A Card for My Father


Book Description

A Card For My Father by Samantha Thornhill with illustrations by Morgan Clement is the first title in a trilogy of picture books exploring the lasting effects, big and small, of a father's incarceration on his first-grade daughter, Flora. In A Card For My Father, how can Flora complete her class assignment to write a father's day card when she's never known her father?




My Dad


Book Description

A child describes the many wonderful things about "my dad, " who can jump over the moon, swim like a fish, and be as warm as toast.




Reading My Father


Book Description

PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST— A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE. In Reading My Father, William Styron’s youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron’s parents—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. A drinker, a carouser, and above all “a high priest at the altar of fiction,” Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family’s life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem. From Styron’s Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation’s friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.




Love, Bill


Book Description

Long before becoming a museum curator, author Jan Krulick-Belin curated memories, photographs, and mementos of her father who died when she was just six. Her mother rarely spoke about him again, until a year before her own death, when she gave Jan a box of one hundred love letters he had written her during World War II. Love, Bill chronicles the true story of Krulick-Belin's life-changing pilgrimage of the heart to find the father she thought she'd lost forever. The letters lead her on an extraordinary journey following her father's actual footsteps during the war years, leading to unexpected discoveries from Morocco to Paris to upstate New York. She learns about her parents' great love story, about the war in North Africa, and about the fate of the Jews in Morocco, Germany, and France. Love, Bill offers a testament to the enduring power of determination, love, family, and the unbreakable bond between fathers and daughters.




Hands of My Father


Book Description

By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg’s memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents—and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it. “Does sound have rhythm?” my father asked. “Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does it come and go like the wind?” Such were the kinds of questions that Myron Uhlberg’s deaf father asked him from earliest childhood, in his eternal quest to decipher, and to understand, the elusive nature of sound. Quite a challenge for a young boy, and one of many he would face. Uhlberg’s first language was American Sign Language, the first sign he learned: “I love you.” But his second language was spoken English—and no sooner did he learn it than he was called upon to act as his father’s ears and mouth in the stores and streets of the neighborhood beyond their silent apartment in Brooklyn. Resentful as he sometimes was of the heavy burdens heaped on his small shoulders, he nonetheless adored his parents, who passed on to him their own passionate engagement with life. These two remarkable people married and had children at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression—an expression of extraordinary optimism, and typical of the joy and resilience they were able to summon at even the darkest of times. From the beaches of Coney Island to Ebbets Field, where he watches his father’s hero Jackie Robinson play ball, from the branch library above the local Chinese restaurant where the odor of chow mein rose from the pages of the books he devoured to the hospital ward where he visits his polio-afflicted friend, this is a memoir filled with stories about growing up not just as the child of two deaf people but as a book-loving, mischief-making, tree-climbing kid during the remarkably eventful period that spanned the Depression, the War, and the early fifties. From the Hardcover edition.




Dreams from My Father


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman




On the Brink of Everything


Book Description

“This impassioned book invites readers to the deep end of life where authentic soul work and human transformation become pressing concerns.” —Publishers Weekly 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying Category From bestselling author Parker J. Palmer comes a brave and beautiful book for all who want to age reflectively, seeking new insights and life-giving ways to engage in the world. “Age itself,” he says, “is no excuse to wade in the shallows. It’s a reason to dive deep and take creative risks.” Looking back on eight decades of life—and on his work as a writer, teacher, and activist—Palmer explores what he’s learning about self and world, inviting readers to explore their own experience. In prose and poetry—and three downloadable songs written for the book by the gifted Carrie Newcomer—he meditates on the meanings of life, past, present, and future. With compassion and chutzpah, gravitas and levity, Palmer writes about cultivating a vital inner and outer life, finding meaning in suffering and joy, and forming friendships across the generations that bring new life to young and old alike. “This book is a companion for not merely surviving a fractured world, but embodying—like Parker—the fiercely honest and gracious wholeness that is ours to claim at every stage of life.” —Krista Tippett, New York Times-bestselling author of Becoming Wise “A wondrously rich mix of reality and possibility, comfort and story, helpful counsel and poetry, in the voice of a friend . . . This is a book of immense gratitude, consolation, and praise.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, National Book Award finalist




All Things Paper


Book Description

Make decorative, simple do-it-yourself projects with this friendly guide to paper crafting. You and your family will love to spend hours making beautiful paper art, jewelry, and decorations with All Things Paper. This easy paper crafts book comes with simple-to-follow instructions and detailed photos that show you how to create colorful and impressive art objects to display at home--many of which have practical uses. It is a great book for experienced paper craft hobbyists looking for new ideas or for new folders who want to learn paper crafts from experts. Projects in this papercrafting book include: Candle Luminaries Citrus Slice Coasters Mysterious Stationery Box Everyday Tote Bag Silver Orb Pendant Fine Paper Yarn Necklace Wedding Cake Card Perfect Journey Journal And many more… All the projects in this book are designed by noted paper crafters like Benjamin John Coleman, Patricia Zapata, and Richela Fabian Morgan. They have all been creating amazing objects with paper for many years. Whether you're a beginner or have been paper crafting for many years, you're bound to find something you'll love in All Things Paper. Soon you will be on your way to creating your own designs and paper art.




Dad, I Wrote a Book about You


Book Description

From tiger fierce to snail slow, there are lots of ways to feel and be. A walk through the menagerie of Tiger Days helps young readers see all the feelings they have and the ways those feelings change.




My Father and Me


Book Description

My Father and Me is an autobiographical story that incorporates some of my most cherished memories that I have chosen to share with the reader, which is filled with love, a smidgen of danger, and good old-fashioned family values. It all starts in Sicily, Italy, in 1896. Families were migrating to America for a better life as harsh economic times were felt by all. My father Frank starts a gambling house, and it becomes quite successful. The mob steps in, and things get dicey. Frank must figure a way out or else. The family’s many activities and interactions sometimes lead to unexpected consequences. While the stories of my experiences growing up are lively and delightful, the stories from my dad and those from friends and family are heart-warming stories of respect and most of all love.