"Riveting--Kusz's gifts as a writer, her original voice and sparkling perceptions, give this memoir the literary precision of a novel."--Los Angeles Times When she was six years old, Natalie Kusz left Los Angeles with her family and headed north to Alaska on a classic quest for freedom, a house on the land, and a more wholesome way of living. Here is hery and survival in an unforgiving environment. "Riveting. . . ."--Los Angeles Times. Serial rights to McCall's and Harper's.
Cheryl Strayed's Wild meets Katherine Center's How to Walk Away in Kathleen Basi's debut novel about an unconventional road trip and what it means to honor the ones we love. It's one year after the death of her husband and twin teenagers, and Miriam Tedesco has lost faith in humanity and herself. When a bouquet of flowers that her husband always sends on their anniversary shows up at her workplace, she completely unravels. With the help of her best friend, she realizes that it's time to pick up the pieces and begin to move on. Step one is not even cleaning out her family's possessions, but just taking inventory starting with her daughter's room. But when she opens her daughter's computer, she stumbles across a program her daughter has created detailing an automated cross-country road trip, for her and her husband to take as soon-to-be empty nesters. Seeing and hearing the video clips of her kids embedded in the program, Miriam is determined to take this trip for her children. Armed with her husband's guitar, her daughter's cello, and her son's unfinished piano sonata, she embarks on a musical pilgrimage to grieve the family she fears she never loved enough. Along the way she meets a young, pregnant hitchhiker named Dicey, whose boisterous and spunky attitude reminds Miriam of her own daughter. Tornadoes, impromptu concerts, and an unlikely friendship...whether she's prepared for it or not, Miriam's world is coming back to life. But as she struggles to keep her focus on the reason she set out on this journey, she has to confront the possibility that the best way to honor her family may be to accept the truths she never wanted to face. Hopeful, honest, and tender, A Song for the Road is about courage, vulnerability, and forgiveness, even of yourself, when it really matters.
Kids will love this cumulative and hysterical read-aloud that features a free downloadable song "I was walking down the road and I saw... a donkey, Hee Haw And he only had three legs He was a wonky donkey." Children will be in fits of laughter with this perfect read-aloud tale of an endearing donkey. By the book's final page, readers end up with a spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey Download the free song at www.scholastic.com/wonkydonkey.
Chug along with a farmer and his tractor on this multi-season animal adventure! A busy farmer picks up fifteen animals along his route, but when his trailer hits a stone, chaos ensues. This colorful book combines simple counting instruction with humor, repetition and rhythm to encourage learning fun. Book with CD edition includes song sung by acclaimed children’s performer SteveSongs.
A walking, talking, singing skeleton minstrel who has mysteriously retained his soul within the confines of the dungeon where he has been imprisoned departs with his sidekick, a gelatinous monster, to investigate clues about his identity in snippets of a song he hears in his dreams.
In this richly imaginative novel, Mingmei Yip--author of Peach Blossom Pavilion and Petals From the Sky--follows one woman's daunting journey along China's fabled Silk Road. As a girl growing up in Hong Kong, Lily Lin was captivated by photographs of the desert--its long, lonely vistas and shifting sand dunes. Now living in New York, Lily is struggling to finish her graduate degree when she receives an astonishing offer. An aunt she never knew existed will pay Lily a huge sum to travel across China's desolate Taklamakan Desert--and carry out a series of tasks along the way. Intrigued, Lily accepts. Her assignments range from the dangerous to the bizarre. Lily must seduce a monk. She must scrape a piece of clay from the famous Terracotta Warriors, and climb the Mountains of Heaven to gather a rare herb. At Xian, her first stop, Lily meets Alex, a young American with whom she forms a powerful connection. And soon, she faces revelations that will redefine her past, her destiny, and the shocking truth behind her aunt's motivations. . . Powerful and eloquent, Song of the Silk Road is a captivating story of self-discovery, resonant with the mysteries of its haunting, exotic landscape.
When a tornado destroys his Tulsa home, fifteen-year-old Carter Danforth is trapped in the pawnshop where his father hawked his custom, left-handed Martin guitar six years earlier before taking off, leaving him with nothing but a hankering to pluck strings and enough heartache to sing the blues. Carter’s mother, meanwhile, is injured during the storm and winds up in the hospital. She wants Carter to fly out to Reno and stay with her sister, but he’s already spent her hidden cash stash to buy his dad’s guitar. Rather than tell her the truth, he embarks on an epic road trip in search of his father in California. But Carter isn’t a runaway. He reckons he’s a “running to.” On the road, Carter picks up licks, chord changes, and performance techniques from a quirky cast of southwestern charmers: a rock star, a thief, a bluesman, a chanteuse-turned-chef, and the dream of a girl back home. By the time he reaches the end of old US Route 66, Carter has learned how to deep-fry yucca blossoms—and tell the truth of his life through music.
This collection of poetry was written by the Irish poet Louis J. McQuilland, whose poems were previously published in magazines such as the Vanity Fair. His works revolve around topics such as medieval royals, bloody revolutions, and the Irish identity.
In Song of the Road, Tsarchen Losal Gyatso (1502-66), a tantric master of the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, weaves ecstatic poetry, song, and accounts of visionary experiences into a record of pilgrimage to central Tibet. Translated for the first time here, Tsarchen's work, a favorite of the Fifth Dalai Lama, brims with striking descriptions of encounters with the divine as well as lyrical portraits of Tibetan landscape. The literary flights of Song of the Road are anchored by Tsarchen's candid observations on the social and political climate of his day, including a rare example in Tibetan literature of open critique of religious power. Like the Japanese master Basho's famous Narrow Road to the Interior, written 150 years later, Tsarchen's travelogue contains a mixture of luminous prose and verse, rich with allusions. Traveling on horseback with a band of companions, Tsarchen visited some of the most renowned holy sites of the Tsang region, incluing Jonang, Tropu, Ngor, Shalu, and Gyantse. In his introduction and copious notes, Cyrus Stearns unearths the layers of meaning concealed in the text, excavating the history, legends, and lore associated with people and places encountered on the pilgrimage, revealing the spiritual as well as geographical topography of Tsarchen's journey.
