River means everything to Sky. They have lived alone together on Island for as long as they can remember. The two of them hunt for food, wash in Falls and curl up together in Shelter. Their life is simple and safe. Until River sees a boat . . . Across Ocean is California, a place where nothing makes sense to Sky. She is separated from River and taken to live with a grandmother she doesn't know. Lost and heartbroken, Sky searches for him so they can return to Island, only to find out that their paradise wasn't as perfect as she thought, and everything she's ever known and loved may have been a lie. A gripping and beautifully told story of love and survival in a hostile world – ours.
Something Was Very Wrong, Out There Among The Stars...The interstellar transport had touched down on six other colony worlds - and all six had been devoid of human life. Where was everybody? It was almost as if humankind, when separated by cosmic distances from Mother Earth, could not survive.
This shocking, boisterous novel was a runaway bestseller and award winner in Japan: “Pressingly real . . . In these pages, you will find the lives of all of us” (Japan Times). Searingly honest and sexually explicit, So We Look to the Sky is a novel told in five linked stories that begin with an affair between a student and a woman ten years his senior, who picks him up for cosplay sex in a comics market. Their scandalous liaison, which the woman's husband makes public by posting secretly taped video online, frames all of the stories, but each explores a different aspect of the life passages and hardships ordinary people face. A teenager experimenting with sex and then, perhaps, experiencing love and loss; a young, anime-obsessed wife bullied by her mother-in-law to produce the child she and her husband cannot conceive; a high school girl, spurned by the student, realizing that being cute and fertile is all others expect of her; the student's best friend, who lives in the projects and is left alone to support and care for his voracious, senile grandmother; and the student's mother, a divorced single parent and midwife, who guides women bringing new life into this world and must rescue her son, crushed by the twin blows of public humiliation and loss, from giving up on his own. Narrating each story in the distinctive voice of its protagonist, Misumi Kubo weaves themes including sex, love, the female body, gossip, and the bullying that leaves young people feeling burdened and helpless into a profoundly original novel that lingers in the mind for its affirmation of the raw, unquellable force of life.
A migrating swallow and a migrant girl cross paths while looking for a place to call home. A bird so small that it fits in your hand flies halfway around the world looking for a place to nest, while a young girl from northern Africa flees halfway around the world looking for safety. This is the story of Bird. This is the story of Leila. This is the story of a chance encounter and a long journey home. North Somerset Teachers Book Awards shortlist. Kate Greenaway Medal Nomination. “Beneath the surface, one can find many opportunities for a deep conversation about belonging, welcoming, and freedom from oppression and danger”—Youth Book Review Services “A delicate and touching little tale that packs its powerful message inside a velvet glove. Do yourselves a favor and order a copy now”—The Letterpress Project “A beautiful exploration of friendship, the parallel migrations of Bird and Leila, and the welcome they receive in their new home. Perfect for developing empathy and compassion”—Library Girl and Book Boy
"There are times when a full moon will guide you, a storm will excite you, and a big, blue sky will inspire you to believe anything is possible. These are a few of the many gifts we receive from the sky and universe when life feels scary and confusing. Told by a grandmother to her grandchild, ''If You Look Up to the Sky'' is about the power of everlasting love and the ways the sky connects us through good times and bad. It offers a child comfort in knowing that you never need to be afraid... if you look up to the sky."--Jacket flap.
Welcome to a ‘perfect’ world. Where war is illegal, where harmony rules. And where your date of birth marks your destiny. But nothing is perfect. And in a world this broken, who can Amity trust? Set in a daring and distorted echo of 1940s America, Broken Sky is an exhilarating epic of deception, heartbreak and rebellion.
Kay Kenyon, noted for her science fiction world-building, has in this new series created her most vivid and compelling society, the Universe Entire. In a land-locked galaxy that tunnels through our own, the Entire is a bizarre and seductive mix of long-lived quasi-human and alien beings gathered under a sky of fire, called the bright. A land of wonders, the Entire is sustained by monumental storm walls and an exotic, never-ending river. Over all, the elegant and cruel Tarig rule supreme. Into this rich milieu is thrust Titus Quinn, former star pilot, bereft of his beloved wife and daughter who are assumed dead by everyone on earth except Quinn. Believing them trapped in a parallel universe—one where he himself may have been imprisoned—he returns to the Entire without resources, language, or his memories of that former life. He is assisted by Anzi, a woman of the Chalin people, a Chinese culture copied from our own universe and transformed by the kingdom of the bright. Learning of his daughter’s dreadful slavery, Quinn swears to free her. To do so, he must cross the unimaginable distances of the Entire in disguise, for the Tarig are lying in wait for him. As Quinn’s memories return, he discovers why. Quinn’s goal is to penetrate the exotic culture of the Entire—to the heart of Tarig power, the fabulous city of the Ascendancy, to steal the key to his family’s redemption. But will his daughter and wife welcome rescue? Ten years of brutality have forced compromises on everyone. What Quinn will learn to his dismay is what his own choices were, long ago, in the Universe Entire. He will also discover why a fearful multiverse destiny is converging on him and what he must sacrifice to oppose the coming storm. This is high-concept SF written on the scale of Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld, Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles, and Dan Simmons’s Hyperion.
""Gravity's victory was inevitable. My fingers were losing their grip, slowly sliding off a rusty section of rain gutter... I felt a strong hand wrap around my swollen ankle and begin to pull. I couldn't hold on anymore."" In a span of 100 hours, 11-year-old Justin Tyme's world has been shattered. Still reeling from his father's unexplained disappearance and unsatisfied with the non-answers his mother has given him, he learns of his father's involvement with an elite team of engineers on the brink of developing a revolutionary new material, code-named C-Metal. With help from the school janitor, Justin unravels the clues to his father's disappearance, documenting his search in a mysterious, gold-edged journal his teacher gives him. As he searches for his dad, he copes with his mother's depression and struggles to protect his sister from their emotionally abusive stepfather. "Search a Darker Sky" is a rapid-fire psychological journey that propels Justin from boyhood to adolescence. "I was blown away by the suspense in "Search a Darker Sky." Truly an amazing story One to be read by millions." --Justin Stanton, age 13 "I couldn't put the book down. I felt I was part of the story. I can hardly wait for the sequel " --Yonatan Margalit, age 11 The Author: As a kid, Devik Schreiner had a bad haircut and wore his pants too short. He enjoyed reading almanacs, science fiction, and the backs of baseball cards. He plays the trumpet and piano, loves golf and the San Francisco Giants, and is known for balancing a pencil on his nose. Devik teaches middle school English and History in San Jose and lives in Los Gatos, California with his wife and twin girls.
Takes the reader on a voyage of discovery as the author traces a single mass of air traveling from the Canadian Rockies to the northeastern United States.
"Best known as a political activist and an essayist, and hailed by Library Journal as "one of the most important poets today," Jordan has now written the libretto and the lyrics for an American opera. The music is composed by John Adams." "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky mixes the drama of poetry and song to construct a brilliant earthquake/romance. In the context of the timeless issues of love, the opera, set in South Central Los Angeles, explores such contemporary questions as immigration, birth control, and criminal law. A white cop, a black Baptist minister, and an El Salvadoran mother are among the young Americans cast in this heartfelt portrayal of a day in the life of an LA neighborhood."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
