An upbeat, empowering, important picture book from the team that created the award-winning Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut. A perfect gift for any special occasion! I am a nonstop ball of energy. Powerful and full of light. I am a go-getter. A difference maker. A leader. The confident Black narrator of this book is proud of everything that makes him who he is. He's got big plans, and no doubt he'll see them through--as he's creative, adventurous, smart, funny, and a good friend. Sometimes he falls, but he always gets back up. And other times he's afraid, because he's so often misunderstood and called what he is not. So slow down and really look and listen, when somebody tells you--and shows you--who they are. There are superheroes in our midst!
If you were an octopus, you′d have eight legs to put into pants! Follow one little boy through his day as he playfully considers how mealtime, bath time, nap time, and many other activities would be different if he were a bird, a tiger, or any number of baby animals. Julie Markes′s first picture book is charmingly illustrated by Maggie Smith.
Laugh and learn with fun facts about eating healthy, being active, avoiding germs, and more—all told in Dr. Seuss’s beloved rhyming style and starring the Cat in the Hat! “I’m the Cat in the Hat and I’ve come here to say: to be healthy, be active—an hour each day.” The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series combines beloved characters, engaging rhymes, and Seussian illustrations to introduce children to non-fiction topics from the real world! Take care of yourself and learn why it’s important to: move your body every day eat colorful foods wash your hands and much more! Perfect for story time and for the youngest readers, Oh, the Things You Can Do That Are Good for You! also includes an index, glossary, and suggestions for further learning. Look for more books in the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series! Wacky Weather One Cent, Two Cents, Old Cent, New Cent Super-Dee-Dooper Book of Animal Facts Oh, the Pets You Can Get!
Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of practicing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct complex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By completing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the methods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard keyboard, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the simple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Figure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcomponents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accurate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chainsaws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.
Charming, poignant, and sexy, When You Got a Good Thing pulled me in with its sweet charm and deft storytelling, and didn't let go until the very last page. It has everything I love in a small-town romance! ~USA Today Best-Selling Author Tawna Fenske She thought she could never go home again. Kennedy Reynolds has spent the past decade traveling the world as a free spirit. She never looks back at the past, the place, or the love she left behind-until her adopted mother's unexpected death forces her home to Eden's Ridge, Tennessee. Deputy Xander Kincaid has never forgotten his first love. He's spent ten long years waiting for the chance to make up for one bone-headed mistake that sent her running. Now that she's finally home, he wants to give her so much more than just an apology. Kennedy finds an unexpected ally in Xander, as she struggles to mend fences with her sisters and to care for the foster child her mother left behind. Falling back into his arms is beyond tempting, but accepting his support is dangerous. He can never know the truth about why she really left. Will Kennedy be able to bury the past and carve out her place in the Ridge, or will her secret destroy her second chance?
No one was more surprised than Andrew Klavan when, at the age of fifty, he found himself about to be baptized. The Great Good Thing tells the soul-searching story of a man born into an age of disbelief who had to abandon everything he thought he knew in order to find his way to the truth. Best known for his hard-boiled, white-knuckle thrillers and for the movies made from them--among them True Crime and Don’t Say a Word--bestselling author and Edgar Award-winner Klavan was born in a suburban Jewish enclave outside New York City. He left the faith of his childhood behind to live most of his life as an agnostic until he found himself mulling over the hard questions that so many other believers have asked: How can I be certain in my faith? What's the truth, and how can I know it's the truth? How can you think, live, and make choices and judgments day by day if you don't know for sure? In The Great Good Thing, Klavan shares that his troubled childhood caused him to live inside the stories in his head and grow up to become an alienated young writer whose disconnection and rage devolved into depression and suicidal breakdown. In those years, Klavan fought to ignore the insistent call of God, a call glimpsed in a childhood Christmas at the home of a beloved babysitter, in a transcendent moment at his daughter's birth, and in a snippet of a baseball game broadcast that moved him from the brink of suicide. But more than anything, the call of God existed in stories--the stories Klavan loved to read and the stories he loved to write. Join Klavan as he discovers the meaning of belief, the importance of asking tough questions, and the power of sharing your story.
A storybook princess breaks the fourth wall and incites a new kind of adventure in this imaginative middle grade fantasy perfect for fans of Chris Colfer and Gail Carson Levine. Sylvie had an amazing life, but she didn’t get to live it very often. Sylvie has been a twelve-year-old princess for more than eighty years, ever since the book she lives in was first printed. She’s the heroine, and her story is exciting. But that’s the trouble: it’s always exciting in the same way. So when a new Reader opens the book at long last, Sylvie breaks the cardinal rule of all storybook characters: she looks up. And sets into motion a new story all her own. Now, Sylvie is in for an adventure beyond any she could have imagined. As her journey takes her from the pages of a book to the landscape of dreams, Sylvie must summon all her courage to save her kingdom, find her way home, and figure out what it really means to do a Great Good Thing.
Forget This Good Thing I Just Said is a book of 900 aphorisms by Colin Dodds. By turns funny and upsetting, incisive and poignant, they each contain a small world. For best results, flip around the book and seize on a line, think about it or dismiss it, then start flipping and try again. This is a work of literature that lives at the ball-in-socket joint of what the author meant to say, and what he didn't know he meant. Like the cut-ups of William Burroughs, it's an experiment in exposing intentional language to the mysterious dynamics and agendas of so-called randomness. Like the I-Ching, it offers the reader something other than what the reader believes they're looking for, or what the author entirely intends. Like a walk through a city in a strange mood, it is full of messages -some tangential, others meant for exactly where and who you are in that moment. This is philosophy that's closer to first questions than final conclusions, philosophy that springs from the grease on a pizza box, a stranger's glance on a sidewalk, or a child's bedtime negotiations. The aphorism is the unit of meaning because it doesn't leave much room for equivocation or obfuscation. It's also an app for your phone, which you can find at forgetthisgoodthing.com.
