This little book is brief and easy to understand. It won’t bore you with mundane grammar rules or the crap you learn in English class, but offers concrete suggestions on how to improve your writing.From lighthearted pointers for beginners to hard-core truths about the craft, Put the Cat In the Oven is a must-have desk reference for anyone who refuses to put down the pen.

    Top experts in the field offer encyclopedic coverage of the topics relating to pregnancy and birth, from fertility and family planning to nutrition and exercise to lifestyle changes, planning for the future, and more. In all, this comprehensive guide covers more than 300 topics of interest to expecting mothers and their partners.The Pregnancy Encyclopedia is the only book that uses an engaging Q&A style with accompanying full-color photographs, illustrations, and infographics to help you understand what's going on with your baby, your partner, and yourself.Reviews:"This is an excellent addition to public and consumer-health library collections." - Booklist (Starred Review)

    Today’s kids have adopted sedentary lifestyles filled with television, video games, and computer screens. But more and more, studies show that children need “rough and tumble” outdoor play in order to develop their sensory, motor, and executive functions. Disturbingly, a lack of movement has been shown to lead to a number of health and cognitive difficulties, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), emotion regulation and sensory processing issues, and aggressiveness at school recess break. So, how can you ensure your child is fully engaging their body, mind, and all of their senses? Using the same philosophy that lies at the heart of her popular TimberNook program—that nature is the ultimate sensory experience, and that psychological and physical health improves for children when they spend time outside on a regular basis—author Angela Hanscom offers several strategies to help your child thrive, even if you live in an urban environment. Today it is rare to find children rolling down hills, climbing trees, or spinning in circles just for fun. We’ve taken away merry-go-rounds, shortened the length of swings, and done away with teeter-totters to keep children safe. Children have fewer opportunities for unstructured outdoor play than ever before, and recess times at school are shrinking due to demanding educational environments. With this book, you’ll discover little things you can do anytime, anywhere to help your kids achieve the movement they need to be happy and healthy in mind, body, and spirit.

    The Baby Signing Bible provides step-by-step instructions for parents and other caregivers, as well as insight into why baby sign language is useful for children of all ages. Kids with special needs can also benefit greatly from this program. Featuring 400 signs, the book covers essential nouns such as milk, verbs such as eat, and descriptors such as more. In addition, The Baby Signing Bible features real-life stories from parents who have successfully signed with their children, along with fun songs and games that help families learn to "sign and sing." Confidence-building illustrations enhance the basics for mastering vocabulary words.

    Packed with practical advice, reassurance and simple yet effective techniques to help you deal with all the challenges that raising a toddler involves, Jo will give you the confidence and the know-how to raise a happy and contented toddler. She addresses common battlegrounds, such as mealtimes, dressing, sleeping and potty training, and takes you step-by-step through her tried-and-tested techniques to deal with them simply, patiently and effectively. Jo also offers guidance on how to plan your toddler's day hour by hour to ensure he or she is getting the right balance of stimulation and relaxation, offers support and guidance for working and single parents, and shows again and again that far from being an exhausting challenge, the toddler years are the most fun, entertaining and unique years to be cherished and enjoyed.

    From adjectives and exclamation points to dialect and hoopetedoodle, Elmore Leonard explains what to avoid, what to aspire to, and what to do when it sounds like "writing" (rewrite).Beautifully designed, filled with free-flowing, elegant illustrations and specially priced, Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing is the perfect writer's—and reader's—gift.

    The highly sought after baby and toddler care experts strike again with this easy-to-read guide to everything moms and dads need to know for babies 6-15 months.For babies between 6-15 months, this resource takes the guesswork out of: • Common Illnesses (What is it, what do I do about it, when do I call the doctor?)• Feeding (including a grocery list and easy-to-read, specific guidelines on progressing from baby food to table food and mastering that sippy cup!)• Sleeping (including instructions on how to establish all night sleep 10-12 hours in a row, naptime tips, how to transfer to that toddler bed and much much more!) The Moms On Call Next Steps Baby Care: 6-15 months also includes the incredibly popular, hour-by-hour schedules mapped out at a glance!Advice from two pediatric nurse moms with eight children between them has moms all over the globe hailing this as, "The absolute, best baby book ever."

    Grounded in mindfulness and neuroscience, this pioneering book redefines discipline and outlines the five essential elements necessary for children to thrive: unconditional love, space for children to be themselves, mentorship, healthy boundaries, and mis-takes that create learning and growth opportunities. In this book, you will also discover parenting practices such as setting limits with love, working with difficult emotions, and forgiveness and compassion meditations that place discipline within a context of mindfulness. This relationship-centered approach will restore your confidence as a parent and support your children in developing emotional intelligence, self-discipline, and resilience—qualities they need for living an authentic and meaningful life.

    With this book you will learn how to tap into every Kindle Fire feature, including many of the hidden ones not discussed in other books. From setting up your Kindle Page, managing your music, watching movies, and downloading content - this book covers everything. The task based full-color format allows you to quickly and easily find the exact task you want to accomplish and walks you through it in a delightfully concise and visual manner. My Kindle Fire makes it easy for you to:• Master all the basics, fast: reading, playing, watching, browsing, and more• Tweak your Kindle Fire for quicker access and longer battery life• Sample best-seller book chapters for free• Mark up any eBook with highlights, notes, and bookmarks• Convert your personal documents for use on Kindle Fire• Discover Calibre, a powerful eBook management tool• Control even the largest music libraries• Get instant answers from Wikipedia, and from Kindle Fire’s built-in dictionary• Listen to personalized Internet radio stations created just for you• Use your Kindle Fire as a digital photo frame• Prevent unwanted subscription charges• Set up any email account to work on your Kindle Fire• Explore any web content with Amazon’s innovative Silk browser• Use Amazon Cloud to get your stuff anywhere—even if you left your Kindle at home• And much much more…Unlike many other guides which might only briefly mention or skip over some very import Kindle Fire features My Kindle Fire covers everything. Here are just a few of the things you'll find in My Kindle Fire that aren't covered in other guides: • Full coverage of Calibre, a free application for Mac or PC that helps manage your eBook library• A large number of walkthroughs for managing music playlists, including how to use cloud playlists. • How to reinstall multiple apps at once in case you reset your Kindle Fire. • Step-by-step walkthroughs on configuring all types of email accounts. • Coverage on handling attachments in your email application. • Importing contacts from your existing email application or cloud service and how you can export your contacts in order to back them up. • How to use Copy and Paste on the Kindle Fire. • How to use social networking integration with Facebook and others. • Walkthroughs on using the Gallery app, Pandora, Audible, and other popular apps. • Shows you how to access files on other computers in your house right from your Kindle Fire.

    In this inspiring and enlightening book, Heather Shumaker describes her quest to nail down “the rules” to raising smart, sensitive, and self-sufficient kids. Drawing on her own experiences as the mother of two small children, as well as on the work of child psychologists, pediatricians, educators and so on, in this book Shumaker gets to the heart of the matter on a host of important questions. Hint: many of the rules aren’t what you think they are!The “rules” in this book focus on the toddler and preschool years—an important time for laying the foundation for competent and compassionate older kids and then adults. Here are a few of the rules:    • It’s OK if it’s not hurting people or property    • Bombs, guns and bad guys allowed.    • Boys can wear tutus.    • Pictures don’t have to be pretty.    • Paint off the paper!    • Sex ed starts in preschool    • Kids don’t have to say “Sorry.”    • Love your kid’s lies. IT’S OK NOT TO SHARE is an essential resource for any parent hoping to avoid PLAYDATEGATE (i.e. your child’s behavior in a social interaction with another child clearly doesn’t meet with another parent’s approval)!

    The children who heard more words were better prepared when they entered school. These same kids, when followed into third grade, had bigger vocabularies, were stronger readers, and got higher test scores. This disparity in learning is referred to as the achievement gap.Professor Dana Suskind, MD, learned of this thirty million word gap in the course of her work as a cochlear implant surgeon at University of Chicago Medical School and began a new research program along with her sister-in-law, Beth Suskind, to find the best ways to bridge that gap. The Thirty Million Word Initiative has developed programs for parents to show the kind of parent-child communication that enables optimal neural development and has tested the programs in and around Chicago across demographic groups. They boil down to getting parents to follow the three Ts: Tune in to what your child is doing; Talk more to your child using lots of descriptive words; and Take turns with your child as you engage in conversation. Parents are shown how to make the words they serve up more enriching. For example, instead of telling a child, “Put your shoes on,” one might say instead, “It is time to go out. What do we have to do?” The lab's new five-year longitudinal research program has just received funding so they can further corroborate their results. The neuroscience of brain plasticity is some of the most valuable and revolutionary medical science being done today. It enables us to think and do better. It is making a difference in the lives of both the old and young.  If you care for children, this landmark book is essential reading.

    From her long experience working with successful writers and discovering new voices, Lerner looks at different writer personality types and addresses the concerns of writers just getting started as well as those stalled mid-career.

    Wilde. After all, even fluent English speakers can be at sixes and sevens when told to pick up the "dog and bone" or "head to the loo," so they can "spend a penny." Wherever did these peculiar expressions come from?British author Christopher J. Moore made a name for himself on this side of the pond with the sleeper success of his previous book, In Other Words. Now, Moore draws on history, literature, pop culture, and his own heritage to explore the phrases that most embody the British character. He traces the linguistic influence of writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare and Dickens to Wodehouse, and unravels the complexity Brits manage to imbue in seemingly innocuous phrases like "All right." Along the way, Moore reveals the uniquely British origins of some of the English language's more curious sayings. For example: Who is Bob and how did he become your uncle? Why do we refer to powerless politicians as "lame ducks"? How did "posh" become such a stylish word?Part language guide, part cultural study, How to Speak Brit is the perfect addition to every Anglophile's library and an entertaining primer that will charm the linguistic-minded legions.