He lives in Paris, France.

Charlie and his family are about to embark on another trip, to another out-of-the-way place off the beaten path. This time they are heading to an island in Croatia, a country Charlie has never even heard of. An incredibly beautiful country that lives in the shadow of war and conflict.Even for a seasoned traveler like Charlie, Croatia is a very different experience. To travel in a country where the language is completely unfamiliar and half the words have no vowels. To visit remote villages where the Internet is so slow, you might as well not have it at all. Where goats are a traffic-calming device, red cliffs loom like fortresses over an impossibly blue sea, and luggage porters are a line of women pushing wheelbarrows.Still, Charlie and his little brother, Max, manage to find adventure wherever they go. There’s cliff diving, pigs on spits, hair-raising ferry crossings and snake juice for breakfast (“Breakfast in Croatia — at your own risk!”). And there’s a sober side to their adventures this time, too. A friend who was sentenced to Croatia’s version of Alcatraz, despite committing no crime. An unsettling encounter with the Hermit of Vrgada. The sight of a half-destroyed village divided by a war that nobody won. Charlie finds out that this area of the world has a long and troubled history, that wars are complicated, and that long-time feuds can continue to divide neighbors generations later. But he also discovers that you don’t need to speak the same language to communicate with people. Not when you’re having a party in a field, surrounded by goats and dancing in the glow of car headlights with the radio blaring out Croatian music. A warm, funny and thought-provoking book that celebrates a child’s love of adventure and boundless curiosity about the world.

In the sequel to Travels With My Family, the family is on the road again -- this time to spend a year in a tiny village in southern France. They experiences the spring migration of sheep up to the mountain pastures, the annual running of the bulls (in which Charlie's father is trapped in a phone booth by a raging bull), and other adventures large and small. Most of all, though, Charlie and his little brother, Max, grow fond of their new neighbors -- the man who steals ducks from the local river, the neighbor's dog who sleeps right in the middle of the street and their new friends Rachid and Ahmed, who teach them how to play soccer in the village square.

Charlie and his family are taking another trip ? this time to spend a year in a tiny village in southern France. Typically suspicious and resentful at first (they're going all the way to France, and they're not even going to be living in Paris!), big brother Charlie soon finds himself drawn into life in sleepy Celeriac. The family experiences the spring migration of sheep up to the mountain pastures, Dad is threatened by a raging bull, a spring flood makes a mess, and everyone forages for snails and mushrooms and has other adventures large and small. Most of all, though, Charlie and his little brother, Max, make friends of their eccentric new neighbors ? the man who steals ducks from the local river, the neighbor's dog who sleeps in the middle of the street, and their new pals Rachid and Ahmed, who teach them how to play soccer using the open front door of the Catholic church as the goal! It's enough to make Charlie wonder if it's really so important to get to Paris. On the Road Again’s mix of rollicking humor, comic characters, and universal concerns like making new friends and living in a new place are a welcome addition for Gay's many fans.

Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel combine their writing and illustrating talents with their own family memories to produce a very unique travelogue. Family vacations are supposed to be something to look forward to. Unless, that is, your parents have a habit of turning every outing into a risky proposition -- by accident, of course. So instead of dream vacations to Disney World and motels with swimming pools, these parents are always looking for that out-of-the-way destination where other tourists don't go. Their adventures involve eating grasshoppers in Mexico, forgetting the tide schedule while collecting sand dollars off the coast of Georgia, and mistaking alligators for logs in the middle of Okefenokee Swamp. Travels with My Family is told from the point of view of a long-suffering big brother who must fulfill many roles in this eccentric family: keep little brother out of trouble, humor artist Mom, and discourage Dad from pulling out the road map to search for yet another off-the-beaten-track destination. Husband-and-wife team Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel and have combined their prodigious writing and illustrating talents with their own family memories to produce a very different travelogue. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions).

What would happen if the Messiah was a woman, and not the man people have always taken her to be? What if she showed up in rural America, instead of riding triumphantly into Jerusalem? If she preached moral license, not repentance? All of that does happen, and more, in this startlingly original, mischievous and penetrating novel by David Homel. In Homel s tale of theology and erotics, Nathan Gazarra, a Hebew peddler, travels the backroads, from town to town, among tobacco-growers, mystics and illiterates, selling notions and sundries. While he s at it, Gazarra mixes in a little preaching, because he has a secret, burning wish: to be the one to discover the Messiah in this most unlikely of places. When he meets up with Sabbitha Hunter, a woman of disturbing beauty on the run from her home town, he decides to make her his Chosen One. Sabbitha takes the mantle of the Messiah, because with it comes the kind of power she had always dreamed of. When she invites the townsfolk and country people to follow her into heroic sinning, all hell breaks loose. But it takes a lot of energy and imagination to sin and keep on sinning. And when Sabbitha s followers start getting rough, even the Messiah s life will be in danger. David Homel has created an irreverent, earthy, astonishing story, full of insight into the nature of eviland love."