Getting shipped off to live with his uncle Race was the best thing that ever happened to fifteen-year-old Cody. Then a wreck at the speedway nearly ruined everything. Cody’s making every effort to get his life back on track—writing for the school paper, searching for the perfect girlfriend, and counting the days until he gets his drivers’ license—but there’s no escaping the nightmares that haunt him. A chance to build his own car seems like the perfect distraction. Until Cody realizes he’ll have to live up to Race’s legendary status. But that’s the least of his worries, considering he doesn’t have his dad’s permission. All he has to do is the impossible: keep Race from discovering his lie until he can convince his dad that racing’s safe. Yeah, sure. That’ll be easy.
Being shipped off to live with his uncle was the best thing that ever happened to Cody, but then a wreck at the speedway nearly ruined everything. Though he’s working hard to get his life back on track, there’s no escaping the nightmares that haunt him. A chance to build his own car seems like the perfect distraction until he realizes he’ll have to live up to his uncle’s legendary reputation as a driver. But that’s the least of Cody’s worries, considering he doesn’t have his father’s permission. All he has to do is keep his uncle in the dark until he can convince his dad that racing’s safe. Yeah, sure. That’ll be easy. This inspirational sequel to Running Wide Open is a story of integrity and true loyalty. Popular with both teens and adults, it’s perfect for fans of Chris Crutcher, Laurie Halse Anderson, and John Green. Book 2 in the Full Throttle series
A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Rex Pickett's Sideways is also a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships. The basis for the 2004 comedy-drama road movie of the same name starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. Sideways is the story of two friends-Miles and Jack-going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: pinot, putting, and prowling bars. In the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez wine country. For Jack, the tasting tour is Seven Days to D-Day, his final stretch of freedom. For Miles--who has divorced his wife, is facing an uncertain career and has lost his passion for living-the trip is a week long opportunity to evaluate his past, his future and himself.
There has been a terrible mistake. Instead of having thirty classrooms side by side, Wayside School is thirty storeys high! (The builder said he was sorry.) Perhaps that's why all sorts of strange and unusual things keep happening – especially in Mrs Jewls's classroom on the very top floor. There's the terrifying Mrs Gorf, who gets an unusually fruity comeuppance; Terrible Todd, who always gets sent home early; and Mauricia, who has a strange ice-cream addiction. Meanwhile, John can only read upside down, and Leslie is determined to sell her own toes. From top to bottom, Wayside is packed with quirky and hilarious characters who are all brought to life in this new edition with delightful illustrations by Aleksei Bitskoff throughout. This is an unmissable, irrepressible story of mixed-up mayhem from Louis Sachar, the bestselling author of Holes.
Abner and Ian are stuck sideways in this clever picture book created by a bestselling, acclaimed author and cartoonist--and perfect for fans of Elephant & Piggie and Press Here. Abner and Ian are stuck sideways on the pages of their debut picture book. They can't start the story like this! Ian is trying to be brave, despite his dizziness and fear of heights. But don't worry, because Abner has a plan: Readers will shake and turn the book until they get right side up! Sounds easy, right? Think again, because the real solution may be the opposite of what you'd expect. With the odd couple wit of Elephant & Piggie, the interactive appeal of Press Here, and a timeless charm all their own, Abner & Ian offer readers of all ages eighty pages of fast-paced fun with a surprising and rewarding twist.
A primer in visual intelligence and an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination is comprised of an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, trivia, oddities, serious science, jokes and memories, all concerned with the limitless resources of the human mind.
Children are thoroughly, shockingly queer, as Kathryn Bond Stockton explains in The Queer Child, where she examines children’s strangeness, even some children’s subliminal “gayness,” in the twentieth century. Estranging, broadening, darkening forms of children emerge as this book illuminates the child queered by innocence, the child queered by color, the child queered by Freud, the child queered by money, and the grown homosexual metaphorically seen as a child (or as an animal), alongside the gay child. What might the notion of a “gay” child do to conceptions of the child? How might it outline the pain, closets, emotional labors, sexual motives, and sideways movements that attend all children, however we deny it? Engaging and challenging the work of sociologists, legal theorists, and historians, Stockton coins the term “growing sideways” to describe ways of growing that defy the usual sense of growing “up” in a linear trajectory toward full stature, marriage, reproduction, and the relinquishing of childish ways. Growing sideways is a mode of irregular growth involving odd lingerings, wayward paths, and fertile delays. Contending that children’s queerness is rendered and explored best in fictional forms, including literature, film, and television, Stockton offers dazzling readings of works ranging from novels by Henry James, Radclyffe Hall, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, and Vladimir Nabokov to the movies Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Hanging Garden, Heavenly Creatures, Hoop Dreams, and the 2005 remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The result is a fascinating look at children’s masochism, their interactions with pedophiles and animals, their unfathomable, hazy motives (leading them at times into sex, seduction, delinquency, and murder), their interracial appetites, and their love of consumption and destruction through the alluring economy of candy.
Doony, Ryder, Wyatt, Bodhi. The names of Kristin Hersh’s sons are the only ones included in her new memoir, Seeing Sideways. As the book unfolds and her sons’ voices rise from its pages, it becomes clear why: these names tell the story of her life. This story begins in 1990, when Hersh is the leader of the indie rock group Throwing Muses, touring steadily, and the mother of a young son, Doony. The chapters that follow reveal a woman and mother whose life and career grow and change with each of her sons: the story of a custody battle for Doony is told alongside that of Hersh’s struggles with her record company and the resulting PTSD; the tale of breaking free from her record label stands in counterpoint to her recounting of her pregnancy with Ryder; a period of writer’s block coincides with the development of Wyatt as an artist and the family’s loss of their home; and finally, soon after Bodhi’s arrival, Hersh and her boys face crises from which only strange angels can save them. Punctuated with her own song lyrics, Seeing Sideways is a memoir about a life strange enough to be fiction, but so raw and moving that it can only be real.
In this work that's part memoir, part in-depth reporting about women's lives in a very foreign culture, New Delhi-based NPR reporter Kennedy writes about her five years in India, and offers an intimate look at the interconnected lives of six Indian women.
Cody Everett has a temper as hot as the inside of a combustion chamber, and it’s landed him at his uncle’s trailer, a last-chance home before military school. But how can he take the guy seriously when he calls himself Race, eats Twinkies for breakfast, and pals around with rednecks who drive in circles every Saturday night? The last thing Cody expects is for Race to become the friend and mentor he’s been looking for all his life. But just as he begins to settle in and get a handle on his supercharged temper, a crisis sends his life spinning out of control. Everything he’s come to care about is threatened, and he’s forced to choose between falling back on his old, familiar anger or stepping up to prove his loyalty to the only person he’s ever dared trust. Named one of BookBub’s “6 Seriously Awesome YA Books Even Adults Can Get Into” and praised by teachers as perfect for reluctant readers, Running Wide Open is a feel-good story you’ll remember long after you finish the last page. Great for fans of Chris Crutcher, Laurie Halse Anderson, and John Green. “I thoroughly enjoy Lisa Nowak’s books and have especially enjoyed using her Full Throttle series in working with my students. The characters are all so believable and definitely relatable to adolescents. I find that the lessons they learn are valuable and at times similar to things my students are dealing with. In one student's case, I was able to draw from situations in the books to use as comparisons and possible solutions. It was great to not have to ‘lecture.’” ~ Linda Ryan, School Counselor, Londonderry H.S. Book 1 in the Full Throttle Series
