Leo rides his beloved red bicycle to school, soccer practice and everywhere in between. He is devastated when he outgrows Big Red. But when Leo learns of a bicycle donation program, he perks up - someone who really needs his bike can give it a new life. Little does he know that Big Red will change other people’s lives, too. Follow the bike as it travels to West Africa, where it helps people in Burkina Faso bring goods to the market, and serves as a makeshift ambulance, proving that an ordinary bicycle can be truly extraordinary.
When wildlife photographer Abbey Gallagher captures the tenderness between a protective mother gorilla and her newborn baby, she wonders if she can ever feel the same family bonds. First she has to shake loose the anger she carries toward her own mother. After she returns from Africa for her 30th birthday, her boyfriend Ryan cannot pry any commitment from her for their future together, despite her mother's playful, but pointed, urging and interference. Her mother's self-centered behavior drives the wedge between them even deeper, and Abbey retreats into her own defense mode: keep your life separate, don't share your feelings, retreat far away to another continent, refuse to make plans together, use people without letting them use you, stay detached, never say 'I love you'.But when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Abbey postpones her return to Africa on assignment and offers begrudging assistance to lighten her father's caretaking load. One by one, the secret layers of her life as her mother's child are peeled away, until Abbey has no choice but to face a new and unsettling truth.Can she accept the changes in her relationship with her mother that arise as her health slips away? Can Abbey open herself to Ryan enough to repair their attachment and resume their romance, to make plans for a life together?Nothing seems possible until Abbey learns Ryan's childhood story of his yearning for a bike. Not just any bike. The red bike.
A beautifully illustrated collection of new Doctor Who stories, each featuring one of the twelve Doctors on a festive adventure in theTARDIS. Written by six authors and with a full-page colour illustration for each story, these tales are full of magic, mystery, wonder, excitement - and everything else that fans love about a Doctor Who Christmas special.
While spending Christmas in 1939 with a well-meaning aunt, a young boy who does not believe in Santa Claus has an unusual experience that changes his thinking.
Welcome to the place where the next move in the chess game of life is unknown, where the pieces think they are players and where deliberate intentions of fast gain result in unforeseen consequences. It is a place where the lines of fiction and reality are blurred. Tales of Greed, Money and Horrific Circumstance is the magnifying glass of thought provoking actions following multiple characters in different scenarios that will have you ponder the questions of your own actions, thoughts and motives. Are you ready to play the game?
In a world first, almost incredibly, Riaan Manser rode a bicycle right around the continent of Africa. It took him two years, two months and fifteen days. He rode 36 500 kilometres through 34 different countries. In Around Africa on my Bicycle, Manser tells the story of this epic journey. It is a story of blood, sweat, toil and tears. It is a story of triumph and occassional disaster. Of nights out under the stars, of searing heat and rain, of endless miles of Africa and of pressing on and never surrendering whatever the odds. Mostly however it is the story of one man's courage and determination to escape the mundane and see the continent he loves and feels so much a part of. It is a story of the human warmth he encounters, and occasionally human wrath and hostility as he crosses troubled countries and borders.
Rosie the little pig is determined to learn how to ride a bike and see the world—no matter how many times she has to pick herself up and start over—in this whimsical story about following your dreams and never giving up. Rosie is a little pig who has everything she needs right on the farm: a mud bath to play in, plenty of food to eat, and a deliciously smelly pigpen. But then she sees a small, ugly animal with two feet and no tail riding a bicycle and she thinks “That’s easy. I could ride a bike too.” It is only when she sneaks out at night to try to ride the bike herself that Rosie realizes it’s not as easy as it looks. First you have to learn to pedal…but you also need to know how to balance, and braking is very important, too. Every night, watched over by her friend the moon, she tries again and again, and after each failure, she learns something new: to give a push, to wear a helmet, to ask a friend for help. And so every night she tries again, because she knows that if she could just learn how to ride a bike, why, she could travel to the other side of the world…or maybe even farther.
The Spirit Flyer, a rusty old bicycle found in the city dump, surprises its new owner, John Kramar, when it magically lives up to its name, introducing John to an unknown world and changing his life for good.
These quiet, descriptive poems blaze with an inferno of lamenting and loving muses as a son helplessly watches his father suffer from a debilitating illness. The inquisitive voice of the speaker gently paints an emotional landscape ranging from childhood to the present, while trying to find glimpses of happiness in the imminent sorrow.
