About one-quarter of the children on Kristof's old school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. And while these particular stories unfolded in one corner of the country, they are representative of many places the authors write about, ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and Virginia. But here too are stories about resurgence, among them: Annette Dove, who has devoted her life to helping the teenagers of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as they navigate the chaotic reality of growing up poor; Daniel McDowell, of Baltimore, whose tale of opioid addiction and recovery suggests that there are viable ways to solve our nation's drug epidemic. Taken together, these accounts provide a picture of working-class families needlessly but profoundly damaged as a result of decades of policy mistakes. With their superb, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn have given us a book that is both riveting and impossible to ignore.

    Except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother.Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla chooses her own home, a hostile ecosystem of indoor fungi and secret shame. With a borrowed video camera, she captures it all. The mushrooms growing in her brother’s dresser. The black mold blooming up the apartment walls. The unmentionable things living in the dead fridge. All the inevitable exotic toxins that are Layla’s life. Then the video goes viral.When Child Protective Services comes to call, Layla loses her family and her home. Defiant, she must face her bullies and friends alike, on her own. Unafraid at last of being seen, Layla accepts the mortifying reality of visibility. Now she has to figure out how to stay whole and stand behind the truth she has shown the world.

    Nearly 60,000 people sleep in New York City-run shelters every night—forty percent of them children. This Is All I Got makes this issue deeply personal, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to improve her situation, despite the myriad setbacks she encounters. Camila is a twenty-two-year-old new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. Award-winning journalist Lauren Sandler tells the story of a year in Camila's life—from the birth of her son to his first birthday—as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in America. As Camila attempts to secure a college education and a safe place to raise her son, she copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, and miles of red tape with grit, grace, and resilience.This Is All I Got is a dramatic story of survival and powerful indictment of a broken system, but it is also a revealing and candid depiction of the relationship between an embedded reporter and her subject and the tricky boundaries to navigate when it's impossible to remain a dispassionate observer.

    These are the central values of the American dream. But are they actually compatible with Jesus' command to love our neighbor as ourselves? In essays grouped around these four values, D. L. Mayfield asks us to pay attention to the ways they shape our own choices, and the ways those choices affect our neighbors. Where did these values come from? How have they failed those on the edges of our society? And how can we disentangle ourselves from our culture's headlong pursuit of these values and live faithful lives of service to God and our neighbors?

    Weaving together Kalia's story with that of her beloved grandmother, the book moves from the jungles of Laos to the family's early years in the United States.When Kalia becomes unhappy about having to do without and decides she wants braces to improve her smile, it is her grandmother--a woman who has just one tooth in her mouth--who helps her see that true beauty is found with those we love most. Stunning illustrations from Vietnamese illustrator Khoa Le bring this intergenerational tale to life.A deep and moving reflection on enduring hardship and generational love. . . . Poignant storytelling with stunning visuals.--starred, Kirkus Reviews A sincere narrative that centers on the power of family love.--starred, School Library JournalMinnesota Book Award Finalist, ALA Notable Children's Book, New York Public Library Best Book for Kids, NPR Best Book of the Year

    They say a person’s life flashes by before dying. But it’s not his whole life. Just the events that led to this. The important ones, and the ones Santiago would rather forget. The coins in Santiago’s hand are meant for the bus fare back to his abusive abuela’s house. Except he refuses to return; he won’t be missed. His future is uncertain until he meets the kind, maternal María Dolores and her young daughter, Alegría, who help Santiago decide what comes next: He will accompany them to el otro lado, the United States of America. They embark with little, just backpacks with water and a bit of food. To travel together will require trust from all parties, and Santiago is used to going it alone. None of the three travelers realizes that the journey through Mexico to the border is just the beginning of their story.

    It's time to come together and renounce the politics of rejection, division, and greed. It's time to lift up the common good, move up to higher ground, and revive the heart of democracy. In a single, rousing sermon, the celebrated Reverend William J. Barber II of the Poor People’s Campaign makes an impassioned argument whose message could not be clearer: It's time for change, and the time needs you.

    Highly recommended."--School Library Journal, starred reviewThirteen-year-old Robbie leads a double life. It's just Robbie and his dad, but no one knows that his dad isn't like most parents. Sometimes he wakes Robbie up in the middle of the night to talk about dying. Sometimes he just leaves without telling Robbie where he's going. Once when Robbie was younger, he was gone for more than a week. Robbie was terrified of being left alone but even more scared of telling anyone in case he was put into foster care. No one can know. Until one day when Robbie has to show the tough new girl, Harmony, around school. Their first meeting ends horribly and she punches Robbie in the face. But eventually they come to realize that they have a lot more in common than they thought. Can Robbie's new friend be trusted to keep his secret?

    But the story is about more than brooms, mops, and vacuums. Mama and Papa turn the deserted office building into a magnificent kingdom filled with paper. Then they weave a fantasy of dragons and kings to further engage their reluctant companion--and even encourage him to one day be the king of a paper kingdom.The Paper Kingdom expresses the joy and spirit of a loving family who turn a routine and ordinary experience into something much grander. Magical art by Pascal Campion shows both the real world and the fantasy through the eyes of the young narrator.

    With a garden full of produce, a joyfully chaotic kitchen, and a friendly meal shared at the table, Our Little Kitchen is a celebration of full bellies and looking out for one another. Bonus materials include recipes and an author’s note about the volunteering experience that inspired the book.

    In 1867 an infant girl called Luli is born into a middle-class Chinese family on the mainland. Her fate is altered when instead of being put to the breast of her mother, her father declares her a misfortune and she is left at the famous Chaozhou wall where many parents and grandparents abandon their unwanted girls. But the child’s mother is desperate to save her and beseeches one of her sons to step in and deliver the baby to safety.At the same time in the affluent house of a scholar on the island of Hong Kong, house slaves Sun Ling and Jingwei are sworn sisters, bound by their shared struggles. When the hardship and abuse become too much too bear, the girls escape and make a run for freedom, then find themselves on a ship bound for the western coast of the Americas. When the paths of these three forgotten girls of China meet, the ocean journey is treacherous and not for the faint-hearted. In the midst of monumental difficulties, their lives converge, and they traverse many obstacles, but will do anything for one another in their oath to stay together and fulfill their hope for a better future in Chinatown, on the shores of San Francisco.

    

    Forced to return after decades, Robin and her daughter, Haley, set out to renovate the properties as quickly as possible―before anyone exposes Robin's secret past as a teenage prostitute. Disaster strikes when Haley befriends a troubled teen mother, hurling Robin back into a past she'd worked so hard to escape. Robin must reshape her idea of home or risk repeating her greatest mistakes. Margo Orlando Littell, author of Each Vagabond by Name, tells an enthralling and nuanced story about family, womanhood, and coming to terms with a left-behind past.

    Protect. Punch. Repeat. Fear. Protect. Punch. Repeat.After years of bullying and misery, Isabel Johnson is determined that her first year of Gilleford Sixth Form College is going to be different. She's going to reinvent herself as the confident, carefree warrior she's always longed to be. Even if she's secretly terrified the entire time.Joshua Bugg is a fighter. He throws punches without a second's thought. Being Mr Nice Guy doesn't get you anywhere in life. But underneath the bravado, he hides a horrifying secret.When Isabel starts asking too many questions, Joshua knows he needs to do whatever he can to keep her mouth shut. She's an irritating bump in his road to freedom. He can't back down. He has to win the fight. He has to survive.-Angela Mack brings you her debut novel I AM UNWORTHY, a powerful story of pain, bravery and love.Due to it's strong language and violent content, I AM UNWORTHY is recommended for mature readers only.

    Gypsies. No baby-snatching and tambourines, just resilient souls and richly coloured skin. I look most like them, with my brown eyes and scars. I don't have the richly coloured skin, though. Instead of deep bronze or golden ochre, I came out the colour of sunflower oil and, thanks to childhood malnutrition followed by years of low iron levels, I'm now the shade of an off-brand Simpson.' Eliska Tanzer is a dreamer. Born into a family of prostitutes in a Romani ghetto, she grows up in squalid conditions, with no running water, no education, and no future.Desperate to make her own way in the world, Eliska sets in motion a chain of events that will lead her to England, to school, and to within inches of her dreams.But the brutalities of her new life threaten to turn the dream into a nightmare.This is her story. A true story of resilience, determination, and hunger to learn. A story of a girl on the brink. A moving and timely memoir from a powerful new voice in literature.

    Such is the guiding element of journalist Jack Shuler’s new book, one that explores the current addiction crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate health care. Tainted drug supplies, inadequate civic responses, and prevailing negative opinions about people who use drugs, the poor, and those struggling with mental health issues lead to thousands of preventable deaths each year while politicians are slow to adopt effective policies. Putting themselves at great personal risk (and often breaking the law to do so), the brave men and women profiled in This Is Ohio–a coalition of people who use drugs, mothers, and allies–are mounting a grassroots effort to combat ineffective and often incorrect ideas about addiction and instead focus on saving lives through commonsense harm reduction policies.Opioids are the current face of addiction, but as Shuler shows, the crisis in our midst is one that has long been fostered by income inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs across the Rust Belt, and lack of access to health care. What is playing out in Ohio today isn’t only about opioids, but rather a decades-long economic and sociological shift in small towns all across the United States. It’s also about a larger culture of stigma at the heart of how we talk about addiction. What happens in Ohio will have ramifications felt across the nation and for decades to come.

    It's safer there. But after the Bad Night happens and her mother is taken away, Social Services sends Firefly to live with her Aunt Gayle. She hardly knows Gayle, but discovers that she owns a costume shop, The Corseted Lady.Yes, Firefly might get used to taking baths, sleeping on a bed again and wearing as many costumes as she can to school.But where is home? What is family? Who is Firefly, for that matter...and which costume is the real one?

    Debut novelist Danielle Svetcov shines a light on a big problem without a ready answer, nailing heartbreak and hope, and pulling it off with a humor and warmth that make the funny parts of Jeanne Ann and Cal's story cathartic and the difficult parts all the more moving.

    Lulu and the Hunger Monster delivers the right message at the right time, helping readers recognize the problem of childhood hunger and moving them to find solutions.”—Jeff Bridges, actor and anti-hunger advocateWhen Lulu’s mother’s van breaks down, money for food becomes tight and the Hunger Monster comes into their lives. Only visible to Lulu, Hunger Monster is a troublemaker who makes it hard for her to concentrate in school. How will Lulu help her mom and defeat the Monster when Lulu has promised never to speak the monster’s name to anyone?This realistic—and hopeful—story of food insecurity builds awareness of the issue of childhood hunger, increases empathy for people who are food insecure, and demonstrates how anyone can help end hunger. Lulu and the Hunger Monster™ empowers children to destigmatize the issue of hunger before the feeling turns into shame.The author combines years of experience fighting hunger as a food bank CEO with an MFA in writing for young children to craft an honest story of how poverty and food insecurity can affect adults and their children. Lulu’s story addresses the effects of hunger on learning and can be used in group settings to address social justice issues in an accessible and encouraging way.Lulu and the Hunger Monster has been awarded the International Literacy Association’s 2021 Social Justice Literature Award and a 2020 Foreword INDIES Honorable Mention, Picture Books, Early Reader (Children's).

    So, on February 5, 1979, thousands of tractors from all parts of the USA took to the highways and flooded Washington, DC, in protest. Farmers wanted fair prices for their products and demanded action from Congress. After police corralled the tractors on the National Mall, the farmers and their tractors stayed through a snowstorm and dug out the city. Americans were now convinced they needed farmers, but the law took longer.Lindsay H. Metcalf, a journalist who grew up on a family farm, shares this rarely told story of grassroots perseverance and economic justice rooted in the 1980s farm crisis. It is the story of the struggle and triumph of the American farmer that still resonates today.

    People living in poverty have been depicted as lazy, dependent, and irresponsible so regularly and for so long that it has powerfully affected how people see, think about, and treat their fellow citizens who are financially vulnerable. Drawing on a two-year storytelling project and her own experience of childhood poverty, this book by journalist and author Mary O’Hara argues for a radical overhaul of this fundamentally pernicious portrayal. We can’t begin to address poverty until we actually see it clearly. To start the process of doing that, O’Hara turns not to pundits or social scientists, but to the real experts on poverty: the people who live it.

    The boy's mother patiently answers his questions and explains how people's life paths can be so different. The child observes the things he has in common with the man and wonders where his own path will lead. The One With the Scraggly Beard is defined by a simple narrative in which a child's curiosity and perceptiveness act as catalysts for understanding fear, suffering and resilience while exploring themes of homelessness, belonging and compassion. This unique book will speak to children and adults alike. A note from the author explains how the origin of this story is rooted in her own life.

    In this riveting story about baseball and brotherhood, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks finds himself pitching his way out of poverty–one strike at a time.

    These are not the times to be nice about mere words: the fact is that there is but one mode of obtaining the Charter, and that is by insurrection.” George Julian HarneyChartism was the first time ever that British workers fixed their eyes on the seizure of political power: in 1839, 1842 and again in 1848. In this struggle, they conducted a class war that at different times involved general strikes, battles with the state, mass demonstrations and even armed insurrection. They forged weapons, illegally drilled their forces, and armed themselves in preparation for seizing the reins of government. Such were the early revolutionary traditions of the British working class, deliberately buried beneath a mountain of falsehoods and distortions.This book sees Chartism as an essential part of our history from which we must draw the key lessons for today.

    A beautifully illustrated true childhood story about hockey great Bobby Orr.Bobby eats, sleeps and breathes hockey. So when his birthday is coming up, he only wants one thing: new skates. He's seen the exact pair he wants in the shop window: sparkling blades, shiny leather, clean new laces tied in perfect bows. But when Bobby opens his gift, he's dismayed to find hand-me-down skates: scuffed leather, nicked blades, floppy laces.Once Bobby breaks them in, though, he and the hand-me-down skates become inseparable, and he can't imagine life without them . . . until the brand-new skates come into his life. How can he leave his hand-me-down skates behind?Log Driver's Waltz illustrator Jennifer Phelan brings this classic story to life with timeless, gorgeous art, and Kara Kootsra's words evoke the joy and dedication that Bobby Orr brought to his favorite sport. A perfect gift for readers and fans big and small, this book is destined to be a classic that is reached for time and time again.

    Paraphrasing the wisdom of the great thinker Seneca, he asked the world to question the dogma of consumption that has driven us into environmental and economic crisis. Often referred to as the worlds "poorest" president, in part because of his practice of donating 90% of his $12,000 monthly salary to charity, Jos� Mujica lived his words and proved that one need not have money to be rich. In The World's Poorest President Speaks Out, Jos� Mujica's famous speech comes to life as he asks us to remember our neighbors, our children, and the Earth.

    Informative, moving and essential' - Philippa PerryWe're facing a crisis in care likely to affect every one of us over the course of our lives. Care-work is underpaid; its values disregarded. Britain's society lauds economic growth, productivity and profit over compassion, kindness and empathy. For centuries the caring labours of women have been taken for granted, but with more women now in work, with increasing numbers of elderly and with austerity dismantling the welfare state, care is under pressure as never before.Over five years, Madeleine Bunting travelled the country, speaking to charity workers, doctors, social workers, in-home carers, nurses, palliative care teams and parents, to explore the value of care, the hidden glue that binds us together. She finds remarkable stories, in GP surgeries, in work undertaken by parents for their disabled children and in end-of-life teams, that conjure a different way of imagining our society and the connections between us. Blending these revelatory testimonies with a history and language of care, and with Bunting's own experiences of caring for the young and old in her family, Labours of Love is a hugely important portrait of our nation today - and of how it might be - which raises a clarion call for change.

    What he does next will lead to a chance encounter with a visitor from Texas. This is a true story of survival by eating out of dumpsters and trying to keep warm with restroom hand dryers. More, it is a story of an unlikely friendship that has lasted over twenty-five years. Share through Butch's own letters his sustaining faith and hope to be a somebody. You will cry. You will laugh. You will learn.

      Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Tuchman describes how at different times Jews, middle‑class whites, American Indians, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans have been labeled most at risk for developing diabetes, and that such claims have reflected and perpetuated troubling assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class. She describes how diabetes underwent a mid-century transformation in the public’s eye from being a disease of wealth and “civilization” to one of poverty and “primitive” populations.     In tracing this cultural history, Tuchman argues that shifting understandings of diabetes reveal just as much about scientific and medical beliefs as they do about the cultural, racial, and economic milieus of their time.

    The post-WWII, auto-centric, single-family-development model no longer meets the needs of residents. Urban areas in the US are experiencing dramatically shifting household and cultural demographics and a growing demand for walkable urban living.   Missing Middle Housing, a term coined by Daniel Parolek, describes the walkable, desirable, yet attainable housing that many people across the country are struggling to find. Missing Middle Housing types—such as duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts—can provide options along a spectrum of affordability.   In Missing Middle Housing, Parolek, an architect and urban designer, illustrates the power of these housing types to meet today’s diverse housing needs. With the benefit of beautiful full-color graphics, Parolek goes into depth about the benefits and qualities of Missing Middle Housing. The book demonstrates why more developers should be building Missing Middle Housing and defines the barriers cities need to remove to enable it to be built. Case studies of built projects show what is possible, from  the Prairie Queen Neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska to the Sonoma Wildfire Cottages, in California. A chapter from urban scholar Arthur C. Nelson uses data analysis to highlight the urgency to deliver Missing Middle Housing.   Parolek proves that density is too blunt of an instrument to effectively regulate for twenty-first-century housing needs. Complete industries and systems will have to be rethought to help deliver the broad range of Missing Middle Housing needed to meet the demand, as this book shows. Whether you are a planner, architect, builder, or city leader, Missing Middle Housing will help you think differently about how to address housing needs for today’s communities.

    Criminal defendants come from all races and economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly different ways. Privilege and Punishment examines how racial and class inequalities are embedded in the attorney-client relationship, providing a devastating portrait of inequality and injustice within and beyond the criminal courts.Matthew Clair conducted extensive fieldwork in the Boston court system, attending criminal hearings and interviewing defendants, lawyers, judges, police officers, and probation officers. In this eye-opening book, he uncovers how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court interactions. When disadvantaged defendants try to learn their legal rights and advocate for themselves, lawyers and judges often silence, coerce, and punish them. Privileged defendants, who are more likely to trust their defense attorneys, delegate authority to their lawyers, defer to judges, and are rewarded for their compliance. Clair shows how attempts to exercise legal rights often backfire on the poor and on working-class people of color, and how effective legal representation alone is no guarantee of justice.Superbly written and powerfully argued, Privilege and Punishment draws needed attention to the injustices that are perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship in today's criminal courts, and describes the reforms needed to correct them.

    Kaspar Pine begins his day with a simple task: replace a pet canary. By day's end, as Kaspar is being loaded into an ambulance, he delivers one hell of a "theme essay," covering such subjects as his ability to source and catalogue the cigarette butts he harvests, information on maintaining the social order of chickens, along with general and historic farming details that run from Saskatchewan to Ontario, insinuating himself between other kids and people who wish to do them harm, fire marshalling, and his inability to maintain an essayist's cool detachment in the face of unrequited first love. THE UNION OF SMOKERS details the heartfelt and heroic last day in the life of a reluctant, irreverent, and oddly wise hero."Son of a knacker! An entirely new kind of story told by a gutter-mouthed, chain-smoking twelve year old, who announces in the opening paragraph that he's going to die today. As irreverent and playful as it is tragic and heartbreaking, this wonderfully original debut novel reminds readers to hold onto their humour when life goes squirrelly. Prepare for Paddy Scott's unlikely hero to take up full-time residence in your heart."--Angie Abdou"Philosophical, deeply human and intricately flawed, twelve-year-old Kaspar is the kind of complex, insightful main character whose journey will stay with you for years to come. Paddy Scott's fiction debut is as sharp, detailed and prescient as it is heartbreaking and universal. Bringing together themes of environmental, economic, sexual, emotional, and labour exploitation through one small-town boy's world view, Scott unravels what it can mean to be important, to be human, and to know love. Beautifully told, Kaspar's story reminds us freedom and goodness can be found in the most unexpected ways."--Anita Dolman"Channeling such haunting literary works as Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, Paddy Scott's debut novel THE UNION OF SMOKERS uncannily enfolds readers in the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of small-town Ontario life in the 1960s. With plenty of off-the-cuff banter and more than a little wit and whimsy, this tragi-comic tale of a day in the life of a teenaged boy and the people he meets along the way is a sign of great things to come from Paddy Scott."--Ruth Zuchter

    

    While the wealthy seem to acquire more and more, the impoverished struggle to survive and thrive. This problem pervades not only the secular world but also modern Christianity. The Western church continues to spend more of its resources on its own needs than on those whom God calls us to see and to serve. Perhaps worse, the wealthiest church in history has often become complicit with systemic structures that perpetuate poverty in their own cities. Author and pastor Jimmy Dorrell explains that Scripture demands a drastically different attitude and approach from the wealthy regarding the poor.In Commonwealth: Transformation through Christian Community Development, Dorrell not only explores the cultural entrapment of the modern church regarding wealth and relationships, but offers practical ways that Christians can serve and empower the poor and marginalized in their own communities. Drawing on experiences from twenty-eight years at Mission Waco Mission World and Church Under the Bridge, and undergirded by a thorough and holistic engagement with Scripture, Christian history, and effective models, Dorrell's team has restored one of the most underserved neighborhoods in his community with programs for the unemployed, the homeless, the sick, the addicted and struggling children and teens. They even created a non-profit grocery store in the food desert, transformed a pornographic theater, and built an economic center in a former liquor store.Christian community development rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is how we become neighbors in the biblical sense. Beyond handouts and increased donations, it is only when the poor and marginalized of our communities are empowered that the whole city truly prospers. There is a commonwealth of resources and gifts in all classes, and, if we choose to work together, we can change unjust structures of privilege and favoritism. Dorrell challenges us to see that it is only when we understand how financial prosperity often deepens hardheartedness toward Christ and our neighbors that the Christian church can make the good news of Jesus Christ tangible in our communities and world.