Children use these imagination games that bring the worlds of facts and fantasy into harmony. With a parent or teacher as guide, children explore situations at school, home, and other settings. A reader writes: "This book is so much fun for children of all ages. I played the games in this book as a child, about fifteen years ago or more. It still sticks out in my mind as a great way to get your creativity and imagination working. I love this book and highly recommend it as a way to spend time with your children on a rainy day. Learn to make your imagination grow."
Dr. Jenkins presents a wealth of information and references dealing with positive self-programming through parent/teacher-directed activities, including games, songs, stories, puppetry, art, music, and movement.
Looks at the obstacles faced by women who aspire to run for president, looks at the mistakes made by women candidates in their quest for the presidency, and offers strategies to help them succeed.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
“A book of great value for every daughter and every mother; useful for sons, too.”—Benjamin Spock, M.D. From the Introduction: The goal of this book is to help readers achieve that separation so that they can either find a way to be friends with their mothers, or at least recognize and accept that their mothers did the best they could—even if it wasn't “good enough”—and to stop blaming them. Among the issues to be covered: • To understand how a daughter's attachment to her mother—more so than her relationship with her father—colors all her other relationships, and to analyze why it is more difficult for daughters than sons to separate from their mothers, as well as why daughters are more subject than sons to a mother's manipulation • To recognize the difference between a healthy and a destructive mother-daughter connection, and to define clearly the “bad mommy,” in order to help readers who have trouble acknowledging their childhood losses to begin to comprehend them • To conjugate what I call the “Bad Mommy Taboo”—why our culture is more eager to protect the sanctity of maternity than it is to protect emotionally abused daughters • To describe the evolution of the "unpleasable" mother—in all likelihood, she was bereft of maternal love as a child—and to recognize the huge, and often poignant, stake she has in keeping her grown daughter dependent and off-balance • To illustrate the consequent controlling behavior—in some cases, cloaked in fragility or good intentions—of such mothers, which falls into general patterns, including: the Doormat, the Critic, the Smotherer, the Avenger, the Deserter • To understand that the daughter has a similar stake in either being a slave to or hating her mother—the two sides of her depen dency and immaturity • To illustrate the responsive behavior—and survival mechanisms —of daughters, which is determined in part by such variables as birth rank, family history, and temperament, and which also falls into patterns, including: the Angel, the Superachiever, the Cipher, the Troublemaker, the Defector • To show how to redefine the mother-daughter relationship, so that each can learn to see and accept the other as she is today, appreciating each other's good qualities and not being snared by the bad • Finally, to demonstrate that a redefined relationship with one's mother—adult to adult—frees you from the past, whether that re definition ultimately results in real friendship, affectionate truce, or divorce.
"[Savaş] writes with both sensuality and coolness, as if determined to find a rational explanation for the irrationality of existence..." -- The New York Times "I fell in love with this book." -- Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation A mesmerizing novel set in Paris and a changing Istanbul, about a young Turkish woman grappling with her past and her complicated relationship with a famous British writer. After her mother's death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother's silence and anger, her father's death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu's fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she's told to protect herself from her memories. A wise and unguarded glimpse into a young woman's coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about memory, the pleasure of invention, and those places, real and imagined, we can't escape.
This novel-in-verse—at once literary and emotionally gripping—follows the unfolding friendship between two very different teenage girls who share a hospital room and an illness. Chess, the narrator, is sick, but with what exactly, she isn’t sure. And to make matters worse, she must share a hospital room with Shannon, her polar opposite. Where Chess is polite, Shannon is rude. Where Chess tolerates pain silently, Shannon screams bloody murder. Where Chess seems to be getting slowly better, Shannon seems to be getting worse. How these teenagers become friends, helping each other come to terms with their illness, makes for a dramatic and deeply moving read. "An emotional and innovative novel.... There is so much pathos and humor in these two hospital beds." —E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars "A story told with the utmost economy of language—intense, compelling, and satisfying." —Susan Patron, author of the Newbery Medal winner The Higher Power of Lucky "Riveting, humanizing and real." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred "A raw, unsentimental perspective on the fight to keep an illness from overpowering one's identity." —Publishers Weekly From the Hardcover edition.
Told in their separate voices, sixteen-year-old Prince Oliver, who wants to break free of his fairy-tale existence, and fifteen-year-old Delilah, a loner obsessed with Prince Oliver and the book in which he exists, work together to seek his freedom.
Turn the top 7 career breakers for women into career makers Statistically, more than one-third of Fortune 500 managers are women-and yet we represent barely five percent of the top earners among executives. Usually, we blame it on men-those “old boy” networks that don't typically welcome women into “the club.” But, according to leadership coach Rebecca Shambaugh, the real obstacle to women's advancement is not a “glass ceiling.” It's the self-imposed career blocks that prevent us from moving up. These are the 7 “sticky floors”: 1. Balancing Your Work and Life 2. Embracing “Good Enough” in Your Work 3. Making the Break 4. Making Your Words Count 5. Forming Your Own Board of Directors 6. Capitalizing on Your Political Savvy 7. Asking for What You Want Admit it: You've probably been “stuck” in at least one or more of these situations. Maybe you're a perfectionist who has trouble letting go of a task. Maybe you're so loyal to your company that you haven't explored other career options. Maybe you're afraid of speaking up in meetings. Or maybe you're so accommodating to others' needs that you never take care of your own. This book will show you how to get unstuck from these common traps. You'll discover how other successful women have managed to break out of middle management jobs to grab the top leadership positions. You'll hear hard-won advice from working mothers who also happen to be CEOs, including proven tricks of the trade when it comes to juggling career and family. You'll learn how to conquer your insecurities, transform your thinking, tailor your behavior, and demand the kind of professional recognition you deserve. There's even a section of fill-in charts and checklists at the end of the book to help you stay on track, in control, and on the rise. Once you've freed yourself from life's sticky floors, there's nowhere to go but up.
