Three orphan girls. A pair of pink slippers. A lifetime in the spotlight. Read the classic that has captivated generations! Pauline, Petrova, and Posy love their quiet life together. They are orphans who have been raised as sisters, and when their new family needs money, the girls want to help. They decide to join the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training to earn their keep. Each girl works hard following her dream. Pauline is destined for the movies. Posy is a born dancer. And Petrova? She finds she'd rather be a pilot than perform a pirouette. This beautiful children's classic is perfect for girls who love to dream about ballet, friendship, and finding their own special talents. Adult readers may remember them as the "Shoes" books from You've Got Mail!
As a result of his visits to classrooms across the nation, Brown has compiled an engaging, thought-provoking collection of classroom vignettes which show the ways in which national, state, and local school politics translate into changed classroom practices. "Captures the breadth, depth, and urgency of education reform".--Bill Clinton.
Growing up, Liz Prince wasn't a girly girl, but she wasn't exactly one of the guys either (as she learned when her little league baseball coach exiled her to the distant outfield). She was somewhere in between. But with the forces of middle school, high school, parents, friendship, and romance pulling her this way and that, the middle wasn't an easy place to be. Tomboy follows award-winning author and artist Liz Prince through her early years and explores--with humor, honesty, and poignancy--what it means to "be a girl." From staunchly refuting "girliness" to the point of misogyny, to discovering through the punk community that your identity is whatever you make of it, Tomboy offers a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking account of self-discovery in modern America.
Alek Khederian should have guessed something was wrong when his parents took him to a restaurant. Everyone knows that Armenians never eat out. Why bother, when their home cooking is far superior to anything "these Americans" could come up with? Between bouts of interrogating the waitress and criticizing the menu, Alek's parents announce that he'll be attending summer school in order to bring up his grades. Alek is sure this experience will be the perfect hellish end to his hellish freshmen year of high school. He never could've predicted that he'd meet someone like Ethan. Ethan is everything Alek wishes he were: confident, free-spirited, and irreverent. When Ethan gets Alek to cut school and go to a Rufus Wainwright concert in New York City's Central Park, Alek embarks on his first adventure outside the confines of his suburban New Jersey existence. He can't believe a guy this cool wants to be his friend. And before long, it seems like Ethan wants to be more than friends. Alek has never thought about having a boyfriend—he's barely ever had a girlfriend—but maybe it's time to think again. Michael Barakiva's One Man Guy is a romantic, moving, laugh-out-loud-funny story about what happens when one person cracks open your world and helps you see everything—and, most of all, yourself--like you never have before.
*WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR* Fever Pitch is Nick Hornby's million-copy-selling, award-winnning football classic 'A spanking 7-0 away win of a football book. . . inventive, honest, funny, heroic, charming' Independent For many people watching football is mere entertainment, to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. But, for Nick Hornby, his devotion to the game has provided one of few constants in a life where the meaningful things - like growing up, leaving home and forming relationships, both parental and romantic - have rarely been as simple or as uncomplicated as his love for Arsenal. Brimming with wit and honesty, Fever Pitch, catches perfectly what it really means to be a football fan - and in doing so, what it means to be a man. 'Hornby has put his finger on truths that have been unspoken for generations' Irish Times 'Funny, wise and true' Roddy Doyle
What if society wasn't fundamentally rational, but was motivated by insanity? This thought sets Jon Ronson on an utterly compelling adventure into the world of madness. Along the way, Jon meets psychopaths, those whose lives have been touched by madness and those whose job it is to diagnose it, including the influential psychologist who developed the Psychopath Test, from whom Jon learns the art of psychopath-spotting. A skill which seemingly reveals that madness could indeed be at the heart of everything . . . Combining Jon Ronson's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is both entertaining and honest, unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges. 'The belly laughs come thick and fast – my God, he is funny . . . provocative and interesting' – Observer
This beautifully illustrated children's book sensitively broaches the subject of keeping children safe from inappropriate touch. It is an invaluable tool for caregivers and educators to broach the subject of safe and unsafe touch in an age-appropriate way. The discussion questions support both reader and child when discussing the story. Ages 3-12
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.
As an Olympic rookie, Andie Foster has spent far more time in her cleats than between the sheets. For 21 years, her Friday nights have consisted of blocking shots rather than taking them. But now that she's landed in Rio, she's ready to see for herself if the rumors about the Olympic Village are true: - The athletes are all sex-crazed maniacs... - The committee passes out condoms like candy... - The games continue long after the medals have been handed out... As Andie walks the line between rumor and reality, she's forced into the path of Frederick Archibald, a decorated Olympic swimmer and owner of a sexy British accent-too bad he's unavailable in a way that "it's complicated" doesn't even begin to explain. In other words: off limits. It doesn't matter that he has abs that could bring peace to the Middle East and a smile that makes even the Queen blush; Andie fully intends on keeping her focus on the soccer field. But the Village is small. Suffocating. Everywhere Andie goes, Freddie happens to be there-shirtless, wet from the pool, and determined to show her a whole new meaning of the phrase "international affairs."
