Multicultural, Nonsectarian, Nondenominational Endorsed by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish Religious Leaders Finalist, Children's Books of Distinction Award--Hungry Mind Review A Children's Book Council Not Just for Children Anymore! Selection Recommended by Parent Council Everyone and everything in the world has a name. What is God's name? In poetic text and vibrant illustrations, this modern fable celebrates the diversity and, at the same time, the unity of all people. "God must have a single name this greater and more powerful than all other names." All the people of the world set out to find God's name ... and each of the many seekers is sure that he or she alone has found the right name, the only name, for God. Finally, they come together--and at last learn what God's name really is. In God's Name is a spiritual celebration of all people of the world and their belief in one God.

In 1965, when psychologists Sandra and Daryl Bem met and married, they were determined to function as truly egalitarian partners and also to raise their children in accordance with gender-liberated, anti-homophobic, and sex-positive feminist ideals. During the next ten years, they exuberantly shared the details of their daily lives in both public lectures and the mass media in order to provide at least one concrete example of an alternative to the traditional heterosexual family. In the 1990s, Sandra Bem also published an award-winning book, The Lenses of Gender , which spelled out the feminist theory behind their feminist practices. This second book by Sandra Bem, an autobiographical account of the Bems` nearly thirty-year marriage, is both a personal history of the Bems` past and a social history of a key period in feminism`s past. It is also a look into feminism`s future, because the Bems` children, Emily and Jeremy, now in their early twenties, speak at length in the book as well. Bem analyzes what aspects of family background and psychological makeup led her and Daryl to bond so immediately and to become gender pioneers. She describes the egalitarianism and feminist child-rearing that they invented for their private needs and tells how these family agendas were transformed into public feminist discourse. Finally she reassesses this early feminist union now that the marriage has come to an end and the children are young adults, evaluating (with the help of lengthy interviews with Emily and Jeremy and a brief epilogue by Daryl) what the Bems` experiences--both positive and negative--have to say about the viability and necessity of nontraditional gender arrangements in society today.

An “extremely funny...brilliantly alive” ( The New York Times Book Review ) social satire of the highest order from bestselling author Sam Lipsyte, centered around an unwitting mindfulness guru and the phenomenon he initiates. In an America convulsed by political upheaval, cultural discord, environmental catastrophe, and spiritual confusion, so many of us find ourselves anxious and distracted, searching desperately for peace, salvation, and—perhaps most immediately—just a little damn focus. Enter Hark Morner, a failed stand-up comic turned mindfulness guru whose revolutionary program is set to captivate the masses. But for Fraz and Tovah, a middle-aged couple slogging through a very rough patch, it may take more than the tenets of Hark’s “Mental Archery” to solve the riddles of love, lust, work, and parenthood on the eve of civilizational collapse. And given the sudden power of certain fringe players, including a renegade Ivy League ethicist, a gentle Swedish kidnapper, a social media tycoon with an empire on the skids, and a mysteriously influential (but undeniably slimy) catfish, it just might be too late. But what’s the point of a world, even a blasted-out post-apocalyptic world, if they don’t try with all their might to keep their marriage alive? In this “awfully funny...tartly effective sendup of 21st-century America” ( Star Tribune , Minneapolis) Sam Lipsyte reaches new peaks of daring in a novel that revels in contemporary absurdity and the wild poetry of everyday language while exploring the emotional truths of his characters. “Recommended reading” ( Vanity Fair ), in which “every line feels as thrillingly charged as a live wire” ( O, The Oprah Magazine ), Hark is a smart, incisive look at men, women, and children seeking meaning and dignity in a chaotic, ridiculous, and often dangerous world.

A classic picture book by a Caldecott Medal-winning team about a very funny day that moves in reverse. Imagine your whole day lived backward, from beginning to end. When you got up, you’d put on your jacket, then your shirt and pants, and over those your underwear, because after all, backward is backward, and on a backward day backward is the way everything has to be. You’d walk downstairs backward and sit on your chair backward with your back to the table, and when your parents greeted you in the morning you’d say, of course, “Good night.” But how long can a backward day go on? Just long enough for a smart kid to reverse the spell he’s cast on the whole household and return everything to normal. The Backward Day , a delightfully stylish picture book by the Caldecott Prize–winning team of Marc Simont and Ruth Krauss, brings to life a humorous and engaging reversal of ordinary reality that will enchant young children, as well parents.

Guide to building a lasting relationship--from choosing a mate to raising children together.

~ An Anne Izard Storytellers’ Choice Award Winner ~ A Storytelling World Honor Book Once, when young Nasruddin was acting up in class by distracting his friends with endless antics, jests, and stories, his irate teacher uttered a curse: “Whatever you do or say, people will only laugh at you.” Now, eight centuries later, children, adults, and wise fools everywhere are still laughing at Nasruddin (Nasreddin Hoca), one of the world’s most beloved folk characters. This entertaining and insightful retelling of more than a year’s worth of daily Mullah stories brings the famed Persian legend into the Twenty-First Century. Storytellers, folklorists, Sufis, comedians, wisdom seekers, and everyone who loves to laugh will be enriched and enlightened by the timeless wit, inscrutable wisdom, and uncommon sense of humor of Mullah Nasruddin. “Suresha identifies the real strength of Nasruddin’s stories in context to world literature and story performance, that is, its power to build bridges between cultures. … The point of these stories is to speak to the audience in the language and metaphors that are familiar.” — Storytelling, Self, Society “A contemporary reworking of the tales (the stories fit for a general audience, at least) … to Suresha’s credit he has maintained the direct, unadorned style that is a hallmark of folk tales. … a delightful break from the everyday world for an hour or two.” — Green Man Review “A fine pick and very highly recommended.” — Midwest Book Review “These hilarious, and at times, ribald folk tales of the Turkish wise fool take the reader to another time and place, and share the spiritual lessons of Nasruddin. … The teaching stories included in this volume help to build bridges between cultures by exemplifying Arabic wisdom and universal human humor.” — from the Preface by Ann Shapiro, Executive Director, Connecticut Storytelling Center

~ An Anne Izard Storytellers' Choice Award Winner~ A Storytelling World Honor BookOnce, when young Nasruddin was acting up in class by distracting his friends with endless antics, jests, and stories, his irate teacher uttered a curse: "Whatever you do or say, people will only laugh at you." Now, eight centuries later, children, adults, and wise fools everywhere are still laughing at Nasruddin (Nasreddin Hoca), one of the world's most beloved folk characters. This entertaining and insightful retelling of more than a year's worth of daily Mullah stories brings the famed Persian legend into the Twenty-First Century. Storytellers, folklorists, Sufis, comedians, wisdom seekers, and everyone who loves to laugh will be enriched and enlightened by the timeless wit, inscrutable wisdom, and uncommon sense of humor of Mullah Nasruddin."Suresha identifies the real strength of Nasruddin's stories in context to world literatureand story performance, that is, its power to build bridges between cultures. ... The point of these stories is to speak to the audience in the language and metaphors that are familiar." - Storytelling, Self, Society"A contemporary reworking of the tales (the stories fit for a general audience, at least) ... to Suresha's credit he has maintained the direct, unadorned style that is a hallmark of folk tales. ... a delightful break from the everyday world for an hour or two." - Green Man Review"A fine pick and very highly recommended." - Midwest Book Review"These hilarious, and at times, ribald folk tales of the Turkish wise fool take the reader to another time and place, and share the spiritual lessons of Nasruddin. ...The teaching stories included in this volume help to build bridges between cultures by exemplifying Arabic wisdom and universal human humor." - from the Preface by Ann Shapiro, Executive Director, Connecticut Storytelling Center

A fun and friendly look at how babies grow - from conception to birth, by best-selling author Robie H Harris.Gus and Nellie have had some exciting news: there's going to be a new baby in their family! Join them through the seasons as they watch their mother's pregnancy with fascination and curiosity. With charming informative words and pictures, here is the ideal book to help young children understand the way a baby develops inside a woman's body, and how it is born. Most of all, this book will reassure children that a new arrival in the family is an amazing and wonderful thing!

When Santa and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer find a letter from two children who were forgotten the previous Christmas, Rudolph comes to their rescue and saves the day.

Middle grade supernatural horror series takes young readers Just Beyond the reality they know ... Just Beyond their normal lives ... Just Beyond the real world to an always surprising place of fantasy and fright. Surviving middle school is hard enough but when Jess, Josh, and Marco encounter a strange and deadly creature wandering the halls of The Scare School, it leads them to a sinister secret in the boiler room ... As they leave their school behind, these three unsuspecting students enter a horrifying reality just beyond the one they know, one filled with supernatural terror and fright. Will they survive the harrowing journey and save the other children they find trapped there, or will they forever be trapped on the wrong side of The Scare School?

With his international bestseller The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Richard Zimler first made a name as a master of historical thrillers. in this chilling mystery, winner of the Marques de Ouro Prize, Zimler has woven a gripping tale in the tradition of The Shadow of the Wind. It is autumn, 1940, and the Nazis have sealed 400,000 Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto. Erik Cohen, an elderly psychiatrist, moves into a tiny apartment with his last remaining relatives. then his beloved great-nephew Adam goes missing and his body is discovered tangled in the barbed wire, strangely mutilated. soon afterward, another body turns up, this time a young girl. could there be a Jewish traitor luring children to their deaths? With an unlikely hero and hair-raising suspense, The Warsaw Anagrams is a profoundly moving and darkly atmospheric thriller.

Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. In this book, the author points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school.

Following on from Anguished English and More Anguished English, this collection contains such categories as the things children say in churches (Solomon had 300 wives and 500 porcupines) and menu items lost in translation (Our wines leave you nothing to hope for).

“A humane and sensible guide to and for the many kinds of Americans leading secular lives in what remains one of the most religious nations in the developed world.” —The New York Times Book Review Over the last twenty-five years, “no religion” has become the fastest-growing religious preference in the United States. Around the world, hundreds of millions of people have turned away from the traditional faiths of the past and embraced a moral yet nonreligious—or secular—life, generating societies vastly less religious than at any other time in human history. Revealing the inspiring beliefs that empower secular culture—alongside real stories of nonreligious men and women based on extensive in-depth interviews from across the country—Living the Secular Life will be indispensable for millions of secular Americans. Drawing on innovative sociological research, Living the Secular Life illuminates this demographic shift with the moral convictions that govern secular individuals, offering crucial information for the religious and nonreligious alike. Living the Secular Life reveals that, despite opinions to the contrary, nonreligious Americans possess a unique moral code that allows them to effectively navigate the complexities of modern life. Spiritual self-reliance, clear-eyed pragmatism, and an abiding faith in the Golden Rule to adjudicate moral decisions: these common principles are shared across secular society. Living the Secular Life demonstrates these principles in action and points to their usage throughout daily life. Phil Zuckerman is a sociology professor at Pitzer College, where he studied the lives of the nonreligious for years before founding a Department of Secular Studies, the first academic program in the nation dedicated to exclusively studying secular culture and the sociological consequences of America’s fastest-growing “faith.” Zuckerman discovered that despite the entrenched negative beliefs about nonreligious people, American secular culture is grounded in deep morality and proactive citizenship—indeed, some of the very best that the country has to offer. Living the Secular Life journeys through some of the most essential components of human existence—child rearing and morality, death and ritual, community and beauty—and offers secular readers inspiration for leading their own lives. Zuckerman shares eye-opening research that reveals the enduring moral strength of children raised without religion, as well as the hardships experienced by secular mothers in the rural South, where church attendance defines the public space. Despite the real sorrows of mortality, Zuckerman conveys the deep psychological health of secular individuals in their attitudes toward illness, death, and dying. Tracking the efforts of nonreligious groups to construct their own communities, Zuckerman shows how Americans are building institutions and cultivating relationships without religious influence. Most of all, Living the Secular Life infuses the sociological data and groundbreaking research with the moral convictions that govern secular individuals and demonstrates how readers can integrate these beliefs into their own lives. A manifesto for a booming social movement—and a revelatory survey of this overlooked community—Living the Secular Life offers essential and long-awaited information for anyone building a life based on his or her own principles.

The competition for limited health care resources is intensifying. We urgently need an acceptable method for deciding how they should be allocated. But the goods that health care produces are of very different kinds. Health care can extend the lives of children and of older people. It can make it possible for a person to walk, when without health care that person would be permanently bedridden; and it can reduce the pain and distress of people who are terminally ill. How can we possibly decide which of these - and many more - diverse achievements of health care are more deserving than others? We need a common unit by which we might be able to measure these very different goods. The Quality-Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, is the most developed proposal for such a unit of measure. In this book a distinguished team of ethicists and economists defend the core of the QALY proposal: that health care resources should be used so as to produce more years of life, of the highest possible quality. This leads to a discussion of such fundamental questions as whether all lives are of equal value, whether health care should be allocated on the basis of need and whether the QALY approach incorporates an adequate account of fairness or justice. The result is the most thorough account yet of the ethical issues raised by the use of the QALY as a basis for allocating health care resources.

"Are rural white Christians the real Americans? Should teachers be armed or should the Second Amendment be repealed? Is abortion murder or an ethically sound choice for women? Should migrant babies be caged or should ICE be abolished? Should billionaires exist while children go hungry? These are some of the bitter ideological disputes that have turned social media into a political battlefield. In Digital Civil War, Peter Daou, a veteran digital-media adviser to presidential candidates, investigates the underlying value systems and moral arguments of the warring parties, arguing that democracy itself is under assault by an emboldened and empowered Far Right. Daou shows how the digital civil war is waged with words and images that are designed to inflict psychological harm, to injure through verbal violence, to wreak havoc with rhetoric. And he explains that the relentless toxicity of social media - often treated as an aberration - is a feature, not a bug, of digital warfare."--Amazon.com.

Appelemando loves to dream! The villagers think he will never amount to much, but his friends know better. They can see his dreams drift up from the top of his head and float into the sky. Then, one rainy day, Appelemando's dreams are blown onto all the wet walls and roofs of the town, covering the houses and stores with fantastic pictures. The villagers are astonished and angry: How could the children do such a thing! Not until Appelemando and his friends lose their way in the forest do the villagers recognize the wonder and value of Appelemando's special gift. With her vibrant folk-art illustrations, Patricia Polacco draws young readers into Appelemando's magical world, where they will discover the importance of dreaming and the power of true friendship.

The Paideia Proposal is a system of liberal education intended for all children. It was a response to what Adler characterized as the United States' antidemocratic or undemocratic educational system, a holdover from the 19th century, when the understanding of basic human rights fell short of 20th century expectations. The Paidea Proposal was based upon the following assumptions: 1) All children are educable; 2) Education is never completed in school or higher institutions of learning, but is a lifelong process of maturity for all citizens; 3) The primary cause of learning is the activity of the child's mind, which is not created by, but only assisted by the teacher; 4) Multiple types learning and teaching must be utilized in education, not just teacher lecturing, or telling; and 5) A student's preparation for earning a living is not the primary objective of schooling. Adler stressed that the proposal is much more than just a return to the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. It is not simply a return to the values of classical civilization, but a return to what is of enduring value. It is a democratic proposal intended for the education of all, and not an elitist program as some have alleged.

"A true genius . . . Roald Dahl is my hero" David Walliams Life story of Roald Dahl, World's No.1 storyteller, creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach and many more, brought to life by Michael Rosen - author, top children's poet and former Children's Laureate. Written especially for children, with fun pages and illustrations by Quentin Blake. So, how did Roald Dahl get into writing? Where did he get his ideas from? What ingredients in his life turned him into the kind of writer he was? Michael Rosen comes up with some of the answers to these key questions in his lively biography, specially for children, of the world's No.1 storyteller. Full of stories and funny anecdotes from Roald Dahl's school days and family life, Michael Rosen's fascinating observations creates a vivid picture of one of the most famous writers of all time.

A dog with a plan adopts a chaotic family in a wry comedy extolling the virtues of common sense. When Ma Peachey takes up yoga, the rest of the family finds themselves abandoned to chaos: no one cooks dinner, no one picks up the dirty laundry, the children are always late for school, and there is a good deal of squabbling and squalor. Ma may be off finding inner peace, but irritable Pa Peachey, glum Ava, and wannabe girl-charmer Ollie are falling apart. Only Betty, the sensible youngest child, is wise enough to see that this family is in need of rescue. Enter McTavish, a rescue dog who, true to his mission, is ready to teach this family some new tricks. Getting the Peacheys to behave will take work, but if anyone can do it, McTavish can. After all, he’s a very good dog — maybe even a psychological mastermind!