The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.
The magic of spring, the gift of life and water in a dry land, and the power of kids to make a difference in our world. Eleven-year-old Shanna finds a secret pool on a class field trip to the "waste land" near her new school. The land nearby is dry and covered with scrub brush, but in a hidden pocket there is a wild profusion of flowers, trees and life around a trickle of water. Shanna's teacher says the waste land is scheduled to be bulldozed for a building project and the tiny spring will be destroyed. But Shanna discovers something amazing that few outside her goddess-oriented family would believe-a magical protector of the spring, maybe even a real fairy. Shanna and her eight-year-old brother Rye decide they have to do something to save the spring and its magical resident. Amid a sharing of the festival of Beltane, the kids learn how passion and action can blossom to make positive change. This story is partly based on events from the author's childhood, involving an endangered spring in dry country. But it is also an integral part of the Children's Wheel of the Year, a collection of stories about the adventures of Shanna and Rye which make the concepts and themes of seasonal celebration come alive for children.
A guide for families of all backgrounds to celebrate cultural heritage and embrace inclusivity in the home and beyond. Gone are the days when socially conscious parents felt comfortable teaching their children to merely tolerate others. Instead, they are looking for a way to authentically embrace the fullness of their diverse communities. A Place to Belong offers a path forward for families to honor their cultural heritage and champion diversity in the context of daily family life by: • Fostering open dialogue around discrimination, race, gender, disability, and class • Teaching “hard history” in an age-appropriate way • Curating a diverse selection of books and media choices in which children see themselves and people who are different • Celebrating cultural heritage through art, music, and poetry • Modeling activism and engaging in community service projects as a family Amber O’Neal Johnston, a homeschooling mother of four, shows parents of all backgrounds how to create a home environment where children feel secure in their own personhood and culture, enabling them to better understand and appreciate people who are racially and culturally different. A Place to Belong gives parents the tools to empower children to embrace their unique identities while feeling beautifully tethered to their global community.
Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge.
What if your very existence threatened the heart of power? It's the 21st century, right now, in America and on the surface everything looks just fine. But the commonly accepted image of society is an illusion. A clandestine force usurps the desires of individuals, and those who won't conform must be crushed to preserve the appearance of free will. Aranka is just a sixteen-year-old girl but a fluke in her genes makes her a threat. Those with power will stop at nothing to protect their supremacy. She is kidnapped by doctors who claim she's sick but it's only a matter of time before it's her turn to die. A diverse band of outlaws from every corner of the globe represent the only hope of resistance. Kenyen, a young doctor, infiltrates to the heart of the oppression but he can't stop the terror. He just wants to save one life. In the process he uncovers "the Seed," the first flicker of hope in a thousand years. The Soul and the Seed is the first book in The Kyrennei Series - a dystopian fantasy thriller of today's world. The second book is The Fear and the Solace.
The third novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Next series is “great fun—especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy” (The Washington Post Book World). “Delightful . . . the well of Fforde’s imagination is bottomless.”—People “Fforde creates a literary reality that is somewhere amid a triangulation of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Miss Marple.”—The Denver Post With the 923rd Annual Bookworld Awards just around the corner and an unknown villain wreaking havoc in Jurisfiction, what could possibly be next for Detective Thursday Next? Protecting the world’s greatest literature—not to mention keeping up with Miss Havisham—is tiring work for an expectant mother. And Thursday can definitely use a respite. So what better hideaway than inside the unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliché-ridden pulp mystery in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well itself is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like Caversham Heights—are scrapped for salvage. To top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe—least of all Thursday. Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR • LOST IN A GOOD BOOK • THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS • SOMETHING ROTTEN • FIRST AMONG SEQUELS • ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING • THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT
In the seventh grade, Todd Rose was suspended-not for the first time-for throwing six stink bombs at the blackboard, where his art teacher stood with his back to the class. At eighteen, he was a high school dropout, stocking shelves at a department store for $4.25 an hour. Today, Rose is a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Square Peg illuminates the struggles of millions of bright young children -- and their frustrated parents and teachers--who are stuck in a one-size-fits-all school system that fails to approach the student as an individual. Rose shares his own incredible journey from troubled childhood to Harvard, seamlessly integrating cutting-edge research in neuroscience and psychology along with advances in the field of education, to ultimately provide a roadmap for parents and teachers of kids who are the casualties of America's antiquated school system. With a distinguished blend of humor, humility, and practical advice for nurturing children who are a poor fit in conventional schools, Square Peg is a game-changing manifesto that provides groundbreaking insight into how we can get the most out of all the students in our classrooms, and why today's dropouts could be tomorrow's innovators.
Ten-year-old Shanna has an uneasy feeling about a stranger her seven-year-old brother Rye met on way home from school. Is she just a silly chicken or is this what Momma calls intuition? Shanna and Rye are also disturbed by an angry presence in the shadows under some pine trees and by a mysterious raven. Their mother shows them how to use the magic of Imbolc to protect themselves and stand up for their beliefs. This is the first book in the Children's Wheel of the Year series for earth-centered, Pagan and Wiccan families. It is also a useful book for anyone teaching children about multicultural tolerance and about how to use intuition rather than prejudice to judge potentially dangerous situations.
Lexi’s Reminders * Work. * Don’t think about your birthday tomorrow. Or debt, your crappy apartment, and nonexistent social life. * Re-stock wine and ice cream. * Die in a raging blaze of humiliation when the super-hot and very delicious fireman waiting in your office is not, in fact, a strip-o-gram birthday present. * Reschedule the fire safety inspection you 100 per cent failed because of said humiliation. * Agree to fake date Mr. Not-A-Strip-O-Gram-Fireman to help him win a bet. * Note: do not fall for anyone known as “One Night O’Neil.” Red flag. * Remember that this is fake. Even if his very talented, very real lips are doing sexy things you definitely like. * Do not bend that one tiny rule. (Well, maybe just a little bit.) * Don’t be too surprised that when you bend a rule, something is bound to break... Each book in The Mile High Firefighters series is STANDALONE: * The Dating Dilemma * The Wedding Dilemma * The Firefighter’s Dilemma
What if you could make everything you eat more delicious? As creator of the WNYC podcast The Sporkful and host of the Cooking Channel web series You're Eating It Wrong, Dan Pashman is obsessed with doing just that. Eat More Better weaves science and humor into a definitive, illustrated guidebook for anyone who loves food. But this book isn’t for foodies. It’s for eaters. In the bestselling tradition of Alton Brown’s Good Eats and M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating, Pashman analyzes everyday foods in extraordinary detail to answer some of the most pressing questions of our time, including: Is a cheeseburger better when the cheese is on the bottom, closer to your tongue, to accentuate cheesy goodness? What are the ethics of cherry-picking specific ingredients from a snack mix? And what role does surface-area-to-volume ratio play in fried food enjoyment and ice cube selection? Written with an infectious blend of humor and smarts, Eat More Better is a tongue-in-cheek textbook that teaches readers to eat for maximum pleasure. Chapters are divided into subjects like engineering, philosophy, economics, and physical science, and feature hundreds of drawings, charts, and infographics to illustrate key concepts like The Porklift—a bacon lattice structure placed beneath a pancake stack to elevate it off the plate, thus preventing the bottom pancake from becoming soggy with syrup and imbuing the bacon with maple-based deliciousness. Eat More Better combines Pashman’s award-winning writing with his unparalleled field research, collected over thirty-seven years of eating at least three times a day. It delivers entertaining, fascinating, and practical insights that will satisfy your mind and stomach, and change the way you look at food forever. Read this book and every bite you take will be better.