When the de La Cruz Family Danced


Book Description

During his one and only return visit to the Philippines, Johnny de la Cruz-plagued by a sense of isolation-succumbs to a quick sexual encounter with an old flame, the attractive and beguiling Bunny Piña. Years later, nineteen-year-old Winston Piña has barely finished eulogizing his recently deceased mother when he finds a letter she wrote, but never sent, to Johnny. This leads Winston into the lives of the de la Cruz family-a family to which he might or might not belong. When the de la Cruz Family Danced explores the ties within family and how they are affected by circumstances of birth, immigration, and assimilation.




This is One Way to Dance


Book Description

Deluxe -- Thank You -- Pelham Road -- There Is No Mike Here -- Things People Said: An Essay in Seven Steps -- Temporary Talismans -- Six Hours from Anywhere You Want to Be -- No One Is Ordinary; Everyone Is Ordinary -- Ring Theory -- Saris and Sorrows -- Voice Texting with My Mother.




Kid Tips


Book Description

The Real Parenting Experts Speak Out! For this invaluable book, Tom McMahon mounted a nationwide media campaign and gathered a wealth of tested and proven child raising tips from experienced parents in over three hundred cities across the country. Here are more than one thousand of the best, reflecting every aspect of parenting -- inside tips today's busy parents all too often don't have time to share with their family and friends. Discover fresh, unique, creative ideas that are fun, thrifty, easily accessible and pediatrician-approved for health and safety: PLAYTIME -- from indoor activities to outdoor play to coping with clutter and cleanup MEALTIME -- how to feed baby, deal with your finicky eater and dine out without losing your mind HEALTH AND SAFETY -- taking medicine painlessly, soothing colicky babies, visiting the doctor, and more DISCIPLINE -- three easy steps that short-circuit big problems before they begin! BEDTIME -- from putting baby to bed to quieting bumps in the night ON THE GO -- travel and vacations, errands and shopping made easy SELF ESTEEM AND RELATIONSHIPS -- promoting healthful self-respect and respect for others From baby basics to easy toilet training to teaching your children responsibility and more, here are fast, fabulous "fixes" that work!




Index of Haunted Houses


Book Description

This is a book of ghost stories, and for the most part, ghosts are jealous monsters, intent upon our destruction. They never appear overtly here, yet we gradually become aware of their presence the way spirits in haunted houses trod over creaky floors, slam doors, and issue sudden gusts of wind. The poems are Koan-like—the fewer the words, the more charged they are. The engine driving this sense of haunting and loss is money, which Davis describes as “federal bone” boiling around us. Bison in Nebraska are reduced to bones, “seven/standing men/tall” fodder for the fertilizer used by farmers in the 1800s. Though they often specify dates, there’s an equality to the hauntings—every instance has its moment, and persists, despite being in the past, present, or future. If there really was a 1980 or 1848 or 1499, Davis implies it is somewhere. Index of Haunted Houses is spooky and sad—a stunning debut, one that will surprise, convince, and most of all, delight.




A Room Away From the Wolves


Book Description

“Shiver-inducingly delicious.”—The New York Times Book Review “[Suma’s] narratives are subtle, quicksilver creatures, her language is elegant, and her characters keep more secrets than they reveal. If this book was a dessert, it wouldn't be a chocolate chip cookie or a vanilla birthday cake — it would be an earl grey lavender macaroon, or maybe balsamic fig ice cream.” – NPR.com “This beautiful story is full of magical-realism and luscious, lyrical writing.” – BuzzFeed “Terrific . . . A gothic love letter to secret places of New York City and the runaway girls who find them.”—Kelly Link, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble “Nova Ren Suma surpasses herself with this gorgeously-told, mesmerizing, tense and twisted story.”— Laura Ruby, National Book Award Finalist and Printz-Winning author of Bone Gap "Nova Ren Suma is a force to be reckoned with. Nobody writes like her."—Courtney Summers, author of Sadie "A Room Away From the Wolves is a page-turning thrill. Prepare to be left shivery and spooked and a little bit heartbroken.”—Emily X.R. Pan, New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After "A Room Away from the Wolves is a beautifully tangled chain, a modern gothic haunting by one of our masters."—Elana K. Arnold, author of National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina’s cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother—a bond Bina thought was unbreakable. Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her. She has an old suitcase, a fresh black eye, and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women’s residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history, a vow of confidentiality, and dark, magical secrets. There, Bina is drawn to her enigmatic downstairs neighbor Monet, a girl who is equal parts intriguing and dangerous. As Bina’s lease begins to run out, and nightmare and memory get tangled, she will be forced to face the terrible truth of why she’s come to Catherine House and what it will cost for her to leave . . . In A Room Away from the Wolves, critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author Nova Ren Suma weaves a spellbinding ghost story about who deserves a second chance, how we lie to those around us and ourselves, and what lengths girls will go to in order to save each other.




Monet


Book Description

The life of the great French painter, one of the founders of Impressionism, is narrated in lush comic art reminiscent of his style. From the Salon des Refuses ("Salon of the Rejected") and many struggling years without recognition, money, and yet a family to raise, all the way to great success, critically and financially, Monet pursued insistently one vision: catching the light in painting, refusing to compromise on this ethereal pursuit. It cost him dearly but he was a beacon for his contemporaries. We discover in this comics biography how he came to this vision as well as his turbulent life pursuing it.




Flying Free


Book Description

The daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon grew up as a shy, timid child in a small midwestern town during the 1960s. Targeted by school bullies and dismissed by many of her teachers, she worried that people would find out the truth: that she was INTF. Incompetent. Nerd. Terrified. Failure. This feeling stayed with her well into her twenties when she was told that “girls can’t do science” or “women just don’t know how to handle machines.” Yet in the span of just six years, Cecilia became the first Latina pilot to secure a place on the United States Unlimited Aerobatic Team and earn the right to represent her country at the Olympics of aviation, the World Aerobatic Championships. How did she do it? Using mathematical techniques to overcome her fear, Cecilia performed at air shows in front of millions of people. She jumped out of airplanes and taught others how to fly. She learned how to fund-raise and earn money to compete at the world level. She worked as a test pilot and contributed to the design of experimental airplanes, crafting curves of metal and fabric that shaped air to lift inanimate objects high above the earth. And best of all, she surprised everyone by overcoming the prejudices people held about her because of her race and her gender. Flying Free is the story of how Cecilia Aragon broke free from expectations and rose above her own limits by combining her passion for flying with math and logic in unexpected ways. You don’t have to be a math whiz or a science geek to learn from her story. You just have to want to soar.




Spirits of the Ordinary


Book Description

In the tradition of Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel, Alcala presents a magical, multigenerational tale of family passions set along the Mexican-American border in the 1870s. "A strong and finely rendered book in which passions both ordinary and extraordinary are made vivid and convincing".--Larry McMurtry.




Hola and Goodbye


Book Description

In 1920s Southern California, Lupita Camacho leaves Mexico and settles not far from the border--and so begins the journey of an American family told by a chain of tales stretching across three generations. Early stories track Lupita's concessions to the demands of her new country and her new fish cannery job overseen by a lecherous boss who makes sure Lupita, her friend Rosa, and their Chinese coworkers work long, hard, and, for the most part, in silence, since speaking any language but English is forbidden. The family's first-generation Americans populate later stories as they work toward assimilation, complete with kidney-shaped inground pools, even though their homes and children never quite match those in the pages of Ladies Home Journal. Finally, distanced from the culture of their ancestors and freed from the stigma of accented English, Lupita's grandchildren live lives that are as wide-open as America: hosting karaoke nights, becoming female wrestlers, arriving at high school reunions utterly transformed. However, these modern-day family members discover that despite their freedom, they somehow remain set apart. In a time when the word "immigrant" has become politically charged and sometimes stripped of its earlier sense of dignity, these exquisitely human stories provide welcome restoration. In Hola and Goodbye, Donna Miscolta's altogether fascinating and flawed characters face progress and failure against the backdrop of each new generation--bound together, and to us all, by the search for a place in this world.