Every parent dreams of having a happy, healthy child. What happens when these dreams are shattered by a physical or cognitive disability? A Different Kind of Perfect offers comfort, consolation, and wisdom from parents who have been there—and are finding their way through. The writings collected here are grouped into chapters reflecting the progressive stages of many parents' emotional journeys, starting with grief, denial, and anger and moving towards acceptance, empowerment, laughter, and even joy. Each chapter opens with an introduction by Neil Nicoll, a child and family psychologist who specializes in development disorders.
A Different Kind of Perfect is a story about parents choosing a child with Down syndrome and the implications of that choice. It's a story about faith and blessings in an imperfect world that craves and idealizes perfection. It's also a story about finding God's perfection through love. Written with an honest voice, George Michael Lane draws the reader into his family's personal story. The struggle with whether or not to terminate the pregnancy is honest and will hit a nerve with a contemporary audience.
The TikTok sensation Addicted Series concludes with Some Kind of Perfect, now in a print edition with special bonus material! Falling in love was just the beginning. Lily and Lo are childhood best friends and soul mates. Ryke and Daisy are wild risk-takers and flirty adventurers. Connor and Rose are genius rivals and intellectual teammates. After ten years of laughter. Of heartache. And love. They’re all back one final time.
In this riveting and startling companion to "Impulse," northern Nevada teenagers Cara, Kendra, Sean, and Andre, tell in their own voices of their very different paths toward perfection and how their goals change when tragedy strikes.
All natural curves and shapes, and many artificial ones, manifest such "perfect form" because physical principles can be expressed as a statement requiring some important physical quantity to be mathematically maximum, minimum, or stationary.
Millions of women across America have had it up to here with trying to have it all-while never finding the time to appreciate what is right in front of them. This engaging new book from a fresh new voice reminds women of the wonderful life choices they have already made, and helps them to figure out where they want to go from here. It offers all women, of all ages, a chance to rewrite their "to-do" list, and put themselves at the top. Forget Perfect is a smart and funny look at how trying to be perfect actually gets in the way of happiness, and how letting go of being perfect means raising standards to live life to the fullest and appreciate the things that really matter.
“This is a joyful, spirited gem of a book, as bracing and glorious as a perfect stretch of ice.” –Newbery Honor author Joyce Sidman With the first ice—a skim on a sheep pail so thin it breaks when touched—one family’s winter begins in earnest. Next comes ice like panes of glass. And eventually, skating ice! Take a literary skate over field ice and streambed, through sleeping orchards and beyond. The first ice, the second ice, the third ice . . . perfect ice . . . the last ice . . . Twelve kinds of ice are carved into twenty nostalgic vignettes, illustrated in elegantly scratched detail by the award-winning Barbara McClintock.
Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. She can practically feel the keys under her flying fingers; she can hear the audience's applause. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she'll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall. But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn't the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn't the only part of Zoe's life in Michigan that's off-kilter, what with Mom constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day. Yet when Zoe enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, she finds that life is full of surprises—and that perfection may be even better when it's just a little off center. This ebook includes a sample chapter of Hound Dog True.
A spellbinding novel that will resonate with readers of Mark Haddon, Louise Erdrich, and John Irving, Perfect tells the story of a young boy who is thrown into the murky, difficult realities of the adult world with far-reaching consequences. Byron Hemmings wakes to a morning that looks like any other: his school uniform draped over his wooden desk chair, his sister arguing over the breakfast cereal, the click of his mother’s heels as she crosses the kitchen. But when the three of them leave home, driving into a dense summer fog, the morning takes an unmistakable turn. In one terrible moment, something happens, something completely unexpected and at odds with life as Byron understands it. While his mother seems not to have noticed, eleven-year-old Byron understands that from now on nothing can be the same. What happened and who is to blame? Over the days and weeks that follow, Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Unable to trust his parents, he confides in his best friend, James, and together they concoct a plan. . . . As she did in her debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce has imagined bewitching characters who find their ordinary lives unexpectedly thrown into chaos, who learn that there are times when children must become parents to their parents, and who discover that in confronting the hard truths about their pasts, they will forge unexpected relationships that have profound and surprising impacts. Brimming with love, forgiveness, and redemption, Perfect will cement Rachel Joyce’s reputation as one of fiction’s brightest talents. Praise for Perfect “Touching, eccentric . . . Joyce does an inviting job of setting up these mysterious circumstances, and of drawing Byron’s magical closeness with Diana.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Haunting . . . compelling.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “[Joyce] triumphantly returns with Perfect. . . . As Joyce probes the souls of Diana, Byron and Jim, she reveals—slowly and deliberately, as if peeling back a delicate onion skin—the connection between the two stories, creating a poignant, searching tale.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Perfect touches on class, mental illness, and the ways a psyche is formed or broken. It has the tenor of a horror film, and yet at the end, in some kind of contortionist trick, the narrative unfolds into an unexpected burst of redemption. [Verdict:] Buy It.”—New York “Joyce’s dark, quiet follow-up to her successful debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, could easily become a book club favorite. . . . Perfect is the kind of book that blossoms under thoughtful examination, its slow tendencies redeemed by moments of loveliness and insight. However sad, Joyce’s messages—about the limitations of time and control, the failures of adults and the fears of children, and our responsibility for our own imprisonment and freedom—have a gentle ring of truth to them.”—The Washington Post “There is a poignancy to Joyce’s narrative that makes for her most memorable writing.”—NPR’s All Things Considered
From author Nikki Ash comes a roommates-to-lovers, single dad romance...GeorgiaI'm surrounded by love, yet have no one to call my own.But then Chase, my new roommate, is suddenly there.He could be the perfect guy for me, if he wasn't nursing a broken heart.The more time I waste looking for love, the more I realize that what I want has been right in front of me all along.Falling for Chase is the easiest thing I've ever done, but fighting for him is the hardest.Because his past isn't finished with him- not even close.ChaseLove finds you when you least expect it.I was only looking for a place to crash after having my heart ripped out, instead I found someone who turned my world upside down.A girl like Georgia was looking for happily ever after, and so far my life had been anything but a fairytale.I can walk into a burning building without thinking twice, but the spark I feel with her scares the hell out of me.I can't keep watching her look for someone else-not when I'm falling for her.Just when everything starts to fall into place, I'm reminded just how messy and imperfect life can be.When the smoke clears, it's Georgia by my side. Life might not be perfect- but our love could be.
