Maudie tests love to its limits, and Bear passes the test every time. Maudie's world revolves around Maudie. Bear's world also revolves around Maudie--he is as patient and solid as a rock. Maudie is so confident of Bear's love that she makes demands, throws tantrums, lays down rules and lets Bear do all the work, knowing he will love her unconditionally. And he does ... right to the end.
A teenager struggles through physical loss to the start of acceptance in an absorbing, artful novel at once honest and insightful, wrenching and redemptive. (Age 12 and up) On a sunny day in June, at the beach with her mom and brother, fifteen-year-old Jane Arrowood went for a swim. And then everything -- absolutely everything -- changed. Now she’s counting down the days until she returns to school with her fake arm, where she knows kids will whisper, "That’s her -- that’s Shark Girl," as she passes. In the meantime there are only questions: Why did this happen? Why her? What about her art? What about her life? In this striking first novel, Kelly Bingham uses poems, letters, telephone conversations, and newspaper clippings to look unflinchingly at what it’s like to lose part of yourself - and to summon the courage it takes to find yourself again.
"A must for Daisy fans everywhere," declares School Library Journal in a starred review. With the same emotional intensity that he brought to his New York Times bestselling, New York Times Best Illustrated, and Caldecott Medal-winning picture book A Ball for Daisy, Raschka has created a story that explores fear as only he can. Any child who has ever felt lost will relate to Daisy's despair upon finding herself in an unfamiliar part of the park after chasing a squirrel. In a nearly wordless picture book, Daisy encounters the unease of being lost and the joys of being found. Raschka's signature swirling, impressionistic illustrations and his affectionate story will particularly appeal to young dog lovers, teachers, parents and, of course, the legions of Daisy fans out there.
In 1953, 27-year-old Henry Gustave Molaison underwent an experimental "psychosurgical" procedure -- a targeted lobotomy -- in an effort to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The outcome was unexpected -- when Henry awoke, he could no longer form new memories, and for the rest of his life would be trapped in the moment. But Henry's tragedy would prove a gift to humanity. As renowned neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin explains in Permanent Present Tense, she and her colleagues brought to light the sharp contrast between Henry's crippling memory impairment and his preserved intellect. This new insight that the capacity for remembering is housed in a specific brain area revolutionized the science of memory. The case of Henry -- known only by his initials H. M. until his death in 2008 -- stands as one of the most consequential and widely referenced in the spiraling field of neuroscience. Corkin and her collaborators worked closely with Henry for nearly fifty years, and in Permanent Present Tense she tells the incredible story of the life and legacy of this intelligent, quiet, and remarkably good-humored man. Henry never remembered Corkin from one meeting to the next and had only a dim conception of the importance of the work they were doing together, yet he was consistently happy to see her and always willing to participate in her research. His case afforded untold advances in the study of memory, including the discovery that even profound amnesia spares some kinds of learning, and that different memory processes are localized to separate circuits in the human brain. Henry taught us that learning can occur without conscious awareness, that short-term and long-term memory are distinct capacities, and that the effects of aging-related disease are detectable in an already damaged brain. Undergirded by rich details about the functions of the human brain, Permanent Present Tense pulls back the curtain on the man whose misfortune propelled a half-century of exciting research. With great clarity, sensitivity, and grace, Corkin brings readers to the cutting edge of neuroscience in this deeply felt elegy for her patient and friend.
Junior in college. Star athlete. Constant attention from the opposite sex. On this campus, I'm worshiped. While seven hundred miles away, back in my hometown, I'm still trailer park trash, child of the town tramp, and older sibling to three kids who are counting on me to keep my shit together so I can take them away from the same crappy life I grew up in. These two opposing sides of myself never mix until one person gets a glimpse of the true me. I never expected to connect with anyone like this or want more beyond one night. This may be the real deal. Problem is Dr. Kavanagh's my literature professor. If I start anything with a teacher and we're caught together, I might as well kiss my entire future goodbye, as well as my family's and especially Dr. Kavanagh's. Except sometimes love is worth risking everything. Or at least, it damn well better be, because I can only resist so much.-N. G.-.--Provided by publisher.
The highly acclaimed novel that reveals the life of a Vietnamese family in America through the knowing eyes of a child finding her place and voice in a new country. “A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating.” —The New York Times Book Review In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects, and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage.
