ABBY LINFORD isn't your ordinary 9-year-old. She's a quiet and a bit more mature than the other girls at Van Horne Elementary. This isn't Abby's fault however. When she was just a 3-year-old her father passed away which resulted in a little girl that had to grow up way too fast. Because of this, Abby is considered a bit of an outcast from the other kids at school. Then one day she meets Issac, a new boy in the neighborhood. He himself is a bit of an outsider and this seems like a natural friendship. That is, until Abby's discovery that Issac is imaginary. "I'm too old for an imaginary...

The Creolization of American Culture examines the artworks, letters, sketchbooks, music collection, and biography of the painter William Sidney Mount (1807 1868) as a lens through which to see the multiethnic antebellum world that gave birth to blackface minstrelsy. As a young man living in the multiethnic working-class community of New York's Lower East Side, Mount took part in the black-white musical interchange his paintings depict. An avid musician and tune collector as well as an artist, he was the among the first to depict vernacular fiddlers, banjo players, and dancers precisely and...