"Stop That Girl" chronicles Ann's colorful coming-of-age travails, from her childhood in a disjointed family through her tender adolescence and beyond. In the captivating title story, our eight-year-old heroine is sent by her pregnant mother on a whirlwind jaunt to Europe with her iconoclast grandmother—known even to her family as Dr. Frost—and comes home to find her family completely reconfigured. In "SOS," Dr. Frost returns to haunt Ann in college, her visit colliding with a famous poet's appearance on campus. "We Know Where We Are, But Not Why" is set during a summer at the Grand Canyon and contrasts Ann's angst-ridden yearning for a philosophical schoolmate back home to her mother's happier pursuits of a lively Australian activist.Along the way, Ann discovers the absurdities that lurk around every corner of a young woman's life, by way of oafish neighbors, overzealous boyfriends, prurient vegetable salesmen, and sour landlords.In these keenly funny, highly original stories, Ann and the people around her are forced to reassess their complex relationships and, along the way, find happiness on the brink of calamity. "Stop That Girl" is a brilliant examination of the exigencies of love and the fragile fabric of family, and heralds the emergence of a remarkable new voice in fiction.

    65 pages of summaries and analysis on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

    Popularity goes much deeper. . . .Appearances can be deceiving. Sam Klein’s found that out firsthand. All she wanted was to be popular. But sometimes what we want is the absolute worst thing for us.Sam discovers that Kylie, It-girl of Woodlawn High, owes her popular status not to her expensive clothes, highlighted hair, and spot on the cheerleading squad but to a magical second skin. Nobody can actually see it—but they can feel it. And if you’re wearing the skin, you feel incredible. Invincible. Popularity is yours.So Sam stole the skin from Kylie. Now she’s the most popular girl at school, while Kylie’s social life takes a serious hit. Sam can barely recognize herself. Her old geek clique is history—but are her new friends really people she can count on? The skin is clinging tighter to her each day . . . can Sam get it off before it’s too late?

    With removables related to favorite scenes in both of the hit Disney Channel Original Movies, as well as elements like Gabriella's karaoke tips and Sharpay's sketches of her dream golf cart, Disney High School Musical All-Access takes readers beyond what they've seen in the movies and gives them an in-depth look at the world of High School Musical.

    Unfortunately, Brett’s got a big mouth she can’t seem to tame and opinions she can’t keep to herself. And she’s obsessed with the moment she became redefined and went from good student, bestfriend-to-Diane to twice-suspended, friendless, and deadest meat in Maine. Soon her world has turned upside down, and she’s not sure where she fits, what she should do, or how to make right what she, and her big fat mouth, have made wrong. Brett’s fresh and funny voice will keep readers laughing out loud at her plights, groaning in sympathy at every misstep, and rooting for her as things go from bad to worst ever possible.

    This Fourth Edition guides students from understanding established theories and models of persuasion, to being able to develop and apply general conclusions about persuasion in real-world settings. The authors present a social-scientific perspective of persuasion that includes in a wide variety of contexts and connects with students by drawing on numerous real-life examples and applications of persuasion.

    With the fate of his family in balance, it's up to Oz to try and crack the case, with the help of his best friend, Rusty. It's a quest that has more twists and turns than the dusty roads of New Mexico--with the answer being closer to home than Oz ever could have imagined.

    They gather evidence—fingerprints lifted from windows with tape, a wallet stained with blood—and lay traps to flush out the murderer. But nothing can prepare them for what happens when a criminal feels you closing in on him. Recently emigrated from Ghana with his sister and mother to London’s enormous housing projects, Harri is pure curiosity and ebullience—obsessed with gummy candy, a friend to the pigeon who visits his balcony, quite possibly the fastest runner in his school, and clearly also fast on the trail of a murderer. Told in Harri's infectious voice and multicultural slang, Pigeon English follows in the tradition of our great novels of friendship and adventure, as Harri finds wonder, mystery, and danger in his new, ever-expanding world.

    Evoking a forgotten America of lush lawns, bountiful summer picnics, and shady front porches, the tale is set when the day's toughest decision might have been what to serve for dinner or which suit or dress to wear.   In this edition, an introduction by longtime Millikin University faculty member and Findlay resident Dan Guillory situates the book and its charming tale firmly in the Central Illinois of 1900.

    Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center--her mother's office building.Through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Wendy, we gain entrance to the world rarely shown by those who documented the events of that one terrible day: a family's slow and terrible realization that Wendy's mother has died, and their struggle to go on with their lives in the face of such a crushing loss.Absent for years, Wendy's real father shows up without warning. He takes her back with him to California, where she re-invents her life: Wendy now lives more or less on her own in a one-room apartment with a TV set and not much else. Wendy's new circle now includes her father's cactus-grower girlfriend, newly reconnected with the son she gave up for adoption twenty years before; a sad and tender bookstore owner who introduces her to the voice of Anne Frank and to his autistic son; and a homeless skateboarder, on a mission to find his long-lost brother.Over the winter and spring that follow, Wendy moves between the alternately painful and reassuring memories of her mother and the revelations that come with growing to know her real father for the first time. Pulled between her old life in Brooklyn and a new one 3,000 miles away, our heroine is faced with a world where the usual rules no longer apply but eventually discovers a strength and capacity for compassion and survival that she never knew she possessed.At the core of the story is Wendy's deep connection with her little brother, back in New York, who is grieving the loss of their mother without her. This is a story about the ties of siblings, about children who lose their parents, parents who lose their children, and the unexpected ways they sometimes find one another again. Set against the backdrop of global and personal tragedy, and written in a style alternately wry and heartbreaking, The Usual Rules is an unexpectedly hopeful story of healing and forgiveness that will offer readers, young and old alike, a picture of how, out of the rubble, a family rebuilds its life.

    I didn't have to. I was transparent; no colour at all. I hung out, was a good enough student and no one paid any special attention to me at all. Then I became a white girl."Until she was fourteen, Josie was pretty ordinary. Then her Mom meets Martin, "a real ponytail Indian," and before long, Josie finds herself living on a reserve outside town, with a new stepfather, a new stepbrother, and a new name; "Blondie." In town, white was the ambient noise, the no-colour background. On the reserve, she's White, and most seem to see her only for her blond hair and blue eyes. Her mother's no help. She never leaves the house, gripped by her fear of the "wild Indians" beyond Martin's doorstep. But Josie can't afford to hide out forever. She has to go to school, and she has to get herself a life, one way or another. So bit by bit, she finds a way through the minefields. She makes a friend, Rose, with whom she tries to bridge the chasms between out and in, white and Indian, town and reserve. She finds a family in Martin, Luke, and Grandma. And bit by bit, the place itself, the reserve; the run-down houses, the way the people live in them and around them, the forest and the sea; finds its way into her, like nothing else ever has, or ever will.

    She has a pet rat, her dead dad's Book of Lists, an encyclopedic knowledge of cheese from working at her mom's cheese shop, and a crush on Nick, the surf bum who works behind the counter. It's the summer before eighth grade and Drew's days seem like business as usual, until one night after closing time, when she meets a strange boy in the alley named Emmett Crane. Who he is, why he's there, where the cut on his cheek came from, and his bottomless knowledge of rats are all mysteries Drew will untangle as they are drawn closer together, and Drew enters into the first true friendship, and adventure, of her life.From the Hardcover edition.

    What happens to a dream divided? Draping colorful scarves around her neck, the thirteen-year-old from Kosova thinks of herself as a typical American schoolgirl, happy to blend into eighth grade with her friends. But for her parents, seeking a new life in Maine was not a choice but a necessity -- a way to escape from a war and find medical care for a daughter burned in a fire that scarred her up to her chin. While her underemployed parents still talk about "home" and continue to feel like foreigners ten years later, their daughter is torn between the guilt about their displacement and pride in her new identity. Then a hateful event changes everything, stirring passions throughout the entire region and forcing residents old and new to re-examine what it means to be an American. Narrated by the young daughter from Kosova, the nuanced and deeply moving immigration tale was inspired by true events: In October 2002, the mayor of Lewiston, Maine wrote a letter to the elders of the local Somali community, asking them to turn future refugees away because the town was "maxed-out physically, financially, and emotionally." Seizing the opportunity, a racist group staged a rally that drew thirty people, only to be met by some six thousand residents in support of the Somalis -- people of all cultures and backgrounds who knew something about America.

    "If you could have anything in the world, what would you wish for?" I shrug. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe . . ." "Maybe what?" "For us to live better than we do." He does not say anything. In 1948, award-winning author Ruth White lived in Jewell Valley, a coal camp nestled between the hills of southwestern Virginia, with her mother, still mourning for a baby who died four years earlier; her father, who spent the weekends and most of his pay out drinking; and her three older sisters, Audrey, Yvonne, and Eleanor. Told in Audrey's voice, this is how the author imagines Audrey's experiences during a time of great trauma for the White family – and what happened before they were able to live a better life.This snapshot of life in a coal camp, complete with everyday heartaches and joys – as well as stories, songs, and jokes – is Ruth White's most personal work to date.Little Audrey is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix™ come alive is made only more delightful by the extraordinary soundtrack that enhances Harry, Hermione, Ron's adventures. Alfred presents this selection of music from the soundtrack to the major motion picture arranged for advanced solo piano. Titles are * Dumbledore's Army * Fireworks * Flight of the Order of the Phoenix * Loved Ones & Leaving * The Ministry of Magic * Professor Umbridge * The Room of Requirement * (Bonus Selection) Hedwig's Theme.